The Forsaken (44 page)

“It’s really you?” I whisper past the tears.

“It’s me.”

“But—” I’m so confused, torn between laughter and hysterical tears. “How?”

“The thought of seeing you again is what kept me alive,” she murmurs.

I pull back from our embrace, and I scrutinize her face.
Yes, it
is her.
I have no doubt. Her eyes are the same shade as mine, like they always were.

I glance back. Liam is right behind me. Dr. Vargas-Ruiz places a pale hand on his shoulder.

“I thought you and Dad were dead,” I tell my mom, turning back to her, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. “I mean, I always secretly hoped I was wrong.”

“I was sent to the wheel too,” she says. “It was an internment camp for UNA political dissidents, before it became the abomination it is today. Your father and I were both sent there after we were arrested, along with anyone else who the government thought was a threat and couldn’t coerce into joining them. We did nothing wrong, other than disagree with the UNA’s policies.”

“Minister Harka told us you helped him on the wheel, before he died.” I pause, wondering if she even knows that Minister Harka is dead. This should be major news to her. But she doesn’t look surprised, so maybe the inhabitants of Destiny Station already know somehow. Perhaps from tapping into the network of hidden cameras, or from other sources. “And I found one of the rocks with our name on it,” I add. “So, is Dad here somewhere?”

She can see the yearning in my eyes, and a look of pain flashes across her face. “Your father—”

I can guess what’s coming next. I shut my eyes. My scarred heart aches so much that the grief is hard to bear.

“He passed away three years ago.”

I put my head against her chest again.

“Don’t be sad,” my mom says. She pulls back, staring into my eyes. “He died fighting for a cause he believed in. If it weren’t for him, we never would have been able to build this place, or even get off Island Alpha. Your dad is a hero.”

I don’t know what to say. He was always a hero to me. I just wish he were still alive. “His stories about Sisyphus kept me going,” I say. “And his carvings in the rocks as well.”

My mom nods. It’s weird to have a mother again after I’ve become so used to being on my own. I wonder if she feels weird about it too. “What do we do now?” I ask.

“Your being sent here wasn’t a coincidence,” she tells me. “We’ve figured out how to intercept some of the video feeds from the museum camera, and other cameras hidden around the island. I watched your arrival. I suspected you’d fail the GPPT and end up on Island Alpha, because the gift we have—the ability of our brains to repel the government neurotoxins—has a genetic component, and that’s primarily what the GPPT tests for. Of course, given your family history, they probably identified you as one of us from the start.”

“So we’re, like . . . mutants?”

She smiles. “No. We just have something inside our heads that won’t let the government in. We don’t know what it is, and they don’t either. A quirk of our genetic codes. Maybe Dr. Elliott told you, but that’s why the island is a testing ground for all their new variant drugs. They spray them in the atmosphere. Then hidden motion detectors around the sector boundaries alert the feelers to come and pick up the most energetic inhabitants. The sickness—what you call the Suffering—is what happens when their new drugs cause unwanted side effects. Some people are susceptible to them sooner than others. In time, almost everyone falls prey to their effects.”

“But what about the others? My friends?”

I glance back to see what Liam thinks, but Dr. Vargas-Ruiz is escorting him out of the room. I feel a sudden pang of fear. “Wait,” I call out.

Liam turns.

“We should give you some privacy,” Dr. Vargas-Ruiz says.

“It’s okay. You can stay,” I tell Liam. To my mom, I add, “This is Liam Bernal. My . . .” I feel more fluttering in my stomach. “My boyfriend.”

Liam smiles.

“Nice to meet you,” my mom says to him, sounding a little awkward. But that makes sense, because the last time she saw me, I was a ten-year-old with pigtails. But then she adds, “Actually, we’ve met before, Liam. A long time ago.”

I’m startled, and so is Liam.

“What do you mean?” he asks her.

“Unless I’m mistaken, your father’s name is Octavio Bernal. He was a famous rebel leader.”

Liam now looks completely shocked. “How do you know that?”

“Alenna’s father and I were friends with your parents many years ago, in the chaos before the UNA was formed. You and Alenna played together sometimes when you were little kids. We took a trip together to Old Florida once. You probably don’t even remember it.”

