The Coming End...Can You Keep a Secret? Run! As Fast As You Can!
The Secret Runners of New York (titled The Secret Runners in the United States) is a 2019 novel by Matthew Reilly.
Skye "Blue" Rogers, a new student at an exclusive New York school, discovers a secret portal to the future, just days before a massive gamma cloud will strike Earth and essentially destroy civilisation.
The Secret Runners of New York contains examples of:
- After the End: The characters travel to a post-apocalyptic New York over two decades in their future.
- The Elites Jump Ship: The story features a contagion that kills 99.5% of humanity. The narrator's parents and most of their acquaintances pay $17 million apiece to ride things out in an island refuge. When the narrator travels into the future and journeys to the island, she discovers that it was attacked by angry lower-class survivors who killed or chased away all the elites.
- Girl Posse: There is a quartet of psychopathic prep school girls who engage in time travel for thrill-seeking. They kidnap classmates who get them mad (a friend of theirs who outshined the eldest girl in a debutante showing, a girl with Down's Syndrome who the Beta Bitch got into trouble for bullying, etc.) and strand them in the Bad Future to be killed by cannibals. They have several male friends, but the boys don't know about the murders. The narrator (a New Transfer Student) becomes the Token Good Teammate of the group's female members.
- Ignored Expert: Aging physicist Dr. Finklestein claims that a gamma cloud traveling through the solar system will kill 99% of humanity. He's right, and his claims are broadcast to the world, but most people don't believe him, mainly because he has been accused of plagiarism in the past.
- Pursued Protagonist: The story begins with Becky Taylor being chased by the maddened inhabitants of New York in the Bad Future. The time portal she hopes to take back home is blocked, and Becky is never seen again.
- Uncertain Doom: In the prologue, Becky Taylor is trapped in the Bad Future and left terrified that her pursuers are about to kill her. Still, she isn't killed onscreen, and other characters survive in the post-apocalyptic world for long periods.
