Harvester of Light Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by S. J. West

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. I know when you saw those bodies stuffed in that can like sardines you felt something. You tried to ignore it, but you won’t be able to for much longer.”

  I looked away from my future self and noticed Rose had a melancholic smile on her face.

  “And what’s your problem?” I asked.

  “I just feel sad for what you have to go through,” Rose said. “You don’t know how much I wanted to warn you about what was coming.”

  “But you didn’t, did you?” I said, the words sounding like an accusation. “You just remained the loyal little bitch to this one.”

  I felt the sting of future me’s hand across my cheek before my mind even registered what was happening. The force of the blow was so hard it knocked me back a step.

  “Don’t you ever call her that again,” my future self growled. “You owe her more than you know. She has done nothing but what I asked her to do for your benefit.”

  Future me turned to Rose. “It’s just the Harvester in her lashing out at you. Don’t take it to heart. You know that’s not how I feel about you.”

  “I know,” Rose replied, giving me a pitying look. “I just feel sorry for everything you had to go through.”

  “Don’t.” Future me touched Rose on her arm. “It was all worth it in the end.”

  “This is all heartwarming and stuff,” I said, rubbing the sting away from my cheek. “But I would really like to go home now.”

  The older version of myself looked back at me.

  “Just remember what you saw,” future me said. “I have faith you’ll do the right thing when the time comes.”

  “Will you be making more of these heartfelt trips to me? Or can I count on this one being the last?” I asked her.

  “This will be the last time you see me until you look in a mirror one day in the future.”

  “Are you going to be sending Rose and Simon to bug me anymore?”

  “They’ll only come when they need to, like they always have.”

  “Well, they don’t need to come anymore. I don’t need their help.”

  “The world will need their help in the end. It’s their destiny.”

  Future me took hold of one of Rose’s hands and squeezed it tight in a reassuring manner. Then she held out her other hand for me to take. I grabbed it and soon found myself standing back in my bedroom.

  The door to the room was open, but Grant was still sitting unconscious in the chair I had left him in. Daylight seeped through the curtains, marking the beginning of a new day.

  “Don’t burden yourself with regret about what happens today,” my future self told me. “You won’t be able to change her fate.”

  “Whose fate?”

  But before I could get an answer, Walsh walked into the room. When he saw Rose and future me, he automatically drew his gun intent on pulling the trigger.

  “Mom!” I heard Rose yell as she grabbed future me’s shoulder and vanished.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I stood there stunned into silence.

  Why had Rose just called me mom?

  I heard Walsh say something to me, but his words were having a hard time breaking though my temporary stupor. Rose had called future me “Mom,” but why? I thought back to the future scene of the boy and girl playing together, realizing the girl had to have been Rose. If Rose was the girl, then the boy had to be Simon.

  I had always assumed Rose and Simon were related in some way. Their resemblance to one another could only be genetic. The day Rose had visited me in the Southern Kingdom I asked her point blank if Zoe was Simon’s mother, and she refused to answer me. When my mother revealed her little experiment with Zoe and Ash, I knew then who at least two of the children within her womb were: Rose and Simon. Only the offspring of my friends union could produce children with Zoe’s shielding capabilities and Ash’s time travel gift.

  But why had Zoe called my future self “Mom,” and Simon called Jace “Daddy”? How did Zoe and Ash fit, or in this case vanish from, the equation?

  “Skye!”

  Walsh’s voice finally broke through my self-contemplation.

  “What?” I asked slightly perturbed by the interruption of my thoughts.

  “Did they hurt you? Are you all right?” he asked with true concern.

  I felt sure he was only concerned about his own hide if I was hurt. My mother would have his head mounted on a pike if he allowed any harm to come to me.

  “I’m fine,” I said, tightening the sash of my robe around my waist.

  “Who were those people?”

  “They’re none of your concern. And don’t mention any of this to my mother.”

  “She’ll want to know about this.”

  “What exactly were my mother’s orders to you about me?”

  “To do whatever you needed and to keep you safe.”

  “Then I’m ordering you to keep your big mouth shut about what you just saw,” I snapped. “I’ll tell my mother when I’m ready for her to know.”

  I could see the uncertainty in Walsh’s eyes.

  “I don’t like keeping secrets from the Queen,” he finally said. “But she did order me to do what you wanted, so I’ll keep quiet.”

  “Good. Now get rid of Grant. He’s completely useless to me now. They drugged him with something, but he should wake up eventually.”

  Walsh walked over to Grant and lifted him easily over his shoulder.

  “Come back in an hour,” I told Walsh. “I’ll be ready for my tour of the camp then.”

  “I’ll be back,” Walsh promised as he walked out of my room with his burden.

  I closed the door behind him and leaned my back up against it. The uncertainty of Zoe and Ash’s future bothered me. Why would Jace and I become their children’s parents? Why didn’t they seem to have a place in the future?

