The Forsaken (8 page)

The boy and the girl scrutinize me. I’m struck by the way their pale skin seems to glow. They both have delicate features, straight noses, and expressive blue eyes. I wonder if they’re siblings—maybe even twins.

“We’ve been waiting for you,” the boy says. “Well, not you specifically, but for the next arrivals.”

“There was another one, but the Monk’s drones got him,” Gadya explains. “He’s either dead already or the drones are brainwashing him into joining ’em. It’s too late to go back for him.”

“Pity. I’m sure you’ll do better next time.” It takes me a moment to place the unusual lilt in the girl’s voice. The boy has it too. Then I realize they must be from far up north. The place once called Canada.

The boy extends his hand to me. “My name’s Matthieu Veidman,” he says. “I run things around here.”

I tell him my name as I return his handshake. His grip is firm and dry, despite the heat.

He gestures at his companion. “This is Meira.”

The girl extends her hand coolly, and I shake it, too. “Did Gadya explain about the vaccine?” she asks.

“Kind of.”

“My predecessor discovered how to make it,” Veidman says. “It prevents a malarial fever that used to be common around here.” He pauses. “Come with me to my cabin, and I’ll get you sorted out.” He turns to Meira and Gadya. “Bring me ten cc’s of the new batch.”

“Sure,” Meira says, heading away at once with Gadya. I’m pretty surprised they even have needles and vaccines here.

Veidman calls after Meira, a few final words in French. Then he turns back to me. “I’m from Montreal— in Quebec,” he explains. “I mean, before it all became part of the UNA and Minister Harka renamed everything.”

Sensing that he probably has a lot more answers than Gadya, I blurt, “So tell me everything I need to know about this island! Is there any way to get off it?”

Surprised by my outburst, he laughs. “Look, on the wheel you have to learn as you go. That’s how most of us have made it this far.” He cocks an eyebrow at me. “You gotta use your wits. I’m nineteen and a half. That’s one year and six months beyond my life expectancy, and I don’t plan on dying anytime soon.” Veidman puts a gentle hand on my shoulder and starts steering me toward a shack about a hundred paces away. “But feel free to ask me whatever questions you want.”

I don’t know where to begin. “I thought only Unanchored Souls got sent here. But I’m not like that. And neither are any of you. Why would the government lie?”

“We don’t know. There are definitely some evil people here on the wheel, but a lot of regular ones as well. It’s not too different from back home, I guess.”

“Gadya told me about the Cannibal Monk,” I say. “That you guys are at war with him.”

“The boys you met in the forest today are the Monk’s warriors, his hunters,” Veidman tells me. “We call them drones. They’re like worker bees protecting the hive. Other groups exist in the sectors controlled by the Monk, like gatherers, builders, and cooks. His people worship him, and they’ve been taking over the island one sector at a time for years. We’re the only sector of kids left who oppose him.”

We reach some colorful blankets on the ground outside Veidman’s shack. We both sit down, cross-legged.

“Actually, we think some drones might have infiltrated our sector,” Veidman continues. “That they’re living among us, maybe even in this village, pretending to be on our side. But waiting for the perfect moment to sabotage everything . . .”

His words trail off as Meira and Gadya reappear. Meira is holding a medical syringe in her left hand. It’s just dangling there, filled with dark fluid. Red, like blood. She walks over and hands the syringe to Veidman.

Veidman glances over at me. “I was planning on becoming a doctor before I got sent to the wheel.” He holds up the syringe and squirts a little liquid into the air. “Now I just get to play one.” He smiles. “Show me your arm.”

Suddenly I’m back in the scanning cell, with the tech in the white lab coat leaning over me.

“Flashback,” I croak, breaking out in a cold sweat. I feel woozy. Faint. And embarrassed.

“Happens sometimes.” Veidman leans forward, pushing up my right sleeve. He taps the inside of my arm, searching for a vein.

“You know why you felt like crap when you landed here?” Gadya asks from behind me.

