Golden Flight

Book 2: The Keeper's Records of Revolution

by S.K. Ali

Genres: Young Adult; YA Dystopian

Synopsis

Concluding S. K. Ali's powerful duology, The Keeper's Records of Revolution, Golden Flight returns to a divided world with war on the horizon.

How difficult is it to crash the party of the decade? Literally crash it?

The Golden Flight happens once every ten years—a gala to honor elites fallen in service of maintaining Upper Earth’s powerful hold on earth’s remaining populace and dwindling resources. 

It’s a party where cunning new technology gets unveiled to masked revelers perpetually thirsty for fresh entertainment. 

It’s also a party Raisa and Nayf plan to infiltrate to bring down Upper Earth for good.  

Even with a known traitor, and a mysterious, ruthless avenger in their midst, pulling off a dangerous mission in enemy territory feels possible with record-keeper Khalda at the helm. To crack into Upper Earth, simply find strategic details hidden in the records.

However, they soon discover the toll of running a crew with competing, secretive goals: the lines between friend and foe begin to blur to violent ends. 

But on an oil rig at the edge of the world, the sun rises and shines on a team member no one knows about. 

Will she bring the seed of hope or be the source of ultimate chaos?

Just who is she—and why does she know exactly how to end the world?

Release date: September 1, 2026

Publisher: Kokila

Print pages: 528

Sample

Chapter One
Raisa
A line of people moves on the path in the valley below me.
Loaded weapon in hand, I can’t take my eyes off the woman in a blue kaftan, a toddler in a sling on her back, a crying baby at her hip, pulling a third child by the hand. Her dress is caked with dirt, the children similarly dusty, oversized clothing hanging on their tiny frames.
On arriving at the Home of the Displaced—­previously barren, drought-­stricken grounds now covered in white plastic tents, enclosed in barbed wire—­the refugees are processed by androids manning the gates.
I know what occurs next. I’ve seen it happen over and over at these camps.
The children are separated from the mother. The mother is assured that it is to check that they are vaccinated, to give them nutrition pellets to boost their immunity, to protect them from diseases prevalent at the camp.
The mother nods, face relaxing, chasing away the initial confusion and fear stoked on seeing robots maneuvering her children.
She doesn’t know this is the last time she’ll see her kids, that they will be taken to Upper Earth to be offered to its citizens who cannot have children.
Like all the other women, she’ll wait in vain for her little ones to be returned to her.
But this mother in blue doesn’t continue following the droid leading her into camp. She stops abruptly and turns to the kids crying out for her as they’re corralled onto a truck that will transport them to an off-­site clinic.
The woman breaks away and runs back to her little ones. Her oldest child pushes his toddler sibling toward their mother and tries to grab the baby from the droid’s arms.
Each droid in the vicinity sounds their alarm, a static-­piercing high note.
It brings a human guard out of the concrete barracks at the outskirts of the camp, nearest to where I’m hunkered down on the escarpment, watching the scene below.
The guard’s gun is already out and pointed at the mother before he even reaches the gates. He’s one of two humans at the camp at the moment, and his only role is to determine kills.
I adjust the loaded arrow in the steelcutter bow, lock in, and lift, whispering, “One to the core. A second to the heart.”
Though Mama isn’t here with me, her oft-­repeated training guides my eyes to the back of the guard’s helmet. There’s a slight indent of half an inch, the core, which, once hit and depressed, unlinks the guard from the ALIGN communication system.
So he can’t call for help.
So Upper Earth doesn’t know what I’m about to do. That I’m about to—­
I lower my bow.
I can’t.
I can’t kill.
This is the fifth time I’ve failed.
I watch as the wailing woman below me is roughly placed in handcuffs.
Once the camp has processed all the refugees, she’ll be shackled to a wooden post along with other “agitators”—­a line of people placed on display for a week to prevent further disturbances—­before they’re executed in sight of their com­patriots.
