by S. J. West
As soon as I stood up, I felt an excruciating soreness beneath my abdomen. It was similar to the cramping sensation I usually felt right before my menstrual cycle only this pain was ten times worse. After standing still for a few minutes, the pain slowly subsided but the ache was still present.
I opened the double doors of the wardrobe and found an array of clothing inside. Everything from party dresses to blue jeans was available. I quickly picked out a pair of jeans and a long sleeved brown cowl neck sweater to wear. From a chest of drawers on the other side of the room, I found some frilly looking underwear and matching bras. They were way fancier than I thought I needed, since I was the only person who would ever get to appreciate the delicate lace creations. After I was dressed, I tucked Jace’s rock in the front pocket of my jeans. Shoes were the last item on my list and easily found at the bottom of the wardrobe. I chose a pair of brown suede tennis shoes, which fit perfectly. And that was the problem. Everything seemed to be tailor made for me. How long had Lucena been planning to have me join her? And now that she had me, what did she plan to do to me?
Just after I put my shoes on, I heard the rumble of a helicopter fly overhead. I walked over to a door that led out onto a balcony at the front of the house. It was a small balcony but seemed sturdy enough since it was made of stone. I peeked through the white gauzy curtains of the glass door and saw a black hawk helicopter swoop down into the courtyard onto the same helipad we had landed on the day before. The door to the helicopter slid open, and Jace stepped out.
From that moment on, the only thing I could hear was the hammering of my heart against the walls of my chest. I tightened my grip on the curtain in my hands, almost pulling it from its rod.
Jace turned away from the helicopter and yelled to a Harvester who was walking over to him from the direction of the house. Jace’s naturally curly hair was slicked back, giving him an almost sinister look if you didn’t know the kind heart of the man standing in front of you. He wore a thick black turtle neck shirt underneath a black leather trench coat, which hung down to mid-thigh and was cinched in at the waist by a silver buckled belt. Even from a distance, I could tell he was tired from the slight slump of his shoulders and the way he hung his head. He seemed to give the Harvester some instructions as he pointed to the helicopter. For some reason, he stopped in what looked like mid-sentence and looked straight up at the balcony as if sensing my presence.
I practically ripped the door from its hinges to get outside. Even before I got to the stone railing of the balcony, Jace was making a mad dash toward the house. I swirled away from the balcony and ran out of the room. I ran down the long hallway only to be met by another long hallway, but I had to decide which direction to go. I ran to the left toward the front of the house and prayed to the powers that I wouldn’t get lost in the mansion’s maze of corridors. Every time I came to the end of one hallway, I was always met by another hallway. I kept going until I heard Jace yell my name from behind me.
When I turned, I saw Jace standing at the other end of the hallway I had just run down. I was breathing so hard my lungs hurt, but I didn’t care. I ran to him as fast as my tired legs would take me and threw myself into his arms, never second-guessing he would catch me. I held onto him like he was the only life preserver in an ocean with no land in sight. I let go of him enough to look into his eyes and immediately felt my heart lurch unpleasantly in response.
He looked disappointed.
“Why are you here?” he asked me. “I told you not to leave the Southern Kingdom.”
I let go of him and took a step back. My whole body felt like it was about to implode in on itself. Why didn’t he look as happy as I felt to finally hold him again? Had our separation tempered his feelings for me? Had Jace fallen out of love with me, even though he said he would love me forever?
I felt the sting of tears burn my eyes but forced them back. I couldn’t think of any words to say to make the moment right again. I tried to hold back my tears, but they fell of their own accord. Unable to hide my hurt from him, I turned away and raced back down the hall, too ashamed to let him see the devastating effect his words had on me. Before I made it very far, I felt him grab me around the waist with both of his arms, pulling me back against him.
“Skye, please ...” he begged, tightening his hold, refusing to let me go no matter how hard I fought for release.
My shoulders shook as I cried, but I couldn’t stop them from shaking any more than I could prevent the scalding hot drops of disappointment and heartache from falling.
Jace put his hands on my shoulders and gently forced me to turn around and face him.
“Skye, why are you crying? Has she done something to you?”
I shook my head, unable to find my voice.
“Then why are you crying and running away from me?”
I looked up into his face and saw his worry over my emotional outburst.
“Because you don’t want me here,” I blubbered, feeling completely stupid for not being able to control the physical display of my heartbreak.
Jace pulled me against him, resting his forehead against mine, closing his eyes, and sighing deeply.
“No, I don’t want you here in her house. You don’t understand how dangerous this place is for you. I thought you understood that when I asked you to stay in the Southern Kingdom. You’re all I’ve thought about since I’ve been here. You’re all I want.”
I closed my eyes and breathed him in. He smelled like leather and Jace. I lifted my hands and caressed the sides of his face. He opened his eyes and lifted his head from mine to look into my eyes. It was then I finally saw what I had hoped to see the first time: want. He did want me. He did still love me. But he was letting his worry for me override everything else.
