The figures begin howling as they scramble toward us. I can’t tell how many there are. At least fifteen or twenty.
It takes every ounce of courage I possess not to turn and flee. I stand my ground next to Liam. I raise my blade, ready to do battle.
Liam strikes at the first figure, his blade sparking as it hits the figure’s knife. There’s no way we’re going to win this fight. But I leap forward anyway, trying to strike out at another one of the figures, right next to the one that Liam is fighting.
I see Cass off to one side, struggling with one of them too. There’s no sign of Emma and Alun. They’re probably running away back down the road. I don’t blame them. But I know I can’t do the same thing.
I see one of the figures slam Cass to the ground. It stands over her, poised to strike.
“No!” I scream, finding my voice. “Don’t touch her!”
Liam is fending off four of these terrifying apparitions at once. Another one comes at me, with fierce eyes blazing, swinging a long jagged knife in one hand like a baseball bat.
I raise my blade to defend myself against the onslaught.
But then, at the last second, the figure inexplicably stops short.
Confused, I lunge forward with my knife, aiming right for its heart.
But the figure manages to dance out of the way. The tip of my blade just grazes its hoofer skins, tearing off a chunk of animal hair.
“Come on!” I yell, knowing that our lives might end right here and now. “What are you waiting for?”
We don’t have anything to lose by fighting. We might as well take some of these drones down with us—assuming that’s what they even are. I hear screams behind me in the distance. Emma and Alun must have been caught.
“Stop!” the crazed figure in front of me suddenly yells. Its voice is loud and clear, ringing out over the noise of the battle.
To my surprise, I realize that it’s a girl.
The figure stares at me. Then she raises her blade above her head, holding it sideways with both hands, to signal that she means no harm.
I stare back, trying to figure out what’s going on. Liam pauses too, backing away from the four figures he’s been fighting. They stare him down. Their weapons are at the ready, but they’ve halted their attack.
I glance over and see that the figure who was about to stab Cass has paused too. His blade hovers just an inch above her neck. A second more, and he would have cut her throat.
“Who are you?” Liam calls out. We stand there, glaring at these warriors.
The girl who stopped the fight steps forward.
Then she grins, the mud around her eyes crinkling. “Don’t you recognize your old friend?”
And in that moment, I do recognize her.
“No way!” I say, shocked.
She tears off her headdress of hoofer skins to reveal her own hair, dyed through with vivid blue streaks.
“Gadya!” I yell.
It seems impossible.
But somehow it’s happening.
Liam looks as stunned as I feel. Cass is slowly getting to her feet. The man who nearly sliced through her throat is now helping her up.
“Who’s Gadya?” Cass asks, rubbing her neck.
I lean forward and hug Gadya as hard as I can. I feel her arms wrap around me. She smells of hoofer blood, mud, and sweat. I can’t believe that we’ve been reunited like this. This entire time, I’ve been worried about finding her and saving her, but here she is right in front of me.
“I never thought I’d see you again!” she whispers, her voice close to breaking.
“Me neither!” I’m close to tears myself. The last thing I expected was to find Gadya alive and well on this desolate road.
“How did you get out of the specimen archive?” I ask her. “I thought you’d been frozen, or worse! We were coming to rescue you and everyone else, but we got ambushed.”
“I already got rescued,” she says, gesturing around at the dirty figures surrounding us. Some of them are taking off their hoofer-skin disguises, and rubbing mud off themselves. I don’t recognize any of them. In fact, they look slightly older than most other kids that I’ve seen on the wheel. Maybe as old as Veidman was. Eighteen or nineteen at the least.
Alun and Emma have rejoined us, dragged back to the barricade. Both of them look confused, but relieved to be alive.
“You know these people?” one of the figures asks Gadya gruffly.
“Yes!” she exclaims. “Some of them.” She casts her eyes over our group. “Liam!” she yells excitedly when she sees him.
“Gad!” he calls back. “It’s really you!”
