The Forsaken

PROLOGUE
    AT FIRST I THINK the hammering sound is the noise of waves crashing down on white sand. I’m dreaming I’m in Old Florida with my parents, before the government restricted all travel.
    Then, as I start to wake, I realize the noise is something else. Something real. I pull a pillow over my head. But the hammering gets more insistent.
    I finally realize that someone is banging on the front door of our apartment.
    I wonder why my parents aren’t answering. Usually they’re awake late at night. But tonight, there’s no sign of them.
    “Get the door already, jeez,” I mutter.
    I am ten years old.
    I have no idea that tonight I will become an orphan.
    The door to my bedroom bursts open, letting in a blaze of light. My mom rushes inside, frantic.
    “They’ve come for us!” she hisses. I hear distant guttural voices barking out orders.
    I sit straight up, pushing the covers back, my blood turning to ice.
    The military police are here.
    “Hide! Hide!” my mom whispers harshly. She grabs my arm, hard enough to bruise it through my pajamas, and yanks me out of bed.
    We’re halfway across my room when I hear a deafening crack. Our front door is beginning to splinter.
    “Run!” my mom screams, pushing me into the hallway. I see my dad at the front door, desperately trying to barricade it with furniture.
    There’s no time to hide. No time to reach the kitchen and the hollowed-out space in the wall behind the refrigerator.
    The front door gives way. Armed police barge into our apartment, knocking the smashed door off its hinges, plowing the furniture out of the way.
    My dad springs forward, tackling the first man who comes through the doorway. But another policeman strikes him in the mouth with his assault rifle. The police surround my dad and start beating him with nightsticks. All of them are wearing dark visors and black uniforms.
    “Alenna!” my mom screams as policemen race toward her. “You’ll be okay!” But the look in her eyes says she knows the truth.
    Our lives are over.
    One of the policemen jabs my mom in the neck with an electric cattle prod. Her body seizes up. She goes crashing to the carpet.
    “Mom!” I yell, rushing over.
    My dad has already disappeared. Before I can reach my mom, officers grab her arms and start pulling her away too.
    I cling to one of her ankles, but an officer smacks my knuckles with his nightstick. I fall back with a gasp. My mom gets dragged across the carpet, right out the front door. It’s over lightning fast.
    I barely remember what happens next. It’s just fragments, like a nightmare. Policemen stand in the doorway, blocking it so I can’t run after my parents. There must be at least twenty of them crowding our apartment.
    In numb shock, I walk back into my bedroom and crawl into bed. I pull the covers over my head, clutching my throbbing hand. Now that they’ve taken my parents, what’s going to happen to me? I want to fight back, but what can a ten-year-old do against the government? What can anyone do?
    Moments later, someone walks into my bedroom. I curl up in a ball as the covers are peeled away.
    When I look up, an old man in a dark suit is standing over me, smiling warmly. Behind him, officers rummage through my father’s frayed notebooks, slipping them into evidence bags in the hall.
    “Alenna Shawcross, you are now a ward of the United Northern Alliance,” the old man says gently. “Come with me, and our government will take care of you—despite the treasonous crimes of your parents.”
    I want to scream at him for taking my mom and dad away. Hit him in the face and then run. But I’m so stunned that I do nothing. I just sit there and stare back at him.
    “I’m not going to hurt you,” he says. “In fact, I’ll take you to your new home. Orphanage Forty-One in New Providence, about an hour down the Intercoastal Megaway.”
    “Why can’t I stay here?” I ask, biting back tears.
    “You’re too young to live on your own. Besides, there are lots of other girls your age at the orphanage.” He smiles again. “Hurry up and put some shoes on. A car is waiting for us downstairs.”
    A few minutes later, he leads me out of the apartment and into the narrow halls of our building. I’ve lived here, on the thirty-sixth floor of Tower G-7 in New Boston, for most of my life. I know that our neighbors must have heard what happened, but all of their doors remain closed.
    “Today is the start of your new life,” the old man tells me. He