The Forsaken (36 page)

My anger is infectious. “You son of a bitch!” Rika yells at the feelers. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard her curse.
“You can’t have me! Not now! Not ever!”

Gadya joins me in attacking the feeler with our frozen hands. Miniature gears grind inside the tentacles. For a moment, I think the feeler is going to give up because we’re dragging it down a little. Maybe the three of us can outweigh it after all. Get it to the ground and destroy it, like we did to the one on the lake.

But then a look passes across Rika’s eyes, and I know the tentacles have tightened too far, squeezing her ribs, constricting her chest. Her mouth opens. She looks down at us as the feeler starts rising. “Gadya. Alenna . . .”

The noise of the rotor increases, like it has received a massive surge of energy. I grip Rika’s foot, trying to keep her from vanishing into the sky. Gadya grabs her other leg.

“Don’t give up!” Gadya yells. “Fight the damn thing!”

But this time there will be no victory for us.

The tentacles coil like elastic bands. And then suddenly, Rika’s foot is ripped right out of my hands. The force is unbelievable. I’m thrown back onto the ground, stunned, holding her empty boot.

I look up just in time to see the feeler hurl Rika upward, toward the clouds. It begins zooming away, with Rika’s limp body dangling beneath it.

Gadya falls back. Her hands are bleeding again, more flesh ripped from her fingers. My hands are stinging, so I look down at them. They’re bleeding through the gloves too. Lacerations mark my palms like stigmata.

Gadya and I stare at each other.

Rika is gone.

And Markus, David, and James are trapped behind the big pipe, probably about to be taken.

There are only two of us left.

I want to cry. I want to shut my eyes and make this whole terrible place disappear. But there’s no time for self-pity. We’re easy targets, and there are other feelers on the loose.

“The hatch!” I call out, breaking the spell. Gadya and I start moving toward it. Gadya can barely walk, cursing as she limps and hobbles her way forward. I put my arm around her shoulders, trying to support her.

I’m certain the other feelers are going to chase us, but when I look over my shoulder, I see they’re still battling David, Markus, and James. I turn back around and keep moving with Gadya.

Seconds later, I hear the awful sound of someone being taken.

And then someone else.

I turn again, just in time to see Markus being pulled up into the sky. Then I catch a glimpse of another feeler heaving James into the heavens, his black robes flapping, his mouth open in a frightened, disbelieving
O.

There is nothing we can do for them. Gadya and I keep heading toward the hatch.

Another feeler has descended behind us. I hear David yelling as he tries to fight it off alone. I can’t stand feeling so powerless anymore.

“David!” I scream, looking back one last time. I see the feeler pulling his struggling body up into the sky. He has sacrificed everything so that Gadya and I have a chance to survive. I turn back around. I can’t watch anymore—the pain is too great.

Gadya and I reach the hatch within seconds. Up close I see that it’s huge and round, nearly the width and height of a single-car garage door. The words “MAINTENANCE HATCH No. 12” are stenciled on it in red paint.

I throw out my hands, grabbing the large hydraulic wheel that serves as its handle. I desperately hope we’ll find refuge from the feelers in this building, even if we just curl up and freeze to death inside it.

Gadya grabs the wheel too. We both crank the handle with all our strength, screaming as we hear more feelers in the sky above us, getting louder. The metal wheel feels locked and immobilized at first.

Then, with a sudden hiss, the wheel slowly starts to turn. . . .

SELECTED

“
IT
’
S OPEN!
”
I YELL
, barely believing our good fortune. Part of me thinks I’m hallucinating. Another part thinks it’s a trap and an army of feelers is going to burst out and fly us up into the void.

“Go, go, go!” Gadya screams at me.

We yank the hatch wide open. As pressurized air pours out, we fling ourselves inside.

I don’t know where we’re headed, or who or what we’ll find there. I just tell myself it can’t be worse than what’s outside.

Gadya sprawls to the floor, clutching her damaged ankle as I slam the huge door shut. I spin the handle, trying to lock us inside and keep the feelers out. I hear a clank, and the handle stops turning.

I’m gasping for air. I lean over, heaving, trying to listen for the feelers. There’s nothing but silence.

I gaze around. We’re inside a frigid, square cement chamber. It’s cold but doesn’t have the dry-ice feeling. It’s dimly lit by a few recessed fluorescent bulbs, and the concrete walls are slick with ice.

Three large metal doorways to our left appear to lead into further catacombs. I can see icy stalactites hanging down from the high ceiling, as though pipes have leaked and the water has frozen. The floor is pretty much a sheet of ice, as slippery as the frozen lake.

“Where is everyone?” Gadya asks, trying to get a look at her ankle. Indeed, the space is deserted, like it was abandoned long ago.

“I don’t know.” I can barely speak, and not just because I’m out of breath. I’m mourning all of our friends. I failed to help David—after he saved me so many times. Just like I couldn’t save Liam. And now there’s no way to ever make it up to them.

“I thought there’d be people in here,” Gadya says, her voice rising in a groan of desperation. Her fists are clenched, but there’s no one around for her to fight. “None of this makes any sense!”

“It looks like no one’s been here for years.”

“How is that possible?”

I hear the raw panic in her voice. This is not the place either of us expected. It’s not the gleaming nerve center of a city. It’s just an empty hole inside an old industrial building.

“Liam, Sinxen, Markus,” Gadya says. “David, too. They died for this?
For this?
”

I gaze around. “At least they have lights in here. That means they’ve got power. Which is more than we had at the village.”

Gadya doesn’t respond. I see a bank of dusty computer monitors embedded in one of the walls. They’re all dead, their LCD screens cracked and frozen.

Gadya sinks against a concrete pillar. “I think my ankle’s broken from jumping off that pipe. I can’t move it anymore. Not even a little.”

