The Forsaken

room.
    I turn back to my mom. “Tell me everything.”
    “You mean about this place?”
    “No, I mean everything . The whole story. What happened when you and Dad got taken. I need to know.”
    I hear the door close. It’s just me and my mom now. “I’ll try. But I don’t remember all of it.”
    For the next hour we sit there, holding hands. She tells me a condensed version of everything she went through. How she and my dad were interrogated for days. Starved and denied water. Beaten and chained.
    Then they were shipped across the country to the West Coast, and then onward to Island Alpha—a desolate, unpopulated island in the Pacific, located halfway between Hawaii and Australia. My mom explains that the UNA established its prison islands far from the mainland because of fears of rebellion—especially Island Alpha, the largest and harshest of its prison colonies. Other smaller, secret islands apparently exist elsewhere.
    Back then, Island Alpha was a different place from the one I encountered—with dissidents, criminals, vagabonds, and intellectuals mixed together, forced to battle for the small population of hoofers released onto the island to provide food for the prisoners. The colored sectors for each part of the wheel were already established by the UNA, and were initially meant to demarcate zones for different kinds of prisoners.
    The ubiquitous fireworks were already present back then too—apparently because the island used to be a layover for cruise ships in the early years of the twenty-first century. Giant buried crates of fireworks, some the size of trailers, still exist on the island, providing the drones with a seemingly inexhaustible supply.
    My parents and their fellow dissidents began building a new society on the island, complete with a primitive power station, and a huge lookout tower. The ruins of the spiral staircase are all that remain of it. This is because the government soon began bombing the island. After that, the chemical testing began, and people started dying.
    Eventually, my parents and some other islanders, mostly scientists, came up with a plan to attack one of the UNA freighters that was shipping prisoners there back then. They battled the crew and eventually took over the boat. Then they piloted it all the way to Australia and started building Destiny Station inside the sandstone formation, deciding to use their knowledge to find a way to defeat the UNA.
    Australia had just become an enemy of the UNA at that time, and the Australians were also embroiled in bloody civil conflicts in their own cities. They did nothing to intervene and stop these refugees from arriving. So the city inside the rock grew and grew, unchecked.
    “Tell me about Dad,” I say. I can tell that’s the part she doesn’t want to talk about, but it’s the part I need to know about most of all.
    “There was a bombing raid. For a while, the UNA thought it might be able to take advantage of Australia’s unrest and occupy the country. They briefly tried to turn it into a colony of the UNA, until the Australians fought back. UNA warplanes used to bomb the dunes occasionally, mostly at night. Parts of our rock shelter were hit a few times, but we rebuilt any sections that got damaged. Your father was outside one night, trying to save some children playing in the dunes and bring them back into the station. A bomb landed nearby . . .” Her voice falters. “The children survived, but the shock wave from the blast took his life.”
    I wipe away tears. All these years I assumed that my dad was dead, but hearing this story makes the pain feel fresh again. “How did you keep going?”
    “Because as long as you were alive, there was hope. That’s all people need in order to do amazing things, Alenna. Hope is the great human motivator. It always has been.”
    She pulls away gently and then stands up. I know there’s so much more she wants to say, and so much more I need to ask her. “Look, I don’t want to overwhelm you,” she says. “The doctors asked me not to. You’re dehydrated, probably starving, and you need sleep. There’s plenty of time now. I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you and Liam.” She pauses. “At least not right away.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “For the moment, we’ll be staying here. But we’re not alone at Destiny Station. Other rebel colonies of UNA refugees exist, hidden across the globe. One in the Highveld of South Africa. One in the Arctic, under the ice.