by S. J. West
Jace grinned, taking my admonishment in stride.
“I’ll be sure to remember that,” he promised.
I placed my hand in his, and we walked back to the van. Everyone was standing around it waiting on us. I felt my cheeks blush when Ian arched a questioning eyebrow in my direction and blushed even harder when he started to chuckle knowingly. Blue ran up to me and licked my hand, giving me an excuse to not meet the eyes of my other friends openly staring at us.
After we got settled back in the van, Ian informed us we were only a few hours away from the barrier and should be there just after nightfall. I felt tired from my encounter with Jace and decided to take a nap hoping it would make the time it took to reach the barrier go by quickly.
“Skye, wake up.”
Startled awake, I immediately sat up, expecting to see Ash.
Weren’t those the same three little words he had used to awaken me once upon a time, starting me on the strange odyssey I now found myself having to deal with?
But unlike the first time I heard those words, it was Jace’s voice that brought me out of my dreamless sleep.
“We’re here,” he said, looking out the window to what lay behind me outside the van.
I knew what he was looking at without even having to turn around. The blue-green shimmer of the barrier lit the interior of the van and the faces of my fellow travelers. Ash and I had stared at the barrier more times than I liked to count, never finding safe passage through it to the Southern Kingdom.
“So, what are we supposed to do now folks?” Ian asked, staring at the barrier of death to any who were crazy enough to try and cross it.
I looked over at Zoe. Her eyes were wide in wonder as she took in the spectacle.
“Zoe,” I said, dragging her attention away from one of the most tragic wonders of the world. “Do you feel strong enough?”
She knew what I was asking without me having to verbalize it fully. I could see understanding dawn on the faces of Kirk and Teegan. We had told them about Zoe’s power. Now they fully understood how we were supposed to cross the barrier.
“How far is it to the other side?” Zoe asked, like she needed the data to plug into a mental calculation.
“Ten miles,” I told her, watching her take in the information but not giving away if she thought it was too far for her or not.
She would have to sustain her shield for at least two and a half hours, minimum. If the terrain within the barrier was flat for the most part and easy to walk through, we would need at least that much time. If we ran into an obstacle that needed to be walked around, I wasn’t sure how much longer it would add on to the time spent within the radiation field.
“I don’t know, Skye,” Zoe answered, uncertain she would have the strength to last so long. “Maybe after the next growth spurt. I can feel it about to happen. My knees always start to hurt when I’m about to start growing again. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do it just yet.”
“No, that’s fine, Zoe. Don’t be sorry. We thought you might need a little bit more time. We’ll just find a place to make camp, and when you’re ready to lead us through, we’ll go. There’s no rush.”
Zoe nodded her head, biting her lower lip worriedly. I knew she felt like she was letting us down, but I hoped my words eased her mind.
We all decided to get out and venture closer to the barrier to inspect it. The blue-green glow was meant to prevent regular people from stumbling across it unaware. The people of the Southern Kingdom used the light to warn the remaining humans in the Eastern Kingdom they shouldn’t come any closer.
Just as we approached it, a multitude of white lights suddenly flashed on, blinding our eyes with their bright beams. We all instinctually shielded our eyes with our hands, shading them against the unexpected glare. After the initial flash, my heart raced when I saw ten Harvester SUVs parked in a line a hundred feet away to our left. It was like they had been waiting for us, expecting us to be exactly where we were somehow.
A group of Harvesters came to stand in a row in front of the lights. I counted twenty but there might as well have been a hundred. We were trapped. We had no guns with us and if we tried to run behind us, there wasn’t any way we could outdistance them. The only means of escape was through the barrier.
In the blackness behind the Harvester SUVs, I saw a car door open, the interior light flashing on as three shadowy figures stepped out of it. They began walking toward us. As they approached, I instantly knew who one of the three was just by the silhouette of a long jacket and round brimmed hat, Freddy.
I felt Jace take one of my hands into his and give it a firm, reassuring squeeze, but I kept my eyes on the three people who seemed intent on coming near enough to talk to us.
From the way the other two figures walked, I knew they were female. It wasn’t until they reached the lights that I could see who they were. One was Julia and the other was someone I never hoped to meet in person, the self-proclaimed queen of the Eastern Kingdom, Lucena Day.
“How did they find us?” Kirk whispered to me.
“It wasn’t hard,” the Queen remarked, hearing Kirk easily with her enhanced hearing. “Julia was smart enough to implant a tracker into dear Zoe while she was her guest.”
I heard Zoe’s startled intake of breath and hoped her empathy for Julia was forever shattered.
“Zoe, sweetie, I came for you. I told you we would be together forever,” Julia said, attempting to sound motherly but instead sounding like the winner of the “Demented Mother of the Year” award.
Zoe grabbed my free hand, holding on tight. Now she knew the truth, and the truth of what Julia was scared her.
“What do you want?” Jace asked, but by the tone of his voice, I knew he already knew the answer.
Lucena’s eyes narrowed on Jace. “I see you did what you so stubbornly refused to do when I asked you to. You found her for me.”
It took a moment for the Queen’s words to sink in. Who had Jace been sent to find?
