The Forsaken

to stand in my way.”
    “The Monk is the one true path to salvation,” the drone murmurs in a well-worn litany. “He is the doorway to life after death. He is the eye of the needle, and we are the threads! The multicolored threads!” He shuts his eyes and starts muttering faster and faster, his lips moving with increasing speed. It takes me a second to realize that he’s praying ferociously, maybe even speaking in tongues.
    Gadya leans back and slaps him across his freezing cheek. His eyes snap open. “There’s no time for that nonsense! Do you want to live? Or do you want to die? I know you believe in the Monk, but I can make your death incredibly long and painful. Do you want my knife carving your throat out, slice by slice? Besides, we’ll probably all die out here anyway. Do you really want to get killed right now? By a girl? What would your Monk think of that? At least wait awhile. Maybe you can die a glorious death in battle later on.”
    The drone hesitates for a moment.
    Gadya presses the knife tight against his throat. “It’s your call.”
    I notice that David does nothing to intervene. He certainly doesn’t seem interested in helping the Monk or the drone. He has obviously been telling the truth about his identity the whole time. No drone or spy would risk their life like he did for Rika. I just hope that Markus finally sees this.
    “I want to live,” the drone finally gasps, as he starts crying. It’s clear the choice is incredibly painful for him.
    “Good.” Gadya pulls back her knife and slowly gets up. The drone shuts his eyes. “That’s right. You don’t have to watch if you don’t want to.”
    “Gadya—” I begin, worried.
    “I’m just gonna ask the Monk a few questions. He owes us some truth.”
    Gadya steps toward the Monk’s cowering body as all of us watch, except for the drone. He remains on the ground, eyes still tightly shut.
    I follow Gadya and stand with her, Markus, David, and Rika around the Monk’s shrunken body. For a moment, I think he’s already dead, but then I see his arm twitch slightly.
    “Uncover your face,” Gadya instructs, because he still has both hands over it.
    “You might not like . . . what you see. . . .” He breathes haltingly, between his fingers. Some blood comes up with each word.
    “Do it,” Markus commands.
    Slowly, the Monk lets his hands slip away from his face, down to his side.
    “No freaking way!” I hear Gadya gasp.
    When I see the Monk’s face for myself, I stumble sideways, like I’ve been punched in the gut.
    I go down to my knees. The others aren’t far behind me. All except David, who murmurs, “So the rumors are true.”
    I’m not just shocked because the Monk’s face is grotesquely blackened and scarred, which it is. And it’s not because of the mocking sadistic smile he wears on his blistered lips.
    It’s because, against all odds, I recognize his face. And I realize why his voice sounded weirdly familiar.
    Despite his grievous injuries, an older, deeper mark gives his identity away. A unique diamond-shaped white scar on his left temple.
    The Monk is Minister Harka.

THE HOUSE OF ICE
    RIKA STARTS WAILING BEHIND me, in horror and disbelief. We have all seen this man’s face thousands of times back home—on posters at school, on billboards, in government-sanctioned textbooks. It’s the face of the UNA’s totalitarian regime. We all know exactly who this man is, despite his disfigurement.
    But it doesn’t make any sense that he would be here on the wheel with us.
    “I don’t understand,” I hear Gadya saying, her voice just a gasp.
    Markus leans over, gagging.
    I stand up again. “How is this possible?” I ask in a barely audible voice. If Minister Harka is here, then who is actually running things back home? I dare to look down at Minister Harka again. No wonder he hid his face all this time.
    He doesn’t even have the Suffering, I slowly realize. It’s true his face is deformed—as though someone doused his head with gasoline and then put a match to it—but up close I can see that he doesn’t bear the sores and pockmarks of disease. In fact, what I thought were sores on his arms are actually old scars.
    He has been pretending to have the Suffering so that he never had to show his face. I guess that explains how he has lived so long with a disease that usually kills its victims within a few months. It’s not because he has supernatural powers. It’s because he was lying all along.
    His