Harvester of Light Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by S. J. West

  When we stepped through the door, I came to a complete stop.

  This floor had been cleared of walls to make one large open space. Row after row of babies in clear acrylic bassinets on stainless steel roll away carts filled the floor space. Their cries echoed within the cavernous space and my heart sank.

  How the hell was I supposed to find Rose in the sea of babies before me?

  There were three Harvesters, one male and two females, in pink scrubs walking up and down the aisles separating the infants. When we entered the room, their eyes homed in on us immediately.

  “Who are you?” one of the females demanded, striding up to us, seeming intent to make us leave.

  “Where is the baby they just brought in here?” I asked, assuming Rose couldn’t have been here very long and was probably one of the few new arrivals to the baby farm.

  “What business is it of yours?” the woman demanded, daring in her arrogance to stand in front of me.

  I tossed my stun baton to Lux who immediately grabbed it, now holding one in each hand. She stood with them both outstretched in front of her to ward off any attempt by the others to come closer as they stood and cautiously watched the proceedings.

  “I’m going to ask you one more time,” I said to the woman, not even attempting to hold in my rage. “Where is the baby that was just brought in here?”

  I watched as the woman’s eyes darted between me and Lux, not as confident as she once was with my show of no fear.

  “Are you the reason why the alarms went off a few minutes ago?” the woman asked me.

  I reached out and grabbed the woman by the throat with one hand, spun around, and pinned her to the wall behind me.

  “Where is my daughter?” I screamed at her, squeezing her throat and then forcing myself to let it go just enough for the woman to speak.

  I heard the running of feet across the cement floor and knew I didn’t have much time before the other two Harvesters were on me. Lux was brave and stood her ground, but she wasn’t any match for them, even with two stun batons to fend them off with.

  Whether subconsciously or not, the woman looked off to the left, and I knew that’s where Rose was.

  I broke the woman’s neck, letting her body fall to the floor and turned to meet my two new attackers.

  “Lux!” I called, holding out both my hands.

  She immediately tossed the batons to me, knowing I would be able to do more damage with them than she could.

  I kept my back toward the wall as I faced the man and woman approaching me. The man was the most arrogant and just came barreling at me with his shoulders hunched like he was going to tackle me. I almost laughed at his stupidity. All I had to do was step out of the way right before he reached me, and he did the rest to himself by plowing his head against the cinder block wall at my back, knocking himself unconscious.

  The woman was more cautious, smarter. She stopped halfway to me and looked me up and down.

  “What are you?” she asked me. “You have our strength and agility, but you act like a human.”

  “I am human,” I told her. “You’re human too. You’ve simply been brainwashed to think you’re something different, something more.”

  “I am more. I’m immortal.”

  “No,” I told her, actually feeling pity that she thought herself a god. “You can die just like everyone else. It just takes a little more effort to kill you.”

  The woman looked me up and down one more time before she turned her back to me and walked away.

  “Take the child,” she said over her shoulder, putting as much distance between us as she could. “One won’t make a difference. We have others to replace her with.”

  I let myself take a moment to really look at the room full of babies, and I realized she was absolutely right. The Harvesters would rape this world of its future leaders. The babies in this room were just a small fraction of the lives they would destroy in their quest for immortality. I had no way to save them all, but I knew I could save at least one of them.

  Lux and I ran over to the group of babies where Rose was supposed to be. There had to be at least a hundred babies just in this group alone. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the cries. I heard her clearly then. It was a cry I had become intimately familiar with in the past couple of months. I opened my eyes and ran up the aisle I was standing in until I found my Rose.

  She was crying for all she was worth as if knowing it would draw me to her. I picked her up and her cries ceased almost immediately. Our eyes met, and I felt my heart swell with not only a need to protect her but total love, not because she would become a savior for the world one day, but because she was my daughter. I knew in that moment, without a shadow of a doubt, that I would die for her if it ever came to that because I loved her—not because it would be expected.

  “Come on,” Lux said, heading back toward the exit. “We need to get out of here before they send reinforcements.”

  “Wait,” I said, walking up to Lux and handing Rose to her. “I need my hands free to fight off whatever we run into. You keep her safe, no matter what. If we get in a situation I don’t think I can handle and I tell you to leave, you run as fast as you can with her. Understand?”

  Lux nodded. “I will. I’ll protect her.”

  “Let’s go then.”

  We went back to the stairwell and made it to the third floor before we saw them. An unending stream of Harvesters flowed through the door leading from the first floor, racing up the stairs toward us. They were armed to the teeth with guns.

  “Back,” I told Lux, turning around and pushing her back up the stairs. “There are too many of them.”

  We went up the stairs until we reached the fifth floor again. The female Harvester was nowhere to be seen now. I assumed she didn’t want to be involved in the fight that was heading her way. I scanned the room praying there was another exit off the floor. I knew if we were forced to go to the roof we were, in effect, screwed. There was nowhere to go but down from there. I would survive the fall, but Rose and Lux wouldn’t. There was no escape unless I could take both of them with me.

