Chosen Ones (The Chosen Ones, #1)

by Veronica Roth

She didn’t know if the Resurrectionist was the Dark One under the siphons and the dramatic cloak or if the Resurrectionist was causing the Drains or how many Chosen Ones had died doing exactly what she was about to do.

What would be causing the Drains instead? Universe colliding magic? Why would the Drains have stopped on their side then?

BY THE TIME Sloane’s vision cleared, they were inside the safe house, a large red-brick building perched on the river’s edge.

Why would they stay in the old building after Sloane escaped, anyway? It was clearly compromised

“Nero,” Sloane repeated. “Not that I doubt you, but he seems kind of . . . nonthreatening. Are you sure he’s—”

Lol, she knows he is calculated and has seen glimpses of his power

It had taken her a long time to fall asleep—not just because of the strange surroundings or the buzz of all that Mox had told her in the back of her mind, but also because of the guilt over abandoning Matt and Esther in the middle of a mission, without explanation.

Yeah. Why didn't she tell them? Guilt over Esther's mom?

“Maybe they weren’t.” His thumb was bleeding at the cuticle. He had bitten down too hard. “Or maybe they just . . . weren’t prepared to have a kid bursting at the seams with magic. It’s still—” He shifted. “Too much. It’s too much. Makes me—not settled. Not stable.”

Aw, she wants someone unstable. I guess she is going to stay here with him and his zombies forever. Poor Ines

“No, I’m not.” Sloane shook her head. “You just haven’t been to my world.” “Something tells me I wouldn’t do well there.” “Are you doing well here?” He laughed. “No, I guess not.”

Or he, hers

“On your other world, you fought a battle,” Sibyl said, sinking down onto a fat tree stump. She set her water bottle down and sat slumped, her arms around her knees. She looked so small that way, the bones of her spine sticking out even through her cardigan. “It clings to you still.” Sibyl was looking down at Sloane’s scarred right hand. Sloane resisted the urge to cover it up. “That was not your battle,” Sibyl said. “Not really.” Sloane’s instinct was to argue. It had been her battle; of course it had. The Dark One had taken her brother from her. That she would fight him had been an inevitability not even worth discussing. But there was too much truth in what Sibyl had said for Sloane to deny it. It had been a battle worth fighting, but that didn’t mean it was Sloane’s. For ten years she had been jiggling her knee, waiting for something to make sense, for something new to happen. But until now, it had been too terrible to consider that there might be another fight in front of her and that it might be hers in a way the other had not.

Ok, so she is a Chosen One to Nero only?

In his book The Manifestation of Impossible Wants: A New Theory of Magic, Arthur Solowell makes the bold claim that “desire cannot be threatened or manipulated into being.” While I agree that simple threats do not produce reliable magical results, it is naive to suggest that coercion is never effective in influencing magic. Perhaps Mr. Solowell was fortunate enough to grow up in a community of moral adults who never exerted their influence against children, but I was not. I saw the way that cruel parents shaped my peers and, therefore, their desires.

THIS. Thanks, Erica

“It’s important not to confuse causation with correlation,” Sibyl said, scrutinizing the pepper grinder she held in both hands. Even though she was a widow, she was still wearing her wedding band. “However, we know that a Drain happens every time one of you shows up to kill him, so they do seem to be related.” “Wait . . . they do?” Sloane set the magazine down and got to her feet. “So you think they’re maybe caused by . . . the presence of an outsider?” “All I know is you’re not supposed to be here,” Sibyl said. “Maybe the Drains are like the world’s allergic reaction to you.” At Sloane’s raised eyebrow, she scowled. “Well, I don’t know, girl, I’m not a scientist.”

Ok, so Nero did work out interdimensional travel, and caused Drains across his trips... So he knew these newbs would again make it look like the Resurrectionist was causing them...

“He loves it,” Sibyl said, nodding toward the hall bathroom where Mox was showering. “To him it looks like . . . beams of light or something. He plays magic like guitar strings. Pluck—your gravity’s gone. Pluck—your house is on fire. Delightful.”

