Harvester of Light Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by S. J. West

  “He told me …” I tried to remember, but that night was so chaotic I had to really think about what had been said. “He told me we had a lot of good times to look forward to in the future.”

  Lucena’s eyes narrowed on me like she was a walking lie detector. “And that’s all? That’s all he said?”

  I sifted through what I could remember, trying to find something in what Jace said to me that night that would help me figure out a way to prevent Lucena from making me a Harvester but nothing else seemed important.

  “That’s all I can remember,” I said truthfully.

  Lucena studied me closely for a few seconds more before relaxing.

  “Then come on. The surgical team is waiting for you.”

  When we walked into the laboratory, my eyes were immediately drawn to the surgical room. There were six people in the room dressed in white robes, white masks covered their mouths, and white rubber gloves were stretched over their hands.

  Only then did true fear creep inside my chest, chasing my heart until it raced. This was it. This was the end of who I was. There was no hope for me if I let this happen. I would be doomed to live a half-life for all of eternity by Lucena’s side. That picture more than anything else made me swiftly turn on my heels and run back down the corridor. I knew what I was doing was a hopeless act, but a small voice inside my head ordered me to try, to not give up so easily.

  I didn’t even make it halfway down the hall before I felt Lucena’s hand grab one of my wrists and yank me back to her side.

  I knew she had been gentle because my arm was still attached, just throbbing with the suddenness of the action.

  “You know there’s no point to this,” Lucena hissed.

  When I looked into her face, I was prepared to see anger, but instead I saw disappointment.

  “Please, don’t do this to me,” I begged. I wasn’t above begging for my life. If there was even a glimmer of humanity left inside Lucena, I needed to find it quickly.

  “Please,” I begged her. “Please, let me stay who I am, and I won’t try to run away from you. I’ll stay with you until I die, but don’t make me a Harvester.”

  “We’re not monsters, Skye. You don’t realize what you would be giving up.”

  “I don’t care! I just want to stay the way I am.”

  “But I can’t let you. I won’t stand by and watch you grow old and die.” Lucena’s eyes looked haunted with pain. “Not when I have the technology to cheat death and keep you alive forever.”

  Lucena easily drug me back to the laboratory, even though I was kicking and screaming for all I was worth. A woman in white scrubs met us at the door with a syringe in one hand. She plunged the needle in my arm, causing me to go limp almost instantly. I was still awake and able to move, but it was like I had no motivation to do anything but what I was told. The woman had me lie down on the bed in the room and covered me with a blood red sheet. The back of the bed was lifted at an angle. The woman gave me a series of shots down both my arms.

  “What are those for?” I asked drowsily.

  The woman looked over at Lucena who was watching the proceedings through the glass in the main part of the laboratory.

  “They’re the Harvester nanites,” Lucena told me through the intercom system.

  I felt someone brush out my hair and thought it odd until I felt her cut a large section of it away. Then there was a buzzing noise like my dad’s old shaver. I felt the metal glide across my scalp as it shaved down the remaining stubble of hair. The prick of needles on the now exposed area was next. Then they placed my head in some sort of restrictive metal vise to immobilize it.

  “Now, try not to move,” a man behind me said. “We’ll need to use a small saw to cut a hole in your skull to access the center of the brain. You shouldn’t feel any pain, but you will feel the vibration of the saw and a little pressure. Do you understand?”

  I almost nodded and then remembered I wasn’t supposed to move.

  “Yes,” I said.

  The whir of the saw startled me as the surgeon began his work cutting away a section of my skull. I didn’t understand why I was still awake. Didn’t they usually put you to sleep during a surgery? I tried to think about the people I loved, hoping to imprint my feelings for them so permanently I would never be able to forget.

  Jace was the first person who made it to the surface of my muddled thoughts. I wanted one more moment with him. Did he know how much I truly cared for him? Would he ever know? I wished he had spent more time talking about his feelings for me rather than bringing up Freddy—a person I wanted to erase from my mind. But why did Jace bring up that night when he knew we would have so little time together?

  I tried again to remember the events of that night when I was shot in the chest and first learned I could heal myself.

  Heal myself …

  “We’re almost through, Skye,” the surgeon said to me. “The chip is in place. All we have to do is activate it. I just need you to wiggle your toes for me first.”

  “No,” I whispered through the drugs, my one last act of defiance.

  “Nurse,” the surgeon said.

  With that one word of instruction, one of the nurses went to the end of the table and ran something against the length of my foot. On reflex, my foot arched.

  “Good,” the surgeon said. “Now, it’ll just take a few minutes to activate it.”

  I knew what I had to do before that happened. I had to heal myself. Jace had given me silent instructions of his own. He must have known I could heal the damage somehow. There had to be a way to reverse what was being done to me.

  I tried to force my mind to concentrate, but the drugs were making it hard to do the simplest of tasks. Only fear of what I would become seemed to be enough to clear away some of the cobwebs slowing my thoughts. I felt a jolt of adrenaline and used that to awaken my power. I didn’t want to become a monster. I wanted to stay human.