  In the wall to the right, there was another door.

  “Over there,” I said to Lux, pointing to the door.

  Before we even made it halfway there, the door we were heading toward burst open and a line of Harvesters flowed into the room. There were at least twenty of them and I had to assume about the same number was coming up the stairwell behind us. We were trapped.

  Corporal Dax came out to the forefront of the group.

  “You have nowhere else to go,” he said. “You can either come with us quietly or we can kill you where you stand.”

  “We’re dead either way,” I told him, seeing no means of escape.

  “True, but the baby will live.”

  “Until she’s old enough for you to harvest her organs,” I replied. “I would rather have her die now than live that type of life.”

  “Then you leave me no choice.” Corporal Dax turned to face the men behind him. “Open fire.”

  As the Harvesters lifted their guns and aimed, I wrapped Lux, who was still holding Rose, in my arms and turned them away from the firing squad, letting my back be their only target. I felt the first spray of bullets pierce my back like the tips of ice picks. A pool of blood filled my mouth, and I couldn’t prevent coughing it out, spraying the pink blanket Rose was wrapped in.

  I closed my eyes and prayed for a miracle.

  The firing continued, but for some reason I didn’t feel the bullets strike me. How were they missing me?

  I opened my eyes and found us surrounded by a protective shield just like the one Zoe used to make. I looked around, half expecting to see my friend standing somewhere close by but only saw Harvesters still firing at us. Their bullets ricocheted off the dome, causing an array of cascading light to dance where they hit the shield.

  “What is that?” Lux asked, staring at the shield protecting us, completely dumbfounded by its sudden appe
arance.

  I looked down at Rose who was looking at me with a seriousness a four month old just shouldn’t have.

  I knew then she was the one who had made the shield. She made it to protect me. If she could make a shield. …

  “Daddy,” I said, a trickle of blood sliding out of the left corner of my mouth. “Take us to Daddy, Rose.”

  The room melted away from us, and I held my breath waiting to see when and where we would end up.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The space around us coalesced back into being, but we were only met by darkness.

  “What the hell just happened?” Lux asked, shaking slightly in my arms. “Where are we? Why isn’t there any light?”

  I didn’t answer her, mostly because I was just trying to concentrate on my bullet wounds and heal them before I tried to figure out where we were.

  Healing my own wounds was simply a matter of thinking about them now. Within in a matter of seconds, I felt whole again. I let go of Lux and stood to my full height, no longer having to completely shield her and Rose with my body.

  “I’m not sure,” I finally answered, turning my head to look around us but not being able to see anything—only pitch black.

  I didn’t have to close my eyes to concentrate on the sounds in the room because it was already so dark. I just listened and immediately heard the ragged breathing of a man coming from somewhere off to the right of me.

  “Stay here,” I told Lux, walking in the direction of the breathing.

  I held my hands out in front of me to prevent colliding with objects I couldn’t see but ended up banging my shins against something hard and cursing softly. I reached down with my hands and found Jace.

  I felt around and found that he was lying on a cot of some sort.

  “Jace?” I called softly, gliding my hands up his neck and cupping his face between my hands.

  He didn’t answer, but, honestly, I was just happy to find him alive. I knew he was injured somewhere because the metallic scent of blood surrounded him.

  I ran the tips of my fingers across his face to see if I felt any physical evidence of damage. Finding none there, I continued my exploration down his neck and along the length of his arms. It wasn’t until I touched his chest that I found them. Deep gashes laced his torso in a crisscross pattern. The sticky feel of congealed blood coated the tips of my fingers. I cursed under my breath, knowing without a shadow of a doubt who gave the order to torture Jace. Or did she have the guts to do it herself? I had a hard time believing the Queen would dirty her hands with such a menial task.

  I laid the flat of my palms on his torso and began to heal his wounds while my hatred of the Queen simmered just below the surface, threatening to blind me with rage. Only Rose’s cry was able to bring me out of the dark place I felt my soul slipping into.

  “Is she okay?” I asked Lux.

  “I think she just wants you,” Lux answered. “But hell if I know for sure. I can’t see shit.”

  “I’ll look for a door in a minute,” I told her, “to get some light in here. Jace needs to be healed first.”

  “I take it Jace is the baby daddy?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, are you going to tell me where we are exactly? And how the hell we got here?” Lux asked through the darkness.

  “We’re back in my time line,” I told her. “Your future.”

  Lux was completely silent. I decided to go ahead and tell her the rest so she could get over her shock all at once.

  “Rose has the ability to time jump. That’s how we got here.”

  I ran my hands up and down Jace’s torso just to double check that his wounds were indeed healed.

  I found the edge of the sheet on the cot and wiped my hands clean of his blood.

  Lux remained silent.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her, standing with my arms outstretched and walking until I found a wall of the room we were in.

  “No,” Lux admitted, “not really.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told her, gliding my right hand against the wall as I walked around trying to find a door, but all I felt was a rough cement wall against the palm of my hand. “I never intended for you to come with us. But there just wasn’t any other way to escape.”

