The Uprising: The Forsaken Trilogy

by Lisa M. Stasse

  We’re silent for a moment.

  “David escaped from a feeler on the way to the archive,” I finally say, trying to puzzle it out. “He said that he pulled out its battery, and it fell down from the sky. But he could have been lying. Maybe he knows how they work.”

  “Maybe he’s known all along,” Gadya adds.

  We keep looking down at David, weapons drawn. He’s in for an unpleasant surprise when he wakes up. This time it won’t be like when he was captured back in the village and I spoke up for him. This time he’s on his own.

  Emma joins us, eyes wide. She stares down at David too. “I can’t believe he’s here.”

  As I look down at David, I see him start to stir. Everyone watches him cautiously. His eyelids flutter. Then his dark eyes open a bit, squinting. He stares up at us, and at the sky beyond.

  “I’m alive . . . ,” he murmurs.

  “Hopefully not for long,” Gadya says, glaring at him. But travelers keep their hands on her arms to keep her from doing anything rash.

  David looks around at the gleaming spear tips and blades pointed right at his face. He reaches up a hand and rubs his eye and cheekbone where Liam hit him. “I wouldn’t have expected anything else,” he murmurs. He shuts his eyes. I wonder if he’s delirious. I’m guessing that he’ll try to stand up, but he just lies there.

  “Did you get sent here? Banished by the drones?” a traveler calls out. Now that the final feeler has been brought down, more travelers are joining the circle of people around David. Cass joins us again, pushing her way up front.

  “Tell us who you really are!” Cass prompts. “And whose side you’re really on!”

  David opens his eyes again. He sees Cass, and for a moment, a look of surprise passes across his face at her words. “You don’t understand.” He pauses. “None of you do.”

  “Then explain it to us,” I say to him coldly. “You owe us that much.”

  “Yeah, explain how you live with yourself, with so much blood on your hands!” Gadya hisses.

  “There’s blood on your hands, too, Gadya,” David says tiredly.

  “Why did you sabotage our plan to rescue everyone on the wheel?” I ask, determined to make him answer me. “Why did you betray us?”

  David moves slightly, like he’s preparing to sit up. Everyone shifts, ready to strike him with fists or weapons if they have to. He notices and pauses.

  “I didn’t do this to sabotage you, Alenna.” He looks right at me, staring into my eyes, ignoring everyone else. “I did this to save you.”

  19DAVID

  HALF AN HOUR LATER, all of us have moved back to the settlement under the highway. The remains of the feelers have been cleared away, and taken into the forest. Travelers work in the underbrush, dismantling them for parts.

  Liam and I still can’t get close enough to David to talk to him. After his cryptic words on the road, travelers instantly surrounded him despite our angry protests, and took him away with them. I assume they are interrogating him right now. Maybe they’re even torturing him, given that they won’t let us watch.

  But I’m thinking about what David said. That he did this to save me. How is that even possible? I’m amazed at his audacity. I can’t let myself believe in him again—not after what he did.

  Liam and I now sit on the hanging wooden platforms beneath the road, with Gadya and Cass. Alun is lying down a few platforms away from us. The travelers have brought him up here and given him herbs to help with his pain and blood loss. He moves in and out of consciousness. Emma is at his side, helping tend to him. Dabbing his forehead with a cool, wet rag. She’s also fashioned a new eye patch for him out of cloth.

  Gadya is seething about David. “I should have killed him! He’s a scourge.” She looks at me. “He just claimed he’s doing this to save us because he doesn’t know what else to say.”

  I nod. “Probably. But the travelers seem to think he might know something. Let’s find out what it is.”

  “What do they know?” Gadya scoffs openly. “They spend their lives trying to avoid conflict, in a place where fighting is the only thing that keeps you alive!”

  “But they’ve been keeping you alive,” I point out, startled by the sudden turnaround in her attitude.

  Gadya glares at me. “Yeah, well, today has just reminded me what the wheel is really all about! Violence and war.”

