The Complete Harvesters Series

by Luke R. Mitchell

  At least someone had had the good sense to break out the stun weapons.

  “Worst first day of school ever, Mr. Robot,” Jarek said as he turned down the next hallway and continued toward Michael’s room. “And where the hell are you, by the way?”

  “Almost there, sir.” Al sounded tense. “Navigation is… parametrically challenging at the moment.”

  “As in people are trying to kill you?”

  “Emphatically, sir.”

  “I’d tell you to try being inanimate, but”—Jarek turned into Michael’s hallway and spotted Alton Parker stalking his way, eyes shimmering faint red—“I might be needing you here, buddy. Nowish.”

  Jarek had one second to try to process how bad it would be for a raknoth to fall into mindless rage inside Resistance HQ before Johnny’s flaming red hair darted into sight behind Alton.

  “Take my pendant, you stubborn ass!” Johnny cried. “We can’t afford to—”

  Alton shook his head and said something Jarek couldn’t quite pick out.

  Johnny was saying something back and reaching for his neck when two wild-looking men hurtled out of a room they were passing and straight for them.

  To his credit, Johnny reacted with impressive speed and neatly pulled his attacker into some kind of hip throw that left the guy pinned and frothing on the ground.

  Alton, on the other hand, had closed his eyes in a silent snarl as his attacker crashed into him like a particularly big-headed puppy challenging a full-grown bear. The raknoth’s face twitched like he was fighting for control, then he reached out and, almost gently, shoved his maddened attacker to send him, airborne, back into the room he’d come from.

  “How ya doin’, Red?” Johnny called, still struggling to control his own berserker. “You still with us?”

  Alton opened his eyes, which were decidedly redder than they had been pre-ambush, and turned to Johnny right as another pair of Resistance troops scuttled into the hallway, weapons readied.

  “Oh, fuck!” one of them gasped, pointing his gun.

  “Don’t!”

  Jarek, Johnny, and the other Resistance soldier all yelled the word at almost the same time.

  None of them made a lick of difference.

  Two gunshots cracked down the hall. Alton jerked, then tilted his head back and gave a roar that shriveled bits of Jarek’s anatomy.

  Johnny backed away from Alton, slowly raising his hands. The guy he’d had pinned sprang to his feet and lunged for Alton, who apparently seemed like the most interesting thing in the hallway at the moment.

  He was sure as hell the most dangerous thing.

  Alton swatted his would-be challenger aside like an unwanted beach ball. The guy hit the wall with a sickening crunch and lay still.

  The shooter prepared to fire again, but his partner grabbed him and pulled him frantically around the corner, which to red-eyed, raging Alton must’ve looked something like a fleeing rabbit looks to a hungry wolf. He tensed to spring after them.

  “Shit,” Jarek muttered. Then, much louder, “Hey, Parker!”

  Alton showed a moment’s hesitation, but didn’t turn.

  Only one thing to do, then.

  “Sorry about this, buddy,” Jarek called, raising his gun.

  Johnny sharply shook his head at Jarek, wide-eyed.

  Jarek sighted on Alton’s back and pulled the trigger.

  Alton whipped around, all of his red-eyed fury settling firmly on Jarek, and charged with a resonant roar.

  Jarek backpedaled, two options cloying for place in his mind, which couldn’t seem to get beyond screaming that there was a pissed off raknoth helling down the hallway toward his pathetic meat-sack form.

  Run or dodge, or run or dodge, or—Shit!

  Alton closed faster than seemed physically possible. Jarek threw himself to the side. Not enough. Not fast enough. Alton reached out a clawed hand, and—

  Something dark flashed past Jarek and slammed into Alton in a full-on tackle.

  Fela.

  “Al, you magnificent bastard!” Jarek cried.

  Alton staggered backward, wrestling with the suit, which had wrapped its arms firmly around his waist. Or maybe not that firmly.

  Al had only driven Alton back a few feet before the raknoth got his balance back.

  “Uh-oh,” Al said.

  Then Alton pivoted and chucked Fela into the wall.