I turn around and lie on my back with minimal disturbance to the low grass on the plateau. The sky above is a hazy gray, which is why we’ve been commissioned here to take out as many guards, both droid and human, as possible. Mama’s second-­in-­command, Murda, a brilliant self-­taught meteorologist, predicts a level-­eight storm will hit tomorrow, which will make freeing the people in the camp below us almost impossible. If we don’t finish the job soon, that is.
I said “us.”
When it’s not really “us.”
So far I haven’t been able to actively participate in any of the Ahraar missions except as a cosplayer. The moment I get close enough for success, I pull back.
It’s not the thought of being killed by our enemy that I shrink from.
It’s the thought of beingcaptured. And brought to Upper Earth.
To Papa.
I haven’t seen my father in over a year.
The news, mostly from Jansu, who communicates with Nayf, is that Papa’s safely ensconced in Upper Earth, commanding the complete reconquista of Lower Earth.
Since the second revolution began, only a handful of Enlightenment aircraft—a clever yet cruel euphemism for neural- linking centers—have been able to settle into Lower Earth to process the population into compliance. And so Papa has ordered a steady supply of weapons and droids to herd the remaining people of Earth into “safe zones,” as ALIGN notices call them.
In reality, they’re concentration camps where the refugees will await their fate to become “enlightened.”
ALIGN’s official communication continues its laughably obvious propaganda efforts assuring the refugees that the links embedded into their brains will connect them to Upper Earth’s superior systems and save the population from the rebels’ ways, from their “brutality.”
Which is an “us” I’m supposed to be a part of.
The rebel Ahraar faction under my mother Salwe’s command, that is—­not the increasing number of splinter groups that have broken away from my mother’s leadership.
No matter.
As Murda says, many chisels are needed to chip at a seemingly unmovable mountain. The “mountain” in this case being Upper Earth, hovering above us all.
I stare at the stillness of the gray sky, trying not to think of the world I left behind up there.
Something hits the heel of my boot, and I almost sit up to see what it is before remembering where I am. At this elevation, any upright movement will alert the droids below, causing them to train their bullet-­loaded eyes this way.
I slide my gaze down to check what touched my boot.
It’s to seehis hands nudging my foot once more.
Nayf has commando-­crawled to my location, trailhunt in hand.
“Again?” he whispers, no disappointment clouding his face, just curiosity.
I nod, lettingmy disappointment lead me to completely avert my gaze from his dark, searching eyes. I turn back to the sky and don’t bother masking the shame in my voice. “Can’t even take one guard out. And he’s right under my nose.”
I can only say this so openly to Nayf.
Sometimes I think Nayf’s become familiar with too much about me, and it’s making him wary of being commissioned on duties I’m on as well.
He even knows of my fear of Papa. He’s occasionally become hotheaded with the rest of the Ahraar-­in-­training at the base whenever they tease me, sometimes too vigorously, obviously giving in to their suspicion about the daughter of the chief guardian—­princess, as some call me—­wearing fatigues among them.
Cosplaying.
“Give it here.” Nayf’s voice now is more matter-­of-­fact than exasperated, like he’s asking for me to pass the salt at our mess hall table at Namarax.
I set the bow—a steelcutter 6, the newest upgrade in precision bows, which we recently secured from an Upper Earth warehouse takeover—beside me on the sand. “Already trained to the target’s specs once he gets in the vicinity of the barracks again.” I close my eyes to the sky for a brief moment and then flip over on my stomach to watch Nayf take another of my kills.
Somehow it makes sense in my head that if his shots happened to alert ALIGN to our location, we wouldn’t get captured. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen him get us out of tricky situations countless times that I have such complete faith in him.
When the guard is back at the barracks, away from the droids’ sight, Nayf gets into position. Then, in beautiful staccato, he deactivates the link in the man’s helmet with one shot, reloads the electric bow, and sends another arrow whizzing to execute a clean kill, causing the guard to slump to the ground.
I sigh in relief while Nayf seamlessly turns his gaze to the Upper Earth leader assigned to this “refugee” camp.
