I feel a hand on my shoulder. It’s Liam. “Alenna, whether he’s new or not, the drones might have threatened or bribed him last night. He might be corrupted already. Just let Veidman talk to him.”
“I was a drone for less than a day!” David cries out hoarsely, like he’s overheard us. “I was actually trying to get away from them! I got lost.”
It’s obvious that most of the crowd doesn’t believe him.
Assassin Elite steps up on the stone rim of the fire pit and stares down at him. “Lost? I thought you drones were supposed to know this forest. What’s your Monk gonna think of you now, chump?”
“I couldn’t care less, because I’m not a drone,” David insists. “This is ridiculous.”
I look around at the crowd. “Why not just give him some truth serum?”
Veidman doesn’t reply.
“I want to be here with you guys, not with the drones,” David says. “I mean, am I acting like a drone right now? Think about it.”
Veidman crouches down at the edge of the pit, directly in front of David, at his level. “Okay, I hear you. But try to see it from our perspective. It’s difficult to trust someone who attacked us last night, wearing face paint and holding a spear. So just tell me what happened, and then I’ll decide what to do with you.”
“Last night, after that thing in the sky came down, I managed to ditch the other drones who brought me here,” David says. “But then I got turned around in the forest, and—”
“Couldn’t find your friends!” a girl in the crowd yells. “Couldn’t burn down our village and capture any of us!”
Voices rise up in support of her words. Whether David is a drone or not doesn’t matter to these villagers. The fact that he looks like one is enough for them to take their anger out on him.
“Quiet!” Veidman admonishes. He addresses David again: “Keep talking.”
“I lost my way in the dark,” David murmurs. “I couldn’t find anyone. So that’s why I hid in the forest all night and waited until daylight.” He shuts his eyes. “When I got found by your hunters, I thought I was being rescued. All I want is to come and be part of your tribe, or whatever it is. I never wanted to go with the drones to begin with. They forced me to. Alenna and her friend—the girl with the blue hair—can clear all this up for you.”
“Not if you’re secretly a spy!” an onlooker hisses.
The assembled crowd is growing larger, and they’re muttering ominously among themselves. Someone throws a clod of dirt. It barely misses David’s face.
“What are you gonna do with me, then?” David asks. “I’m not the enemy, and I’m definitely not a spy.”
Liam steps forward. “He’s probably telling the truth about that part, at least. We found him one mile east of here, hiding up in a tree. If he’s a spy, he’s a pretty bad one.”
Veidman sighs. Then stands up, still looking at David. “Until I can talk to Gadya and get some truth serum into you, I’m gonna have to lock you up for a little while, unfortunately. In one of our prison kennels. It’s our policy to do this to anyone who turns up looking like a drone.”
“Great,” David mutters. “Guilty until proven innocent. Just like in the UNA.”
“If our hunters hadn’t found you, would you really have joined our village of your own free will?” Veidman asks. “I can’t be sure of that yet.”
David’s shoulders slump. “Fine, then. Just hurry up with your truth serum.”
Behind Veidman, I see a couple hunters make slicing motions across their throats, like they want David dead. Veidman doesn’t notice, but Liam does.
Concerned, Liam moves closer to David, stepping down into the fire pit. “I can take him to the kennels if you want, Vei. Might be safest for him until we get this straightened out.”
“Fine,” Veidman murmurs. “Meira and I will meet you there.”
Liam grabs David and helps him out of the pit.
“It’s gonna be okay!” I call out to David, wanting to help him like he helped me.
Assassin Elite steps from the front of the crowd and takes David’s other arm. Slowly, he and Liam lead David away up one of the trails.
The group begins to disperse. Gadya walks up beside me, appearing from out of nowhere.
“Where were you?” I ask, startled.
“Watching from the back.”
“Why didn’t you say anything? You recognize him, right? Just talk to Veidman.”
Gadya holds up her hand. “I’m not saying anything to Veidman yet. David’s been out of our sight for most of a day. We don’t know what happened to him when we weren’t watching.”