Veidman frowns. “Probably not the best time—”

Gadya keeps talking: “Why your head hurt? Why your thoughts were all fuzzy?”

I glance back at her over my shoulder. “No. Tell me.”

“Gadya.”
I hear a cold note of warning in Meira’s voice. But I don’t want Gadya to be quiet. I want to know what happened to me. It’s my body. I have a right.

Gadya moves forward into my view. “Ever heard of ECT?” she asks. “Also known as electroshock therapy? That metal band in the testing cell didn’t scan your mind. It delivered an eight-hundred milliamp jolt of electricity, right into your frontal lobes!”

I yank my arm out of Veidman’s grasp, horrified. “Electroshock! But that was banned years ago!” Tears spring into my eyes. The government tried to fry my mind?

“It’s no big deal,” Veidman says, sounding resigned. “Happens to everyone who gets sent to the wheel. They use a low dose to disorient us. To make us forget how we got here.” He pulls my arm forward again, ignoring my dismay. Before I’m even ready, he jabs me with the needle on the inside of my elbow.
Just like the scanning tech.

Veidman stands up and hands the empty syringe back to Meira.

“So what happens now?” I ask. “Am I going to be okay?”

Veidman looks down at me. “Well, I’ve got good news and bad news.” His tone is fairly jocular, but his eyes are distant and veiled. I look over at Gadya and Meira. Meira is now half shrouded in the shadow of a tree; Gadya is still watching me closely.

“I’ll take the good news first,” I mutter. I try to stand up, then realize that my whole body feels heavy. I sit back down again as a sensation of heat rushes through me. “Does anyone ever have an allergic reaction to this vaccine?”

Veidman is about to speak, but Gadya cuts him off. “It’s not a vaccine!” she exclaims, like she’s unable to stay silent. I look up at her, confused, as my head starts swimming.

“Gadya, keep your fat mouth shut,” Meira warns.

“It’s not a vaccine. It’s a truth serum!” Gadya continues. “They’re gonna ask you questions and find out who you really are. They think you’re a secret spy for the Monk. They think you’ve been sent here to kill us all!”

THE VILLAGE

FIVE MINUTES LATER, THE
truth serum—or whatever it is—has completely taken hold. I’m caught in a weird state between waking and sleeping. I’ve been dragged inside Veidman’s cabin and stretched out on a hammock. Veidman, Gadya, Meira, and several other villagers cluster around me.

The questions come in rapid succession from a chorus of voices. They ask me what my real name is. Where I’m really from. Who sent me here, and why. What I know about the wheel and about the Monk. They ask me about David. And if I’m here to hurt anyone, among a hundred other things. For once ignorance truly is bliss. I know nothing. Less than any of these kids do.

But the questions don’t stop. Veidman and Meira are certain I have secrets. Their voices grow as sharp as knives, slicing deeply. They think I’m lying, despite the truth serum.

“You’re an orphan,” their voices insist. “You claim your parents were dissidents, so what did they do? Tell us!”

But of course I don’t have an easy answer for that one. I never have. I can hear my own voice explaining all of this, calm but deadened, inside an echo chamber of numbness. I tell them I was only ten when my parents got taken away. If they did anything radically subversive, beyond minor infractions, then they hid it from me.

Finally, after what feels like hours, my interrogators begin to sound tired. The questions wane.

“She doesn’t know squat,” I hear Gadya mutter. “Just like I figured.” She’s the only one who hasn’t asked me a single thing. “She’s not the one you’re looking for, Veidman.”

“Maybe,” I hear Meira say, still unconvinced.

Gadya and another girl eventually lead me out of the hut and back into the grassy clearing. The sun is lower on the horizon, the sky a deeper shade of blue. I sit down. The girl splashes cold water across my face before heading away with a dismissive glance. I’m still groggy, but starting to come around.

“I told you I didn’t know anything,” I murmur to Gadya.

“I know, but I don’t make the rules, remember?” She forces a plastic water jug into my hands. “Drink. It’ll help you pee the serum out faster.”