Nayf’s target.
The man, bald, tanned, and muscled, wearing no helmet or body gear, casually dressed in a fatigue T-­shirt and khakis, is at a land carrier to the side of the barracks, his back to us as he communicates to someone through his scalplink. Gesticulating wildly while talking, he rests his hands on his hips when listening.
Helpful information when you’re timing your shot to kill a man.
“The second he disconnects from whoever he’s on the line with, he’s dead,” Nayf whispers, trailhunt now in hand. He raises it casually, having already programmed the leader’s DNA into the gun. The notoriously precise weapon will find its mark even if the target should make sudden movements out of its range.
We watch, like patient predators, for the man to stop talking. If he gets killed while on a call with Upper Earth, our cover will be blown.
Though I’m confident of Nayf’s skills, and though I am not skilled at this at all, I feel the urge to reach out my hand to lay it on his arm, to restrain his movements—­so he doesn’t pull the trigger too early, alerting . . . Papa.
But while Nayf and I have spent hours training together, though we’ve shared our problems plenty, there’s a distance between us that is uncrossable. Untouchable.
Once, long ago, there was a night when I felt the possibility of something opening up in me—­in us. The way we smiled at each other when we got away from the palace, from Lein, Nayf’s cousin, my former fiancée, now thankfully deceased. The night air sent its intoxicating tendrils of romantic possibilities into our getaway car, and I let myself crack open my heart to someone I’d begun growing feelings for organically.
Then we learned of Nayf’s sister Nada’s death.
And everything changed.
Possibilities disappeared under the weight of new expectations and the specter of our reality.
Dealing with a world that led to the cold-­blooded killing of someone as pure as Nada commanded Nayf’s heart.
And my mind.
While it’s true that I’ve grown love for my mother since reuniting with her on Lower Earth, I’d be lying if I said that I threw myself into training only in order to serve under Mama’s leadership, only with her goals in mind.
It was also for Nada that I’d gotten over my discomfort, and pain, and the harsh reality of serving in a resistance army seeking revolution.
I want the world Nada fought for—­Aerd, a new Earthuniting all the realms into one, with equality between all peoples.
In the aftermath of his sister’s death, Nayf became monosyllabic and singular in his aims: to bring down Upper Earth by all the means assigned to him by Mama.
Anything that flared up between Nayf and me on that night so long ago—­was it only in my heart that it occurred?—­was extinguished with the dampest of towels, and now we were two soldiers living mission to mission.
“He’s stopped moving,” I whisper, my eyes on the Upper Earth leader now suddenly gone still, arms at his sides.
Nayf fits his eye in the gun’s scope. “Confirming he’s cut communication.”
The man’s hands go into his pockets, but the rest of his body remains motionless.
I hesitate, my eyes narrowing. “Pause. Maybe he’s listening to someone.”
“He’s been still for a while.”
“Let’s wait.” I try to say it the way Mama would, but it comes out like a plea instead of a directive.
“The scan-­droids on periphery duty will be here any minute.” Nayf’s finger is on the trigger.
I reach my hand out, fear flexing its tentacles around my heart again. “Wait.” This time I command him in a stern whisper.
When I touch his arm gingerly, he shakes my hand off, and I’m bewildered by both the harshness of his move and the irritation in his voice as he barks, “This isn’t your task.”
“I’d rather ensure it’s a clean shot.” I grip his arm as the man below us makes a sudden move, swiveling his right foot to turn—­
Nayf pulls the trigger.
We watch as the bullet hits the dead guard on the ground instead, ricocheting when it strikes the steel armor that my arrow was able to cut through.
The leader, hands still in his pocket, now facing us completely, smiles triumphantly before walking forward. “Excellent shot. If we hadn’t switched out my DNA from that trailhunt, I’d be dead now.”
“The bow!” I yell.
Nayf feels the ground between us, but the weapon is not there.
“This bow?” a voice asks from behind us. “This superb steelcutter six?”
We both turn, because the voice is familiar.
Jansu holds the bow in the air and nods to the man below, the man we came here to kill.