“It just seems really paranoid to treat him like a full-fledged drone, when we know he isn’t.”
Gadya looks irritated. “Hey, if you don’t like how we do things, then go back into the forest and stumble around alone. See how long you last!”
The force of her words backs me off a step. “Look, I’m just trying to learn the ropes here. Don’t get mad at me.”
“I’m not.” She takes a deep breath and then exhales slowly. Finally she says, “All right. Maybe you touched a nerve.”
I nod, trying to understand.
“When I first got here, I didn’t find Veidman and the village right away.” She grimaces in disgust. “I got found by two drones instead. I didn’t know who, or what, they were. They said they’d just arrived on the wheel themselves, so I trusted them. I was green. I let myself get taken advantage of.” Her eyes go distant. “Every day I think about getting revenge for what those bastards did to me.”
I touch her arm gently.
She looks down at my hand. “The Monk’s people don’t live by any rules,” she continues. “Their society’s based on his crazy religious teachings and his desire for power. His drones are drunk on fermented berries half the time, and always planning trouble and destruction. The Monk tells them the first step to getting off the wheel is conquering all the other sectors—at any cost. So even though I don’t agree with some of Veidman and Meira’s decisions, their rules keep us safe. And they keep us human.”
I picture lizard boy, dancing like a lunatic in the spray of fireworks last night. Completely out of his mind, like an animal. Gadya’s right. Those kids are nothing like us. But I also know that David isn’t one of them.
“Where are the kennels? Can I go visit him?”
“Maybe later. It’ll take a while for Veidman and Meira to interrogate him.” Then, deliberately changing the subject, Gadya asks, “Wanna help me and Rika prepare lunch?”
I nod, deciding not to push the David issue right now. I know Gadya’s not going to back down. I feel guilty that I haven’t been able to do more for David already. At least he’s in our village now, instead of out in the forest. I’m confident that Veidman will quickly figure out he’s telling the truth and set him free.
“So I’m guessing lunch is hoofer stew?” I ask Gadya.
“Yeah, but with some grubs and worms mixed in for protein.”
“Seriously?”
Gadya smiles, unable to keep a straight face. “Just messing with you. See, you’re still too gullible. We gotta work on that.” She spits on the ground. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I eat an insect.”
We head over to a makeshift cooking area forty paces from the fire pit. Around us everyone seems busy, although I’m not exactly sure what they’re doing. Cooking pots hang from triangular frames made from tree branches, over low flames.
I notice Rika standing next to a tureen made from a hollowed log. She waves as we approach.
Behind her, two boys are carving up a hoofer carcass, cutting the marbled meat with razorlike blades that must have been sharpened on rocks. The boys work quickly and efficiently, slicing the meat into thin strips and hanging it on branches to cure in the sun.
“Rika takes cooking seriously, and she’s really good at it,” Gadya tells me as we near. “If it weren’t for her, things would be worse in the village. It’s hard to fight on an empty stomach
.”
When we reach Rika, she’s stirring a thin brown liquid with a stick. Lumps of greasy hoofer meat bob near the surface. It looks revolting, but smells surprisingly good. “Grab a stick and start stirring,” Rika tells me.
Gadya leans over and sniffs. “Not bad.”
“Considering what I have to work with, it’s a frigging gourmet masterpiece. Now someone help me stir already.”
I rummage on the ground, find a stick, and wipe it down. “Will this work?”
“Yup.”
I take over the stirring duties as Rika begins chopping up a green cabbage-like plant. The smell of the stew makes my mouth water. I hold the stick up and lick it, sneaking a taste. It’s tangy, like sweet-and-sour sauce.
I hear Rika and Gadya start laughing. They’ve been watching me. “Thumbs up or thumbs down?” Rika asks. “Be honest.”
I give her a thumbs up.
“Feel free to keep sampling. I always do.”
I stick my finger in and lick it showily. Rika laughs again.
