The Forsaken

stuff us into pods and freeze us, like week-old hamburger meat. That’s all we are to it. Meat for dissection. And I still don’t know why.
    Honor can be found in death. I learned that on the wheel during our battles with the drones. But what honor is found by being frozen alive in perpetual hibernation, in a seemingly abandoned warehouse? Eternal stasis is worse than death.
    “Oh no,” Gadya’s voice says in my ear. She isn’t screaming anymore, which makes me even more afraid. “There’s more than one of them.”
    “Where?” Liam asks.
    “Everywhere. On all sides, closing in. At least five. They’re floating like jellyfish.”
    It’s funny. I thought Gadya would be the one who wouldn’t make it. Because she got injured, and because she’s up in the observation deck, closer to the surface of the island. I thought Liam and I were safe down here.
    But I was wrong.
    “Talk to the computer,” Liam says. “Make it stop them somehow.”
    “Clara!” I yell. “Tell these selection units, or whatever they are, to leave us alone! You don’t have to do this.”
    The voice is coolly efficient. “Earlier, I requested that you move to the observation deck, but you did not follow my suggestion. You will therefore be removed and placed in protective custody until the staff of this station returns.”
    “They’re never coming back!” I scream. “Don’t you get it?” I hear more metallic noises now, coming from every direction, just like Gadya said. She’s trying to tell us which way to go. But her voice is breaking up into electronic crackles. I’m yelling at her to shut Clara down again, but she can’t hear.
    “We want out of here,” Liam tells Clara. “Just let us get back to the observation deck and we’ll leave peacefully, okay?”
    “I am following Silver Shore protocol,” the voice tells us. “I must detain you because of your actions.”
    I feel something grab my arm. I yank it back instinctively, thinking it’s a tentacle. But it’s Liam.
    I look at him. Our eyes meet through the glass of our visors. “There’s probably no way out of this one, Alenna,” he says with surprising calm. “Those things are going to collect us, put us into pods, and freeze us. And no one’s ever going to come and find us.”
    “I know that!” I yell. We only have a few seconds left before the tentacles grab us.
    “I’m not getting frozen again. No way. And I’m not letting it happen to you, either.”
    “Then we need to run!”
    “Run where? These things can move way faster than us.”
    I don’t have an answer.
    “What if we don’t run?” Liam suddenly says. “What if we do exactly what we’re not supposed to do.”
    I stare at him through my visor. “Which is?”
    “Get these helmets off and climb back into my pod together. And let it take us out of here on schedule. Hijack their mechanisms. Get off the wheel that way.”
    I don’t need time to think about his idea. It’s crazy, ill-thought out, and probably doomed to fail. “Let’s do it!” I yell.
    Gadya’s been listening, and now she speaks over the radio: “Move fast. Less than one minute left!”
    Then I realize that if we leave, we’ll be stranding Gadya. Leaving her to either bleed to death, or get taken by an indoor feeler. “Wait, we can’t go!” I suddenly yell. “I can’t leave you.”
    “You have to! They’ll probably just find me and freeze me. . . . I’ll be here waiting when you come back and rescue me, along with everyone else.”
    I know she’s just saying that to help us make the decision to leave. I hesitate for a second.
    “Do it!” Gadya screams over a burst of static. “Or we’re all going to die. Every single villager on the wheel. You and Liam are our only chance!”
    Before she can say another word, I’m already tearing off my helmet. The cold is unbearable, like a living entity surrounding me, trying to flay the skin off my face. Outer space couldn’t be much colder. I don’t know how Liam was able to withstand it even for a second.
    “We’ll come back for you!” Liam yells to Gadya.
    I want to cry. Gadya is the one person who saw me through this entire journey, and now I feel like I’m ditching her. But she’s right. If we don’t get off the wheel, no one else will either. At least not for a very long time.
    The countdown clock on the pod is still running.
    Thirty-two seconds left.
    “Go, you idiots!” Gadya yells.
    I know her sacrifice is for the sake of all of us villagers.