“It is!” She turns to the figures watching us. “Alenna and Liam are from my village in the blue sector. They’re the ones who escaped from the wheel—the ones I told you about!”
“That’s right,” one of the figures says, nodding. He has a huge scar across his shoulder, and the lower lobe of his left ear is missing. “You hijacked a pod and got off Island Alpha. If what Gadya says is true.”
Liam looks at him. “It’s true.”
“Why’d you come back?” another one asks us, with a mixture of suspicion and respect.
“We came back to rescue everyone, and to take back the wheel from the UNA and make the drones sane again,” I explain. “The UNA destroyed most of the rebel bases around the globe. So we came here to free everyone in the specimen archive, and to stop the villagers and drones from fighting. We were going to make this island our new home base, and use it to mount an attack on the UNA.”
“Then where is everyone else?” Gadya asks. “It’s just the five of you? I was hoping you’d come back with a bigger army!”
“Our army got captured by drones,” Liam says. “David led everyone into an ambush when they landed here in airships.”
“For real?” Gadya looks shocked. “Why would he do that?”
“Oh, it gets worse,” I continue. “There’s a new Monk, and—”
“We know,” one of the figures says.
“Then who is it?” Liam asks. “Minister Harka is dead.”
“Nobody knows,” Gadya says. “But he’s taken over and reorganized the drones in just a few weeks. They obviously think it’s the same Monk—miraculously healed or something.” She pauses. “So do you think David was a spy all along?”
“It looks that way,” I tell Gadya.
“Disgusting,” she replies. She spits into the dirt. “I’m gonna kill him!”
“Get in line.” I still feel sick about what happened. “He fled and joined the army of drones. We haven’t seen him since then. Maybe he has some crazy reason, but maybe he doesn’t. Either way, it’s impossible to trust him. He betrayed us all. We almost died because of him, and the scientists got trapped.”
“We better move,” one of the other figures says, hoisting up his hoofer skins and his knives. I glance behind me. Emma stands there, looking overwhelmed. Alun is close to collapsing. The strange figures bustle around us, repairing the barricade.
“You’re going to have to introduce us to your new friends,” I tell Gadya.
“I will. It’s gonna blow your mind.” She smiles. “And I’ll explain how I got out of the gray zone. I’m so happy you came back! I kind of can’t believe it.”
“Me neither.”
“So, I’ll tell you and Liam everything as we go . . .” She glances at Cass, Emma, and Alun, her words trailing off.
“They’re okay. They’re with us,” I tell her.
Liam nods in agreement.
“Let’s hope they’re more trustworthy than David,” Gadya adds. “Now, come on. I’ll show you where we’re living.”
Around us, the figures are nearly finished fixing the barricade. Making sure it will effectively block anything else that comes this way.
We start walking to the edge of the highway. For once, I’m not worried about whatever is going to happen next. I know that I can trust Gadya with my life, unlike David. And with her and Liam next to me, anythin
g seems possible again.
The three of us walk side by side. Cass, Emma, and Alun trail behind. The figures escort them, watching them more closely than us because Gadya doesn’t know any of them.
Maybe fate is on our side for once, I muse. Trying to find Gadya was one of my most important reasons for coming back to the wheel. And now Liam and I have achieved that, completely by accident.
“How’s your ankle?” I ask her. The last time I was with her, it looked broken. She couldn’t even walk on it.
She bends down and pulls up the pant leg of her torn, muddy jeans. “It’s not pretty.”
“Ouch,” I say when I see her skin. “Does it hurt?”
“Every day.”
There’s a painful-looking metal brace around the lower half of Gadya’s left leg, and some sort of homemade splint on her ankle. A huge, jagged scar snakes its way up from it, nearly to her knee. “They fixed me up. It’s not one hundred percent, but it’s getting there.”
“Who are these people?” Liam asks her. “Is there a village we didn’t know about hidden in this sector?”