Chapter Two
Nayf
It should have been a relief to see Jansu, but all I feel is the blow of failure, of not getting the shot I was sent to take.
And bewilderment.How are Jansu and the man below us in charge of an ALIGN concentration camp connected?
The man I’m itching to kill?
Yet, when Jansu holds his hand out for my trailhunt, I immediately give the weapon over without hesitation.
Next to me, standing upright on the escarpment now that we’ve stepped out of sight of the droids, Raisa shoots me a look likeWhy are you listening to Jansu?
She doesn’t know Jansu like I do. I’ve known him since I was born. He’s connected to my life growing up in the palace before I was sent to prison. And he’s connected to my freedom after.
More importantly, Jansu is one of the few threads connecting me to my twin sister, Nada, in my memories, he having been Nada’s personal guard at the palace when we were children.
Jansu leads us away into a sparse grove of trees. We walk for a while until the trees become dense. There’s a green land carrier tucked behind some heavy brush, and he motions for us to get in the back.
I do so without hesitation, but Raisa stops.
Seated in the vehicle, I open the carrier door I just entered wider so I can see her.
She’s so different from the first time I laid eyes on her—­standing outside on the steps of an air carrier in a sky-­blue purform suit, holding a matching carrier case, thick dark hair falling around her face, long bangs parted and skimming her cheeks under big eyes.
Her entire self screamedUpper Earth elite back then.
Even when she rejected that version of herself and chose to come away to fight with us in that red dress I’ll never forget, her class distinction was clear to any outside viewer.
Now, though, she’s one of us. The Ahraar.
She dresses in whatever is handed to her for a mission, keeps her hair ponytailed and secured under a cap, and wears no sign that she is different from the rest of the crew she’s with.
But I still see those eyes that drew me in so deeply the first time I glimpsed them. Eyes that I realized hold courage, and that, after months, learned to trust me.
Sometimes—­okay, too many times—­I just want to gather her tight in my arms and take her somewhere only we know about—­completely free to reveal my feelings for her.
Safe in the trust we’ve developed for each other.
When Jansu grunts in frustration from the front of the land carrier, I come back to earth.
I’ll need to appeal to that trust in Raisa’s eyes now.
I swing one of my legs out so that I’m half in and half out of the carrier. I make sure my body is turned to face her, though. “What’s the matter, Ray?”
“Getting in there is not part of our mission.”
“Jansu is Ahraar.”
“He’s not part of Mama’s faction.” She crosses her arms at the same time as her brows scrunch. “We’re supposed to be keeping watch over the valley and eliminate the rest of the guards scheduled to arrive later.”
“They’ve all been decommissioned already,” Jansu interrupts. “They were all droids. And they’re lying in heaps, batteries drained, in trucks overturned on the road to here. We remotely depleted both the droids and the charging stations in each vehicle right after they left the warehouse. The remaining droids at the camp will also lose juice in an hour or so. They’re all on fifth-­gen batteries, and those—­”
I shake my head at him. Jansu likes nothing better than to overexplain gadgets, and Raisa’s frown hasn’t eased on hearing this proud recount of his.
“Does Mama know all this?” She tilts her head to peer at Jansu.
“I don’t serve your mama.” He turns away from her and adjusts the carrier controls.
“That’s why I’m not getting in.”
I exit the carrier and walk back to Raisa. “Okay, look, have I ever gotten us in trouble, Ray? Haven’t I gotten usout of it?”
“The leader isn’t dead down there. The one you were supposed to kill.” She glances behind me and points at Jansu. “He’s working with our target. Andhe has our weapons.”
“Let’s find out what he has to say. Especially since he did our mission for us.” I raise my eyebrows. “Just think about this: When the rest of our team arrives at the camp to release the refugees, they won’t have an army of droids to take down. Due to Jansu and his crew.”
She becomes quiet at that. “Can I tell you something about Nada? Which is why I refuse to get into that carrier?”
I nod. It’s extraordinary to me that she asks if she can talk about Nada before she does so.
She’s always mindful of how it varies for me—­sometimes my sister’s death is still fresh in my heart, and sometimes it’s a dull ache, and sometimes—­actually, often now, I’m sad to admit—­it doesn’t pinganything in me. “What does this have to do with Nada?”
“She once gave me a weapon to use against her, should I need to.” Raisa raises her eyebrows and then repeats, “Against her. Simply because, at the time, Nada knew I didn’t fully trust her.”
I swallow, remembering the ease with which Nada walked in the shoes of others. If she’d thought Raisa was scared, she’d have taken every measure to eliminate that fear. Meanwhile, I prefer to stick to doing what I’m told to do, going where I’m sent, following orders, not making instinctual decisions.
It’s better that way.
“And Jansu did the opposite. He took our weapons away.” Raisa uncrosses her arms, but her voice is firmer now. “I’m not getting into that car without personal protection.”
I look at the determination settling into those eyes that I force myself away from again and again on the daily, afraid I’ll be distracted by them, when there’s no time for distractions, and nod a second time.
After a brief one-­on-­one with Jansu, we are in his land carrier, trailhunt in my lap, Raisa’s bow on the seat beside her.