  Jarek needed to do something—needed to buy a few seconds to let him suit up.

  But before he could so much as think the word distraction, Alton whirled and advanced on him.

  “Run, sir!” Al cried, scrambling Fela back to her feet.

  There wasn’t time for that.

  Jarek twisted under Alton’s wild grab and nearly cried out at the brush of Alton’s arm on the top of his head. One misstep, one hesitation, and—

  Alton twisted after him with a heavy backhand, and Jarek threw himself backward.

  He hit the floor hard, unforgiving concrete slapping the air from his lungs, and kicked to scoot away. Alton stalked after him like a primitive predator, basking in the kill to come.

  Jarek raised his gun, knowing it was futile.

  Alton dove forward.

  Halfway to Jarek, something caught the raknoth in an invisible embrace and held him there, floating in midair. Then that something slammed Alton into the wall hard enough to pulverize half the cinder blocks he struck.

  He roared once, looking furious, but his struggles seemed to be weakening.

  Jarek tilted his head back and caught an upside-down view of Rachel striding toward them, one hand gripping her staff and the other outstretched toward Alton.

  She looked pissed—more pissed than Jarek could remember ever seeing her—and something told him it wasn’t solely because Alton had been about to enjoy a fine Jarek tar tar.

  At least Alton seemed to be calming down now, for whatever miraculous reason. He’d ceased his struggles completely when Jarek glanced back, and the raknoth fire was draining from his eyes.

  Rachel’s boots clicked closer until Jarek was staring along the lovely curve of her leg and up to the eyes that were somehow exuding more fire than Alton’s. She spared him the briefest of glances. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “What does it look like?” Jarek said between pants. “I’m here to rescue you.”

  7

  Jarek had never been a fan of scavenging. God knew he’d done plenty of it in the years following the Catastrophe. It had been a necessity to survive. The best thing he’d ever found, though, hadn’t been food. Not by a long shot. That honor almost certainly went to the storage drive he’d happened across camping out in an abandoned apartment one night. More accurately, it went to the contents of that drive.

  Movies. Thousands of them, a cinematic sampler of the century’s works.

  Sure, movies weren’t much use to a starving man. But to a fed man whose social circle had pretty much consisted of Al, an occasional visit with Pryce, and whatever band of marauders or mercenaries happened to be trying to kill him that week?

  That drive had been worth a thousand cheeseburgers.

  On one of the countless nights he’d spent in the following years lounging in his ship and watching his way through the better part of two thousand movies, he’d happened across a movie called 28 Days Later. The sight of the title had brought back memories of his dad. He couldn’t even remember why at first, but eventually it came to him. He’d wanted to see it back in the day, before the bombs fell. Somehow, he’d seen an ad somewhere and had set to work bugging his dad to take him.

  His dad, of course, had calmly explained that the movie wasn’t age-appropriate for Jarek and that, besides, the film was just a remake of an old classic and probably an enormous pile of flashy crap anyways. The one from the turn of the century, his dad had said, that was the one Jarek would have to watch—in a few years, maybe.

  Remembering that little snippet of his dad, Jarek had been struck by one of those sudden, mournful pangs
of loss that were routine and yet always unexpected. He’d breathed a heavy sigh. And then he’d watched the crap out of that movie.

  Whether or not it stood up to the standard of the one from the early 2000s, Jarek couldn’t have said. Regardless, it was thanks to 28 Days Later that he had some loose framework to classify what in the ever-living hell had just swept through Resistance HQ.

  “That,” he said, “was some straight up rage virus shit right there.”

  Rachel frowned up at him from Michael’s bedside, clearly not following. Behind her, Lea looked a bit pale.

  He didn’t blame her.

  “That wasn’t a virus,” Rachel said. “It was—”

  “Messengers,” Jarek finished. “Yeah, I put that part together. I’m just saying—never mind. Not important.”

  “Are they done out there?” Rachel asked, glancing back at Michael in clear concern—probably more for whatever was happening in his head than what might happen to his body.

