The Uprising: The Forsaken Trilogy

by Lisa M. Stasse

  I feel my legs get shaky.

  This can’t be happening.

  “He’s bluffing,” Cass says to me.

  I can’t even respond.

  My knees give out and I crouch down. If the voice isn’t lying, then it means that the drones have taken Liam. That he’s being held captive—and might be killed. I knew that the journey here was a risk, but I was certain that Dr. Barrett and Octavio would keep Liam and themselves safe. How could I have been so wrong?

  I expect the guards and the airships to start firing again, but their guns remain still. There’s only silence. The guards near the forest have their assault rifles out, but they’ve paused to listen.

  “You are surrounded by ten thousand of my soldiers,” the amplified voice continues. “We have been waiting for your arrival. If you fire one single shot, we will consider it a declaration of war. You have the guns, but we have your leader, and we outnumber you more than ten to one.”

  “I can’t believe this,” I whisper numbly.

  “Your guns will be useless when thousands of us overrun this land with spears and arrows,” the voice continues. “None of us will hesitate to sacrifice our lives. You are heathens! You must be punished.”

  I remember what happened when we got surrounded by drones like this once before, in the orange sector. That was the battle in which Liam got taken, and half our warriors were killed.

  “It was a trap,” I say to Cass, shutting my eyes. “This sector. This field. Everything.” I turn to her. “They were waiting for us here. Don’t you see that? Somehow they knew exactly where we were landing.”

  Cass doesn’t say anything. I can tell she knows I’m right.

  “Who are you?” a guard calls out, his voice loud and brittle in the silence. His uniform is decorated with gold stripes on the sleeves. I wonder if this is Dr. Barrett’s second lieutenant.

  “My name is not important,” the voice replies. “Lay down your weapons and surrender to our will. This is not your land; it is ours. And you are all prisoners now. Accept your fate, and you will live. Resist, and you will die. Your guns are no advantage—we know this terrain well and you do not.”

  I hear strange noises, and I glance up. Standing up high on the edge of the cliff, I see a line of at least a thousand drones appear. They are pointing arrows straight down at us. I also hear noises in the jungle around us. The sounds of a huge army. This is definitely not a bluff.

  Cass and I look at each other. My own desperation is reflected in her eyes. Around our feet, the fog grows thicker.

  Our mission to liberate the wheel has become imperiled before it even began. I feel like crying, but I can’t afford the luxury. If Liam is still alive, even if he’s a captive somewhere, then there’s hope.

  I have to find him. Then we can work together to turn this around. We have no other choice except giving up, and that will never be an option. A line from The Myth of Sisyphus springs into my mind. That only the warrior truly understands the real nature of existence and the universe—and that one must always choose action over contemplation. I gather my strength. For Liam, I will fight. For Liam, I will do anything.

  12BETRAYED

  FOR A MOMENT, I’M worried that our guards are going to start shooting anyway. I’m guessing that the guns on the airships could take out a lot of these drones. But the sheer numbers would eventually overwhelm us, and the drones have a strategic advantage. Also, these guards work for Dr. Barrett. I’m not sure if they’re willing to put his life in danger.

  But surrendering to the drones will probably mean death anyway. If these drones hadn’t kidnapped Liam, I’d want the guards to open fire right away.

  “If you attempt to reboard your ships, we will destroy the passenger compartments with flaming arrows,” the distorted voice continues calmly. “Your only option is to surrender and live under our rules, in our domain.”

  “They want to make us their slaves,” Cass hisses. “I know how their minds work. They’ll make us serve them and do hard labor. And worse!”

  “I know.” I’m torn between my desire to fight for what I know is right, and my love for Liam. I don’t want anything to jeopardize his life.

  Seconds pass like hours. Neither side makes a move. I try to think about what Liam would do. Or Gadya. They would definitely want to fight. But at the same time, I know they wouldn’t put the lives of someone they love in danger if there were a smarter way to do things.

