The Forsaken

unimportant now. All the little secrets each of us has kept from one another. “I know.”
    “Is that the reason you wanted to come on this expedition?” She doesn’t sound suspicious of me like I expected she would. She just sounds tired.
    I nod.
    She looks at me. “I wish you’d told me that. I thought it was all about Liam.”
    The drone staggers up behind Markus.
    Gadya and I turn to him.
    “You can come with us if you want,” Gadya says. “Now that you know your Monk is a fraud. He tricked all of you, understand? And us, too.”
    The drone just nods wanly. He still can’t look down at the body near our feet. Neither can Rika. She’s been rendered mute by shock.
    FIVE MINUTES LATER, MARKUS has somehow managed to get a few branches lit. They emit a dull yellow glow, and little heat. “I hated Minister Harka for so many years,” he mutters. “But it wasn’t even him I was hating. It was some stupid body double.” He laughs grimly. “Now I don’t know who to hate.” He turns to David, as he tends the fire. “How did you know?”
    “I first heard the rumor two years ago. My resistance cell in New Providence—” He pauses, looking around. He can barely talk because he’s so cold. He moves over toward the burgeoning fire. “I better start from the beginning, I guess. Back home I’m part of a youth resistance movement. Against the UNA and Minister Harka’s regime. It’s secret, passed on by word of mouth. We noticed Minister Harka never aged, and looked different in certain photos. We started to suspect something like this had to be going on.”
    “Wait, slow down. A resistance cell?” Gadya asks him.
    “Yes. Trying to sabotage the UNA and restore order instead of tyranny.” He bends in closer to the fire, letting the heat play over him as Markus fans the flames. “I was always on your side. The side of freedom. And there are a whole lot more like me back home.” We stare at him. “That’s how I could move so easily between worlds on the wheel. I’m used to it. Used to acting one way, then another. I was recruited by the resistance cell when I was thirteen, by a friend’s older brother. I’d been putting up antigovernment flyers in my building. Secretly, at night, while my parents were asleep. I knew I’d probably get sent to Island Alpha all along—either because the GPPT is real or, more likely, because I was under surveillance by the government already. I just didn’t know what to do about it, so I figured I’d make the best of it and try to figure out how everything worked once I got here.”
    Gadya scrutinizes him. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?”
    He nods.
    We stand there for a moment in silence. So much starts to make sense now. “Sorry,” Gadya finally murmurs. “For not believing you. Anyone in a resistance cell is a friend of mine.”
    “It’s okay.”
    The others chime in with apologies too.
    “We need to keep hiking,” Gadya finally says, after we’ve warmed ourselves around the fire for a long time. We’ve swapped some items of clothing around so that David and Rika have dry clothes. It means all of us are even colder, but at least they’re not wet anymore. “We’ll just leave Minister Harka here. There’s no way to bury him. The ground’s too hard.”
    “Can I—” the drone begins. “Can I put his mask back on?”
    “Make it fast,” Markus tells him.
    So Minister Harka is dead, I think as the drone reattaches the mask. And we’re the only ones on the entire planet who know it. Of course, for the citizens back home, he’s still alive. He’ll probably be alive as long as the UNA exists, an ageless cipher of a corrupt regime.
    The drone walks back over to us, in a trance.
    I realize that this whole time, no one has even asked him what his name is. “Hey,” I say softly, trying to be nice. In a weird way, I feel sorry for him. “What’s your name?”
    He looks at me. “I don’t . . .” He pauses. “I don’t remember.”
    Gadya makes a scoffing noise. Maybe she thinks he’s lying, but I can tell from his eyes that he’s telling the truth.
    “I’ve been with the Monk a long time. Three winters. I think my name was John. Or James. Or—”
    “Doesn’t matter,” Gadya interrupts. “Pick one, and that’s what we’ll call you.”
    “James,” the drone says. He repeats it, his voice getting stronger. “Call me that.”
    So we leave Minister Harka’s body there by the frozen lake after we’ve warmed ourselves as