The Forsaken (42 page)

“Oh my God!” another voice yells. I turn in her direction. It’s a middle-aged woman with dark curly hair.

She’s not particularly threatening-looking, but I still scream at her: “Get the hell away from us!”

She backs off rapidly, as do the others.

Liam crouches on the sand in his warrior stance. We’re both trying to make sense of where we’ve landed and who these people are. They don’t look like UNA scientists or soldiers, that’s for sure.

They’re just a mix of regular men and women, all dressed in loose white desert tunics. On their faces, I see looks ranging from surprise to catatonic shock.

I move over to Liam and stand back-to-back with him. The group has formed a wide circle around us. Behind them I see the aircraft that brought us here. It looks like an old slate-gray UNA bomber, large and cumbersome. It’s missing part of a wing from our landing.

“Who are you?” Liam yells. “What is this place?”

A tall, lanky man with thinning gray hair and glasses takes a step forward.

“Keep your distance!” Liam barks. “Don’t come near us, or I’ll kill you.”

Liam sounds both ferocious and believable. The man stops moving and stretches out his empty hands, presumably to show that he’s unarmed and means no harm.

“What’s your name, son?” he asks. He has a strange accent. Maybe British or Australian.

“Don’t call me ‘son’!” Liam snaps. “I said stay back!”

I glance around at the group of adults. If these really are the technicians who intended to dissect us, then I hate them with a passion that I’ve never felt before.

Yet I see looks of compassion and pity on some of their faces, now that their shock is wearing off. It’s hard to imagine that these rumpled desert dwellers are murderous UNA scientists. I don’t even think we’re in the UNA anymore.

I hear one woman murmur to another, “The first ones who are awake! And there’s more than one of them.” When she sees me glaring at her, she stops talking pretty fast.

“I’m Dr. Terry Elliott,” the tall man says to us.

“Doctor?”
Liam asks, his face darkening. “So you want to cut us up and study our corpses? Sorry we aren’t frozen enough for you.”

“No, no.” The man shakes his head. “Not that kind of doctor. I’m an anthropologist, originally from Old Melbourne, Victoria. Do you even know where you are?”

I don’t reply.

“What’s your name, hon?” the middle-aged woman calls out in my direction. I don’t respond. These strangers will have to earn our trust.

“You’re safe now,” Dr. Elliott continues, running a hand through what’s left of his hair. “Look, I know you might not believe it, but you’ve been rescued.” He takes a hesitant half step forward. “I understand why you’re so angry. You’ve been on that bloody island too long and—”

“You don’t know anything about us!” Liam snarls.

The man nods slowly. “True. But we want to learn. That’s why we brought you here.”

“
You
brought us here?” I ask.

“Yes. Me and the other rebel scientists at Destiny Station.”

“What are you talking about?” Liam asks the man. “Alenna rescued me, then we hijacked a pod, and after that, the transport plane crashed here. You didn’t do crap.” Liam looks like he’s ready to lunge forward and attack.

“Let me explain.” Dr. Elliott wipes sweat from his eyes. “We’ve been tracking radio signals emitted by the Island Alpha airplanes. I guess you could say we’ve been doing some hijacking of our own.” He glances at his silent companions, and then back at us. “For the past month, we’ve been intercepting guidance signals for each plane that leaves the island. The planes are remotely operated by computers, all automated, so we’ve been able to take over the controls and guide the planes here, and land them in this desert. The landings are rough, but if the occupants of the pods are frozen and preserved in fluid, they’re generally well protected. You two are complete anomalies.” He pauses. “Right now, the UNA just thinks there’s a temporary glitch in their system. They can afford the steep losses because they have plenty of planes from their wars, and a current backlog of thousands of bodies. They can’t even keep up with their own research.”

“Keep talking,” Liam prompts the doctor warily.

“We’ve managed to rescue more than three hundred of you inmates, and bring you all here to our settlement.”

I fold my arms. “Settlement?”

“Yes, on the northern ridge of Australia. Thousands of miles from where you should be right now.” He pushes down his glasses and scratches the bridge of his nose. “If it weren’t for us, you’d be in the processing center on a UNA naval base. From there, you’d be shipped to a medical facility, where—as you seem to already know—you’d eventually be dissected.”

