The Forsaken (37 page)

“My video feed indicates that no staff members are currently available. So I invite you to take your seats in the waiting area.” The lighted panels on the floor start flashing more insistently.

“Video feed,” Gadya mutters. “Did you hear that?” We immediately start looking around for cameras.

Finally I see one, up high on the ceiling above the door. It’s the first camera I’ve seen since the one near the spiral staircase, the first day I arrived on the wheel. Gadya and I both start waving at it. Even though this voice is automated, maybe there’s a human somewhere out there in the darkness, watching us.

“I notice that you are signaling to me,” the voice says. “If you have a request, please speak to the receptionist. Remember, a staff member will be with you shortly.”

“Screw you!” Gadya screams, head tilted up at the speakers again, her voice raw. “Rot in hell!”

I stop waving at the camera. The voice is just saying the same things over and over. I was hoping I could ask it questions and get some answers. Clearly, that’s not going to happen.

Or so I think—until the voice abruptly changes in pitch. It’s still female, but now it sounds deeper and more serious. “I apologize for the delay. We here at the Silver Shore Terminal take pride in our punctuality. It is possible your guide has been unexpectedly detained. If you wish, you may request the automated tour function. Just say ‘automatic mode.’”

I do what the voice says.

The lights dim slightly, and I try to see out of that huge, mysterious window. But beyond all the reflections, it still looks blacker than the night sky.

“Welcome. I will be your automated tour guide this afternoon,” the new voice continues. “My name is Clara.
C
-
L
-
A
-
R
-
A
. At any time you may interrupt this tour, and I will do my best to answer any questions.”

I take that as my invitation. “Where are we?”

“You are on Balcony Delta.”

“No, I mean, what is this place?”

“Balcony Delta,” the voice repeats, with the exact same inflection.

“What does that even mean?” Gadya presses. “What does Balcony Delta do? Where are the aircrafts?”

There’s no answer this time.

I stare at Gadya helplessly. Under the lights, I see how dirty and grimy she is. Her piercings are dull and encrusted with blood. I see my own reflection in the glass wall and realize I look just as haggard. I barely recognize the filthy, skinny girl staring back at me. I look like a wild animal.

“This isn’t working,” Gadya mutters.

“What’s behind all those windows?” I ask the robotic voice, trying another tactic.

“Windows?” It’s like the voice just recognizes certain words and ignores the rest of the sentence. “This gallery window is the focal point of Balcony Delta, which is one of twelve viewing portals in the Silver Shore Terminal. The windows are made from a Plexiglas-silicone hybrid, fourteen inches thick, to provide maximum viewer protection.”

“Protection from what?”

My question throws the voice. “I’m sorry. I do not understand.”

Gadya speaks up. “She means, what the hell’s behind that glass?”

For some reason, the voice likes her phrasing more than mine. “Behind the glass is the Silver Shore specimen archive. We’ve processed more than fifty percent of the island’s specimens, making this the largest processing facility on Island Alpha—”

“The island!” I jump in. “How do we get off it?”

I don’t think there’s any chance the voice will answer that one. But to my shock, it does. “The helipads and aircraft landing strips are located on the roof level of Terminal C. Please contact a staff member to request all relevant scheduling data.”

“Can we get off this island without a helicopter or an airplane?” Gadya asks.

“I’m sorry. I do not understand.”

I leap in. “Is there a boat? A bridge?
Anything?
”

“I’m sorry. I do not understand.”

Gadya yells and kicks at the wall with her good foot. Her boot leaves a dark smudge on the white surface. We stand there, freezing and dirty, not sure what to do next.

“Hey, what did it mean by ‘specimens’?” Gadya finally asks me. “It said that earlier. Did you hear?”

The voice decides to answer before I can. “All specimen test subjects are flash frozen in a cryoprotectant solution, and held at minus fifty degrees Fahrenheit, to minimize cellular decay.” It pauses. “Do you wish to view the specimens?”

“Yes,” Gadya and I say, at the exact same moment.

The fluorescent lights start dimming again, and our horseshoe-shaped room grows darker until there’s barely any light at all.