  “How did the drones know that we’d land here? Or that we’d be arriving in airships?” I ask Cass, trying to figure it out.

  “They must have intercepted some of our transmissions. Or maybe someone ratted us out.”

  “Who would do that?”

  Cass doesn’t answer. Neither of us wants to think about how terrible it would be if someone we trusted betrayed us.

  We suddenly hear rustling noises from the jungle. I watch as our guards start backing away in the fog. Then I see them turn and run toward us, back to safety. The rustling noises turn into an even more ominous sound. The noise of thousands of footsteps headed our way.

  I wish I had a weapon on me right now. I look around for something to use, but I see nothing.

  A moment later, a line of drones steps out from the trees, followed by another line, and yet another. They march through the fog across the field in our direction. They are all wearing homemade black robes.

  Startled, I notice that the drones are arranged in some kind of strange military-style phalanx. I’ve never seen anything like it before on the wheel. The drones march in line toward us, like a well-trained army of UNA soldiers.

  None of them are screaming profanities or throwing fireworks. They don’t seem crazy at all—not like they used to. If anything, they seem kind of mindless. Like robots following a computer program. Some carry spears, and others carry bows and arrows. Their army just keeps moving toward us. I see no sign of their leader. He’s still hiding in the trees.

  “Something’s changed with the drones,” Cass whispers to me, sounding as shocked as I feel.

  We watch as the army walks closer.

  The drones stop about a hundred paces away from our ships and our end of the field. It’s like they all received an invisible signal at once. Almost like they’re wearing UNA earpieces giving them commands or something—as impossible as that would be. There are at least a couple thousand of them here on the burned field.

  It’s a true standoff. We huddle between the huge airships, watching this massive enemy force. Waiting in dread.

  The amplified voice of their leader booms over us again. “This is merely a fraction of my army. You are surrounded by equal numbers on all sides, not to mention my warriors on the cliff.”

  I look around. It seems like no one knows what to do. The guards clearly expected Dr. Barrett to meet them here and guide them. I’m not sure whether we’re about to do battle, or surrender our freedom to this army. Either way, Liam’s life, and mine as well, hang in the balance.

  “The choice is yours,” the voice continues. “You have sixty seconds to decide. If you fire one shot, you die. If you lay down your weapons, you live.”

  Movement abruptly catches my eye.

  I see a lone figure striding swiftly across the field, cutting a path through the wisps of fog. He’s walking across from our side of the field to theirs.

  I’m confused. Is this person crazy? He’s going to get killed!

  Then, stunned, I realize that it’s David.

  I don’t understand what he’s doing.

  Without thinking, I stand up and yell out his name. Cass starts calling for him too. Is he going to sacrifice his life in some kind of deranged attempt to bargain with the drones?

  “David!” Cass and I keep yelling. “Come back!”

  Other people try to hush us.

  David doesn’t turn or glance behind him. Maybe he didn’t hear us. He just keeps moving rapidly.

  “David!” I scream again, ignoring the guards telling me to be quiet. I don’t w
ant David to make a martyr of himself. A single arrow from a drone could kill him instantly.

  I start to move forward. I’m ready to run out into the field and grab him if I have to. To rescue him from what’s about to happen. He once saved Rika on the ice. Now it’s he who needs saving. Cass is just one step behind me.

  “David, don’t do it!” I yell, not even sure what he’s about to do.

  But then, as I watch, David raises both of his hands above his head. He makes a strange forward motion with his index fingers.

  It’s not a gesture of surrender, or of war. Instead, he’s signaling to the army. The drones in the front row raise their hands and signal back to him in the same way.

  And then, in a flash, I understand the awful truth.

  David is not on our side.

  He is on theirs.

  I can’t speak. I feel sick. I just keep watching in stunned disbelief, as I sink back down to the ground.

  “No!” Cass yells next to me, sounding enraged. “That’s impossible! Not David!”