With trembling fingers, I raise the jug to my lips and take a sip. Then I lower it. “You tricked me.” As my senses return, I’m starting to get angry. “You lied about the vaccine.”

“I didn’t have a choice. There was no way to know if you were a spy or not. You and David could have just been pretending to be new to the wheel.” She crosses her arms. “It wasn’t my idea, if that helps any. Veidman and Meira are the ones who figured out how to make the truth serum—from henbane seeds and grain alcohol. They’re crazy smart. They know things we don’t, and they’ve been here longer than anyone else in our village. They’ve started using their truth serum on every new arrival.”

I take a deeper sip of water, feeling it trace a cool path down my throat. “So now that you know I’m not a spy, tell me why you think I got sent here. Give me that much.”

Gadya takes the jug from my hands and swigs from it, and then wipes her mouth on the back of her arm. “None of us know why we’re here. Personally, I think the wheel is just a place where the government sends any teenager it wants to get rid of. I don’t even know if the GPPT tests for anything at all.” She pauses. “In your case, you told us under the serum that people came into your cell and administered ECT before the test could even take place. That means the government had marked you as an Unanchored Soul from the get-go. But it doesn’t always work that way for everyone. . . . Look, we’ll fill you in on what we do know at the campfire meeting tonight, with Veidman and Meira.”

“I don’t think they like me.”

“Those two don’t like anyone except each other. Canadians are weird.”

“Are they twins or something?”

Gadya stifles a grin as she passes me the water jug again. “Don’t let either of them hear you say that. They’re a couple—they just look alike.” She watches as I chug more water. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I just got tricked and drugged,” I mutter. “Other than that, fine.”

Gadya smiles. “I’ll take you on a tour of the village, introduce you to some other kids. When I first got here, I felt really alone until I made some friends.” A shadow falls over her eyes. “A lot of those friends aren’t alive anymore.”

“They got killed fighting the Monk?”

“That, or they were taken by—” She breaks off, standing up. “If I say too much now, Veidman and the others will get mad.”

As we start walking around the edge of the clearing, I take in my surroundings. Sloppily constructed cabins are clustered beneath the trees. They’re made of moldy wooden slats, propped up with stones. The roofs are either thatched or made from sheets of corrugated metal, like the shantytowns I’ve seen in government-sanctioned depictions of Europe and Asia. The village looks ramshackle and filthy. I remember what Gadya said about the drones constantly destroying everything. This is probably the best the villagers can do, given the circumstances.

I’m reminded of a book of mythology that my dad gave me when I was six.
D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths
. It was mostly drawings, which was why I liked it so much at the time. My dad would read the text while I looked at the pictures.

One of the myths was about Sisyphus, who had to roll a boulder endlessly up a mountain—only to have it crash down on him whenever he neared the top. Then he’d have to start his journey all over again. He was locked in that cycle for eternity, as punishment for offending the gods. I told my dad I thought it was a pretty discouraging myth, and that I felt sad for Sisyphus.

“Ah, but the key is to imagine Sisyphus
happy,
” he earnestly explained to my six-year-old self. “If Sisyphus is happy, then the story isn’t sad. Maybe he finds a lot of meaning in rolling that boulder up the mountain, even if he seems doomed to us. If Sisyphus ever lost his boulder—or succeeded in getting it over the top—he’d probably lose his entire purpose in life!”

I keep that story close to my heart as I trail Gadya past all the kids rebuilding their shacks.
To imagine Sisyphus happy.
Is that really possible?

Some of the kids start noticing me, and they stop what they’re doing. All of them are grubby and tousle-haired, smeared with dirt like they’ve been playing in the woods. But I know that none of them have been playing. Their eyes burn with concentration and fear.

“Where’d you find this one?” a redheaded boy calls out to Gadya.

“Yeah, what’s her name?” yells a frowning girl, sounding worried. “Is she safe?”

“My name’s Alenna,” I say, before Gadya can speak for me. I want to stand up for myself. If I have only two more years to live, then I don’t want to spend them living in the shadows.