by S. J. West
“I took your eggs. Now I have the genetic material I need to produce bodies when we need new organs.”
I wrapped my arms around my abdomen as if I could protect what had already been lost.
“You took … my eggs?”
“Every woman is born with a set number of eggs in her body,” Lucena said, like I was her pupil and she the teacher. “There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.5 million of them. So, yes I harvested your eggs. We’ll need them eventually, especially now that your mother has so little left to give.”
“You keep saying ‘we.’ Who is ‘we’?”
“You and I, of course. Didn’t I make that clear?”
I stood to my feet.
“No, you didn’t. Why would I need organs unless …” I faltered, unable to finish my train of thought out loud because the answer was too horrible to acknowledge.
“Unless?” Lucena prodded, urging me to voice my own conclusion.
“Unless you intend to make me a Harvester too.”
Lucena smiled. “I’ve waited so long for you to join me, Skye. You can’t imagine how desolate an eternity alone can be when you’re faced with it.”
“But you’re not alone,” I argued, trying to find a loophole that would free me of my fate. “You have thousands of Harvesters at your beck and call.”
“There’s nothing like having your own flesh and blood by your side though.” Lucena sounded almost wistful. “If I had known about the sterilization side effect, I would have had my own eggs frozen. But now we have your eggs, so we don’t have to worry about organs anymore.”
She sounded so happy, so pleased with herself like she was doing me a favor.
“I will not become like you,” I said, clearly enunciating each word to make sure she heard me. “I will not become a monster.”
“You will become what I say you become.” Her head lifted a notch higher. “I am your mother and your queen. You will do whatever I want and thank me for it later.”
I didn’t realize until that very moment just how crazy Lucena Day was. To actually hear her call herself queen of a wasted world sounded ridiculous. She was completely delusional and completely insane if she thought I would ever thank her for making me a Harvester. I knew then there would be no reasoning with her. You can’t have a rational conversation with a crazy person.
“Where are Ash and Zoe?” I asked, deciding to change the linear progression of our conversation with a tangent. Plus, it was something I desperately needed to know in order to formulate an escape plan. Leaving them behind was not an option.
“They’re both being taken care of,” Lucena said, her eyes shifting away from me suspiciously.
“What does that mean exactly?” With Lucena, I knew her definition of “care” clashed with mine.
Lucena looked back at me and tilted her head toward the doors. “Come with me to my other lab. You can see them for yourself.”
Just as we were about to leave, Jace rushed into the room, flushed and out of breath like he had been running for a while. His eyes were drawn to me first and then to my mother still floating inside the glass tube. I knew from the look of regret in his eyes he had hoped to spare me from seeing this particular horror.
“Are you all right?” he asked, coming to stand in front of me.
“The pain isn’t as bad now,” I answered.
“That’s not all I meant,” he said, his eyes glancing behind me.
“I’ll be okay.” I reached for one of his hands, finally finding my balance with him by my side.
“I was just about to show Skye our little project,” Lucena said to Jace.
“Can’t she have some time to rest first?” he implored. “She isn’t feeling well.”
“No,” I said quickly. “I need to know what’s going on.”
Lucena held her hand out in my direction. “See,” she said to Jace. “I told you she was resilient, just like her mother.”
Jace tightened his hold on my hand and looked down at me.
“Everything will be all right,” his words said, even if his eyes said the complete opposite.
I nodded, hoping he still had the power to see into my future because I needed to believe in something good at that moment.
Lucena led us down a corridor to a set of steps, which led to another level below the basement.
“We built this laboratory when Jace was a toddler,” she explained to me. “He was always finding a way out of the other lab.”
“I’m sorry I was such a rebellious child, my Queen,” Jace said, sounding truly humble and apologetic.
I looked at him silently asking him what he was doing. Why did he sound like an obedient Harvester?
He looked at me with a warning in his eyes and an almost imperceptible shake of his head before returning his attention back to Lucena.
“It’s all right, Jace. You came around in the end thanks to my daughter.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I blurted out.
Lucena stopped and turned around to face me. “His love for you has made him quite the loyal soldier for me. He wants to keep you safe, and he knows I’m the best person to make sure you are.”
“But that’s a lie,” I said, placing a hand on my abdomen. “You took away my chance of ever having children. How can you say you’ve kept me safe?”
“She did what?” Jace asked.
“Oh, please,” Lucena said, rolling her eyes at Jace. “You knew I planned to make Skye a Harvester when I brought her here. I took her eggs to protect them. If it wasn’t for me, the two of you might not ever have children.”
Jace’s whole body became rigid, like he might explode with anger.
“How can I have a child?” I asked, hoping to give Jace enough time to calm down. We needed to stay calm in order to find a way out of Lucena’s house of horrors. “You took that choice away from me.”
“We’ll find you a suitable surrogate,” Lucena said offhandedly, like it was the most obvious solution in the world. “A human can carry however many babies you want. Did you honestly think I would deprive my own daughter from the joy of having children of her own?”