We enter a hill that slides opens like a garage door. When the entrance closes behind us, we’re in pitch darkness. I hear movement nearby and realize Raisa has reached for her steelcutter bow.
“Nothing to worry about,” Jansu says. “We’re on a hydraulic system that will take us where we need to go.”
“Inside a hill?” I risk getting Jansu on a roll talking about the technological wonders of the place we’ve entered.
But his reply is simply “Inside a sod-­covered building.”
After that he remains quiet.
I close my eyes as we’ve been taught to do in situations like this. When it’s more important to save your mental clarity than cloud it trying to see into the blackness closing in.
I try not to think of Raisa beside me, because I’m remembering she once told me she hated the dark and always had to have some source of light nearby.
I inch my foot over in increments until it comes to rest beside hers, our boots just barely touching. It may be my imagination, but she lets out a small breath when I make contact.
After several minutes, lights gradually dawn to reveal that the land carrier is now in a large warehouse, except the floor and walls are khaki colored and shiny. When I get out, I realize it’s soil, the floor and walls covered in some type of resin.
Obviously an underground location.
Jansu motions us forward to a door. He walks behind us, and I’m relieved to see he holds no weapon.
When we’re a couple of feet away from the door, a red light turns on over the threshold, and a voice emerges from a speaker. “They must enter unarmed.”
“I vouch for them with my life,” Jansu speaks firmly. “And I have done so since the boy was a baby.”
“Unarmed.”
Raisa shakes her head at Jansu. “Unarmed means it’s a kidnapping. Is that what you’re doing here?”
I look into the red light, uncertain where the camera is, but certain the owner of the voice is watching us. “Let Raisa keep her weapon, and I’ll give mine up.” I hand the trailhunt over to Jansu. “And I vouch for her with my life. You can kill me if she tries anything.”
Raisa stares at me, and I can see the turmoil simmering in her glance. I turn back to the door to escape its intensity.