  Jarek poked his head out the door, eternally grateful to be back in Fela’s sturdy embrace again. Across the hallway, Alton glanced both directions and gave Jarek a small nod.

  Jarek listened with Fela’s auditory sensors and came to the same conclusion as Alton settled back into his remorseful raknoth pose.

  The impromptu rage storm seemed to have abated, and HQ was beginning to pick up the broken, or bitten, pieces.

  “All clear,” Jarek said.

  Which probably meant now might be a good time for Alton to fill them in on what the shit had just happened.

  Jarek had some vague understanding, of course. Something—presumably the rakul—had sent some violently bad vibes their way, apparently using messengers, and people had started trying to kill each other. What was less clear was… well, pretty much everything else.

  Did this attack mean the rakul were close? Could they do it again? Had the event been local or worldwide? All those and a thousand more like them.

  At least most of their cloaking glyphs seemed to have held up to the messenger juju. Well, except for Michael’s, but that was a separate issue as far as Jarek knew.

  Many of the Resistance soldiers’ minds had been shielded behind glyphs much like Jarek’s, but not all of them. Apparently, the glyphing device the Resistance had procured from god knew where had been lost, destroyed, or maybe even stolen during Golga’s attack a few weeks prior.

  Whichever it was, now that HQ had dropped its game of flying under the radar, there were plenty of new faces around—faces that hadn’t been properly warded against the potential for being telepathically goaded into completely losing their shit.

  As far as they’d pieced together, it had mostly been those ones who’d gone promptly and utterly ape shit crazy fifteen minutes ago. Michael, on the other hand, hadn’t stayed conscious to rage out like the others, but he had been having the worst seizure Jarek had seen when Rachel peeled Jarek’s nearly-flattened ass off the floor and swept him into the room.

  Thankfully, with an army of trained, unaffected soldiers around, coming together and containing the ragers had happened quickly and effectively enough. That hadn’t made the raving wild people any less disturbing, though. Bullets and blades and mean-hearted thugs, Jarek could handle all day long. Mindless human rage puppets that made rabid dogs look like well-mannered socialites, though?

  Apparently that one had direct access to his freaky button.

  Who knew?

  Luckily, they hadn’t had to deal with any more berserkers after Rachel had shown up. None but Alton, that was, though the raknoth hadn’t actually put up any more of a fight after Rachel’s first big girl body slam.

  In fact, even speaking as the one who’d nearly been eaten, Jarek thought Rachel had been a bit extreme in how brutally she’d contained Alton—how hesitant she’d been to release him when his sense returned, how savagely she’d told him to stay the hell out of Michael’s room once she finally had.

  On some level, and probably not a particularly deep one, if Jarek’s intuition was worth much, Rachel had wanted to kill Alton in that hallway. And whether it was their alliance or good old reason and morality that had guided her hand in pulling it back together, Jarek thought it was safe to say the urge hadn’t simply come from nowhere.

  Something was going on between her and Alton. He was sure of it now. But whatever it was, he doubted he’d be helping anyone by interjecting himself—at least not before they’d collected themselves and processed this lovely new crap storm.

  “So you wanna tell us what that was all about?” Jarek asked Alton when it became clear no one was readily going to speak.

  Alton didn’t look up. “From what I gathered, there’s at least one Kul nearby—most likely Gada—and he wanted to let us know he’s not very happy.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “How nearby?” Rachel called from the room. “And how the hell strong are these things that they can remotely control that many people and you all at once?”

  “Clearly quite strong,” Alton said. “Now that I know to expect it, I should be able to maintain control if it happens again, but… Well, it’s lucky you stepped in when you did, Rachel.”

  Rachel somehow managed to convey distrust, displeasure, and maybe a touch of loathing all in one monosyllabic grunt. For Jarek’s part, he didn’t think Alton sounded like a man—or a raknoth, rather—blowing smoke up their tailpipes, but it wasn’t like he had any real insight into the telepathic mind games.

  “As for distance,” Alton continued after a pause, “I might wager a day’s travel out, but it would only be a wild guess.”

  A buzz from Lea’s direction drew Jarek’s attention.