Gadya shakes her head. “They’re not villagers or drones. It’s a whole other tribe. They’ve made their own secret world on the wheel.”
“David mentioned something about that once,” I say. “I mean, not that his words mean anything now. But he said that there were people on the wheel who just went off into the jungle, and did their own thing. He wanted me to come with him.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Liam says, glancing over at me.
“Yeah, no kidding.”
“David might have been wrong about a lot of things, but he wasn’t wrong about people living way out in the jungle,” Gadya says.
We reach the short concrete wall at the edge of the highway. I’m not sure how we’re going to get down to the forest below. It’s about sixty feet below us. I hadn’t realized how high up we’d gotten.
I peer over the edge. I see five long, knotted ropes dangling to the ground. No safety harnesses. No equipment. Just ropes.
“Wow,” I say. “That’s a pretty big drop.”
“I wish there were an easier way,” Gadya says. “But it’ll be all right. Only thirty or forty feet.”
I nod. “It looks higher.” People are already rapidly descending some of the ropes. I watch them slide down to the green underbrush.
“Ropes are the only way on and off the road near the barricade,” Gadya says. “C’mon. Let’s get down there and I’ll show you around.”
Liam and I look at each other. Neither of us can believe that we’ve found Gadya—let alone been rescued by her and this new tribe.
Liam glances over the edge. “We can go down next to each other,” he says to me encouragingly. “The ropes have knots all the way down to put our feet on.”
He leans over, grabs a rope, and gives it to me. Then he sits down on the raised edge of the road and grabs one for himself. “This would be easier with carabineers and harnesses,” he says to Gadya.
“You’ll get used to roughing it after a while,” Gadya says, sounding slightly amused. Typical Gadya. “That’s how they do things around here. As simply as possible.”
“So does this tribe have a name?” I ask her. Meanwhile, I’m scrutinizing the rope. Trying to make sure it’s not going to snap on me.
“The tribe calls themselves the travelers. They’re nomads. They avoid conflicts if they can, and they settle down wherever it’s most peaceful.”
“Setting up ambushes and attacking people on the road doesn’t seem too peaceful,” I say, still looking at my rope.
Gadya stares at me. “On the wheel, being peaceful is relative, remember? The travelers do what they have to do, in order to survive.”
Liam touches my hand lightly. “You ready?”
I nod. “Sure. If you are.”
He takes off one of his sheathes and gives it to me. I stick my blade in it and sling it over my shoulder.
I glance down the length of the highway. Some travelers are helping Cass, Emma, and Alun to nearby ropes.
“There’s no climbing harnesses?” Emma asks. “No helmets? Nothing?” The travelers ignore her.
“Yeah, helmets would be nice,” I murmur.
“Don’t think too much about it,” Liam says to me. “Just let your body be your guide. Watch.”
He grabs his rope tightly and edges himself toward the lip of the short wall at the edge of the road. Then he swings out with both hands, like he’s about to rappel down the side of the highway.
“Be careful!” I call out, but I can tell that he’s enjoying himself.
Slowly, he starts moving down a bit. His feet find the first knot and rest on it. He holds onto the rope, swaying back and forth.
“Your turn!” he yells.
I sit on the wall at the edge of the road and swing my legs over it.
“Anyone ever fall off this highway?” I ask Gadya.
“No. So don’t break our winning streak.”
I take a deep breath. I see travelers sliding down the ropes with ease. At the bottom they slow down and land gently in the underbrush beneath the massive elevated highway.
I see that Cass is already on a rope, dangling there without moving, like a fly caught in a web. She’s yelling and arguing with the travelers who are trying to help her. At least she’s on a rope, though. If Cass can do this, then so can I.
I turn my body around so that I’m facing the highway. I clutch the rope as hard as I can. Then I slowly inch myself off the side of the road.
For a second, I’m afraid that I’m going to fall. My weight drags me down, and I clench my hands around the rope. I barely catch myself. I swing there, my heart pounding rapidly as my feet search for a knot.