  “I hate David, but Alenna’s right,” Cass interrupts. “Let’s wait and see. Back in the resistance cell—”

  “I’m sick of hearing about resistance cells!” Gadya snaps. “We’re not back in the UNA. We’re on the wheel! Different rules apply.”

  “Fine,” Cass retorts, rolling her eyes. “Whatever.”

  “Either way, we know we can’t trust David,” I say in the tense silence. “So let’s just let the travelers figure out what to do with him, okay?”

  Liam nods. He’s been listening to Gadya and Cass bicker this whole time. “If David was banished by the Monk, the travelers will get that out of him. And if he can control the feelers, I’m sure they’ll figure that out too. That’d be a pretty useful skill to learn.”

  I nod. “Exactly. David might not matter. But his knowledge still does.”

  We sit there in uneasy silence, waiting.

  Eventually, we see a group of travelers heading toward us on the platforms.

  Startled, I see that David is walking freely among them. Liam and I stand up, on guard. So do the others. Gadya’s hand is already on her knife. Liam unsheathes his blade.

  “He’s all yours. He’s safe,” one of the travelers says.

  “Safe?” I ask. “What does that mean?”

  “Are you serious?” Cass spits. “After what he did?”

  “Has David fooled you guys, just like he fooled us?” Gadya calls out.

  “No,” the traveler says. The group keeps heading our way. David is staring right at us, completely unfazed. “By ‘safe,’ I mean he doesn’t have the ability to cause us any harm right now,” the traveler clarifies.

  The travelers walk closer with David. I sense the nervous energy bristling all around me.

  The travelers can sense it too. One of them looks at us and says sharply, “Leave David be. Put your weapons away. There will be no violence among us today. Sit and talk with him. You have a lot to discuss.”

  They stop moving.

  But David keeps walking, heading directly toward us. Gadya and the others stand their ground, glaring at him. I think I detect a sliver of fear pass across David’s face, but it’s hard to tell in the gray light.

  “Don’t come near me, traitor!” Gadya hisses at David.

  “Listen, I—” he begins.

  “Quiet!” I snap. “Let us ask the questions. That’s the only way this is going to work. Okay?”

  David nods.

  “Sit,” Liam commands. David slowly takes a seat across from me and the others. His glasses are back on, but now one of the lenses is cracked.

  We face him like interrogators. If it weren’t for the travelers nearby watching us, he wouldn’t be alive right now. And I can tell that he knows it.

  “What did you mean when you said this was the only way to save us?” Liam asks. His voice is as hard and cold as steel. I clasp his hand. I can tell that he’s working hard to suppress his anger and give David a chance.

  David looks at us and sighs. “The drones knew about the rebels’ plans all along.”

  “From you, probably,” Cass says.

  He shakes his head. “No. From their new Monk. He found out somehow and told them. The Monk knew that you were coming in airships from Southern Arc—I don’t know how. At the time, I was being pursued by drones and feelers in the jungle. It was only a matter of days before I got caught.” He pauses. “So I let the drones catch me and take me to the new Monk. And then I pretended to work with them. They knew I was talking to the scientists via satellite. That’s the only reason they didn’t kill me. Because they wanted to use me. But I was also using them.”
r />   “You’re such a liar,” Gadya mutters.

  “Yeah, you’re just saying this stuff now because you got caught,” Cass adds.

  “Tell us more,” I say to David. “But you know that everything you’ve said and done looks really suspicious, right?”

  David nods. “I know. There’s a reason for that. Just listen.”

  “It better be good,” I tell him.

  “I realized I could control every detail from the inside of the Monk’s camp,” David continues. “Set up the landing site. Make the Monk think I was telling him everything that was going on. But I wasn’t.” He gazes at Liam. “Who do you think put those weapons and that map in your cell? It was me. I did it to help you and your dad get free. I knew you’d rescue Alenna and the others.”

  “Keep talking,” Liam says warily.