Hahaha

“You, girl,” she said, leaning closer to Sloane, “have the grittiest of all magic. Fate’s grabbed you hard and it’s not letting go. So I want you to remember something.” She closed her fingers around Sloane’s arm tightly, her grip strong for a woman of her size. “The line between a Chosen One and his opposite is hair-fine, so don’t get too cozy on one side of it.” The smell of onions was pungent enough to make Sloane’s eyes sting. She tugged her arm free. “All I want is to go home,” she said. “That,” Sibyl said, her eyes glittering, “is the fattest lie I’ve ever heard. You want everything. You’re a bottomless pit. Makes me feel exhausted just thinking about you.” “You know, you’re not such a peach yourself,” Sloane snapped.

Shouldn't she be cozy on the good side? Or will she have to pick a world?

But she made herself look at him anyway, because she deserved it, deserved to know just how disgusting she was, how she had betrayed Albie and ruined him and set him on a path that would lead to his death— But Mox was just looking at her.

“Not possible.” Edda was shaking her head. Sloane leaned back slightly to feel the press of Mox’s shoulder against hers. “I mean,” Sloane said, “it’s always possible that you’ve been lied to.”

A sharp crack sounded, and Mox screamed, his concentration broken by a metal rod slamming into his back. It seemed to have sprouted from Edda’s palm. Mox collapsed onto the tile. The masked soldier was just a few strides away from Sloane. Sloane knew that if the woman got a hand on her, they were both lost, captives of Nero.

I amso confused. I thought no one could kill him, but he seems so weak

“I think I figured out your siphon problem,” Mox said. He kept flicking magical breaths at her every so often, trying to get her to laugh. She had threatened to take away his tooth whistle more than once, not that it would have made much of a difference.

Cute. They are definitely not my OTP, but I like them as the start of a cute new romance

“Right. Well—have you considered that maybe when you were trying to create a magical breath, you didn’t want to create a magical breath? That the one thing you actually wanted was a destructive indoor hurricane that broke all the windows?” Sloane opened her mouth to object—of course she had wanted to do what she was supposed to do with the magical breath. She had spent days so frustrated with the siphon she wanted to hammer it into fragments. But really, hadn’t she found herself wondering why she cared about puffs of air and summoning elevators without touching buttons and flinging open doors when all those things were simple enough to do without magic? Hadn’t she broken that skylight in the Hall of Summons by tapping into whatever it was that gnawed inside her, telling her to take more, more, more while she could get it?

“You can’t force someone to want something,” he said. “And knowing what you want—not just vaguely but really specifically what you want—is a big part of magic. You don’t pick the act and then force the desire. You know the desire—the exact shade of it—and then choose the act accordingly.”

“What happened?” he said, and she hadn’t realized how controlled he had been during their journey back to Chicago until he was the Resurrectionist again, all chaos and fury.

She wasn’t with Albie. Albie was dead. Her head knew it but also didn’t know it. I feel like I’ve got one foot in the past all the time, she had told Matt once, and that was when he had grabbed the toe of her shoe and wiggled it. In the past, you were barefoot, he had said to her. And in the present, look! You’ve got shoes on. So you know both feet are here.

Salt had stained the toes gray in an uneven line.

Very midwestern

“I’m not allowing either of you to march like fools toward a man who, apparently, both of you have failed to kill on more than one occasion,” Ziva said. “So get a firmer grip on yourself, Chosen One.” “Ziva,” Mox said, chastising. But Sloane only nodded. There was something bracing about Ziva’s manner, like a slap to the face that brought her back to herself. She ran her hands through her hair and nodded again. “Okay,” she said, tugging herself free of Mox’s grip. “Let’s make a plan, then.”

SLOANE HAD NEVER had to plan an operation like this without her friends before. Her mind was a maze of city streets and entry and exit points. Her talent was in observation, not in strategy. Not like Matt, who had an instinct for people and exactly how they could be pressed, or like Esther, who could think five moves ahead of her opponents, whoever they were. All together, they had not been great wielders of magic, but they had been like the fingers of a hand moving to make a fist. And now she was just a single finger. The middle one, probably, Sloane thought with a kind of faint hysteria.

I wonder when Ines or Albie may come in? Maybe never

“Well,” Sloane said, scowling, “it’s my first time sewing rotten flesh back together, so you’ll have to forgive me being a little clumsy about it.” “ ’S not rotten,” the man said. “ ’S rotting.” Ziva’s teeth whistled as she laughed. “Don’t take offense, Pete. She’s a little wound up right now.”

Sloane gritted her teeth and tied off the last stitch. She didn’t bother to keep it neat. Pete—what a ridiculous name for a zombie.

