The Forsaken

eyes catch mine. “I came here . . . six years ago.” He chokes out the words around his cynical smile.
    “But how?” Markus manages. His eyes look dazed and far away. Rika has stopped screaming.
    “I was condemned and sent here. Just like you,” Minister Harka rasps. He coughs, and more blood bubbles up. He doesn’t have long to live, and he knows it. He doesn’t seem to care, though. Maybe he’s even glad that he can finally reveal his true identity. My mind is filled with a million questions, but there’s only time to ask a few.
    “Why did they send you here? You run everything! You’re the prime minister!”
    “In the end I was disposable. My staff betrayed me when I tried to make changes . . . when I told them the UNA had become too corrupt. I was arrested and tortured by men more cunning than myself. Men who feared I was growing soft. . . . I woke up here on the island.”
    “But we saw you back home. You can’t be in two places at once!” Gadya says.
    “Lookalikes and body doubles, am I right?” David asks. “That’s what they always said. In my resistance cell.”
    Resistance cell? I’m not sure what he’s talking about.
    “Yes,” Minister Harka answers, his smile finally fading. “I always had them. For security. Now they use them as my stand-ins. As human puppets to make people believe I’m still in charge.”
    “Couldn’t you get off this island?” I ask, realizing that the lookalikes and body doubles explain why he seemed so ageless. “It’s a government island. As far as we know, you practically designed it! Why didn’t you find the way off? Why did you need us? And why did you start a crazy cult?”
    He’s coughing, his chest making strange sounds. “I never even knew this island existed,” he whispers. “It was a secret colony, set up years before. By another regime in Old America, at the dawn of the twenty-first century. For political prisoners. They told me it had been abolished.” His lips curl upward again as more blood seeps out. “I know less about its geography than you do.”
    David is nodding.
    Minister Harka keeps talking, and we listen, riveted: “When I got here, the prisoners recognized me and burned me alive. They hated me . . . and I deserved it. But others rescued me and kept me alive. Made me part of their encampment. Then everyone started getting sick. Dying. Teenagers began turning up. I pretended to be sick . . . but because I knew so much, and because I never died, they thought I had mystical powers. That I was a supernatural being. I played along—”
    Minister Harka is gripped by another coughing fit. I glance over at the drone. His face is a rictus of agony and disbelief. His world has been shattered.
    Even though Gadya and Markus are right there, I have to ask about my parents. This is probably my final opportunity to get any answers from Minister Harka. I lean in close. “My name’s Alenna Shawcross.” I glance at David. “David said that my parents got sent here?”
    Minster Harka’s eyes are shut. So much blood is coming up now, it’s like he’s hemorrhaging from the inside. “Shawcross,” he breathes. “Of course. It’s you. You look like your mother.” The breath instantly gets caught in my chest. Minister Harka knew my parents? “Your parents were both here. They were among the kind ones—the ones who helped me when others would not.”
    “What happened to them? Where did they go?”
    “Now they are free. They are—”
    His body abruptly seizes, as though he’s plugged a finger into an electrical socket. Gadya rushes to my side.
    “We have to do something!” I yell at her. “He can’t die! Not now!”
    David runs over to him and tries to help.
    But I know the life is leaving his body. I can tell. And there’s nothing we can do about it. We try to keep his arms from flailing, and eventually the seizure stops. No more blood comes out. But for him, the long journey is finally over.
    Minster Harka is dead.
    I can’t accept it.
    “Wake up!” I yell at him, straddling his corpse. I’m crying, but my tears come from anger, not sorrow. “Wake up and tell me about my parents!”
    I feel hands on my shoulder, pulling me off him. I struggle against them, but I finally get torn from his body. I look up. It’s Gadya. “He’s gone, Alenna.”
    I nod. Slowly, I get to my feet. I know that everyone is watching me.
    “You never told me about your parents being here,” Gadya says softly.
    It all seems so