  “I picked a landing site that was near that cathedral, and the highway as well. I knew that you could get outside through the tunnel and into the forest.”

  “We barely survived,” I say.

  “But you did survive. So I was right.”

  “You couldn’t know that we’d make it. Not for sure. You took too many risks with other peoples’ lives,” Liam says. “I don’t even know if my dad is alive.”

  I nod, staring at David. “A lot of people died in that cathedral. Scientists. Guards. Kids. What about them? Didn’t they even matter to you?”

  “That was going to happen anyway,” David says softly. “Did you think you’d land here and the drones would surrender peacefully? Throw you a welcome party? No chance. They wanted a war. So I made sure they didn’t get one. They thought they were one step ahead of us. Many more people survived than if we’d gone head-to-head with them.” He pushes his glasses up his nose. “A battle would have meant thousands dead within a few hours.” He pauses. “And yes, I saw what happened to Dr. Barrett. I couldn’t stop it. The Monk wanted to make an example out of him.”

  “Is he alive?” I ask.

  “I’m not sure.” David looks down.

  Some of his words have the ring of truth. But after what happened, I’m not going to grant him my trust easily again. He’s clearly an excellent liar.

  “So who is the new Monk?” I ask.

  He looks back up. “Someone who knew that with Minster Harka gone, he could harness the power of the drones. And someone who knows a whole lot about the UNA. I don’t know who he is, or where he came from. The weird thing is—” He breaks off.

  “What?” Gadya snaps.

  “I think— I think he knows who I am. He never said anything, but I got the feeling that he did.”

  “Did you ever see his face?” I ask.

  “Never. Only the mask.”

  “It’s possible that Minister Harka had an understudy,” Gadya says. “Someone who was shadowing us, watching and waiting in the wings this whole time.”

  “We have to figure out who he is,” Liam says. “He’s doing a much better job controlling the drones than Minister Harka ever did.”

  David nods in agreement. “Definitely.”

  “Stop that!” Cass says to him angrily. “You’re not part of our group. You’re not going to insinuate yourself that easily.”

  David stops nodding.

  “So how did you get here?” I ask David. “I mean, out on the highway?”

  “As you probably suspect, I’ve figured out a few things along the way, with the scientists’ help.”

  “The feelers, right?” I ask.

  “Exactly. This whole time we were focused on getting off the wheel, rather than controlling the parts of the wheel that we could. I knew if the UNA didn’t care that so many airplanes were getting hijacked, they wouldn’t care—or even notice—if some of the feelers didn’t act like they were supposed to.”

  “But how did you do it?” Cass asks, looking at him with narrowed eyes.

  “The scientists read the technical specs to me, and then they talked me through the steps,” David says. “They showed me how to turn the receiver I’d taken from the crashed feeler in the gray zone into a transmitter.” He reaches into the pocket of his jeans, under his black robes.

  Everyone flinches, and knives are instantly raised.

  David pauses.

  “Slowly,” Liam cautions.

  “If you want to live . . . ,” Gadya adds.

  David sighs. “The travelers already searched me.”

  He tentatively extracts a black box the size of his palm. It has crooked wires sticking out of it, and rows of tiny white switches on its smooth metal surface.

  “What the hell is that?” Cass asks.

  “This box came from inside the crashed feeler, but I’ve modified it, based on what the scientists told me to do. The feelers work off radio signals. It’s possible to intercept the signals, and make the feelers do what you want. The scientists locked on to this box and downloaded codes into it, so that by pressing different switches, certain codes are activated, and the box is able to control nearby feelers. We can even send out a signal to call feelers to us if we want.”

  “And the travelers let you keep that box?” I ask.

  He nods. “They told me they didn’t want it. They don’t really care about technology. Only nature. They said it would bring them harm if they kept it.”

  “Sounds about right,” Gadya mutters.

  “How far is its range?” Liam asks. I can tell that his mind is racing. “If you’re telling the truth, we could use the feelers to free the scientists and Dr. Barrett’s guards—and everyone else from the cathedral.”

