by S. J. West
I’m not sure how long we were in the tunnel, but my guess would have been at least half an hour. Finally, it felt like we were angling upward. The vehicle lurched forward to break the surface of the water, allowing murky rays of moonlight to enter through the front glass. After being in total darkness for so long, the light felt like the sun glaring into my eyes, forcing me to let go of Zoe’s hand to shield them.
“Over there,” my father said from the front. I peeked between my fingers to see him pointing to a spot to our left.
“Hold on, children,” Doc Riley said. “Almost there.”
The gentle sway of the vehicle on water was soon disrupted as we emerged onto dry land. We rolled on an incline, then came to a flat spot before coming to a complete stop.
I heard my father and Doc Riley unlatch their harnesses and took that as my cue to do the same. Everyone else in the back followed my lead.
Doc Riley emerged from the cockpit first with my father standing slightly behind her, securing the black briefcase he brought with him firmly behind his seat.
“Time to see who else made it out alive,” she said, walking to the hatch and unhooking the latch to open the door.
Ash took my hand when we stood, giving me a quick, reassuring wink. Whenever things seemed their bleakest during our travels through the Eastern Kingdom, Ash would sometimes wink at me, squeeze my hand, and say, “Come on.” It was his way of giving me hope.
By the time we all made it out, a dozen other vehicles like ours were in different stages of making it to the same spot. As people emerged, Doc Riley took on her role as physician and made sure the others were physically unharmed. My father delegated jobs for the rest of us. He asked Ash, Zoe, and me to gather up as much dry wood as we could to make a fire against the cold.
“We’ll be staying here for the rest of the night to take inventory and make a list of everyone who made it out. Tomorrow, we’ll travel to the alternate settlement site,” my father told us.
“Alternate settlement?” I asked.
“There’s another underground facility farther south of here,” he explained. “But we need to wait for the others so we can all travel there together.”
“So, there are two Southern Kingdoms?” Zoe asked.
“The alternate site isn’t as nice as the one we just lost,” my father told us. “But it has everything we need to survive.”
Two Southern Kingdoms …
I wanted to ask why the leaders of the old world didn’t use the alternate site to save more of those left behind in the Eastern Kingdom, but I didn’t really need to ask when the answer was so obvious. They wanted to save the alternate site for the scenario we found ourselves in now. They wanted to make sure that if they lost their first nirvana, there was a second one ready for them to use as a backup. The selfishness of such a plan wasn’t lost on me.
Ash, Zoe, and I walked toward the woods to do as we were asked. We were all silent as we gathered up fallen branches to take back to camp. Zoe was a few feet to the left of me when I felt Ash rest a hand on my shoulder and turn me to face him.
“Are you ok?” he asked.
“Probably better than I should be considering things,” I admitted. “This might sound stupid, but I’m more comfortable here on the outside than I was down in paradise.”
Ash’s lips spread into a grin. “Were you feeling a bit too pampered down there?”
“You think I’m silly to feel more at home in a wasteland, don’t you?” I sighed and didn’t wait for his answer before I continued. “It’s just that everything down there was an illusion. They tried to remake the old world, but nothing ever felt real to me. Things were just too perfect.”
“It may have been fake, but at least it felt safe,” he said.
“Even that turned out to be an illusion,” I reminded him.
“Stand still.”
The click of a gun made both Ash and I freeze where we stood.
“Put the wood down and turn back toward the lake,” the man ordered.
We did what he said. As I turned, I saw Zoe facing the same situation we were with another armed gunman. In that instant, I wished I had mental telepathy instead of the power to heal. I wanted to scream to Zoe to not use her power. I knew if she erected a shield around herself, our captors might not ever let her go. They could have all our food and transportation for all I cared. Things could be replaced. Zoe couldn’t. If these were the same people who invaded the Southern Kingdom and ultimately destroyed it, I feared what they might do to us if they knew we had supernatural powers.
With our hands on top of our heads, we walked back to the lake. Lit torches made a circular jail for the survivors from the Southern Kingdom. My father was anxiously waiting for us within its perimeter.
“What’s going on?” I asked him as we walked inside the circle of torches.
“Outsiders,” he whispered. “They’re the ones who invaded the Southern Kingdom and set off the self-destruct.”
“Why would they want it blown up?” Zoe asked.
“My guess is to force us to do what we had to do to survive: come outside.”
“But why?” I questioned.
“Why do you think?” I heard the man who had brought Ash and me back ask from behind me.
I turned around and saw that he was in his mid-fifties with white hair balding at the temples and a shaggy white beard and mustache covering over half of his face. His dark brown eyes felt like they were boring holes into my skull. He was shaking slightly, but I couldn’t tell if it was because he hated us that much or if it was a medical condition.
“I don’t know,” I said, refraining from giving a smartass retort to a man holding a gun. If I had known the answer to my question, I wouldn’t have asked it.
