The Forsaken (32 page)

Then I see Gadya slide past, fighting two tentacles, trying to wrap herself up in them. The bright spotlight cuts off completely, like the feeler is conserving its power.

I see the underside of the helicopter again, and then the full shape emerges, its blades spinning wildly. Smoke is rising from it, like we’ve overloaded its capacity.

The tip of my tentacle whips across my face, bloodying my lips, but I don’t let go. Nothing will make me let go. This is the thing that killed Liam, and so many others. For all I know, a feeler killed my own parents.

Now I will get my revenge.

The helicopter-thing finally loses control. It veers sideways, still pulling us along with it. My head cracks against the ice so hard that I almost pass out for a second. I smell burning oil and see clouds of smoke billowing from the helicopter’s rotor.

The feeler begins emitting beeping sounds. I realize that the noise is the death throes of a machine. It makes me happy to hear that sound, almost like it can feel pain. The tentacles start to spasm as though they’re having a seizure. Everyone’s screaming.

Then the tentacle whips sideways, right out of my hands, as the helicopter-thing starts falling from the sky. I slide for several yards on the ice until my momentum finally slows.

I watch as the feeler and its dead tentacles plummet onto the ice about a hundred yards away. The helicopter blades hit the surface first and break off, spinning away past my head. The body of the helicopter crashes through the ice in an explosion of freezing water and tentacles. Bits of metal and wire shoot through the air like bullets, eventually skittering onto the ice and sliding away into oblivion.

I stagger up, feeling tremors underneath my feet as the ice starts cracking all around us.

“No!” Rika screams. I look over and see that she’s okay. But Sinxen is standing near her, swaying, as red liquid bubbles from his mouth. A shard of metal is sticking out of his chest.

I realize that in the feeler’s death throes, a stray tentacle must have skewered him. He falls to his knees, turning the ice around him red as his eyes roll up in their sockets.

I can’t believe it.

Sinxen.

Another death—and for what?

Gadya races to his side. I follow right behind and see that she’s bleeding too. Deep slices from the tentacles run down both her arms, cutting through the down of her jacket.

I gaze around wildly. The drone is back at the Monk’s side, hoisting him up. He’s recovered his secret blade, but it’s gnarled and chipped now. Markus is crawling across the buckling ice. He was closest to the impact site, yet looks relatively unscathed. David is also on his feet, swaying unsteadily.

But the crash has set off a slow-motion chain reaction—a destabilizing effect that is now cascading across the surface of the frozen lake.

We start sprinting and limping toward the bank ahead of us. All except for Gadya, who is trying to drag Sinxen’s body along with her.

“We have to run!” I scream at her. “The ice is breaking!” The cracking noises are deafening under our feet. A jet of water suddenly sprays up between us. I feel the ice shift and move, like sections are about to break apart and give way. I know that if we tumble into the water, we’ll be swept under the ice and trapped there.

I turn back to see Rika lagging even farther behind me, along with the drone carrying the Monk.

“Faster!” I yell.

Gadya finally lets go of Sinxen, because there’s nothing she can do for him anymore. The life is gone from his body.

I feel a weird sliding sensation underneath me. Suddenly, a sheet of ice breaks free right in front of me. I veer sideways in panic.

While I avoid the ice, I get slapped in the face by a wall of freezing water. I stumble and fall, hands slapping onto the ice. Then I pick myself up, blinking ice out of my eyes, trying to see clearly.

Maybe the feeler is going to be victorious after all,
I think, as I start moving again.
Maybe I’m going to drown.
I stare at the bank ahead and tell myself that I have to make it.

Water slams against the side of my head again like an icy wave, stinging my ear. Large chunks of ice are breaking up everywhere. I struggle to outrun them as water seeps and surges between moving slabs of ice.

Ahead of me, I see Markus reach land, sliding onto the frozen mud at the shore. He stands at the edge of the lake, yelling for us to run. David is hopping and jumping over chunks of ice, desperately trying to make it too, despite the splint on his foot.

I ignore the terrifying cracking and snapping noises, and just focus on the edge of the bank. My eyes fix on an icy crystalline oak tree, its frozen boughs shimmering in the gray light.
If I can make it to that tree, then I’m going to be okay,
I tell myself.
I just have to keep moving.