  I watch David keep walking, hobbling quickly over the blackened earth, heading straight toward the waiting army.

  I can’t believe it either.

  “He betrayed us,” I say, spitting out each word painfully. It should have been obvious to me all along. But I just didn’t want to see the warning signs. He set up this landing site to trap us. He lied to us again and again. And he sent us those misleading dispatches. But why?

  David reaches the drones. They instantly part for him. He walks down the line, completely untouched.

  “He’s the one who told them where we’d be landing,” I say tiredly. “The drones didn’t intercept any transmissions. It was a setup.”

  “I’m going to kill him,” Cass breathes. “I’m going to break his scrawny neck!” She sounds close to tears. “All this time I wanted to get back here and help him! But he was just playing us for fools!”

  “I know,” I say helplessly.

  Because of David’s actions, Liam might die. How could David have done such a terrible thing to his friends? I trusted him with everything! Maybe someone is forcing David to do this. But that still wouldn’t explain his betrayal. David has sabotaged our entire plan.

  Was Liam right all along? And everyone else who thought David was a spy for the Monk? Was David manipulating me the entire time? It’s hard to accept, but the evidence is right in front of me.

  “Your sixty seconds are up,” the voice intones loudly from the trees. “Make your decision or face your doom.”

  David continues to glide down the rows of armed drones. He disappears through the fog into the shadows of the jungle.

  At the same time, the army of drones in front of us raises its spears and arrows. More noises come from the trees. And above us, even more drones appear at the top of the cliff. They line it, pressed tightly shoulder to shoulder, with another line of reinforcements behind them. If we fire our guns, then thousands of precisely aimed arrows will zoom down at us.

  “Prepare for battle!” the leader of the drones calls out to his army. Arrows are slotted into bows.

  A split second later, the second lieutenant screams out to the leader: “Wait! Stop! Hold your fire! We agree to your terms.”

  “No!” Cass yells. Some voices join her. “Don’t surrender! They’ll kill us either way!” Others shout her down.

  But it’s too late.

  The muzzles of the guns in the airships are being lowered.

  Is this the right decision? I’m not sure. There would have been no way to survive the waves of arrows from above. Most of the drones would have been shot by our guns, but most of our group would have died as well. But it doesn’t feel like the right decision to me. I tell myself that at least it doesn’t put Liam in danger for the moment, unless the voice is lying.

  The army of drones on the field starts marching forward. More drones flood out from the trees around us. The whole time, the drones above us keep their arrows trained on us.

  Their behavior is almost as startling as David’s. How did these drones become so well-trained and disciplined in only a month? It seems impossible.

  “We could still fight,” Cass whispers into my ear. “We don’t have to do what the guards say. We could fight and then make a break for it!”

  I nod, looking around for any avenue of escape.

  But right then, a scientist from Destiny Station splits away from the crowd and grabs one of the guard’s handguns. He grapples with it, wrenching it away from the guard. Before anyone can stop him, he points it in the direction of the drones.

  For a moment, I think this is the start of a rebellion.

  But within half a second, he has five arrows sticking out of his torso. His body topples to the ground.

  He didn’t even have time to fire a shot.

  Silence falls over the landscape. Two scientists rush out to grab his corpse.

  “Anyone who tries to fire on us will be killed,” the voice of the drone leader intones, matter-of-factly. “Lay down your weapons. Put your hands above your heads. This is your only path to survival.”

  The army of drones keeps marching forward. Soon they will reach us.

  I look at Cass. “It’s over for now,” I say softly. “We can’t fight them, or we’ll be killed. We have to survive this day, so we can strategize and get revenge later on. When we’re not outnumbered so badly.”

  “As soon as I can, I’m going to make them pay,” Cass says, her brown eyes flashing with anger. “Especially David.”

