The Roar
Emma Clayton
 The story follows twins Mika and Ellie who live in England. Mika and Ellie live with their parents in the poverty stricken area behind The Wall on the first level in a fold out apartment located in Barford North. Ellie has been kidnapped and is being held by the leader of the Youth Development Foundation, Mal Gorman. Although everyone says that Ellie is dead, Mika refuses to believe that she is. Even a year after Ellie's "death", Mika still believes his sister is alive. His parents seek help from an old lady named Helen who always seems to know more than she says. In the beginning of the book, Ellie is flying a Pod Fighter, along with a Capuchin monkey named Puck that Mal Gorman gave to her. They are flying over the Atlantic Ocean, and she flies toward her home, Barford North. There, Mal's forces try to kill her. Soon, her Pod Fighter is shot down, and she is forced into flood-waters. Mal Gorman captures her, and in her anger she nearly kills him with her mutant powers. She was outnumbered, captured, and taken to the Lab to be examined with Puck, for they were both clearly underestimated. Back home, Mika does not believe Ellie is dead. He still grieves at her absence. He sleeps in her bed, and does not move. Eventually, his parents send him to school. At his school, he meets a new person - a boy named Kobi who came from the shadows. During the day, a nurse comes from the Youth Development Foundation. She tells all the children that they will have to drink a product called "Fit Mix". Mika refuses to drink it because of the fact that she reminded him of a "tellyhead", and is punished with a 100 credit fine and a week long suspension. During his suspension, he has strange dreams. Once, he has a dream of a dog he calls Awen, who reappears in his conscious states and acts as his guide in the book. His nightmares consist of people with televisions for heads who he calls the "Telly Heads". When his suspension is finished, all the kids seem to be obsessed with a new arcade game called Pod Fighter. Helen told him that she now has to leave so she said "if you play pod fighter you will most probably find your sister Ellie". Soon, he learns that there will be a competition with prizes of a new companion, which is a futuristic cell-phone like device that has an artificial intelligence that emulates the personality of a human, a hover car, and a new house in the Golden Turrets in London. The Golden Turrets are a set of large fancy towers that are painted gold and made up of enclosed apartments for the very wealthiest people in London. At school, the kids take "Fit Camp". While taking the camp, the instructor pushes them to the limit. He makes them exercise when they are out of breath, and they do unimaginable exercises until their feet bleed. But none of them know that they are being prepared for something else. Later, Mika makes his way up the Pod Fighter chart and moves to the second round after winning the first round of a Pod Fighter competition, with his faithful gunner, Audrey, a new girl with Borg eyes. Audrey also seems to be a love interest for Mika. Mika, Audrey and one hundred other kids are selected to do further training at a fake island. They are taken to the fake resort that resembles the Caribbean Islands. While their parents relax, they are given numerous physical challenges. They give the children a new challenge with harpoons; shooting Borg fish. Mika is accidentally hit but is quickly healed. Before he moves on to the next round they do strange experiments on him and teach him to move things with his mind. In his first test, he is paired up with a boy named Ruben, his arch-enemy. They both lift up a red ball with their mind, and accidentally set it on fire. While the room is being cleared out, they nearly kill each other. After some of the special children with slight mutations (including Mika and Audrey) are given extreme tests, like meeting Borg wolves, while in a cage to see how the Borg wolves will react to them, he is taken to a military base in Scotland called Cape Wrath. There he has more tests done to him. After staying for a while, they have a dinner where they announce the winners. He meets Mal Gorman, who to Mika resembles one of the Telly Heads from his dream, and the rest of the Youth Development board. Mika is announced the winner. Mr Gorman tells Mika he can have his sister. He needs to know he can trust him so he tells Mika he has to stay in his apartment and come back to Cape Wrath the next day. When Mika goes to his new home in the Golden Turrets, there is an uproar: the government has taken all the children from The Shadows for a war no one knows about. Mika and Audrey escape to get away from the horde of people in a pod fighter. They go over the wall and see that there is a forest with animals and people. They are outraged and fly back to the military to find Mal and ask him why he has been lied to. Mal tells him that 30 years ago the plague was faked by a group of people who wanted the world for themselves. Mal was trying to make an army of children to fight off the people in the southern hemispheric. And he says that he overworked the children in fit camp to prepare them for war. After he lets Mika see Ellie for the first time in a year, and they finally embrace each other. After meeting with Ellie, they fly a Pod Fighter back towards Barford North, hoping to tell their family of the good news.