“Why?” I ask. “Why are we worth dissecting?”

“Because the UNA wants to analyze your brains and your DNA. To determine why you’re immune to the sedating chemicals that your government puts in your thought-pills and pumps through the veins of its entire populace.”

I digest this information slowly. Liam and I look at each other. Things are beginning to swim into focus. “Immune to chemicals?” I ask.
That explains so much—the vague feeling of always being
an outsider in the UNA.
The feeling that so many of us shared on the wheel.

“That’s the real reason you got sent to Prison Island Alpha. You and all the other kids like you. A genetic mutation protects your minds from being pacified by the chemicals in the thought-pills. The UNA also secretly infuses most of its food and water with chemicals, to keep the populace docile. Your government uses Island Alpha to test new drugs on those of you who are resistant to the drugs they already have. They go after kids who cross the zones because those are generally the most active and rebellious ones. They want to learn how to break the minds of teenagers like you. Kids who think for themselves, and might grow up to question their system.”

I stare back at him, horrified.

“We’re all dissidents ourselves from an earlier era, when the UNA exiled the scientists who didn’t agree with its policies and research,” Dr. Elliott continues. He gestures to the huge sandstone formation. “We’ve built tunnels and chambers inside that rock over there, like a honeycomb. We call the place Destiny Station. More than two thousand of us live inside it, trying to fight the UNA and countries like it.”

I look at Liam. He still seems wary. But I believe this man. I’ve been watching the people who are with him. They’re more afraid of us than we are of them.

“When we misdirect a plane here, we’re used to finding the occupants frozen, and then thawing them out in the temperature chambers in our lab,” Dr. Elliott continues. “I’m glad you two aren’t frozen. It’s a sign that the system on Island Alpha is finally crumbling. We know that the UNA is spending all its money on new war machinery. They can’t maintain the island anymore, so they’re in the process of abandoning it. They’ve put a containment wall around their entire cooling zone, because of all the leaks and spills. We think at some point they’re going to exterminate everyone on the island—unless they can find a drug soon that will defeat your genetic immunity, and brainwash you.”

The middle-aged woman steps up next to him. “I know both of you probably have questions. We have answers. Some but not all.” She’s looking right at me with intelligent eyes. “My name is Dr. Angeline Vargas-Ruiz. I’m an anthropologist too. Most of us are scientists here.” She holds out her hand.

My head is a jumble of data.
Anthropologists. Australia. An outpost in the desert.
I take Dr. Vargas-Ruiz’s hand and shake it. “My name’s Alenna Shawcross.”

I see a strange look pass across her eyes. She knows my name—I can tell. But how? Nothing makes sense to me anymore.

Liam looks at me, then at the woman. Grudgingly he says, “Liam Bernal.”

“Nice to meet you,” she replies.

I feel so tired that I just want to curl up in the sand and sleep for a thousand years. I see Liam’s shoulders slump, and his fists start to uncurl.

“Come with us. I bet you’re dying of thirst,” Dr. Vargas-Ruiz says. “We have water and food, and fresh clothes too. Soft beds.” Everyone’s watching us. “You’re safe.”

Safe.
It almost sounds like a joke.

“You believe them, right?” Liam whispers to me. I hear the longing in his voice. I feel it as well, my chest aching with hope.

“I think it’s okay,” I whisper back.

“Come, come,” Dr. Elliott says. “We have to get back inside the station as soon as possible.” The group starts to encircle us.

I don’t feel fear, just relief tempered with confusion. I look up at the sun. It’s hot enough to burn my face, but the heat feels wonderful after being inside the specimen archive.

I see men break off from the group and surround our fallen pod, as well as the other pods, which are scattered everywhere. Muscles heaving, they start dragging and pulling them across the sand like they’re taking them with us. I know these other pods must contain the frozen bodies of both villagers and drones.

“Let’s keep talking as we head back to Destiny Station,” Dr. Vargas-Ruiz says, hurrying along. “We don’t want our movement to get picked up on satellite.”

“Someone’s still watching us?” I ask as Liam grabs my hand. We begin walking quickly across the sand with the group, heading toward Destiny Station.

“Someone’s always watching,” Dr. Vargas-Ruiz replies with a faint, sad smile.