But my body is barely responding to my commands anymore. I try to move my feet, but I’m so cold, it feels like I’m running in molasses.

I glance back to see the others struggling forward. The lake has claimed Sinxen’s body already. I see his pale hand slip off a slab of ice and into the water.

Gone forever.

The feeler has completely disappeared too, its tentacles sucked into the ever-widening hole created by the impact.

Now there are only five of us left, plus the Monk and his drone.

I keep my eyes locked on that icy oak tree. I’m getting closer as I dodge ice chunks and dance over pools of water. Underneath the ice, the lake is far from placid. It’s roiling and dark, like an ocean. I feel its currents wanting to suck me in and pull me under.

Then I hear frenzied screaming, and I chance a final look back.

While Gadya is practically alongside me, and the Monk and his drone are off to my left near David, Rika is now lagging badly. She’s trapped on an ice floe, with water spraying up all around her.

“Rika!” I yell. I don’t want to stop moving, but I pause for an instant as the ice cracks around me.

“Help!” she calls back, too scared to move in any direction. More water cascades upward, and she almost loses her balance. The piece of ice she’s stuck on tilts sideways and she screams again.

My survival depends on getting to the bank. I spin around and see that Gadya and Markus haven’t heard Rika’s screams. No one else is going to save her.

Suppressing my fear, I realize that I don’t have a choice.
Not if I want to live with myself.
I’m only alive because Gadya brought me to the village, with David’s help, and because Liam saved me during the feeler attack in the orange sector. Our survival depends on helping one another. So I race back across the ice, lunging toward Rika.

I slip across the surface, which is disintegrating under my feet. I inch as close to her as I dare, and hold out my hand, swaying as the ice moves with me. “Come on!” I yell. “Jump toward me!”

She’s crouched on all fours, pressing herself against the stray piece of ice so she doesn’t get tossed off into the water.

I creep a bit closer, still hearing those explosive cracks. If any more ice breaks up, I won’t be able to get to the shore either.

“Grab my hand!” I scream.

“I’m scared!”

“Me too!” I stretch my arm out as far as I can, while water billows up around me. I’m so cold, I don’t feel any pain. My whole body has gone numb.

I don’t think my plan is going to work. I think Rika is just going to sit down on the ice and give up. But then I hear footsteps next to me, and a voice yells my name. It’s David. He has turned around and come back to help us.

“Give me your hand!” he calls out to Rika. “You can do it.”

She’s sobbing hysterically. “I can’t.”

David looks at me. “I’m going to get her.”

“How?”

“Watch.”

He takes a few steps back and then runs forward, leaping up and throwing himself over the water. He barely makes it, landing on Rika’s sheet of ice with a crash, flailing to keep his balance. Wincing in pain from his foot.

She turns to him, shocked.

“If I can do it, so can you,” he yells, grabbing her. “Look at Alenna, okay? You’re going to have to jump. Just like I did.”

Rika starts to whimper, but David forces her forward.

I lean down, stretching out my arms. “C’mon, Rika!” I yell. “I’ll catch you.”

David whispers something into her ear. Maybe words of encouragement. Maybe even a threat. Rika looks at me. She shuts her eyes, and then pushes herself off the sheet of ice, right at me.

For a terrifying moment, I think she’s going to fall into the widening abyss between the two sheets of ice. She lands right at the edge, and is about to teeter backward into the water.

“No!”
I howl, lunging forward to grab her.

And then her hand catches mine, and I’m yanking her forward to safety. Her feet and legs get soaked, but her body makes it onto the ice.

She tumbles into me, and we lurch backward. By now, Gadya and Markus have realized something is wrong, and I can hear their voices yelling at us.

I roll sideways. I sit up, dazed.

“David!” I scream, as I see the sheet of ice he’s on starting to disintegrate. He’s looking around wildly. His sheet of ice and ours are separating, with only freezing water left between them. “Jump! Do it now!”

David hears me and runs forward. He has enough momentum that at first it looks like it’ll carry him over the water. Then his injured foot slips at the last second and he stumbles.