We step into a dark room full of screens.
Behind the desk in the center sits the man I was sent to kill.
“Marcel,” he says by way of introduction, still seated but holding his hand out to me. “I’ve been embedded with Upper Earth for the past twenty years. Still embedded. I’m here to speak to both of you.”
I nod, aware that Raisa is not looking at Marcel but at the screens filling the walls.
“What is this?” Her voice has become small. I come to stand beside her and see the extraordinary scene she’s watching on one of the screens.
A little boy sulks, looking at a bird lying dead at the bottom of a golden birdcage. He’s in an overly gilded room that looks like a page out of a book I read long ago in the palace library called Versailles: An Introduction to Splendor.
A woman enters the room. Her hands are hidden behind her.
“Mama, you told me Skylar wouldn’t die,” the boy says. Text lights up the bottom of the screen, capturing his words, which is useful, as this room we’re in hums with voices coming from numerous screens. “You said Father bought a stronger kind of bird.”
“Let me check on Skylar, but only if you go sanitize your hand. I know you’ve poked at him. Remember Colm got sick from his bird.”
The boy nods and runs out of the room. The woman watches him leave and then turns back around and opens her cupped hands into the cage, after which she swiftly removes the dead bird with a cloth she took out of her pocket. A new bird, identical to the dead one, perches on the twig fitted across the cage’s bars.
“Upper Earth,” Raisa whispers. “Birds can’t live there. Many of my friends had birds exchanged by their parents like this.”
She turns to Marcel, her voice not so low any longer. “Why do you have videos of Upper Earth?”
“They’re surveillance videos. Real time,” Jansu answers for Marcel, with pride.
“Why do you surveil Upper Earth’s homes—­” She stops talking and leans to look at another screen. “Suzume. Moineau.” She says this more to herself than any of us. I glance at her and witness something I’ve never seen in her before: a strange tenderness.
Longing? As she looks on at these people—­her friends? From home?
No, itcan’t be nostalgia.
For Upper Earth, of all places.
We watch two young women seated at a counter swiping auras of dresses. Across from them stand two humanoid droids, both with women’s figures, one short and one tall. Peering, I realize they each have hairstyles exactly like the young women.
“Mimicquins. Custom droids tailored to their owners’ physical characteristics,” Jansu offers as though he glimpsed the curiosity lighting my mind.
“This one. It’s perfect for your frame,” one of the girls says. “And it’s aqua and white. It will be a froth of a dress, and Merle will adore you in it. Imagine walking with him on the red carpet in this.”
“Try, M-­Two,” the girl with golden hair pronounces, and a dress projects onto the petite humanoid that looks like her, which is now twirling and taking sashaying steps back and forth to show off the projection it wears.
But this isn’t a projection like the auras we have here on Lower Earth.
It looks like the droid is wearing an actual dress, real fabric and all.
“There are no wings, though. I need wings.” The girl with golden hair pouts. “After all, itis for Le Vol—­”
“Doré,” Raisa finishes, pensive. “They’re shopping for Le Vol Doré.”
Marcel comes to stand beside us. “Yes, Le Vol Doré, the grandest one of all, according to ALIGN communications, to bolster the spirit of Upper Earthers’ supposed suffering due to being in a state of war.”
“What is the Le Vol Doré?” I’m confused as to why this is the first time I’m hearing the term. While my knowledge of Upper Earth is limited by personal choice, I’m still familiar with all the “grand” events they stage in a scheduled series every year to flaunt their excesses. We used to get auras streamed regularly on Lower Earth of each glitzy occasion.
“Le Vol Doré, the Golden Flight, is a gala event held every decade to venerate the people who’ve taken flight, a euphemism for those who’ve died in the cause of Upper Earth,” Marcel shares. “The elites gather, dressed in fancy clothing that brings to mind the remembrance that we will all fly off into the sunset one day. They wear masks, either decorative ones or actual masks of their chosen hero’s visage, the dead person they’re commemorating. You were both children when the last one occurred, and only adults were permitted into the event, with no streaming allowed, because there’s always a special bonus at the end that they call a surprise for future generations. The Golden Reveal. The elite elders get a first glimpse of what is to come before the event, followed by an unveiling for all the revelers at Le Vol Doré.”
Marcel exchanges glances with Jansu.
“Why do you have all this surveillance of Upper Earth’s private citizens?” Raisa asks.
I whip my head to stare at her.
Her tone. It’s accusatory.
Like she’s upset on behalf of the people of Upper Earth?
“We don’t. This is all Upper Earth’s surveillance of its own people,” Jansu says. “We just intercept it to gather intel. We can’t access all the locations we’d like to, such as the council’s chambers, where decisions are made, so we take what we can and make our own notes.”
“But some of these are private.” Raisa touches the screen displaying the scene containing the two girls.
They must be her friends up there.
“We don’t seek those out. The interceptions a