“Who’s she talking about?” Ian asked, voicing the question I wanted to ask but one I feared to know the answer to. A picture of Jace lying on the floor of the library uttering the words “I found you” raced through my mind.
Jace looked down at me, confirming my suspicion with one look.
“Don’t blame Jace, Skye,” the Queen said, addressing me directly. “He tried extremely hard not to lead me to you, but his natural instincts kicked in when I took away his memories.”
“You did that to him? Why?”
“To find you, dear heart. I couldn’t very well let my daughter run around the Eastern Kingdom unprotected.”
I almost laughed at her ludicrous insinuation. “You are not my mother. My mother died saving me from you and the monsters you invented.”
Lucena smiled like she knew a secret I didn’t. “Emma wasn’t your real mother, Skye, but she was my sister. When you turned thirteen, you were supposed to come live with me, but my sister decided to sacrifice herself instead, so you could run wild in the woods for the past five years. Though, why she thought that was a better way for you to live than coming to stay with me is still a mystery.”
“You’re lying,” I said weakly, trying to make sense out of what the Queen was telling me and not finding any reasonable explanation why she should lie.
Lucena walked closer to me, taking her time like a hunter would if she didn’t want to frighten away skittish prey. When she stood only two feet away from me, she turned slightly, so the light behind her would reflect the features of her face clearly. I could see the resemblance to my mother in the high cheekbones, full lips, and oval features. Worst of all, her hair, pulled back in a severe ponytail, was the same color as mine. A trait I had always attributed to my mother and been proud of until that moment.
Noticing my reaction, Lucena smiled.
“You see it, don’t you?” she asked me, looking me up and down. “The resemblance is too strong to just be coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Whatever relation you might be to me, you could never be my mother.”
“Well, you certainly have my stubbornness,” Lucena said, a look of pride on her face. “I suppose you need to hear the truth from someone you trust before you’ll believe it.” Lucena paused, like she was thinking over her options. “I tell you what. I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll let you and your friends go through the barrier so you can find the truth out for yourself. After you know for a fact that you are my daughter, promise me you’ll at least consider coming to me on your own.”
I wanted to tell her to take her offer and shove it, but she was giving us safe passage to do what we wanted.
“Why would you do something like that?” I asked, not understanding her reasoning behind making such a deal. One she had to know I would never willingly keep.
“Because I think once you learn the truth, you’ll want the whole truth, and I’m the only one who can give that to you.”
All I had to do was lie to her and we would be allowed to leave unharmed. Lying wasn’t something I liked to do, but in this instance, I had no choice if I wanted to protect my friends. Plus, considering whom it was I was lying to, no harm done.
“Fine,” I said, not adding more.
“Now, wait just a damn minute,” Freddy said, coming to stand beside the Queen. Julia followed in his footsteps but kept a safe distance from Lucena.
“You know what I told you about her, what she can do,” he stressed, trying to make his argument without tipping off the Harvesters behind him on my ability. “How can you just let her go?”
“You forget yourself, Freddy.” Lucena’s words were as sharp as a whip through Freddy’s skin. He looked visibly shaken. “I will handle things as I see fit. Don’t question my decisions.”
I could tell Julia wanted to ask about keeping Zoe from the way she kept looking furtively at my friend, but she wasn’t stupid enough to go against an order from the Queen.
“Oh.” Lucena turned her attention back to me. “Just one other thing. Jace will have to stay with me. I need his help in finding some other people.”
“No, he comes with us,” I told her, possessively tightening my hold on Jace’s hand.
“Skye…” I could hear the argument coming out of Jace’s mouth before he said another word.
“No,” I told him. “I’m not going to just hand you over to her.”
“What if what she said is true?” he argued. “What if I’m the reason she found you?”
“She’s making that up, just like she’s lying about being my mother.”
Lucena laughed. “Skye, use your brain instead of your heart for a moment. You know Jace is different, more than human but less than a Harvester.”
“What am I?” Jace asked, a question he had been asking himself ever since ripping off the head of the Harvester in Meadowdale.
“You are something very rare: the child of a Harvester father and human mother. You are one of a kind, dear boy. Most hybrids die within a year because of the accelerated growth. But you were strong enough to endure it. I was able to engineer you with certain abilities, like selective precognition. I can make you see the future of anyone as long as I have a copy of their DNA. Unfortunately, I think I may have made you too well. Your precognition showed you Skye’s future, and you refused to find her like I asked. So, I took away all of your memories except for the visions you had of my daughter and kindly let you remember your name.”
“Then, you don’t need Jace anymore,” I argued. “He did what you designed him for. He found me.”
“You’re not the only one I’m searching for,” Lucena said. “A few years ago, I became aware that one of my earlier experiments actually worked, even though I had no way of knowing it at the time. I wasn’t able to see the results then because the nanites went into a dormant mode for some reason. I gave Jace the ability to more or less awaken the nanites from their dormancy so they functioned how they were always meant to. His distinctive biorhythms activate the nanites with one touch. He certainly seems to have awoken yours.”