So I stand there with the two girls, talking and laughing as we prepare the stew together. Other kids stop by and help. I try to catch their names, but there are so many of them that they tumble together into a blur of tanned faces and shaggy hair.
I realize that I almost feel safe, despite what happened last night, and despite the fact that David has been imprisoned. The wheel is definitely a terrifying, violent place—fraught with danger—but right now this village is a place of refuge, and I’m grateful to have found it.
TIGER STRIKE
TWO HOURS LATER, ALMOST all the members of the village are sitting around the fire pit, scarfing down Rika’s stew for lunch. Veidman has returned from administering the truth serum to David. I was hoping that David would join us, but there’s no sign of him.
“David was telling the truth even before we gave him the serum,” Veidman says, standing up on his tree stump to address the crowd. “Or at least he seemed to be, at first.”
Everyone starts murmuring.
“Where is he, then?” a boy calls out.
“Still in the kennels.” Veidman runs a hand through his blond hair. “Although he passed the truth test, Meira and I still thought his story was suspicious. We think he might be a different class of drone. One who’s been prepared in advance to answer our questions and endure the serum, or maybe—through hypnosis or other means—he has had some kind of secret agenda implanted in his mind. Until we have time to interrogate him further, we’re going to keep him locked up.”
Hypnosis? The whole thing seems completely implausible to me. “But—” I begin to say. Heads immediately turn in my direction. I fall silent.
I’m nervous to speak in front of such a large gathering, and I also don’t want to say the wrong thing. I know that David is genuine, and I’m worried for him, but I have to tread carefully. I clear my throat. “If he passed the truth test, then I don’t understand why you still don’t believe him.” I ignore the scowls that come my way. “What’s the point of the test if you don’t think it works?”
“It’s more complicated than that,” Veidman continues smoothly. “We’re hoping to get more information from him soon. One way or another.”
“Did you ask him about the Cannibal Monk’s face?” a girl’s voice calls out.
I’m not sure what she’s talking about. I glance at Gadya. She anticipates my question:
“None of us have ever actually seen the Monk,” she whispers. “And none of the Monk’s drones we capture will tell us anything specific. Supposedly the Monk always wears a wooden mask. Always. Some drones wear metal ones to emulate him. And the Monk never walks. He’s carried everywhere by four drones.”
“Who knows if he even exists,” Rika chimes in from my other side. “Some kids think he’s a mass delusion.”
Gadya shakes her head. “I just think he’s smart enough to keep a low profile. But who knows? Maybe he’s dead, and his own people don’t know it yet. They just keep on fighting anyway.”
Our whispers trail away as Meira appears from the trees. She alights on a rock near Veidman, like an exotic species of bird. Her clothes are so clean and white, I don’t know how she keeps them that way. Whenever I see her, I get embarrassed about how shabby I look. My sweaty clothes and underwear stick to my body, and the skin under my bra chafes. But of course most of these kids look more like me than like Meira. So maybe she’s the one who should feel out of place.
Meira stands up, displaying the fluid grace of a UNA fashion model. She speaks where Veidman left off. “The good news is, we don’t think David knows about Operation Tiger Strike yet. This could mean the spy in our village hasn’t had a chance to share any recent intel with the Monk.”
“Or maybe there is no spy, like a lot of us have been saying,” Edie adds.
“Operation Tiger Strike?” I mouth at Gadya.
“I’ll tell you about it,” a soft voice says in my ear, making me jump. It’s Liam. He has moved up behind us, silently and stealthily.
Gadya tries to pretend he’s not there, but I glance back at him. He’s cleaned up nicely and put on fresh clothes—jeans and a faded blue V-neck.
“It’s the code name for a secret expedition,” he whispers to me. “A small group of us hunters are going to look for another way into the gray zone, now that the tunnel’s gone. The whole zone’s surrounded by some kind of gigantic high-tech barrier, but if we can make an opening and get inside, we’re going to keep exploring the zone, find out where the aircrafts are, and hijack one of them.”
“That sounds dangerous. . . . I mean, kind of—” I stutter.