“Show me,” I said.
“Show you what?” he asked, not quite sure what I was asking for.
“If you still love me, prove it,” I dared.
“Are you mine to love?” he asked.
I knew what the question implied. He was asking me if being reunited with Ash had rekindled my adolescent longings for my best friend.
“Kiss me,” I begged, unable to give him an answer to his question.
Jace hesitated, but I knew it wasn’t because he didn’t want to kiss me. I saw the same desire I felt mirrored in his eyes. I knew he wanted me to tell him whether or not I had chosen between him and Ash yet. I couldn’t give him a truthful answer because my heart was still torn by the two men in my life. But I needed him to kiss me like I needed water to survive. My body ached from wanting him to the point where if he didn’t kiss me soon I might wither away like a flower left in the sun too long.
“Kiss …” I began but wasn’t allowed to finish.
Jace quickly pulled me against his torso. He looked into my eyes like he was searching for the answer to his question there.
“I love you,” he breathed against my lips. “I’ve missed you,” he said, continuing to plant light kisses.
They felt like sweet teases. I needed more.
I put my arms around his neck and leaned up, forcing him to deepen the kiss. I didn’t have to persuade him any further.
The first contact of our tongues lit my body on fire. I put my hands on the back of his head to find balance and to make sure he didn’t stop the kiss before I wanted him to. The sound of our heavy breathing echoed in the empty hallway. I couldn’t think about anything else except that I wanted Jace, and I knew without a shadow of a doubt he wanted me too.
I began to tug at the belt of his coat, wanting to feel his warmth against my body. Our fingers fumbled together undoing the buttons until the leather fell away. I pulled the ends of his shirt out of the black jeans he wore until I could run my hands up his rippled abdomen around to the well-defined muscles of his back. With a groan, Jace quickly pulled the shirt off, giving me more room to explore his well-toned torso. But it still wasn’t enough for me. I needed to feel his skin against mine. I needed to feel his hands on me.
/> I pulled back from Jace to take off my shirt in one sweeping motion. He stood staring at me as I let the shirt fall to the carpeted floor. His chest rose and fell like he was having trouble getting enough air into his lungs. His eyes asked me an unvoiced question.
“Kiss me,” I answered, not even having to think about it, just knowing it was what I wanted.
Jace didn’t need any more persuasion than that. He came at me, lifting me up, forcing me to put my arms around his neck and my legs around his waist.
It was then I screamed out in pain.
The pain was so intense I completely let go of Jace. On reflex, he caught me, cradling me in his arms.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “What happened? Did I hurt you?”
I couldn’t speak until the pain ebbed away into a dull throb in my pelvic area.
“I hurt here,” I said, placing a hand over the affected area.
Our clothes forgotten on the floor, Jace took long, quick strides with me in his arms down the hallway. I kept my eyes closed for most of the trip, only opening them again when he gently laid me down on a bed.
When I opened my eyes, I realized we weren’t in the room I had started the morning out in. This room was similar, but the walls were of a raised redwood. Velvety forest green curtains hung beside the three windows of the room.
Jace pulled a quilt off of a nearby wingback caramel colored chair sitting in front of a small marble fireplace. He came back to the bed and covered me with it before sitting down beside me.
“Do you know why you’re hurting there?” he asked me. “Have you ever felt pain there before?”
“I’ve felt something similar but only during my … you know … monthly cycle,” I said, feeling shy talking about such things with a man, especially a man I was half naked with. “But the pain has never been this bad before.”
“Has Lucena done anything to you in the past few days that would cause you to hurt there?”
“I haven’t been here that long,” I replied. “Right after we got here yesterday, she fed us something that made us all go to sleep.”
“Right after you got here?” Jace asked in confusion. “How long do you think you’ve been here?”
“Not even twenty-four hours yet. Why?”
All of the color drained from Jace’s face. “Skye, I got the news you were here four days ago.”
I stared at Jace in stunned silence. Four days. I’d been unconscious for four days.
I started to sit up, but the pain came back.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Jace said, admonishing me for my stupidity. “You need to rest.”
I shook my head furiously. “I have to find Zoe and Ash. I have to know what she’s done to them. In four days …” I let the implications hang in the air. What could she have done to my friends in four days’ time?
“You’re not going anywhere,” Jace said, standing up. “I’ll go find out where they are. You just lay on my bed until I come back for you.” He went to a wardrobe similar to the one I had in the room I woke up in and pulled out a white button down shirt. “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said, slipping his arms into the shirt and heading out the door.
“Jace!”
He ran back into the room.
“What’s wrong?”
I held my hand out to him, not having to tell him with words how scared I felt.
He took it and leaned down. “Don’t worry,” he said. “Everything will be all right. Just stay put until I get back. Ok?”
I nodded my head.
He kissed me on the lips and each cheek before squeezing my hand and heading back out the door.
I huddled underneath the quilt in a fetal position, trying my best to ignore the pain, which seemed to stubbornly not want to go away.