  “My Queen,” the surgeon said. “Would you like the honor of activating your daughter’s chip?”

  “Yes,” Lucena said. “I think I would.”

  No time … No time … were the only words I could think. But I had to try. I had to save myself.

  I concentrated on the damage I knew had been done to my brain and skull. Slowly, my blood began to course through my veins like it always did when my power was activated.

  “That’s odd,” I heard the surgeon say. “Why is the hole in her skull reforming before we’ve even activated the chip?”

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” Lucena said, coming to stand by me. She looked so proud of me. “Healing is Skye’s power. It may make her into the perfect Harvester.”

  I closed my eyes and kept my mind focused. The chip. That was the next thing that needed to be taken care of. I had to get rid of it. Would my power destroy it like it might a virus or a cancer cell? Could my body recognize it as something foreign that didn’t belong? I did everything I could to visualize the chip buried deep inside my brain, trying to instruct my power to destroy it.

  “Just press Enter,” the nurse told Lucena.

  Lucena walked away from me. I only had seconds now; seconds to remember who I was; seconds to save myself from becoming a monster; seconds …

  “And that’s it,” the surgeon said triumphantly. “A new Harvester is born.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Just as the surgeon said those words, the walls of the room reverberated with the sounds of a large explosion somewhere in the depths of the mansion. I put my hands over my face to shield it as the glass from the inner wall of the surgery room exploded inward. The high-pitched screech of a siren gave a dire warning. The overhead lights in the room flickered off and on before plunging us into absolute darkness. A series of dim emergency floodlights slowly took their place.

  “Get out there and find out what’s happened!” the Queen ordered.

  The doctor and the nurses rushed from the room to do as the Queen asked, instantly transforming them from medical pe
rsonnel into her own personal strike force team.

  Guttural cries of pain and the staccato drum of gunfire could be heard coming from the direction of the corridor outside the laboratory.

  I tried to move my legs, but they felt as limp as noodles.

  The Queen put her arms underneath my back and knees, easily picking me up. I felt too light-headed to ask where we were going, and to be honest, I simply lacked the will to care.

  The Queen walked out of the surgery room toward the main glass double doors, except there wasn’t any glass in the doors now, only empty steel casings. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered why the Queen wasn’t trying to find an alternate route of escape instead of diving headfirst into the mayhem. The only logical explanation was there was no other way out.

  The sounds of fighting and the strong stench of blood mixed with gun powder enticed my curiosity enough to force me to lift my head off the Queen’s shoulder and discover for myself what was happening in the hallway.

  Smoke and dust floated in the air around us visually blocking off what was happening farther down the hallway. Shots were still being fired, and a ringing sound, like metal hitting stone, echoed against the walls. Suddenly, through the chaos of the battle, the figure of a man emerged.

  His silhouette was tall, almost six feet. He was slim, but his upper torso seemed well-built from the swagger of his gait. As he came closer, I saw a sword in one of his hands and a pistol in the other one, both glistened with blood that didn’t seem to be his.

  He stopped ten feet away from us, staring straight at the Queen with a gaze only someone who truly knows you and hates what you are can give.

  “Michael,” the Queen said knowingly. “I guess I should have expected this treachery from you, but quite frankly I didn’t think you had the balls.”

  “Put the girl down,” the man ordered.

  “Or what? You’ll kill me?” the Queen taunted. “We both know you won’t do that.”

  “Put the girl down, and I’ll let you go unscathed.”

  “Get out of my way, Michael.”

  Michael stood his ground, daring the Queen to try and walk past him.

  Another figure raced out of the smoke. This one I recognized: Jace. I knew I should feel happy, even relieved to see him, but I felt nothing but mild curiosity on what part he had played in the chaos surrounding us.

  Blood splattered the white shirt he wore, but I had a feeling none of it belonged to him.

  “Grab the girl,” Michael told Jace.

  Without any other warning, Michael held out his pistol and shot straight at us three times. The Queen whirled around shielding me from the spray of bullets with her own body. Her grip on me loosened as she slowly crumpled to the ground onto her knees. I felt a pair of strong arms lift me out of the Queen’s protective hold.

  “I’ve got you,” Jace said to me, like the words should be a relief to me.

  I looked down at my Queen and saw her kneeling on the cold white tiled floor trying to catch her breath as though she had merely had the wind knocked out of her not been shot three times in the back.

  “Take the girl, and do what my men tell you to do. They’ll lead you out of here safely. You have my word,” Michael said to Jace as he grabbed a handful of the Queen’s hair, yanking her head back, forcing her to look at him.

  “Why should I trust you?” Jace asked.

  Michael looked from the Queen to Jace. “Because I owe your mother a debt. Now go!”

  The Queen began to laugh. “Aren’t you going to tell him the whole truth Michael?”

  “Shut your mouth.” Michael shoved the barrel of his gun between the Queen’s lips, which only seemed to amuse her.

  “What is she talking about? What truth?”

  “Get the girl out first, and then we can talk,” Michael said to Jace. “Her safety is your first priority.”