Rude

“Gotta stay loose,” Pete said, and he wrenched his arm out of its socket so he could waggle it around a little. Sloane bit back a laugh. “That doesn’t hurt?” she said. “Eh, not really,” Pete said. “ ’S more like the memory of pain, if you know what I mean. That’s how everything is for us—echoes.” Sloane glanced at Mox. He was acting like he hadn’t heard.

We might need you. I’m still unpredictable with the siphon, and what if the blond cadaver’s head falls off?” “Unpredictable? I think the word you’re looking for is useless. You are useless with the siphon,” Ziva said. “But this raises another question: How are we even going to get in the Camel? It’s not as if she and I can just walk in unnoticed.” “We could put some tape over that hole in your face,” Sloane said. “Careful, flesh-bag, or I’ll give you one to match,” Ziva retorted. Mox coughed as if to disguise a laugh.

“Our universes . . . split?” Mox said. “I mean, it seems like we were running right alongside each other—hence the term parallel. But then you guys developed big magic, and we didn’t.” Sloane shrugged. “I thought it was the Tenebris Incident that caused the split, but now I think it’s because Genetrix’s World War Two was fought primarily on water instead of air, so they focused on underwater surveillance, which is what precipitated the Tenebris Incident and . . . what?” They were both giving her odd looks. “Where,” Ziva said to Mox, “did you find this fucking nerd?”

She wondered what he would be like when he didn’t have to fight for his life anymore. He had spent so long locked up with the remains of his friends, separate from the world. Would he even know how to go back to a regular life?

Is he not trying to save the world anymore, though?

“Not to all of them, obviously,” he said. “But to some. Ziva especially. You and I, we’re fated to join this fight. But not her. It was her choice. She wanted to defend the world. I can’t imagine taking on that kind of burden voluntarily.” He smiled. “I seem to attract the chronically grumpy.”

Ah, they had been together or would have been?

She had asked him why he didn’t run, leave the state, the country. And his enemy was still out there, hunting him. But hers—well, now she knew that he was still alive, but she hadn’t before. She could have left Chicago, left Matt, left her entire life. Gone backpacking in Europe like a college graduate with wanderlust. Ate, prayed, and loved across India to find herself. Bought a bunch of land in Idaho and built her own log cabin. But she hadn’t tried anything. Her only desire had been to be left alone.

No wonder she couldn’t do magic reliably; deep down, she didn’t even know what she really wanted.

Then why did Sybil say she wanted everything?

As a reminder, without a significant object to guide the working, the target is unlikely to respond to the summons to move to another universe—the object will work upon his mind such that when we speak our invitation, the target will hear it in the voice of a lost loved one, which he is more likely to trust. If he accepts said invitation, even momentarily, he will begin the process of entry.

Wah

A group of women near the end of the platform wore loose, gauzy robes in all the colors of the rainbow that shimmered when they moved. One of them had her hair tied up in a scarf that was equally colorful. They were like caricatures of tarot readers, their bracelets jingling, eyes wide as they peered into the future. After meeting Sibyl—paranoid, magic-hating Sibyl—Sloane thought they looked ridiculous. Who wanted to see the future anyway? But there were other nods to magic-users of the past among the people lined up on the platform. A teenager in a magician’s top hat and white gloves—the rest of his clothes were more typical—stood next to a girl with a flower crown, like a nymph. A woman standing near them wore a large, elaborate amulet; her companion had a high, face-framing collar, like something out of Snow White.

Nah, this sounds fab

“Have you ever talked to Mox about this?” Ziva shook her head. “He needs me. I can’t leave while he still does.” Sloane nodded, but she couldn’t help but think that people didn’t just spontaneously stop needing their friends.

She kicked, at first measured and strong, then frantic, clawing at the water to get down faster and faster. Her lungs burned, but it was no different than the burning in her chest, in her head. It occurred to her that this sensation of being deep underwater—the fire inside her, the pressure against her head, the tingling in every limb—was what she had always associated with magic, and maybe this was why. Maybe all her life had not been motion forward but motion around this moment, like something circling a drain.