  We share a long look. I never thought that David would betray me. I believed in him with all of my heart, when almost no one else did. Back at the village, I was his sole defender. “David will pay most of all,” I reply. “What he’s done is unforgivable. When we get our chance, we’ll go after him first.”

  Cass is about to say something else, but then the drones reach our group.

  “Kneel!” one of them commands, pointing his spear at us.

  Both Cass and I go down to our knees reluctantly, along with the other refugees around us.

  I stare up at the drone. His eyes are oddly dull and glassy. His face is puffy and his short hair has fallen out in patches. I remember the drones being wild and nearly psychotic, driven by bloodlust. But this drone seems dispassionate. Like he’s not even fully here, like he’s some brainwashed UNA bureaucrat.

  More drones reach us. This is not what I expected upon returning to the wheel. In fact, it’s pretty much the worst thing I could imagine. I only hope that I’ll be able to find Liam again soon—and that he’s alive.

  I feel the hands of a drone dragging me upward. I go limp. I don’t struggle or fight. I need to seem docile now. That way, when I do fight back later on, they’ll never see it coming. I notice that Cass is doing the same thing. There’s no point drawing attention to ourselves any more than we’ve already done. At least not until we have a good plan.

  The drones pat us down, checking for weapons. They also strip us of our jackets. They find Cass’s hidden data drives and her GPS, and they smash them on the ground with their spears.

  Cass and I are then pushed and prodded along with everyone else—kids, scientists, older refugees, and guards. The drones start leading us away from the landing site and into the jungle.

  I wonder who their leader is now that Minister Harka is dead. There must be one—there’s no way these crazed kids got so organized on their own. Is their leader the voice in the forest?

  “Faster,” one of the drones says, shoving me in the back. I’ve noticed that most of them talk monosyllabically now. Like speech is difficult for them.

  There’s a sudden explosion behind me, and I flinch. The noise of the crowd grows louder as everyone turns back to look at what’s going on.

  A large orange fireball rises up from the field and into the air. It’s followed by a plume of thick black smoke. I smell the acrid odor of burning plastic.

  Another concussion detonates across the landscape. I see a second fire
ball rising up into the sky.

  “They’re destroying the airships!” one of the scientists yells.

  The gas inside the airships might not have been flammable, but the ammunition and fuel stored on board the passenger compartments clearly were. I also realize that the antidote pills are being destroyed.

  I should have guessed that the drones would do this to the airships. Even though they could have used the ships to get off the wheel themselves, they would rather destroy them completely. I’d forgotten that the drones don’t even want to leave this island. That they’re happy here amidst the death and destruction.

  “That was our only way off the wheel,” Cass mutters, as we hear more explosions. We keep moving forward, deeper into the forest. I know that the drones won’t stop until the airships are completely destroyed. I wish I knew whose orders they were acting on.

  Some of the kids and adults are crying. But most are walking stoically.

  “How are we going to save anyone when we can’t even save ourselves?” Cass asks as we walk. She’s right next to me. I glance back and see Emma and Alun farther behind us. One of the drones has taken away Alun’s eye patch, so he has made a new one by ripping off part of his T-shirt and tying it around his head like a ribbon.

  We walk faster, guided deeper into the verdant jungle. Even though we’ve been taken captive right now, I know that we’ll fight to free the wheel when the time comes. Even if we die trying.

  As we walk through the forest, I think about the last time I was captured by the drones. Back then, the drones were frenzied and manic, wearing face paint and cackling and leaping around. Torturing us just for the fun of it.

  It was terrifying at the time, but at least there was something human about their behavior. These new drones are almost scarier. They display no emotions whatsoever. None of them talk to each other. And they rarely talk to us, other than to tell us to keep moving.

  Maybe some new kind of drug is being dropped on the wheel. Some new UNA formula intended to pacify the drones. Something has obviously turned this tribe into a formidable, quasi-lobotomized army. Their lack of facial expressions is as disturbing as their relentless uniformity.