“We have to go deeper and find somewhere to hide,” I tell her urgently. “Then we can rest.”

Gadya nods. She sits there wincing in pain as I start trying to open the metal doors closest to us. The first two are either locked or I’m not strong enough to open them. Then I come to the final one, the largest of the three, which has a huge concrete arch above it. A sign next to the door reads
BALCONY DELTA OPENING: PORTAL TWELVE
.

Gadya watches me with hooded eyes.

“It’s not over until we give up,” I tell her. “And I haven’t given up yet. Have you?”

“Never,” she spits back.

I grip the third door’s chrome wheel handle. It’s freezing, and my gloves are in tatters. I put all my strength into it as I try to crank the wheel. At first I think it’s never going to turn, that it’s either locked or frozen shut.

And then it gives.

I turn the handle faster, spinning it. The door begins to move. I leap back as it starts opening outward, under its own power.

Gadya is startled too. She pushes herself off the floor. We know that anything could come through this door.

But nothing does, except stale air. It’s like we’ve broken into a mausoleum. Inside is blackness, with a few small lights burning white in the darkness like electric candles.

Neither Gadya nor I say anything. We just stand there for a moment, completely puzzled.

“It’s deserted,” Gadya finally says. “Like the rest of this place.”

We creep closer to the entrance, trying to understand what’s going on. My teeth are chattering so hard, my jaw hurts.

I take one step forward and then another, passing through the archway with Gadya at my side.

Immediately, I sense that we’ve walked into a much larger space. One that is slightly warmer than the outside. But it’s hard to get oriented here. The scattered white lights don’t make sense to me. They seem to float in the air, like fallen stars.

“Alenna,” Gadya says. I feel her fingers grasping for my sleeve. “I can’t see you.”

I slow down, and we find each other’s hands. I take one more step and put my foot down.

I hear a strange echoing click, like I’ve triggered something.

I stop dead in my tracks.

A millisecond later, the entire space explodes in a blaze of white light.

I reel back, as light glares at us from all directions. I press my hands against my eyes and sink to the icy floor.

For a sickening moment I think maybe I’m dead. That I stepped on a mine or booby trap meant to thwart intruders. Then I realize I can still hear Gadya trying to talk to me. So I can’t be dead.
Not yet.

I open my eyes, but I keep my hands over them, peeking out through my fingers. I still can’t see anything because the room is impossibly, overwhelmingly bright.

“Alenna—it’s okay,” Gadya tells me.

I open my fingers a little bit more, still squinting through the gaps.

As my eyes adjust, I’m surprised at what I see. We seem to be at one end of a colossal semicircular chamber, curving off to our left like a horseshoe. From here, it appears to have no end.

I turn to Gadya. She has lowered her hands from her eyes. I slowly do the same.

Along one side of the chamber is a curved white wall with an endless array of video monitors on it. Unlike the ones in the maintenance antechamber, these look unbroken, although none of them is turned on.

I get up and tentatively step toward the nearest one. Electronic buttons are recessed into the wall everywhere—thousands of them, as though we’re in a gigantic control room.
Maybe this is the place we’ve been seeking!

I realize that the blinding whiteness is emanating from banks of glaring fluorescent lights. They’re on the ceiling, the wall, and even on the floor, encased in translucent tiles underneath our feet.

Opposite the white wall is a massive curved window made from huge panes of thick glass. I can’t see what’s behind it because it’s so dark out there. All we see are our own reflections. I notice additional computer consoles jutting up from the floor in front of the window, covered with dials and controls.

“What is all this stuff?” Gadya asks, leaning against the wall to take weight off her wounded ankle.

Before I can even begin to speculate, I’m interrupted:

“Hello there!” a female voice crackles loudly above my head, making both of us shriek. The voice ricochets off the floor and the glass wall like a sonic bullet.

I look up, staring directly into a circular loudspeaker in the ceiling. I see more speakers stretching off into the distance around the curve.

“Someone else is here!” I yell at Gadya excitedly. Of course I realize that they’ll inevitably want to punish us for escaping our sector and breaking into their city. Maybe they’ll even kill us. But at this point, anything is better than getting massacred by the feelers or freezing to death.

Gadya tilts her head back. “Help us!” she demands. “We’re from the blue sector!”

“It’s a pleasure to welcome you to the Silver Shore Terminal on Prison Island Alpha,” the voice replies stridently, loaded with forced optimism. “I was not expecting guests today, but our staff will do our best to accommodate you—”

“Just send someone down to get us!” I yell, barely listening. “We’re freezing and we’re injured! We surrender, but we need help—”

The voice keeps talking over me.

“A staff member will be with you shortly,” it informs us in bright tones. “If you require a beverage, please ask one of our receptionists for assistance.”

Receptionists? Beverages? I look at Gadya, thinking,
What the hell is this lady talking about?
There’s nothing here but ice.

“We need your help, damn it!” Gadya screams at the speaker above her.

“If you require rest after your journey, you’re welcome to take seats in the waiting area on concourse B,” the voice continues blithely. “Just follow the dotted lights.” As if by magic, a pathway of red-lighted panels brightens the floor, leading off down the curve of the horseshoe. “A tour guide will be with you shortly. If you have a prearranged appointment, please speak the letters of your guide’s last name, and I will page your contact.”

I spin to face Gadya, finally understanding. “It’s not real!” I say. “It’s a recording. A computer program.”

Gadya’s face reflects my emotions.

Total, absolute despair.

“Because at the Silver Shore Terminal,” the voice continues babbling, “your comfort and satisfaction are our primary goals.”

I have no clue what this building is, or why this automated voice is speaking to us now, but it continues, undeterred.