“Please step forward to the observation window,” the voice instructs.

Finally, as the lights in our horseshoe fade to total blackness and the ambient light beyond the window begins to rise, I’m able to see through the glass.

“This facility is currently running at ninety-three point seven percent capacity.”

I ignore the voice for a moment and struggle to make sense of the strange shapes emerging from the darkness. The glass is as cold as ice. Way too cold to touch. I feel it trying to burn the tip of my nose when I lean forward.

“The specimen archive is the heart of this facility,” the voice continues. “More than one hundred test subjects are processed here every day. That includes harvesting, freezing, and transportation to their position in the grid. The specimens are then held until they get recalled to Mexico City Three in the UNA, for clinical tissue biopsies and live dissection . . .”

Live dissection? Tissue biopsies? I’m still just trying to figure out what I’m looking at. Then, as the lights within the massive black space are adjusted more precisely, I finally realize what is being held inside it.

“No!”
I gasp.

My legs turn to jelly as the air is sucked out of my lungs. I get a strange floaty feeling, like I’m about to faint.

Gadya claws at me, clutching onto my arm. I grab her back, holding her close. I literally cannot believe what we are seeing beyond the glass.

“The archive currently houses more than ten thousand specimens,” the voice burbles, oblivious to our horror. “Our efficiency rate is the highest of any station. We are proud to be the number one processing plant on Island Alpha, for the second consecutive year.”

“Burn in hell!” Gadya suddenly screams, kicking at one of the monitors, splintering its glass screen.

“I’m sorry. I do not understand.”

Tears run down my face. I know that Gadya is crying too, racking sobs that make her shoulders shake.

“Don’t look,” I whisper. “We don’t have to look.”

“No, I want to.” She leans back up to stare down through the glass. I do the same, because I can’t help myself.

What I see are human bodies.

Ten thousand of them, hanging on vertical metal beams inside an incredibly vast subterranean space, descending hundreds of feet deep.

The bodies are strung up inside semitranslucent pods that appear to be made of metal and plastic, stretching into infinity. Only the people’s heads are visible through small portholes. The pods are filled with fluid, circulated by plastic tubing that flows back into the beams that support them. Catwalks and metal stairways run beneath each row of bodies, like internal scaffolding.

I know these frozen bodies are alive, but they have the gray pallor of corpses. It’s like a nightmare cemetery, one in which the bodies are denied any respect or grace.

These are the “specimens.”

They’re just kids from the wheel. Kids like us. Exiles.

And given what the voice said about it being the number one processing facility, there must be other places like it on the wheel.

“How—” I begin. “How did this happen?”

“I’m sorry. I do not understand.”

I want to kill the repetitive blandly innocuous voice. Want to find whatever computer controls it and smash it into a million pieces.

But we need answers, and right now this voice is the only hope we have of getting some. “How did these kids”—I can’t bring myself to say “specimens”—“end up here?”

“All specimens run free-range on this island. Each one has been individually acquired by our automatic UNA-51 High Altitude Selection Units, with minimal tissue damage. All selection units are equipped with flight capabilities, and the capacity to acquire and disable uncooperative subjects with minor energy expenditure.”

“Selection units. That’s what the feelers are,” I mutter to Gadya tiredly.

We are just test subjects. Specimens.
But why?

“Our selection units have an eighty-four percent success rate in accurately acquiring their target samples,” the voice regales us proudly. It doesn’t understand or care that it’s talking about human beings. “Our staff can brief you on the latest data.”

“You have no staff,” I finally say, my voice echoing in my ears. “The staff you keep talking about? They’re gone. No one’s here but you, and all these frozen bodies.”

It picks up on the word “you.” “Yes, I am Clara, your automated guide—”

“Your staff has left you here, but you don’t care,” I continue. “And you never will. Because you’re not human. You’re a machine. The UNA has automated mass murder.”

The voice doesn’t have an answer for that one. Maybe I’ve finally confounded it.

I stare out the window, looking at all those bodies again. I imagine being frozen is like being in a coma, but worse.

I struggle to keep control over my sanity. More questions occur to me, creeping into my mind like dark tendrils of thought.