  I decided to leave the future alone for a while and concentrate on the present. The first thing I needed was another bath. The bottoms of my feet were completely covered in dirt from my time traveling experience. It didn’t take me long to find Mary Anne, but Grace was nowhere in sight. Mary Anne told me Grace had gone back to serve my mother. After I instructed Mary Anne to prepare me another bath, I told her to bring me up some breakfast. For some reason, I seemed to be in a constant state of hunger.

  Walsh was punctual in coming back an hour later. I instructed him to drive through the camp until something of interest caught my eye.

  It was almost eight o’clock in the morning, and the humans were just creeping out of their dwellings to travel to their assigned jobs. Most of them were men since a large majority of the women were made to stay home while they were pregnant.

  “What type of work do people do here?” I asked.

  “Well, we have the normal operations of food production and general maintenance, but this camp also manufactures new Harvester chips and nanites the Queen designs. It’s probably one of the most important camps she has. I think that’s why she tends to invest so much time here.”

  “Does she allow many humans to become Harvesters?”

  “No, not many,” Walsh admitted. “But she holds a contest once a month to choose new Harvesters.”

  “What type of contest?”

  “Two families are chosen at random by the Queen. One member of each family is allowed to fight for the right of them all to become Harvesters.”

  “What happens to the losing family?”

  “Depends on whether or not we need organs at the time. If we do, we take them to the harvesting facility to be culled. If we don’t, we place them in a warehouse.”

  I knew for a human family either alternative meant death.

  “What is the contest exactly? A fight to the death?”

  “Not usually. The Queen changes it up sometimes, but normally it’s an obstacle course or a puzzle. Part of it tests who is the smartest, and part of it sees who is the strongest. Most
of the time the Queen throws in something the contestants usually don’t see coming.”

  “Do you know Freddy?” I asked, remembering all too well what Freddy considered entertainment for Harvesters.

  “Yes, I’ve heard about the tournaments he used to host in Alliance. Your mother is far more inventive than him. Plus, Freddy’s games were more to relieve boredom for the Harvesters there. I sure would hate to catch the Cain virus. I couldn’t imagine living trapped like an animal in a cage.”

  “What have you been told about the Cain virus?” I asked, remembering Wilford telling me my mother invented it.

  “I know those damn people fighting with Michael use it against us when they attack. Whoever they infect with it becomes very contagious. If you come into contact with someone who has it, you get it. That’s about as far as my knowledge goes though.”

  I made a mental note to ask my mother why she would invent such a sickness to ail her own creations and aid her sworn enemies. It didn’t make much sense to me, but I knew she would only do it for a good reason.

  “Take me to the harvesting facility. I’ve never been in one before.”

  Walsh drove to what looked like a large hospital. I remembered the harvesting facility in the camp I lived in with my parents was housed inside an old hospital also. But I was never allowed to go inside. Emma Blackwell was part of a group of people known as grief counselors who were allowed to go into the harvesting facilities and provide comfort to those who were scheduled to be harvested. Now that my mother had decided to store the humans in warehouses, I doubted such a position was needed anymore. The humans wouldn’t have the ability to feel anything much less grief.

  As we pulled into what used to be the emergency room entrance, a violent commotion was ensuing between a group of humans and Harvesters. The humans were being stunned into submission, but they still tried to fight the guards anyway. One female Harvester stood near the sliding glass doors to the hospital holding back a distraught girl no older than seven years old. She had blond hair put up in pigtails and was carrying a little threadbare teddy bear in her hands. The child was crying hysterically with her arms outstretched screaming something I couldn’t quite make out inside the car.

  I stepped out of the car and then realized she was calling out to her mother.

  “Mommy!” the girl screamed at the top of her lungs.

  “Please, don’t take her,” a woman begged from the front of the crowd. “She didn’t know it was wrong to go out. She was just trying to get her teddy bear.”

  “The rules are the rules,” the Harvester holding the little girl back said. “We can’t just let it slide because of her age.”

  “But she didn’t know what she was doing!” the mother screamed.

  “What’s going on here?” I asked, stepping up to the Harvester holding the child.

  “The girl was caught out this morning before curfew was over, ma’am,” the guard said, suddenly caught off kilter by my presence. “As you probably know, anyone caught out during curfew hours is sentenced to immediate harvesting.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of the rule,” I said, not needing a lowly guard to feel the need to instruct me about camp regulations.

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Day. I wasn’t sure,” the guard stammered, knowing I could have her life if I wanted it.

  I looked down at the sobbing little girl and knelt down beside her.

  “Why were you outside when you weren’t supposed to be?” I asked her.

  She looked up at me with her blue eyes shimmering with tears and held up her little teddy bear.

  “I had to get Oscar,” she whispered.

  I ran my hand over the bear’s head and tweaked one of its ears.

  “And where were your parents when you went outside?”

  “Sleeping,” the little girl replied.

  “We didn’t know she had gotten out,” the mother yelled past the guards holding her back.

  I stood and walked over to the woman. Everyone, human and Harvester, stopped fighting as I came to stand among them.

  “Do you know who I am?” I asked the mother.