  “The commanders want us in the council chamber,” she said.

  Alton glanced up at them and over at Johnny. “Perhaps we should go find Haldin and Elise.”

  “Actually,” Lea said, “I think they’ll want to hear what you have to say about…”

  She trailed off with a helpless wave of her hand, apparently unsure exactly what to name the ethereal golden rage storm that had just swept the base off its sound feet.

  Johnny tapped at his comm. “Sounds like Hal and Elise are almost here anyway. They just got caught up in the, uh… thing.”

  “The furor,” Alton said.

  “Yeah, right,” Johnny said. “That.”

  “Did he just say furor?” Jarek asked, trading a bemused look with Rachel. Or trying to.

  She didn’t look so bemused. “That’s what you’re choosing to take away from all of this?”

  Before he could say anything, Lea lightly cleared her throat.

  “We should probably all get over there.”

  “We’ll find Hal and Elise and meet you guys there,” Johnny called in from the hallway.

  Alton didn’t argue or give anything more than one last expressionless look at Rachel before he turned and fell in with an unusually apprehensive-looking Johnny.

  “Rache?” came Lea’s voice from behind, hesitant.

  Rachel plunked her staff to the ground harder than necessary and used it to hoist herself up from the foot of Michael’s bed. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

  Jarek teetered with the words on his tongue.

  He could just let all this go and move along. That was absolutely the easy play here. But he couldn’t quite shake the feeling that something had gone awry for Rachel, something that seemed more and more like it might sabotage everything they’d been fighting for. Something that seemed to already be doing that to whatever existed between the two of them.

  Now wasn’t exactly an ideal time, but when rage parties—or furors or whatever the hell anyone wanted to call them—and super monsters could drop down on their heads without a moment’s warning, it seemed prudent to apply some you take what you can get philosophy to these things.

  He fixed Rachel with a serious look. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  At the edge of his vision, Lea glanced back and forth between them. “I’ll, uh, see
you guys over there?”

  Rachel held Jarek’s gaze for a stretch, then finally turned to Lea and gave a short nod.

  Once Rachel had broken the staring contest, Jarek did the same. “Wouldn’t miss it for a hole in my head.”

  “Yeah…” Lea looked vaguely uncomfortable, as if she could smell a fight brewing in the air, but, after only a small hesitation, she nodded and pushed past them, only stopping to touch Michael’s peacefully sleeping shoulder. “They’ll be starting soon,” she said at the door.

  Then Lea was gone, and Rachel and Jarek were alone—Rachel making a quiet point of keeping her attention directed to her sleeping brother, and Jarek taking an acute refresher course on just how loaded and uncomfortable silence between two people could be.

  But why so uncomfortable?

  “What is it?” Rachel finally said, her voice quiet but decidedly not soft. When she looked up at him, her eyes weren’t either. “What do you want?”

  Ah. Right. That was why.

  Some uncharacteristically wise portion of his mind nipped the retaliatory words bubbling up in his chest. He let the heat out as a steadying breath instead.

  “I wanna know how you’re doing.” He waved an encompassing hand. “With all of this. These past couple weeks… I know it can’t be easy.”

  “Do you?”

  Was that accusation in her eyes?

  “It’s hard to tell what with all the ‘Stumpy’ this and the ‘buddy’ that.” She gave her head a sharp shake, her breathing clearly elevated now. “Alton would have killed you if I hadn’t stopped him. And for all I can see, you’re not even pissed about it.”

  Yep. Definitely accusation, mixed with a healthy dose of scolding.

  “I had it under control,” he said, more by reflex than anything else. “And yeah, I’m not happy at having to play rabbit to Alton’s bloodhound, but—shit, I don’t know! I don’t understand what’s happening in your heads. He says he can control it now that he knows to be on guard, I can’t know if that’s bullshit or not. So talk to me, Goldilocks. Tell us what’s going on. Tell me what you know that I don’t.”

  She skewered him on the end of a tight-lipped glare. “What I know is that we crawled into bed with monsters. They’re not your friends, Jarek. No matter how much you want them to be.”