I stared at Lucena, trying to make sense of the woman in front of me. In her own twisted way, she seemed to think everything she had done was completely logical when it was completely insane.
“But I thought the children were going to be used for their organs?”
Lucena let out a harsh laugh. “Not the ones you want to have with Jace! I’m not that barbaric, Skye. The ones we use solely for their organs will be put into a vegetative state as soon as they’re born and grown inside a growth tube like the one your mother is in.”
Lucena shook her head like she couldn’t believe I thought so little of her. “Come along. We can discuss the details after your conversion. Everyone comes out of it … differently. You might not even want children afterwards.”
I looked up at Jace and saw the murderous look on his face. I tightened my hold on his hand, forcing him to look down at me. I saw the deadly promise in his eyes and slowly shook my head.
“Someday,” I whispered.
“Yes, yes, someday the two of you can have all the babies your little hearts desire,” Lucena said, continuing to walk down the corridor without turning around. “It’s really not that big of a deal.”
I was thankful for Lucena’s narcissism. She would never think to believe Jace wanted to kill her for what she had done to me. In her mind, she had bestowed me with a great gift.
The hatred on Jace’s face didn’t ebb away. I wasn’t sure I could hold him back from trying to kill Lucena, and I wasn’t completely convinced I wanted to stop him. But I didn’t know what the consequences of her death would be. If I knew Lucena at all, her death would cause unknown repercussions. There had to be a reason she was still alive and able to control the Harvesters so completely. As far as I knew, none of them ever questioned an order she gave. Yet, they all had similar powers. They were her equals in a sense. What hold did she have over them? A
nd if we broke that hold, what would happen?
I needed more information, and the only way to do that was to play along with what she wanted.
But right now, I needed to get Jace’s anger under control before he did something we would later regret.
I stood on the tips of my toes and kissed him. I felt him resist it at first, but he soon melted under my touch. His anger seemed to diffuse as my lips played against his.
“I need you,” I whispered against his lips, hoping he understood I would need his help to escape Lucena’s control. A rash mistake on his part could kill us all.
“My, my, I suppose I really should give the two of you some time to yourselves after such a long separation,” Lucena said from the other end of the hallway, watching us.
I knew she would be able to hear us even from that distance with her enhanced hearing. It was one reason I had tried to be cryptic with what I said to Jace.
I took hold of Jace’s hand again as we continued to walk down the corridor together to see what other horrors Lucena had waiting for us.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The corridor of the subbasement was sterile in appearance and smell. The stench of freshly bleached floors filled the air around us. The walls and ceiling were painted white, and a white tiled floor lay beneath our feet. Recessed lights made the hallway blinding with their brightness reflected against all the white.
A series of steel doors with touchpad locks at their center ran along the length of each wall.
“This is where we keep the test subjects,” Lucena said, indicating the doors as she walked down the hallway in front of us. “We have to keep them locked up until their conversion into Harvesters is complete.”
“What are you testing them for?” I asked.
Lucena stopped and turned toward us. “They’re the ones Jace has been rounding up for me. They’re just like you. They each have certain special abilities.”
“That night by the barrier you said you gave Jace the ability to use my DNA coding to give him precognition to find me. Is that how you found the others? Did you use their genetic code?”
Lucena smiled, pleased by my own deduction. “Yes.”
“But how could you have the gene sequence of complete strangers?”
“They aren’t strangers to me.” Lucena cocked her head like she thought I should have figured this part out on my own by now. “I helped bring them into this world. If it wasn’t for me, they wouldn’t exist anyway. So, if you think about it, their lives have always belonged to me.”
Then I understood. “They’re all from your fertility clinic?”
“Yes, their parents came to me for help.”
“What did you do to us?” I asked. “How did you give us our abilities?”
“I didn’t give you anything,” Lucena replied. “I simply helped you all unlock your potential.”
“But how? And why?”
“A long time ago, I found a set of inactive genes in the human genome, which were unique in each person I tested. I designed a set of nanites that were supposed to activate those genes, but I ended up having to place them inside the egg before fertilization so they could be incorporated directly into the chromosomal DNA during replication. Unfortunately, the nanites didn’t activate the genes like I had hoped. At least, I didn’t think so, until I realized the nanites had simply gone dormant for some reason. When I engineered Jace, I was able to design his biorhythms to basically wake the nanites up and do what they were designed to do.”
“Is that why my mother told you to stay out of our lives? She found out you used me as one of your test subjects?”
“Your mother simply didn’t share the same vision for the human race as I did. She couldn’t understand I was simply trying to give you every advantage your genetic code allowed for.”
“That’s why they’re all the same age as Skye?” Jace asked Lucena.
“Yes,” Lucena answered.
“Did you ever try to use the nanites in adults?”
“The ones I put into you and the others were the first nanites I ever developed. The second batch of nanites, which I hoped would activate the genes in adults, were placed in the immunity shot everyone received a few years later.”
“The one that killed all the babies?”