  “So that shield thing,” Lux said hesitantly. “Was that Rose too?”

  “Yes. She and her twin brother inherited the powers their parents have.”

  “Their parents? So you’re not Rose’s real mother?”

  “No,” I said, not sure Lux was ready to hear who Rose’s birth mother actually was. I feared it might completely overload her system.

  “Is Jace their real father?”

  “Not the one they share a genetic background with. Their biological father is a friend of mine named Ash.”

  “I’m getting really confused,” Lux admitted with a resigned sigh. “Maybe I should just get used to the idea that I’m in the future first.”

  “Might be a good idea,” I agreed, feeling my right leg hit the edge of the cot Jace was lying in and knowing there wasn’t a door to the room, at least not one I could feel.

  I was just about to tell Lux I couldn’t find the door when I heard footsteps walk along the ceiling of the room. There was a rattle of metal, and a trapdoor in the ceiling opened, bathing us in the fluorescent light filling the room above.

  I saw the Queen’s head appear over the square opening and peer down at us.

  “Well, well,” she said, a pleased smile appearing on her face, “this is certainly an unexpected surprise.”

  I chose to ignore her and used the now available light to visually examine Jace’s body since I had no way of knowing how long we would have it. He was still unconscious, but it looked like I had indeed healed all his wounds. I caressed his face and silently begged him to wake up soon.

  I looked back up at the Queen.

  “So, are you going to let us out or are you just going to stand there and gloat?” I asked.

  “I think I’ll gloat for a little while,” she answered. “Maybe you’ll come to realize being by my side is better than trying to fight against me. It might do you some good to stay down there for a while longer, daughter.”

  I heard Lux’s sharp intake of breath at this revelation, which drew the Queen’s attention away from me and to her.

  “And who are you?”

  “Someone whose family you killed, you evil bitch,” Lux replied, showing no fear of the Queen.

  “Doesn’t really narrow it down for me, dear,” the Queen replied with a raised eyebrow, unconcerned. “I’ve killed millions of families. I seriously doubt yours was of any consequence to me.”

  The Queen immediately dismissed Lux from her mind and looked back at me.

  “Where’s Simon?” I demanded.

  “Safe,” the Queen replied smugly, “for the moment anyway. Ash really shouldn’t have brought you back just yet.”

  “Why?” I asked, not correcting the Queen and telling her that it was in fact Rose who had time jumped us.

  “It’s nothing you need to worry about,” the Queen said with a confidence I could see she didn’t wholeheartedly feel. “Just a little rebellion that we’ll have under control soon enough. And don’t worry, Skye. I promise you I will find a way to make you a true Harvester again. It’s only a matter of time. I’ll come back for you once things are back under control.”

  The Queen was just about to close the trapdoor when I asked, “Is this what your grandmother did to you? Leave you in a cement box with no light?”

  Queen Lucena hesitated and looked back down at me. She reached into the side pocket of the dress she wore and threw something down to me.

  I snatched it out of the air. It was a penlight.

  “There,” she said, “now you have light. There’s no way you can escape, so don’t even try. Like I said, I’ll come back for you after we deal with the problem up here. It won’t be long now, Skye. I will have you back by my side. I promise you that.”

  The Qu
een closed the trapdoor, and I clicked the light on. It didn’t provide much illumination, but it was better than pitch black darkness.

  Lux walked up to me and handed Rose over. My daughter immediately stopped crying.

  “Figured she just wanted you,” Lux said.

  I handed her the penlight to hold while I sat down on the cot next to Jace, holding Rose in my arm.

  “So,” Lux said, “you’re Queen Bitch’s daughter? How is that possible?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Lux sat down on the cold cement floor with her legs crossed.

  “I’m all ears,” she said. “I really need to know what the hell is going on here, Skye. I feel like I’m Dorothy and I’ve just stepped into a whacked out version of Oz.”

  I proceeded to tell Lux how Queen Lucena Day came to be my mother.

  “You know that’s screwed up, right?” Lux asked with a shake of her head. “She’s like your mother and your aunt all at the same time.”

  “I know.”

  “But it’s not like it’s your fault, you know,” Lux said. “Your parents should have known better than to trust someone as nuts as her.”

  “I think they were just desperate to have a child and Lucena was the best fertility doctor around. I doubt my parents would have gone to her if they had known what she was truly capable of.”

  “So, she’s the reason you have the power to heal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well … that’s not so bad. I mean you can use that for good at least.”

  The ground beneath us shook like an earthquake tremor.

  “What was that?” Lux asked, quickly standing to her feet.

  “I’m not sure, but I would have to guess it has something to do with the fighting the Queen was talking about.”

  “What the hell is happening out there to make the ground shake like that though?”

  I shook my head and held Rose even closer to me.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “So who’s left to fight her here in the future?”

  It was a good question. Michael’s group had pretty much been wiped out. There were humans here at the Roanoke camp, but surely they hadn’t had time to coordinate another large scale attack so soon after the last one. Plus, I felt sure the Queen would have kept a close eye on them after the last uprising.