“David!” I scream, automatically moving forward.

He falls straight into the water. His hands claw at my sheet of ice for an instant and then they let go. He disappears completely. Then his head reappears, choking and gasping.

I lay down on the sheet of ice, aware that our lives could end at any second, and throw out my arms. He grabs my wrists, hard. I start moving backward using my elbows, pulling him out of the water as his feet kick violently.

Within a couple of seconds, he’s back on the ice with me and Rika, shivering and soaking wet. He’s so cold, he can’t even speak. I know that without him, Rika probably would have died.

“We still have to run,” I tell him and Rika firmly. They both look like they’re going into shock.

We start hobbling toward the bank. Everything goes all strange and distant, too surreal to actually be happening. The only sound I hear is the noise of my own frantic heartbeat, blotting out everything else.

We move as rapidly as we can. I look for my icy oak tree on the bank, but I don’t see it anymore. My vision is just a blurry frozen haze.

I can barely make out Gadya, standing on the bank with Markus. The Monk and his drone are almost there too. I run toward them, half-dragging Rika and David along with me.

Somehow we make it off the lake, through a combination of luck and perseverance. A few moments later, we’re out of danger, collapsing onto the frozen shore next to the others.

I fall to the ground near Rika, chest heaving for air. David is coughing up water. Gadya and Markus crouch over our shivering bodies.

“Oh God, that was close,” Rika says.

Markus and Gadya are trying to get us warm. David is soaked from head to toe. He’s not going to make it long out here unless he gets warmed up. None of us are. Hypothermia is going to kick in soon.

“We need to start a fire,” I say, teeth chattering. “David fell in saving Rika.”

“I saw,” Gadya says. She’s looking at David in a new way now, with new respect. Like she’s reevaluating her opinion of him.

“I’ll get the fire started,” Markus says. “I have a lighter.”

It’s too cold to stay lying down, so I stagger to my feet, colder than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

I glance over and see the Monk sprawled on the icy mud of the beach. His drone is sitting next to him. Somehow in the chaos of escaping the lake, the drone lost his blade again.

Gadya looks at me, her face ghostly white. I think she’s going to say something about David and his act of heroism, but instead she says, “The Monk is dying, from the cold and his wounds. He can’t survive here. We need to find out everything he knows before it’s too late.”

She looks over at the drone, studying him. But the drone doesn’t notice, because he’s too busy attending to his master. Ice crystals have formed on the Monk’s mask.

“I can’t believe Sinxen is dead,” I murmur, looking back out at the water and ice. This awful lake has become his grave.

Gadya just nods, trying to hide her pain. I know the emotions are too much for her. She turns away from the lake and gestures at the weird shimmering wall about a thousand feet beyond us, in the forest ahead. “If the Monk’s right, then we’ve almost made it to our destination. We might still find a way off the wheel.”

Off the wheel.
It’s what I thought I wanted. That, and information about my parents. “Unless we get warm and dry, I don’t think we’re going to make it,” I reply.

Markus has gathered a few pieces of wood and is trying to get them lit. It’s going to be hard, because everything is cold and wet. David is trying to move around, swinging his arms and legs so they don’t freeze up.

“Please—” I suddenly hear a voice say. To my surprise, I realize it’s the Monk’s drone. We all stare at him.

“You can speak?” Gadya says derisively, her voice as cold as the ground under our feet.

“The Monk needs my help.” The drone looks away for a moment. “I need to take off his mask. Ice got underneath.”

“Then do it,” I tell him.

He hesitates. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the drone felt sheepish. “Can you please not look?”

“Why not?” Gadya asks. “He’s gonna die anyway, just like my friend Sinxen did. And before he does, I plan on interrogating him.” Her hands become fists. “You can’t stop me anymore.”

The drone blanches. “You know he has the Suffering. We can’t gaze upon his holy face. No one can.” He knots his fingers together nervously.

“You’re completely nuts,” Markus says. “Are you aware of that?”

“And you really thought I was one of them?” David mutters, his whole body trembling from the cold. “You couldn’t see the difference between me and some brainwashed lunatic?”