As we walk, her companions start introducing themselves one by one. Their names wash over me. I’m thinking about how great it will feel to get a hot meal and a soft bed.

Then I feel guilty.

What about Gadya? And David, Rika, Sinxen, Veidman, and Markus? Didn’t they deserve to get rescued too? How will we even find David?

I think about all the others still stuck back on the wheel, either dead or entombed in the specimen archive. Liam and I didn’t abandon them by choice, yet I still feel like we’ve betrayed them.

Liam tightens his grip. “You okay?”

“Just thinking about everyone we left behind.”

He nods.

“How are we going to get back and save them?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Not until we learn more about what’s going on here.”

My eyes tear up, but I turn my face away so he doesn’t see.

Dr. Vargas-Ruiz slows her pace so she’s even with us. “That’s the opening to our base right there.”

She points at the clifflike face of the rock. I stare in the direction of her fingertip, wiping my eyes. The sandstone shimmers with diffraction patterns in the heat, and I don’t see anything. For a moment, I wonder if this whole thing—our escape, our landing, and our rescue—is just a delusion on my part.

“What are we supposed to be looking at?” Liam asks.

Dr. Vargas-Ruiz smiles. “Nothing, actually. We’re not meant to be seen.”

“Everything’s hidden inside,” Dr. Elliott says from nearby. He’s supervising the moving of the pods. Liam and I turn to look at him. “Not by choice, but we have to stay off satellite and radar. And out in the desert, it’s cooler inside the rock formation. We’ve built tunnels and rooms throughout it at all different levels, and buttressed them with steel. There’s practically a city in there.”

The group starts slowing down. I’m still scrutinizing the sandstone for any signs of life. Dr. Vargas-Ruiz notices. “Closer to your left.”

She gestures again. I squint against the brightness.

Finally, I see an almost invisible indentation in the base of the rock. It looks like it’s been eroded into the side of the sandstone by the wind, but it’s more than that. It’s small and square, like there’s something hidden behind it.

A secret doorway.

“That’s the entrance to our labyrinth,” she tells me and Liam as the group heads toward it, trailing through the sand, dragging the pods. I glance back and see others rolling the rest of the pods out of the aircraft. A light wind kicks up, blowing sand into my eyes. “We’ll have the entire plane disassembled by nighttime.”

We keep trudging toward the rock wall. Liam has his arm around me. I’m so glad I’m with him that in some ways, nothing else matters.

“How are you holding up?” he whispers.

“Good.”

He laughs softly and hugs me tight. “You’re a trouper.”

Dr. Elliott finally reaches the sandstone indentation, and the rest of the men put down the pods. Some of them spit on their blistered hands to cool them off, because the exteriors of the pods are being superheated by the sun.

Dr. Elliott takes out an old-fashioned key from his back pocket, nearly the length of a screwdriver. He drives it into the rock, slotting it into a hidden lock with an audible click. Chunks of crusted sand fall away. I catch a glimpse of chrome beneath the sandstone.

Then I hear a grinding sound. Instinctively, I startle. A huge section of the rock face slowly and methodically starts opening outward. I see a series of large metal pistons pushing it, and realize that this entire twenty-foot portion of the sandstone wall is fake—hollow and plastic. But it’s very convincing.

As it opens, it reveals a huge industrial elevator, large enough for a truck to drive onto. It’s definitely large enough to carry all of us, and some of the pods as well.

“How did you build all of this in here?” Liam asks Dr. Vargas-Ruiz.

“Remember, most of us are scientists and thinkers. We like to design and build things. It’s our passion. Still, it took several years. We constructed drills and cutters to bore through the sandstone, and to excavate all the tunnels and ventilation shafts. Then the real work began. Building generators and making it livable inside.”

Adults flow past us, rolling the pods again. Dr. Vargas-Ruiz leads us toward the elevator opening and onto the metal floor.

“Where’d you get your materials?” I ask.

“Mostly scrap metal. It’s amazing what you can find. Most of what the UNA and other nations consider trash can be recycled and reused. We’ve also recycled metal from some of the pods and planes we’ve brought here. We just melt it down.”

I notice a small keypad in one corner of the elevator, and flashing lights on its electronic display screen. Dr. Elliott taps in a code, and we rapidly start our ascent, up into the mysterious interior of the rock.