“Good job!” Liam is saying. “You’re doing great . . .”
My right foot finally finds a knot. I manage to turn and face Liam. He’s hanging directly opposite me.
“This sucks,” I tell him. “I didn’t know I was so afraid of heights until now!”
“We’ll be on the ground in no time,” he says. “On the count of three, we’ll start moving. Okay?”
I nod. He counts down, and then together, we both slowly descend to the next knot. Then the next one. And the one after that.
I look up and see that Cass is still arguing with everyone. She hasn’t moved an inch. Emma and Alun aren’t even on the ropes yet.
I keep moving along with Liam. Going slowly, but making progress. Then a gust of wind startles me, and makes my rope sway. I make the mistake of glancing down, and I instantly freeze up.
“Just look at me,” Liam says calmly. “Don’t worry about anything else. Okay?”
“Okay.” I keep my eyes fixed on him. We continue descending.
Soon we’re halfway there. My breath comes more easily now. Occasionally, I almost miss a knot, but I manage to stay on the rope.
We get even closer to the ground. It’s just fifteen feet away, so I’m no longer scared. I glance up and see the roadway high above us. Cass has started coming down, and so have the others.
I hang there for a moment, taking a break. Liam stops too. We stare at each other as we dangle from the ropes.
“What do you think about all of this?” I ask him. We finally have a moment to talk alone, without anyone overhearing us. “Did you know that there were other tribes on the wheel?”
“No. I mean, I heard rumors sometimes, just like you did. But I’ve never heard of the travelers. Not from Veidman or anyone else.”
“If they rescued Gadya and fixed her leg, they must have supplies,” I whisper back to him. “And they can’t be bad people. Gadya wouldn’t be here with them if she didn’t think she could trust them.”
He nods. “True, but she might not have a choice. They rescued her. She might want to believe in them because there’s nowhere else for her to go.” He starts moving slowly again. “Let’s get down there and find out. Who knows. Maybe they’ll know something about how to locate my dad and his
men.”
I nod, thinking about my own mother. Then I begin to move again too. Soon we’ll be at the bottom, and in the travelers’ camp. I just hope they’re who they seem to be. And I also hope that they have the resources we need to continue our ultimate mission—to return to the speciman archive and bring liberty to the wheel.
17THE TRAVELERS
I REACH THE BOTTOM of the ropes. Liam hits the ground a few seconds before me. He stands there, waiting to help me with his arms outstretched. I hop the final few feet down into lush undergrowth and dirt.
I stare back at the ropes, dangling there like giant snakes. The road is far above us. “That looks a lot farther than forty feet.”
“It sure does,” Liam says, smiling a little. “My guess is closer to fifty or sixty. I think Gadya just told everyone it was lower, so we wouldn’t freak out on her.”
“Seriously? You knew that and you didn’t tell me?” I punch him in the arm, annoyed. “Jerk.”
He smiles back. “Looks like it worked.”
I can’t help but smile too. Then I hear loud voices drifting down from the highway. I stare up. “It worked for some of us, maybe.”
Cass is near the top, screaming at the travelers about something. Alun and Emma are descending slowly. Both of them are hanging on to the backs of travelers, who climb down the ropes with confident ease.
“Without your help, I’m worried I’d be just like them,” I tell him.
“Without yours, I would have died in the specimen archive.” He leans over and kisses me.
Sometimes, in moments like these, I wish it could just be the two of us out here. Alone on the wheel, but without having to fight anyone or struggle to survive. I don’t know what lies ahead of us. I just hope that one day we can find the peace that we’re looking for.
Liam pulls back and looks around. “Now let’s find out what’s going on around here.”
“Definitely.”
We begin walking through the brush together. Travelers are moving around us. I see Gadya off to one side, talking to some of the figures near the base of an oak tree. We head in her direction.
The Uprising: The Forsaken Trilogy Page 20