  “Yes,” the woman answered, swallowing hard. “We were all told you would be coming and to do whatever you wanted.”

  I looked the woman up and down. Her hair was as blond as her daughter’s, and her belly protruded with the growth of another child.

  “Your little girl was chosen to become a breeder, right?” I asked, knowing a child of her age wouldn’t exist in the camp and be allowed to grow to adulthood if she hadn’t been one of the few lucky ones picked to carry on the line of her parents.

  “Yes, she was chosen.”

  “And yet you let her break a law which demands she be put to death?”

  “We didn’t think she knew how to get out of the house,” the woman cried.

  I looked back at the little girl and motioned for her to come closer to me. The guard holding her back relinquished her grip on the girl’s shoulders. The girl immediately ran to the awaiting arms of her mother.

  “Oh, Lucy,” the mother said as she hugged her daughter. “What were you thinking?”

  Lucy held up her bear. “I forgot Oscar all night long. He needed me.”

  The mother hugged her daughter close before looking back at me.

  “Thank you,” she said and turned to leave.

  “Wait,” I said.

  The woman turned back around.

  “I didn’t say there wouldn’t be a punishment.”

  “Oh.” The woman’s composure faltered. “I’m sorry. I thought you were letting Lucy go.”

  “I am.”

  “Then, I don’t understand.”

  “It seems to me you are the one at fault here. You should have kept a closer eye on your daughter if you love her as much as you profess. I’m giving you a choice. You can either hand your daughter back over or choose to take her place.”

  The humans around me gasped, but the Harvesters nodded in agreement with my decision.

  “There is no choice,” the woman said, handing her daughter’s hand to a man standing beside her. “Take me.”

  “No! Take me,” the man holding Lucy begged, presumably her father.

  “Let me go, Gavin,” the woman said. “You know it won’t be long before they come for me anyway. I’m almost too old to have any more babies. You need to stay and raise Lucy. Prepare her for her life as a breeder.”

  The man sobbed as he hugged his wife. The tears he shed seemed pointless to me. Only the woman was thinking logically. Her time was up. At least she had the nerve to face it with some sort of dignity.

  The guards seized the woman, dragging her away from her family and toward the hospital entrance.

  Lucy began screaming again for her mother, but her father picked her up and walked away as quickly as he could, knowing I could have both their lives in a second if I so chose.

  “I hate you!” the little girl yelled at me, tears of anguish streaming down her face. “I hate you!”

  I felt Walsh come to stand beside me.

  “Seemed like a fair trade to me,” he said nonchalantly. “Though I think your mother would have just harvested them all.”

  “We have to prepare for the future,” I told him. “She’ll make a good breeder one day. She has the strength to make it.”

  “Would you still like a tour of the facility?”

  “No,” I said. “I think I would rather go see my mother now. Do you know where she is?”

  “Yes, she’s still at her residence. She’s been keeping a close eye on Zoe’s progress. The babies are almost ready to be birthed.”

  “Take me there.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  After we pulled up to my mother’s mansion, I told Walsh he could leave. He seemed relieved by the order. I got the feeling most Harvesters feared my mother more than they adored her. In the grand scheme of things, it really didn’t matter which way they felt as long as they obeyed her every command and never asked questions.

&nbs
p; When I walked into the house, I heard someone singing. I followed the sound to the same room I had first seen Ash and Zoe in the night before. Ash was sitting on the chaise lounge with Zoe’s head lying in his lap with her eyes closed. Tenderly, Ash combed his fingers through her long curly locks and sang a lullaby I had often heard his mother sing to him, but the words were slightly changed:

  Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,

  Papa’s going to buy you a mockingbird.

  If that mockingbird won't sing,

  Papa’s going to buy you a diamond ring …

  “Do you think she’ll let us keep the babies if they don’t have powers like ours?” Zoe asked while Ash hummed the rest of the tune.

  “I don’t know,” he said, although I knew him well enough to know he was lying. He just didn’t want to upset Zoe. “I’m not sure what she’ll do.”

  “Maybe we can get Skye to help us.”

  “I don’t think Skye will. Not unless we can find a way to make her human again.”

  “What about the Cain virus? Do you think that would change her back?”

  “I don’t think that will work on her, Zo. She’s the cure, remember?”

  “Oh yeah,” Zoe sighed. “I seem to be forgetting a lot of things lately.”

  “Your hormones are all out of whack,” Ash said. “But don’t worry, you’re just temporarily senile.”

  Zoe’s eyes flew open, and she hit Ash on the arm. Ash just laughed.

  “He’s right,” I said, purposely interrupting their small, intimate moment by making my presence known as I stepped into the room. “Your elevated hormones are affecting your memory. Read about it in a book once.”

  “Skye!” Zoe tried to lift herself up but Ash made her stay still.

  “You know what Lucena said,” Ash scolded her gently. “You need to be still or the babies will come before they’re ready.”

  Zoe held out her hand to me beckoning me to come closer.

  I stayed as still as a statue.