“I’ll tell you why,” he said, refusing to look away from my eyes, like the act would make me feel some sort of shame.
“Ben.” A woman walked up and put a hand on the man’s shoulders. His shaking became less violent as he looked at the woman by his side.
The woman didn’t look much older than thirty. She was thin, but who in the outside world wasn’t? Her dark brown hair fell down past her waist. Years of malnourishment stretched the skin across her face into a thin mask.
“Why don’t you go help the others and see what’s in the transporters these good people brought up?”
“Ok, Margaret,” he said, completely submissive to the woman as he slowly turned his back to us and walked to the vehicle we had escaped in.
After Ben walked away, Margaret turned to face us.
“You’ll have to excuse some of us,” she said. “We’ve been planning this for quite a while, and the excitement of everything that’s happened is a bit overwhelming.”
“So killing thousands of people is what you call exciting?” My father’s voice brimmed with anger.
“Of course not,” Margaret replied, little atonement in her voice, just tiredness. “Lives on both sides of this battle were lost, but hopefully not in vain.”
“Then, why sacrifice your own people? What did you hope to gain from their suicide mission?”
“Salvation,” Margaret said. “I knew if we tripped your self-destruct, you wouldn’t have any other choice but to come out.”
“How did you know this is where the tunnels led?” I asked.
A sad smile stretched Margaret’s thin lips. “My father helped build the facility down there. When I was a little girl, he showed me everything about it, even the emergency fail-safes.”
“Why weren’t you living down there if your father helped build it?” I asked.
“My parents were among the first to be taken by the Harvesters. I only escaped because they sacrificed themselves to give me a chance at a life.” Margaret let out a harsh laugh. “I’m not sure if they would have gone to the trouble if they had known the way my life would turn out.”
“But why force us to the surface? Why sacrifice your own people?” my father asked.
Margaret was silent. I wa
sn’t sure she was going to answer.
“You wouldn’t have come up any other way. Those who sacrificed their lives were the weakest of us and most likely to die anyway. They gave us the gift of their lives, so that we might have a chance to live. There wasn’t any other way to find the other underground haven.”
“What makes you think there is one?” a man I had only met once asked, as he stepped up to join the conversation.
He was in his sixties with wild gray hair and a mustache. His eyes looked almost black against his pale skin in the dim torch light.
“My father told me there was one, and my father never lied to me. If you don’t take us there, we’ll kill all of you where you stand,” Margaret said without hesitation. “But we are offering you a chance to begin again if you allow us to join you.”
“The stunt your people pulled killed almost half our population,” the man accused angrily. “Why would we want murderers living among us?”
“I would be careful who you call a murderer. Your people have been trading us off to the Harvesters for years. There’s hardly anyone left here on this side of the barrier because of you!”
“If you had just come to us, we might have been able to work something out,” my father said, attempting to be the voice of reason.
Margaret shook her head. “No, thanks. I didn’t feel like being made into Harvester spare parts.”
“We don’t deal with Harvesters,” the man said, but even I could hear the lie in his words.
“Either you take us to the alternate location or you die,” Margaret said, like either option was fine with her. “I think the choice is clear enough.”
Margaret turned her back to us and joined her people near the transporters.
I looked over at the man, who had come to my hospital room and introduced himself to me.
“Mr. President,” I heard a woman call.
The man turned toward the woman’s voice and walked away from us.
I stared at his back as the man who used to be President of the United States walked away.
CHAPTER SIX
Tears of despair surrounded me. Those who were able to escape the destruction of the Southern Kingdom seemed inconsolable in their loss of paradise. Many of them had never been forced to face the reality of the real world because they were able to make a home in the Southern Kingdom before eternal gray had consumed the outside. Being cruelly thrust out of their cushy lives to live in what was left aboveground seemed to be more than some of them were capable of handling. I felt lucky in a strange way. At least I knew what it took to survive on the surface. It was the only home I knew. It was where I was most comfortable.
The only difference between my past and present was the fact I was fortunate enough to have more than one friend with me this time. Kirk and Teegan made it out on the last transport to emerge from the lake. I had to admit the circumstances we found ourselves in weren’t ideal, but at least we were all alive and together, for however long.
“Man, I just don’t think I can stand to see my mom cry anymore,” Kale said, coming to sit in the circle we had made around one of the campfires the outsiders let us build to keep warm by.
Teegan put a comforting arm around Kale’s shoulders, bringing a small smile to his face.
“So, does anyone know what’s going on?” Kirk asked. “It’s almost morning. Why haven’t we left for this other underground Shangri-la the outsiders want us to take them to?”
“Because, sweet boy,” Doc Riley said, leaning toward the fire to warm her hands, “the council hasn’t made up its mind.”
“Made up its mind about what? Taking them with us?” Ash questioned. “It doesn’t seem like they have much of a choice.”
