Hotel Destination

The novel opens with Jade Zhao arriving at an airport in the Central State after fifteen years abroad. The world she returns to is shaped by the aftermath of a global pandemic caused by Virus Nexus, which led to sealed borders and the collapse of Western political alliances. At the airport, passengers are separated into lanes according to their travel zones and processed by guards wearing hazmat suits. Jade, unsettled and distracted, is questioned about her origin and directed to the appropriate queue. She befriends a young woman named Aoife, who appears cheerful and relieved to have finally arrived. The atmosphere is tense and disorienting, intensified by strict biosecurity procedures: blood and saliva tests, disinfection chambers, and constant surveillance.

At border control, Jade is questioned about why she is travelling alone when her immigration application included her husband Liam and her son Rowan. She tells the officer that both died in a car accident. This revelation interrupts the bureaucratic tone and introduces Jade’s private grief. As she leaves the checkpoint, she remembers the early days of her marriage, Rowan’s birth, and her stalled writing career. The passengers are then given welcome bags containing real food and water, which triggers an ecstatic reaction among the crowd. People celebrate wildly, chanting slogans that echo earlier political rallies Jade remembers from her life in the West.

The mood abruptly shifts when screens in the terminal activate and a government official announces that all returnees must undergo a three-month “Re-naturalization Scheme.” Instead of going home, they are to be detained in a hotel and enrolled in compulsory classes and exams to prove their fitness for citizenship. Panic breaks out among the passengers, who protest the lack of prior warning. Guards move in to suppress dissent, and the group is forcibly transported to a remote hotel.