Slated

Teri Terry’s 2013 Slated is the first in a series of young adult dystopian novels. Set in a near future where criminals are given a second chance by having their minds wiped clean – they are “slated” or made into “blank slates.” The novel follows the quest of one slated teenage girl to find out the truth about herself, her past, and the government’s increasingly arbitrary use of mind-wiping technology.

The novel is set in London, in the year 2054. After a financial disaster in 2020, student riots and terrorist actions led several political parties to band together in order to restore stability. This Central Coalition government is comprised of the Law and Order party and the Freedom UK party, whose main platform was juvenile justice reform, and who championed the newly discovered memory-erasing technology as a way of avoiding prisons for those under 16 years old.

Our protagonist is a sixteen year old girl who wakes up in a hospital after being slated – she has no memories of who she is or what she has done to merit slating. She is named Kyla and told about her terrorist past, but something about this story doesn’t ring true for her. Like all other slated teens, she has to wear a Levo device on her wrist. This gadget monitors moods by interacting with a chip implanted in the brain, forcing its wearer to black out when it detects elevated levels of excitement, and its removal is fatal.



Like everyone else who has been slated, Kyla recuperates in the hospital relearning things like how to use silverware and cross the street. But because she has been plagued by recurring nightmares that she shouldn’t be having and that seem to show her another version of her life, Kyla has had to spend an extra three months in recovery.

Kyla and another slated girl, Amy, are allowed to leave the hospital and are placed with a new family. Kyla’s first impression is that her new mother, Sandra, is cold and difficult, while her new father David is warm and friendly. Kyla worries about Sandra’s attitude towards Kyla’s supposed terrorist past, since Sandra’s parents were killed by terrorists.

Amy and Kyla enroll in Lord William’s School, where Kyla’s testing reveals that she is still at grade level, which is unprecedented for slated kids. At school, the girls face tremendous prejudice, are constantly policed by government supporters, nicknamed Lorders, and must undergo talk therapy with mentors, whose real job is to gather intrusive information about how slated teens are doing. Kyla’s mentor, Mrs. Ali, spends much of their sessions threatening Kyla with being “returned” if she continues being curious and asking questions. Meanwhile, Kyla realizes that not everything about her was erased – she figures out that she is left-handed and she somehow knows how to drive. She resolves to learn the truth about herself.



At the same time, Kyla starts going to slated group therapy and meets the handsome Ben Nix and his maybe-girlfriend, the outspoken Tori. One day, Tori disappears – she has been “returned” because of her rebellious outbursts. Soon, another girl, a “natural” named Phoebe who has been tormenting Kyla because of her slated status, is taken away by Lorders – and the next day, they come for Kyla’s favorite art teacher Mr. Gianelli for making a very mild objection to the way Phoebe had been treated.

Amy’s boyfriend Jazz introduces Kyla and Ben to the slightly older Mac, who has access to the internet on his computer. Kyla researches missing-children websites, and finds out that her real name is Lucy Conner, and that the government hasn’t only been slating criminals. Mac’s friend Aiden, a member of an organization trying to locate all the missing people, tells them how important it is to expose what the government is doing in order to stop it. Ben and Kyla discuss this reality and kiss.

Phoebe’s uncle attacks Kyla, blaming her for what happened to Phoebe. Ben tries to intervene, but his Levo forces him to black out. Shamed by not being able to protect Kyla, Ben decides to try to remove the Levo at all costs, and then to join the AGT, the Anti-Government Terrorists. Kyla at first tries to stop him, but one of her nightmares seems to show a potential way that the device can be disabled. Kyla helps Ben, but their effort fails and Ben collapses into a series of seizures. Kyla flees before the paramedics and Lorders can capture her.



Growing more depressed and still suffering from her nightmares, Kyla starts seeing a new doctor at the hospital where she stayed before. Dr. Lysander is the woman who invented the slating process, and her probing questions reveals that she realizes that there is something different about Kyla. Kyla knows that Dr. Lysander can tell when she lies, so she focuses on relying on partial truths in order to fool her.

At the same time, Kyla has a series of heart to hearts with Sandra, and realizes that her new mother is deeply supportive of both her and Amy. Her new father, however, drops his friendly façade as soon as Kyla reveals that she isn’t coping well – he threatens to return her if she doesn’t conform. Their fight makes Kyla realize that her Levo is no longer reacting to her moods – it doesn’t knock her out when she gets mad.

Mr. Hatten, a new biology teacher starts creeping Kyla out when he seems to drop hints that he knows who she is and something about her past. One day he corners her, tells her that he has been looking for her, and demands to know whether she has been hearing the voices. Kyla runs away and is followed by Phoebe’s uncle, who attacks her again. Suddenly, something pops in Kyla’s head and she remembers how to fight.



Fighting off her assailant has opened Kyla’s mind entirely. She realizes that Mr. Hatten is actually Nico, the man who trained her to fight and who also trained her mind to resist the slating process as an experiment. In the training, she learned how to keep a part of her memories and mind closed so that the erasure wouldn’t be effective – and now she knows that the experiment worked. She remembers everything and the Levo no longer affects her.

The novel ends with Kyla dead set on finding Ben and disrupting the disappearances.