She’s right. I don’t remember.

But it explains so much.
The instant connection I felt with Liam from the first moment I saw him on-screen.

I turn to him, my surprise reflected in his face. It’s clear he doesn’t remember either.

“Wow,” he says, sounding as stunned as I feel. “That’s crazy.”

To me it seems like fate. That we would know each other as children and then be reunited again on the wheel.

“I watched your arrival on the island as well, Liam,” my mom adds.

Dr. Vargas-Ruiz puts a hand on his shoulder again. “Let’s give Alenna and her mother some time alone together. Besides, there’s a lot more you need to know about your father.”

Liam looks at me and asks, “Is it all right if I go?”

“Yes,” I tell him, still reeling from everything I’ve learned.

“We’ll be waiting right outside,” Dr. Vargas-Ruiz assures me, as she leads Liam from the room.

I turn back to my mom. “Tell me everything.”

“You mean about this place?”

“No, I mean
everything
. The whole story. What happened when you and Dad got taken. I need to know.”

I hear the door close. It’s just me and my mom now. “I’ll try. But I don’t remember all of it.”

For the next hour we sit there, holding hands. She tells me a condensed version of everything she went through. How she and my dad were interrogated for days. Starved and denied water. Beaten and chained.

Then they were shipped across the country to the West Coast, and then onward to Island Alpha—a desolate, unpopulated island in the Pacific, located halfway between Hawaii and Australia. My mom explains that the UNA established its prison islands far from the mainland because of fears of rebellion—especially Island Alpha, the largest and harshest of its prison colonies. Other smaller, secret islands apparently exist elsewhere.

Back then, Island Alpha was a different place from the one I encountered—with dissidents, criminals, vagabonds, and intellectuals mixed together, forced to battle for the small population of hoofers released onto the island to provide food for the prisoners. The colored sectors for each part of the wheel were already established by the UNA, and were initially meant to demarcate zones for different kinds of prisoners.

The ubiquitous fireworks were already present back then too—apparently because the island used to be a layover for cruise ships in the early years of the twenty-first century. Giant buried crates of fireworks, some the size of trailers, still exist on the island, providing the drones with a seemingly inexhaustible supply.

My parents and their fellow dissidents began building a new society on the island, complete with a primitive power station, and a huge lookout tower. The ruins of the spiral staircase are all that remain of it. This is because the government soon began bombing the island. After that, the chemical testing began, and people started dying.

Eventually, my parents and some other islanders, mostly scientists, came up with a plan to attack one of the UNA freighters that was shipping prisoners there back then. They battled the crew and eventually took over the boat. Then they piloted it all the way to Australia and started building Destiny Station inside the sandstone formation, deciding to use their knowledge to find a way to defeat the UNA.

Australia had just become an enemy of the UNA at that time, and the Australians were also embroiled in bloody civil conflicts in their own cities. They did nothing to intervene and stop these refugees from arriving. So the city inside the rock grew and grew, unchecked.

“Tell me about Dad,” I say. I can tell that’s the part she doesn’t want to talk about, but it’s the part I need to know about most of all.

“There was a bombing raid. For a while, the UNA thought it might be able to take advantage of Australia’s unrest and occupy the country. They briefly tried to turn it into a colony of the UNA, until the Australians fought back. UNA warplanes used to bomb the dunes occasionally, mostly at night. Parts of our rock shelter were hit a few times, but we rebuilt any sections that got damaged. Your father was outside one night, trying to save some children playing in the dunes and bring them back into the station. A bomb landed nearby . . .” Her voice falters. “The children survived, but the shock wave from the blast took his life.”

I wipe away tears. All these years I assumed that my dad was dead, but hearing this story makes the pain feel fresh again. “How did you keep going?”

“Because as long as you were alive, there was hope. That’s all people need in order to do amazing things, Alenna. Hope is the great human motivator. It always has been.”

She pulls away gently and then stands up. I know there’s so much more she wants to say, and so much more I need to ask her. “Look, I don’t want to overwhelm you,” she says. “The doctors asked me not to. You’re dehydrated, probably starving, and you need sleep. There’s plenty of time now. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you and Liam.” She pauses. “At least not right away.”