I knew exactly what she was talking about: my ability to heal. It was only after I met Jace that I was able to do it. The first time I touched him flashed through my mind. I remembered feeling something like static shock. I passed it off as nothing at the time. Who could have known such a small thing was significant?
“If he doesn’t stay,” Lucena said ominously. “Then, I’m afraid you will all have to stay.”
I felt Jace let go of my hand. Before I could stop him, he took two steps forward.
“I’ll stay. Just let them leave.”
“Jace,” I said, holding out my hand to him, pleading for him to come with us.
“She’ll never let me go,” he said, turning to me. “And I can’t endanger the people in the Southern Kingdom by trying to hide there. You have to go, Skye. You need to take everyone where they’ll be safe.”
I knew Jace was right, but knowing what needed to be done didn’t make leaving him any easier.
“Now that that’s settled,” Lucena said. “Just how were you planning to get across the barrier anyway? I assumed you would just use your healing ability to keep everyone healed as you walked across but that doesn’t seem practical considering how many there are of you.”
I looked down at Zoe. “Zoe?”
“I can do it,” Zoe replied without me having to say more. I felt certain Zoe wanted to put as much distance between herself and Julia as possible.
“Are you sure?” I asked, concerned her fear was overshadowing her judgment.
“Yeah, let’s go.” Before I could stop her, Zoe encircled us with her shield.
I didn’t hear it, but I saw Lucena laugh as she took a closer look at Zoe. She said something, but the only word I could decipher was “bubble.” I felt sure Lucena now knew Zoe was the girl in the bubble her people had been watching for the past ten years.
I looked over at Jace and raised my hand, pressing it against the wall of Zoe’s shield until it passed through to the other side. He laced his fingers through mine. I saw the tears tremble in his eyes before I felt the wet warmness of my own slide over my cheeks. He knew this moment would come. He knew he would have to sacrifice himself in order to keep us safe from the Queen.
I felt my heart swell into my throat and allowed it to reveal the words it longed to say, “I love you.”
I knew he couldn’t hear my declaration but hoped their passage over my lips was enough for him to figure it out.
He squeezed my hand. A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, but the sadness of the situation tainted the moment he had been waiting for.
“Skye,” Zoe tugged on my shirt. “We need to go.”
Reluctantly, I let go of Jace’s hand and brought my own back through the shield.
Just before we walked through the edge of the barrier, I turned to look at Jace one last time, but he was already gone.
No one spoke as we walked through the barrier, shielded by Zoe’s gift.
What do you say to someone who might be the daughter of the person who nearly wiped out the human race? I clung to my certainty that the Queen was lying, but at the same time, one question haunted me. Why would she make up such an unbelievable tale? How would she have been able to program Jace to find me if she hadn’t already known my DNA sequence? And if she wasn’t my mother, why did she go through so much trouble to find me? I knew it couldn’t be motherly love. I doubted Lucena Day had ever loved anyone in her life. So my list of questions increased by one.
What did she need me for?
We had walked for more than an hour and hadn’t met any obstacles in the terrain we couldn’t overcome easily. I thought luck might finally be on our side until I saw Zoe fall to the ground, a scream born from pain escaped her lips as she pulled her knees up to her chin, folding her body into a fetal position. The shield protecting us from the radiation field flickered like a light bulb about to go out but by some miracle it held in place.
I ran to Z
oe and knelt down beside her.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she kept repeating over and over. “I thought I could do it, Skye. I really did.”
Zoe began to cry. I sat down beside her and cradled her head in my lap.
“Where does it hurt?” I asked her.
“Everywhere,” she moaned, pressing her lips together as though she were trying not to scream again.
“Is there anything we can do?” Kirk asked, kneeling down on the other side of Zoe.
“No, but I might be able to help her,” I told him, placing my hands on Zoe’s head, not really sure I knew what I was doing.
I thought back to when I had healed myself. I envisioned the rush of my blood pumping through my veins and the heat of healing encasing my body. I focused on that and Zoe, attempting to take away some of her pain but not knowing if it would be enough. After a few minutes, I felt my blood begin to boil and knew whatever I was doing I was on the right track. Ten minutes later, Zoe gently pushed my hands away.
“I feel a little bit better,” she said, but her voice was weak, like she was about to fall asleep.
“Zoe, you need to stay awake,” I told her.
Zoe’s eyes fluttered. “I’m so tired,” she muttered.
“Ian, come help her,” I told him.
Ian picked Zoe up in his arms.
“You have to try to keep her awake,” I told him.
“What should we do?” Kirk asked, knowing we might not have much time left.
“Run.”
As we ran, I could hear Ian trying his best to keep Zoe conscious. At one point I think he might have actually screamed in her ear, trying to jolt her system into staying awake. I had no real way of knowing how much farther we needed to go but wagered we wouldn’t make it. When I saw the light of Zoe’s shield begin to flicker again, I made everyone come to a stop.
“The shield is about to fall,” I told them. “Lucena seemed to think my power would be able to get us across the field.”
“But she said you probably couldn’t do it since there are so many of us,” Ian reminded me.
“Not to go all the way across,” I agreed. “But we have to be over halfway there by now. Everyone hold hands and don’t let go no matter what.”