“Edda—who has a dislocated shoulder, by the way—said you were under some kind of . . . enchantment,” Matt said. Guilt surged in Sloane at the sight of him, though she didn’t want it to. There was no reason for it—she hadn’t betrayed him, hadn’t done anything she wouldn’t have done again given the chance to go back—but she felt it anyway. His eyes had a sharpness to them that they wouldn’t have had a few months ago. But that, Sloane now recognized as an inevitability. Matt and Sloane had been living in a moment of held breath. The exhale had always been coming.

One of the men was Nero, his mask of mildness finally gone and in its place the cold, focused man Sloane had seen when she left his workshop. His hair was tousled, his cape flung over one shoulder, showing its rich navy lining. His gold Camel pin was askew, and his right arm was outstretched, his hand heavy on the back of the other man’s neck. The other man, of course, was Mox.

Right. We are at the end of the book. No time for recon.

“Mox?” Nero looked almost fondly at him. “Oh, I see. Micah Oliver Kent Shepherd. M-O-K-S. It suits you better than Chosen One.” Sloane spared a thought for the name Micah, best left behind, a name for a normal boy and not the man marred by magic who stood across from her, sweaty and hunched, unused to the draining of his power.

“You are needlessly defiant,” Nero said to her, flicking a lock of hair away from his forehead. “I will not ask politely again.” “I don’t have many rules to live by,” Sloane said, “but ‘When a murderous psychopath tells you to do something, don’t do it’ is absolutely one of them.”

He had made flowers grow out of the stone floor in the Hall of Summons.

That's pretty, Mox

But you . . . you have only ever wanted destruction.”

Is that true? She wants her friend back. She wanted to be good. To be normal

He was right, of course. Mox had said that magic was an expression of a person’s deepest desires, which meant that when she eviscerated the crew during the Deep Dive mission, when she worked a gale instead of a magical breath in the Hall of Summons, when she blasted a crater into the side of the Dome, she had wanted it. She had never done a piece of magic that was not in service of ruining something. Somewhere inside her was a thing that wanted to take and take and take, until there was nothing left to give, just as Nero had done in his own universe, his thirst for power and magic not slaked until the well of magic under his Earth’s crust was dry.

Ok, but I don't think she actually wanted to kill all those people

A part of her did want destruction—but that wasn’t all of her. She wanted other things too: justice and mercy, drinks with Albie, kisses with Matt, laughter with Esther. She wanted to wake early in the morning, when the light was pale and new, and run to the lake’s edge. She wanted to sit in silence in the Modern Wing of the Art Institute and look at the Frank Lloyd Wright windows and think of Cameron. She wanted to teach Mox how to drive. She wanted to read the entire Unrealist manifesto. She wanted to watch an olive dance in a cocktail shaker. She would just have to hope that those wants outweighed the others.

Um. Why wouldn't it? She is tortured and jaded, not a sociopath

“Ines,” Esther said. “Remember?” She tugged Sloane by the elbow. “Come on, guys.”

Albie will still be alive please

The door opened, and Ines was standing in front of them in her bare feet and a pair of drawstring pajama bottoms, her eyes red and her hair tangled. She smelled like weed and sweat and coffee. “Where the fuck have you guys been?” Ines demanded. They all fell together like a house of cards, just barely holding each other upright.

No Albie then :(

“Just got back from our place,” he said. “Or, rather, the public Genetrixae park that is now in place of our place.” There was a hint of accusation in Matt’s voice. Sloane stayed quiet. He looked exhausted, his eyes puffy and his shoulders slumped. “If your whole theory is true,” Matt said quietly, “then our apartment is gone because you wanted it to be gone.” “It’s not what you’re thinking,” she said. “That’s—a place I was dreading going back to. Because I knew it would be hard. That’s all.” Matt nodded, but his jaw still looked tight.

Their breakup felt real now that they were back on Earth—more or less—and Matt had met Mox and they were quite literally going in different directions. But it was worse now than it had been before. Whatever misconceptions Matt had had about Sloane’s mushy insides were gone now. All he had to do was look around at all the things she had destroyed to see the truth.

She wanted to tell Matt so much. That she was sorry she hadn’t saved their apartment. That she hadn’t moved on from him as easily as it seemed. That she wished she were better. But their intimate drama seemed insignificant compared to the chaos around them, the uncertain fates of their families. So she stayed quiet. She handed a bottle of water to Ines and hugged her goodbye while Mox piled their bags in the trunk.

They drove along Lake Michigan, and the water glittered in the sun.

I love this. I am Michigan. The lake is magic