I looked over at the circle of huddled leaders standing less than twenty yards away from us. The group of five, including my father, had been talking with one another for hours, which made me question who my father had been talking to in his secret room. Did he have a direct line to the President in there? Was that who he was arguing with when I discovered his secret lair? It made sense since my father hadn’t stopped arguing with the President since they started their little pow-wow over our future with the outsiders.
A loud bang came from one of the transporters. When I looked up, I saw Margaret emerge from the one we used to escape in, holding the small black briefcase my father brought with him. Her face contorted by rage, Margaret headed straight for the gathered members of the council. I looked over at my father and saw him warily watch Margaret’s progress toward them. His shoulders seemed to pull back involuntarily as he stood straighter.
Margaret breached the torch barrier, holding the briefcase up.
“Who does this belong to?” she demanded. The anger in her voice was on the verge of being manic. “Whose is this?” she screamed.
“It’s mine,” my father said.
Margaret threw the case at my father, making him catch it quickly.
“Open it,” she ordered, pulling out a pistol from a pocket of her coat and aiming it straight at my father’s head.
I made a move to stand up, intent on going to my father, but Ash grabbed the back of my coat, forcing me to stay seated on the ground.
“Let me go,” I said.
“Your father can handle things,” Ash whispered. “If you go over there, you might make things worse. She’s not right in the head, Skye. Let your dad deal with her.”
I looked back at my father. He was kneeling with the briefcase lying on the ground in front of him. He unsnapped the clips at the front of the case and slowly opened it.
“Take it out,” Margaret demanded, her gun hand shaking but still pointed directly at my father.
My dad reached inside the briefcase and pulled out a small shiny black laptop computer. I felt my breath catch in my throat when I saw what was engraved in silver on top of it. It was the infinity symbol: Lucena’s crest.
“Are you the one in charge of making deals with that bitch?”
My father stood with the laptop still in his hands.
“Tell me!” Margaret’s men came to stand behind her with their guns drawn on my father, like they were daring him to not answer.
“Yes,” my father said, his gaze reluctantly looking in my direction. “I’m responsible.”
Even though I heard the words come out of his mouth, my mind refused to believe what he was admitting to. He had to be covering up for someone else’s sins. The man I knew and loved could never knowingly hand over innocent lives to be butchered by the Harvesters. Or had the war truly changed him that much? With the loss of his family, had my father lost his humanity too?
Before I knew what was happening, Margaret shot my father point blank in the chest. He fell backwards onto the ground, dropping the laptop, causing it to shatter like glass.
Everything after that felt like it happened in slow motion. I felt more than heard myself scream for him. I leapt to my feet before Ash could stop me and ran to my father not caring that the men standing behind Margaret might shoot me for trying to help him.
Tears of hot anguish trailed down my face as I knelt down beside him, tearing at his coat to find the damage Margaret’s bullet had inflicted. A circular stain of blood was rapidly spreading through the blue pullover he was wearing. I put my hand over the wound, calling on every bit of power I had inside me to heal him before he died. The people around me became a blur of motion and frantic voices. My mind blocked them out, somehow allowing me to concentrate on healing my father. The mingled scent of gunpowder with my father’s blood hung in the air around me like a fog, enveloping my senses. I felt someone give a sharp tug on my jacket, only to hear a guttural grunt as that person was tackled to the ground behind me. Gunshots were fired, but I didn’t have time to ponder who else might be injured. All my thoughts were centered on my father’s wound.
The rise and fall of his chest beneath my hands helped me focus on what needed to be done. I felt my own blood rush through my body and hoped my healing power was working.
I still didn’t understand how my power worked, but it was always there when I needed it. I prayed it wouldn’t abandon me now, not after just being reunited with my dad again. I didn’t care what he had done to survive, even if that meant trading the outsiders to Lucena. I could forgive him his faults. I just needed him to live.
“Skye …”
Ash’s voice sounded like it was a mile away, even though I felt his presence right next to me.
“Skye. You healed him. You can stop.”
I forced myself to open my eyes. My father’s blood covered my hands like a pair of red gloves. I looked up at his face and saw him looking at me with a mixture of pride and fear.
“How the hell did she do that?” Margaret asked. She stood on the other side of my father, staring at me with wide eyes.
I didn’t know what to say, but telling the truth seemed like the best option.
“I can heal people,” I told her.
“What are you?” Margaret lifted her gun until it was level with my head. Her men did the same.
“I’m human, but I have nanites inside me that allow me to heal.”
“Then you’re a Harvester.” Margaret pulled back the hammer on her pistol, preparing to shoot.
“No. I’m human,” I repeated, unable to think of anything better to say.
My father sat up.
“She’s Lucena Day’s daughter,” he told Margaret. A collective gasp came from both outsiders and people from the Southern Kingdom. “And if I were you, I would put that gun down before you do something stupid like shoot her head off.”
“If she’s the Queen’s daughter, she deserves to die.”
“Are you a complete idiot?” my father asked. “What do you think the Queen will do to you if she learns you killed her one and only child?”