  “They don’t work that far, unfortunately,” David says. “A couple hundred yards.”

  “Why didn’t you do anything when we first landed on the field?” I challenge him. “You could have brought feelers in to kill the new Monk right then, and to fight for us.”

  “There weren’t any feelers around,” he answers. “Dr. Barrett’s men were using similar devices on the airships to jam the signals and keep the feelers at bay. I couldn’t reach any.”

  An idea occurs to me. “It’s not too late to do it now.”

  “What do you mean?” Gadya asks.

  But Liam instantly understands. “She means we go back to the cathedral with David and some feelers, right? By now, I bet all of Dr. Barrett’s stuff has been destroyed. No more jamming signals.”

  I nod. “We could get within a hundred yards of the cathedral, and then use the feelers to attack the drones.”

  “It would be a bloodbath,” David says.

  “Worried about getting hurt?” Cass sneers at him.

  “Better someone else’s blood than ours,” Gadya points out.

  Liam is still thinking, his eyes burning with passionate intensity. He gestures at David’s box. “How precise can you get with that thing? How does it work?”

  “You point it at a feeler, lock on to it, and then flick different combinations of switches that trigger various codes. You can then point it at another feeler. You can basically link them together in whatever pattern you want. It takes some practice, though. I can show you when we find another one—”

  “No, stop,” Liam interrupts. “I’m asking because I want to know if we can go in and use the feelers to extract one person. Not fight an entire battle for us.”

  “The Monk,” I say in the ensuing silence, locking eyes with Liam.

  He nods. “If we take out the Monk, we take them all out. At least temporarily. We can step in and stop them from regrouping.”

  “Or not,” Gadya says. “Look what happened when Minister Harka died.”

  “If we use the feeler to kidnap the new Monk, at least we’ll get some answers,” I say. “Why does he want to create an army? We need to find out.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Cass muses.

  Liam turns to Gadya. “Can we count on the travelers to help us?”

  Gadya shakes her head. “I doubt it.”

  “We need to ask,” I tell her.

  Gadya looks at us. “It’s never gonna work
. They’ve survived much longer than we have. We can’t convince them that their way of doing things is wrong. I’ve been here for a month, and I know how they think.” She looks glum. “The travelers are never going to become the army we want them to be. I tried when I first got here. I wanted them to go back to the archives to get Rika, Markus, and the other frozen villagers. They wouldn’t do it. And they wouldn’t go back to Meira and our village to protect it either.”

  “They’re holding a meeting tonight,” David says softly. “I heard them talking about it on the way back from being interrogated. We could ask them then.”

  “Good. We’ll talk to them tonight,” I reply. “Explain the situation. Tell them our plan to use the feelers to kidnap the Monk.” I pause. “But David, we’re going to be keeping an eye on you. We can’t take the chance that you’re lying to us. Or that you’re going to betray us again.”

  “I’ll watch him,” Cass volunteers.

  “Me too,” Gadya says, fingering her knife.

  “We all will,” Liam says.

  We look around at one another in the gray light. No one disagrees. I know that none of us trusts David at all, but right now, we need to keep him around to use whatever information he’s willing to tell us.

  Right then, I see a group of travelers heading in our direction. Walking across the platforms toward us, making the wooden beams shake. We start standing up.

  “Sit,” one of them says, unsmiling. He looks at Gadya. “We need to talk to you, alone.”

  I keep standing. So does Liam. “What’s going on?” he asks.

  “It’s okay,” Gadya tells us. “Don’t worry.”

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  She nods.

  “It won’t take long,” one of the other dreadlocked travelers tells us. His voice is monotone, and his weathered face is hard to read. It’s unnerving.

  I’m glancing back and forth at the travelers. Liam is too. They just stare back at us with their firm, unblinking gazes. Completely inscrutable.

  “I’ll be fine. Just don’t go anywhere,” Gadya half-jokes. Then the travelers surround her. Before we can ask any more questions, she starts walking away with them.