“Where do you think all the people running things went?” I whisper to Gadya. “I mean, the scientists or doctors, or police. Or whoever built this place?”

“They left.” She can barely speak.

“Maybe there was an accident,” I whisper back. “Everything’s automated, but it’s in shambles, and it’s so cold in this zone. That can’t be normal. Maybe there’s a crack in the cooling mechanism.” I pause. “It just seems like things are still running, but no one’s around to check on them anymore.”

“Maybe no one’s around because they don’t need to be. Everything’s probably functioning fine.” She laughs bitterly. “It’s just us
specimens
here. And selection units—whipping us off to get dissected. This place isn’t running by mistake.”

“But why? Why are we worth testing?”

The lights on the other side of the window begin to dim again, as the horseshoe lights around us are raised. In a way I’m relieved, because we won’t have to keep staring at the awful sight of ten thousand frozen bodies.

Then I’m suddenly thinking about something else.
Liam.

My dad’s message carved on the rock meant “Never give up.” He’d want me to find the meaning when there seems to be none.

Although it seems unlikely, if these bodies are being held alive, maybe there’s some way of unfreezing and resuscitating them before they get shipped off the wheel.

“Hello?” I call out to the voice, eager to communicate with it again. “Is there a way to find out who—” I break off, trying to reformulate my question. “Is there a way to track individual specimens being held in the archive? Can you do that?”

“Tracking test subjects is possible through our data link.” A touch-screen panel lights up nearby. I step over to it, followed by a limping Gadya. “Enter the UNA identity number of your required specimen.”

“We don’t know their identity numbers!” Gadya calls out angrily. “They have names! Not numbers! Liam, Markus, Rika, David!”

“What about dates of capture?” I ask suddenly. “I mean the date the specimens were ‘harvested.’ Can you search by date?”

“Affirmative,” the voice replies blithely. “Please use two digits for the day, two for the month, and four digits for the year.”

Before the voice has finished talking, I’m already punching in numbers for yesterday’s date. 10-20-2032. The day Liam was taken.

It takes me only a second to input the digits.

“Processing . . . ,” the voice says. Then it asks, “Male or female?”

“Male.”

“Height and weight?”

Gadya and I guess as best we can, blurting out words, talking over each other.

“Five eleven—”

“Wait, six feet—”

“One hundred fifty pounds—”

“No, one forty—”

Then the voice declares, “Possible subject located.” A nearby computer screen flares to life. On it is a blurred photograph of Liam’s face, with a stream of data running up the right-hand side in a dizzying column.

“That’s him!”
I yell. I run to the window, Gadya at my side. “Where is he? Tell us!” I’m sick with excitement. “Is he still in the archive?
Is he still alive?
”

It picks up on my final word. “All specimens are alive, and suitable for shipping.”

“Where is he, then!” I yell, feeling like my chest is about to burst. If I know where he is, I can try to get to him.

“Specimen number 112-782-B is currently being held on level twenty, which is viewable from this gallery window. That specimen has not been shipped for processing yet.” The voice pauses. “However, his pod is scheduled to depart this station in fifty-six minutes, on Airbus Gamma.”

I barely hear what the voice is saying.

Liam is still here.

Alive.

There is hope.

Gadya and I clutch each other.

“We have to save him!” I yell.

“I know.”

Then, as we look out the window, I see a light begin to glow in the distance. It’s very faint, way out there in the rows of bodies, hanging in endless darkness. The light is about two hundred feet down, and slightly off to our left.

“I have illuminated your requested specimen,” the voice tell us, sounding pleased with itself. For once I don’t mind.

“Liam,” I murmur, staring out the window at the distant light far below us. “They haven’t dissected him yet. But we’ve only got fifty-six minutes.”

“I can’t believe it.” Gadya looks like she’s going to cry.

“We have to get to him,” I say, swallowing over the lump in my throat. “Then try to rescue the others, too.”

Gadya and I start rapidly punching in dates, giving information and physical descriptions as fast as we can. Rika. Markus. David. Even James. Everyone we can think of.