The Forsaken

almost fall. But somehow I manage to keep my balance. “I made it!” I call back.
    “I’m next!” Gadya yells.
    I hustle off to one side, so I’m out of the way when she jumps. Ahead of me, I catch a glimpse of the silver building, stretching onward beyond the pipes. As I keep staring, squinting between the pipes, I think I see some variations in its surface, way in the distance.
    It almost looks like there could be a doorway up ahead.
    Of course, even if it is a doorway, I know we have a huge struggle ahead of us. How are we going to get the door open? And how are we going to find whatever vehicles brought us to the wheel, let alone hijack one of them? I wonder if Rika knows more than she’s saying.
    I almost wish we could turn back around now and get home to the village. With our knowledge, we could assemble a new party for a second expedition—one that might have a better chance of succeeding.
    But there’s no way to turn back, even if we wanted to. The frozen lake, now turned into hundreds of icy slabs, would make that impossible. And the undulating barrier would trap us on the wrong side of the gray zone, with no fireworks to help us get through.
    So I give up on that idea and keep staring at the silver building, trying to figure out if what I see in the distance really is a door. Or if it’s just wishful thinking. I hear David and Markus start helping Gadya onto the pipe behind me.
    “Gadya—” I begin loudly, about to yell back to her about the possible doorway.
    But then I hear a distant buzzing sound.
    One that strikes dread in my heart.
    “No!” I scream at my companions, who are still stuck on the other side of the pipe. “Feeler attack!”
    I suppose I knew the feelers would find us again. I hoped they wouldn’t, but the whole time I’ve been afraid of this. Maybe they were just waiting until we got trapped in the pipes, so they could pick us off one by one.
    The others hear the sound too, and their desperate screams mingle with the noise of the rotors. Gadya’s head suddenly appears over the pipe, unleashing a litany of curses.
    I stare up at the sky, paralyzed. I spot the feeler within half a second. It’s like a distant black helicopter zooming toward us, not even trying to stay hidden in the clouds anymore.
    “Gadya, hurry!” I scream. On top of the pipe, she’s the most exposed. If this feeler gets any of us, it’s going to get her. I lunge at the pipe, trying to help pull her down, as I hear another sound. I look up.
    A second feeler is behind the first one.
    And behind that one is a third.
    They’ve lifted off from someplace nearby, and all three are making a beeline toward us.
    They must have known we were here all along, I realize. The feelers are probably as vast in numbers as the drones. It doesn’t matter that we tore one of them out of the sky. Our lives must be nothing more than a game to whoever controls the wheel.
    I stretch up and grab Gadya’s hands. The whine of the feelers becomes overwhelming as they hover overhead. I pull with all my strength, leaning back, and she slithers over the top of the pipe.
    She topples forward onto me, and we tumble back onto the icy ground. My head slams down, making my vision sparkle. I taste copper—I’ve bitten my tongue. The noise of the feelers roars in.
    Gadya gets to her feet unsteadily. “I think I sprained my ankle when I landed!” she yells.
    I scrabble upward too, reeling with dizziness. Beneath the sounds of the rotors, I still hear screaming on the other side of the pipe.
    “Run!” Gadya yells in my face.
    “Wait—the others! David!”
    She grabs my arm. “No time! They’d want us to keep going.” I pull back, because I’ve seen something she hasn’t—another pair of hands appearing over the top of the pipe. I realize that Markus and David, in the last moments before they’re taken, are trying to heave someone else over. I see that the hands are small. Female. And I know that it’s Rika.
    Gadya is still trying to drag me along, even with her sprained ankle, but I yank her shoulder as hard as I can. She doesn’t understand, and she spins around, looking furious.
    “It’s Rika!” I yell, pointing at the pipe.
    Gadya finally sees her. A look drifts into Gadya’s eyes. It’s the look of a divided soul. She wants to help save her friend. But she also knows that if we all get taken, our entire journey will have been for nothing.
    I understand where she’s coming from, but there’s no way I can leave