Lucena sighed. “Yes, an unfortunate side effect I hadn’t counted on. I’m still not sure what went wrong, but it soon became a moot design flaw after I designed the first Harvester nanites. I still wasn’t able to tap into the unique gene coding sequence, but I didn’t have to. I gave my Harvesters the powers they needed to survive and become the dominant species.”
She walked up to one of the doors and pushed the red button on the touchpad. The door became as transparent as glass, and we were able to see a boy with dark colored skin dressed in white scrubs sitting on the lower level of a bunk bed against the far wall. When he saw us, his eyes traveled from Lucena to Jace. He stood from the bed and walked toward the door.
“When are you letting me out of here?” he asked Lucena.
“In time, Jackson. Once you’re converted I won’t have to worry about you trying to escape.”
Jackson looked at Jace. “I trusted you, man.” Jackson shook his head. “How can you let her do this to me?”
“I’m sorry,” Jace said. “I didn’t want to deceive you, but I didn’t have any choice.” Jace looked down at me.
“You sold me out for some woman?” Jackson asked in disgust.
“It was the only way to make sure she was protected,” Jace said.
“Whatever, man.” Jackson turned his back to us and went to lie down on the bottom bunk bed. “Could I have my privacy back?”
Lucena pushed the red button and the door looked like steel once again.
“What can he do?” I asked.
“Jackson is able to harness power from any source and use that energy as a weapon. We’ve only seen him burn a hole in the wall of the lab, but that was enough.” Lucena laughed.
“How do you keep him from burning his way through that door?”
“Jackson was the first one Jace brought back to me. Luckily, we were able to sedate him to keep him from using his powers, but obviously we couldn’t keep him in a medicated coma forever. So, for each person Jace has brought back to me, we’ve had to modify their cells to meet their particular needs. For instance, Jackson’s cell is completely insulated from any type of electrical power. The only power source he could pull from would be himself and that would kill him instantly.”
Lucena walked over to the cell across the hall from Jackson’s and pushed the red button on the touchpad. This time, the transparent door revealed a girl with brown hair pulled back in a ponytail wearing the same white scrubs. She was doing pushups against the bunk bed in her room, seeming to not have any difficulty at all with the exercise. When she noticed us looking in at her like a bug in a jar, she stopped and walked over to the door. She was rather homely in the face, but her body seemed to be a mass of muscles.
“What do you want?” she asked gruffly.
“Ava here can make plants grow, so we’ve made sure no plants are within the vicinity of her cell. She actually had the roots of a tree invade her first cell as a means of escape before we caught her,” Lucena said, completely ignoring Ava’s question.
Lucena pushed the red button and blocked Ava from our sight. She then showed us the person in the cell next to Ava’s.
“This is Lawrence.”
Lawrence was walking back and forth in his cell, only stopping when he noticed us on the other side of the door. He was tall and thin with dirty blond hair grown out to his shoulders. His nails were bitten down to the quick, making some of them bleed onto his white scrubs.
“Is it time?” he asked excitedly.
“Not yet, Lawrence.” Lucena turned to us. “Lawrence has the ability to walk through objects, so his power was probably the hardest to control. But we found having an electrical field surrounding him keeps him in place.”
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��I only wish to serve you, my Queen,” Lawrence said in a rush before kneeling in front of the door with his head bowed in complete supplication.
“You’ll soon be a Harvester, my dear Lawrence. I have what I need now to convert all of you,” Lucena said before pushing the red button. “Sweet boy, but he can be a little annoying in his undying love for me.” Lucena shook her head. “At first, I let him roam around the mansion, but he kept interrupting my work, so I had to put him into a cell.”
“Where are Ash and Zoe?” I asked.
“They’re in my lab.” Lucena continued to walk down the hallway to another set of opaque glass doors like in the first lab.
When we walked into the laboratory, I saw Ash and Zoe sitting on a bed in a glassed in room to the right. Zoe was softly crying while Ash held her. They were both dressed in only a pair of white scrubs.
“Ash! Zoe!” I yelled, running to the glass, pressing the palms of my hands against its cold hardness.
They looked up.
“Skye!” Ash yelled.
They both ran to the glass and placed one of their hands over one of mine.
“Are you all right?” I asked, quickly scanning them for any injuries.
“We’re ok,” Zoe said, drying the last of her tears with her free hand, but the puffiness around her eyes told me she had been crying for quite some time.
I turned to Lucena. “Can you let them out?”
“Ash can come out but Zoe must remain in the room,” Lucena said.
“Why?”
“Because I know what she can do. She would shield you all and take you away from me before I could stop her.”
“It’s ok, Skye,” Zoe said. “Let Ash come out. We’ve been cooped up in this room for a while. I think he’s getting tired of me leaving a permanent wet spot on his shirt.”
Ash put a comforting arm around Zoe’s shoulders.
“You know I don’t mind,” he told her, before kissing the top of her head.
Zoe laid her cheek against his chest. “I know.”
The tender way Ash comforted Zoe seemed almost too intimate for the casual relationship they shared. Apparently they had become closer within the last four days. For some reason, I didn’t like it.