“What do you mean?”

“For the moment, we’ll be staying here. But we’re not alone at Destiny Station. Other rebel colonies of UNA refugees exist, hidden across the globe. One in the Highveld of South Africa. One in the Arctic, under the ice. And others on remote islands off the coast of India. We’re in touch with them by radio. Armies are being trained. We’re going to join together with them in a year or so. And return to the UNA to fight, and take back our freedom.”

She leads me over to the door as I try to digest her words.

“Get some rest now,” she says. “We’ll talk more in the morning.”

Liam is still waiting in the tunnel, standing there with Dr. Vargas-Ruiz. They both look up as the door opens. I can tell they’ve been having an intense conversation.

“Things will be different from now on. Your new life is beginning,” my mom tells me. In some ways, she’s a stranger, but in other ways, she’s the most familiar person in the world to me.

“God, I missed you,” I say, as she leans in and hugs me.

Dr. Vargas-Ruiz touches my arm. “I need to take you and Liam back to your quarters.”

“And I’ve got guard duty now,” my mom adds. “We all have to pull our weight around here.” She kisses my cheek.

I realize I haven’t said “I love you” to her yet. I want to say it, but I still feel too awkward—I don’t know why. I guess it’s just because I haven’t seen her for so long. Or maybe it’s because it feels like it would be rushing things to say it.
It’s like she has come back from the dead.
But I decide to risk it anyway.

“I love you, Mom,” I tell her.

She smiles, eyes damp. “I love you, too.” We hug one more time before my mom lets go of me and heads off down the tunnel.

“This way,” Dr. Vargas-Ruiz prompts, as I stare after my mom’s retreating figure.

“This place is incredible!” Liam whispers as we start walking. “I talked to Vargas-Ruiz. They’ve got a plan to liberate the wheel from the UNA and unfreeze all the pods. They’re going to meet up with some other rebel stations. She even thinks it’s possible my dad is still alive, at one of the other bases somewhere. That he might have been taken in the raid but escaped being killed. They’re going to try to find out more info for me. I still can’t believe we met each other when we were little kids. . . .”

I nod like I’m following his rush of words, but I feel like my mind is fading in and out. Right now, I just need to lie down and sleep.

“Oh yeah, and something else.” Liam looks troubled. “She said they think Veidman was a spy. Him and Meira. Not David. That the UNA put Vei and Meira in the blue sector and gave them fake names and identities, as a way to keep us in line and stop us from trying to escape. We weren’t supposed to succeed in getting off the wheel. We were meant to fail and go back to the village. I don’t know if it’s true or not.”

Veidman a spy. And Meira, too?

I think about how they always seemed to have things. The serum, the coffee, clean clothes. And about how Veidman was so obsessed with finding the spy. Was that all for show? It’s possible, but I still find it hard to believe.

“I don’t know what to think,” I tell Liam. “Veidman’s dead. If he was a spy, then it doesn’t matter anymore. And Meira could be dead by now too. I’m more worried about rescuing our friends in the archive, and finding David.”

We finally reach our quarantine room again and head inside, as Dr. Vargas-Ruiz leaves us. I can barely believe everything that’s happened to us.

I’m not the same person I was before I got sent to the wheel. I will fight side by side with the people from Destiny Station. With Liam. With my mom. And if there’s any way to do it, Liam and I will try to rescue Gadya, David, Rika, and everyone else. I’ll do whatever it takes to liberate the wheel and ultimately destroy the UNA itself, so that no one else has to go through what we’ve been through.

I see myself reflected in a mirror hanging on the wall opposite the bathroom. With my tousled hair and wild stare, I look more like a warrior than I ever thought possible.

Liam walks over to me and holds me from behind, brushing back my hair. “Everything’s going to be okay,” he says.

I laugh a little.

“What? You don’t believe me?”

“I’ve heard those words before. But right now, here with you? It’s the first time I actually believe them.” I nestle against his body, feeling his heat and his strength. “This is only the beginning,” I tell him. “You know that, right?”