“Can you two be quiet?” Gadya hisses in annoyance. I fall silent, but Liam doesn’t.
“Gadya agrees with me, even if she won’t admit it. Eventually we’re all gonna die in this village. Taken by the drones or the Suffering or the feelers. We can’t stay here forever, because forever isn’t very long on the wheel. We need to send an expedition party to find a way off. Then we’ll come back and get everyone else.”
The thought of people leaving the village frightens me. And I don’t want Liam to go anywhere, not before I can talk to him more. I’m about to respond, when I realize Meira has stopped addressing the gathering. I look up and see that she’s staring at Gadya, Liam, and me. So is Veidman.
“Liam, you got something to say?” Veidman asks.
Liam shakes his head. “Nope.”
“You were telling Alenna about Operation Tiger Strike, am I right?”
Liam nods. “Yep.”
Veidman turns his eyes to me. “Our village is divided. Some of the hunters want to form a group and head into the gray zone right away to find the aircrafts. But other villagers are afraid of—”
“We’re not afraid!” a girl’s voice says vehemently right next to me, and I’m surprised to see that it’s Rika. “We just think it’s a stupid idea to split up the village and lose our best warriors. It puts everyone at risk!”
Voices call out in support of her. Mostly female. But some of the hunters start pounding homemade spears against rocks, making a din.
Assassin Elite holds up a spear excitedly. He looks ready to leave the village this instant and go on a rampage. “It’s stupid to stay here and wait for the next attack!” he yells. “All of us can’t go anyway. Too many people. So let the stupid people stay, and everyone else leave!”
His words get drowned out by the crowd.
The argument lasts for the next half hour. I stay silent the whole time, just watching and listening.
What I learn is this: Most of the camp wants everyone to stay at the village. They feel like it’s their home. They’ve made a life here, even if it’s an imperfect one. They’re also worried about the Ones Who Suffer, and don’t want to abandon them. And they’re scared about what the hunters will encounter in the unknown heart of the gray zone, assuming the hunters can even get back inside now that the tunnel is destroyed.
A minority of the camp—comprised mostly of h
unters and warriors—wants to leave the village as soon as possible and go on the expedition. This vocal contingent of boys wants to search, and fight, for a way off the wheel.
Nothing gets resolved by the end of the debate around the fire pit. I’m hoping that maybe no decision will get made for a long time, not until some crucial event tips the balance. I just got to this village. I don’t want to see it disintegrate around me. And I need to help David. I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for him.
As the group begins to disperse, Gadya and I stand up.
Liam has already disappeared into the forest barefoot, completely at home in the outdoors. After spending my whole life in the concrete and asphalt of New Boston and New Providence, the natural world still feels like a stranger to me.
I turn to Gadya. “What do you think about Operation Tiger Strike? And why’s it called that, anyway?”
“I dunno. Stupid BS the boys thought up,” she answers absently.
“So do you agree with Liam, like he said?”
“I don’t see eye to eye with Liam on anything.” She stares at me long and hard. Too long. She’s scrutinizing my face. “You like him. I can tell,” she finally mutters. “Wonderful.”
“What? I barely know him.”
“Just don’t pursue him. He’s off-limits to you.”
“Fine. No problem. I know that you guys dated, but I thought—”
“Rika should have kept her mouth shut,” Gadya snaps. “She doesn’t know what went on between me and Liam. No one does. It doesn’t matter if we’re together right at this moment. It just matters that you stay away from him.” She’s starting to sound pissed off at me, for no reason. “You can’t just flounce in here with your wavy hair and your pale skin and try to go after all the guys, y’know? It doesn’t work that way.”
“I’m not doing anything but trying to stay alive!” I sputter. “Liam talked to me. I didn’t talk to him.”
Gadya isn’t appeased. “Let’s just see how you look after a year on the wheel. After a bad diet, and all the stress, and all the battles. You’ll look like a ghost of yourself. A wretched, skinny, beat-up ghost!”
The Forsaken (Forsaken - Trilogy) Page 9