The words “four days” still echoed in my mind. What had Lucena done to me in the last four days? Had she harmed Ash and Zoe? Were they even still alive?
The longer I laid there, the worse the scenarios playing inside my head got. I had to know they were all right. I had to find them.
I waited for what felt like forever. The intense pain faded back to a dull throb before I decided to try to stand up. I went to Jace’s wardrobe and found a black t-shirt to slip on. It was big, so I had to pull the bottom of it up together at the side of my hip and tie it into a ball. I walked out the door but had absolutely no idea where in the house I was now. I decided to follow any stairs I came to which went down. By the time I decided I might have gone too far down, I came to a set of opaque glass doors on what I thought to be the basement level of the house.
I peeked behind them and found a laboratory. I walked in and looked around at the various equipment sitting on the countertops, having no idea what any of it was for. The only thing I could put a name to was the Bunsen burner. In the middle of the room, stood a large cylindrical tube made of iron. I walked toward it running my hands along the cool metal until I came to a hand-shaped indentation in the column. I placed my right hand inside it. Steel bars slid out from either side of the opening, trapping my hand. The indentation illuminated blue, and a white light scanned my palm.
“Welcome, Skye,” a soft disembodied female voice said to me.
The bars caging my hand disengaged, imbedding themselves back into the column.
I took my hand out of the indentation just as clicks, like something unlocking, echoed in the room. The column, which I thought had been a structural feature of the mansion, slowly slid up, revealing a glass tube filled with a light blue liquid and a naked woman. Her back was to me. The long brown strands of her hair floated in the liquid around her body, giving her an ethereal beauty. Cautiously, I walked around the tube to see the woman’s face. I felt the earth beneath my feet give way and was only faintly aware of falling to my knees.
The woman inside the glass tube was my mother.
CHAPTER TEN
I’m not sure how long I knelt by the figure of my mother, who floated like a ghostly apparition inside the liquid filled tube. She looked like Sleeping Beauty with her closed eyes shutting out the turmoil around her, completely protected within her cocoon from the evils of the outside world. I envied the imagined peace she seemed to have. Her angelic presence comforted and frightened me all at the same time. Was she alive? Was she dead? The only clue I had she was indeed still alive was the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Through partly opened lips, she seemed to be drawing in the liquid around her down into her lungs like it was air. My hand shook as I reached out and touched the warm glass shell protecting her. I’m not sure what I expected to happen. If she was really alive, could she sense my presence? Would she open her eyes and look at me?
“Still beautiful after all these years, isn’t she?”
I looked over at the entrance to the laboratory and watched Lucena walk into the room. She was wearing a white lab coat and high heels that clicked every time she took a step.
“Is she alive?” I asked, my voice hoarse from trying not to cry.
“Her body is alive.”
“You say that like there’s a difference.”
Lucena walked over beside me and touched the glass tube, gliding her hand down its smooth surface like my mother was her most prized possession.
“She’s in a vegetative state,” Lucena said with a note of regret. “I tried to save her the night you escaped the camp and she was shot, but by the time they brought her to me, she was already in a coma. There was no way to bring her out of it.”
“But she’s alive.”
Lucena looked at me like she pitied me. “She has no brain wave activity. If these were the old days, your mother would have been put in a grave a long time ago. The woman who you knew as your mother doesn’t exist in this body anymore.”
“Then why keep her like this?”
“Because I need her.”
“For what?”
“For her organs, of course.”
I looked back at my mother noting the small incisions across her chest a
nd abdomen.
“You’re keeping her body alive for spare parts for yourself,” I whispered, but Lucena heard me well enough.
“Organ transplants from a sibling or a child are the best matches, and they last longer in us for some reason.”
I looked up at Lucena. “Is that why I’m here? You’ve used up my mother now you need to use me too?”
Lucena looked down at me like I was crazy. She shook her head. “No, Skye. I would never do such a barbaric thing to my own child.”
“Then what did you do to me?” I asked, placing my hands across my abdomen. “Why am I in so much pain?”
Lucena cocked her head and crossed her arms over her chest. “When I designed the nanites to make humans immortal, I didn’t quite expect there to be so many side effects. The degeneration of organs was certainly one of the most severe, but I should have known the nanites would need to gather resources from somewhere in order to preserve everything else. Another was the sterilization of the female Harvesters.”
“So that’s why Harvesters can’t have babies of their own?”
“Yes. For whatever reason, the nanites destroy the eggs as soon as they enter the bloodstream. I’ve tried to change their programming to prevent it from happening but nothing seems to work. So, naturally since I was the first woman to undergo the conversion, all of my eggs were immediately destroyed the moment I became a Harvester.”
“So you can’t have any more children?” I said, trying to understand why what she was telling me was an answer to my question.
“Exactly.”
“But what does that have to do with me?”
“You provided me with what I needed to ensure we live forever.”
I tried to piece together the information she was giving me with what I already knew but nothing added up.
“I still don’t understand.”