  Jace tightened his arms around me and ran back down the hallway. I strained to look over Jace’s shoulder to see what Michael was doing to the Queen, but the smoke and dust in the hallway soon enveloped us, making it impossible to see anything but what lay immediately around us. I wanted to scream and tell Jace to take me back to my Queen but knew it would be useless and a waste of energy. I would have to bide my time until I was stronger. Then I would make Michael pay for the humiliation the Queen was suffering through by his hands. If he killed her, I would make sure his death wasn’t an easy one.

  As we walked down the hallway, I saw headless corpses of my surgical team lying haphazardly across the floor. The only reason I knew who they were was because of the white surgical robes their bodies still wore. Other corpses were scattered at our feet, forcing Jace to walk over them. Some were dressed in Harvester uniforms and some wore regular human clothes. We passed a couple of people in the hallway who seemed to be planted there in order to instruct Jace how to escape the subbasement. Each one told him to keep going. Finally, we reached a short burly man standing by a large hole in the wall of the hallway.

  “Go through the tunnel, boy,” the man said gruffly, handing me a flashlight with one pudgy hand.

  “Where is this going to take us?” Jace asked as I lit the interior of the tunnel to find a hole large enough for us to walk through.

  “Does it matter?”

  Jace seemed to consider the question for a second before answering, “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

  The floor of the tunnel was uneven and the loose dirt made it hard for Jace to walk down it smoothly. I tried to keep the beam of the flashlight pointed straight ahead a few paces in front of us.

  “Were you able to heal yourself before the chip was activated?”

  “I tried.”

  Jace stopped walking. “Skye, look at me.”

  I did what he asked and saw the worry on his face, but I just didn’t see how it was my problem.

  “We’ll find a way to fix you,” Jace promised.

  Even in the dim light given off by the flashlight, I could see unshed tears in his eyes and knew he was upset by my transformation. The old me would have wrapped my arms around him and tried to comfort him, but now I felt no need to do such a thing. He was simply showing weakness caused by his human emotions.

  I looked away, pointing the flashlight farther down the tunnel.

  “We should go,” I said, not wanting to have to deal with his overexaggerated sense of loss.

  I heard Jace sniff and knew the tears he shed for me were born from love, but I honestly just wanted him to get over it and find the end of the tunnel, so I could prepare for what lay ahead.

  After Jace began to walk again, I asked, “Who were those people?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen them before.”

  “The man said he knew your mother. I didn’t realize she was still alive.”

  “She isn’t. Lucena said she died giving birth to me.”

  I looked at Jace. “Do you believe that? Do you think she’s really dead? I thought Emma Blackwell was dead too, but I was wrong.”

  “I suppose she could still be alive, but something in my heart tells me Lucena didn’t lie about that. I can’t explain it, but I’m certain she’s dead.”

  A faint, natural light marked the end of the tunnel ahead of us. When we stepped into the outside world, a handful of people were waiting for us with their guns drawn and swords hanging by their sides.

  A woman with short raven black hair stepped forward, holstering her weapon.

  “Put your guns away boys. These are the people we were sent to fetch.”

  The woman turned to us and said, “Follow me.”

  We walked through a thick thatch of woods until we came to a clearing. The woman signaled us with a clenched fist, indicating we should come to a halt.

  “Why are we stopping?” Jace asked.

  The woman held up her index finger like she was telling Jace to wait for something. In the distance, I could hear the distinctive sound of a helicopter’s blades chopping the air. In a matter of seconds, a black hawk
helicopter landed in the clearing.

  The door in the middle of the helicopter slid open, and Michael stepped out frantically waving us forward.

  The raven haired woman silently disappeared back into the woods without a word of parting.

  Before I knew it, Jace and I were sitting side by side in the helicopter with Michael sitting directly across from us.

  After we lifted off the ground, Jace asked, “Where are you taking us?”

  “To our base of operations,” Michael said.

  “Which is where exactly?”

  Michael shook his head. “The less you know about where it is the better.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “No, I don’t trust Lucena. If she ever got her hands on you, she would know where we are hiding out, and after what I’ve just done, her finding me isn’t something I want to happen just yet.”

  “Why did you come for us?” Jace asked.

  Michael looked at Jace as he contemplated the question.

  “Like I said before, I knew your mother. She wouldn’t have wanted you working for Lucena. It would have broken her heart.”

  “So was it me you came for?” Jace asked.

  “Mostly.” Michael turned his attention to me. “You, little lady, were just icing on the cake. We didn’t know you would be there when we first started digging the tunnel.” Michael looked back at Jace. “Plus, I knew you wouldn’t leave without the girl. I’ve heard the rumors about the two of you.”

  “And what do the rumors say?” I asked out of curiosity.

  Michael grinned. “Just a little something about shirts being left behind in a hallway.”

  The old me would have blushed at the reminder of my reunion with Jace, but the new me didn’t feel anything but a desire to finish what Jace and I had started in that hallway. I looked over at Jace and noticed the heightened color of his cheeks. I let my eyes travel down the length of him wondering what it would feel like to have sex with him. A burning need suddenly ignited in the pit of my stomach.

  “After we get to the base, I’ll tell you anything you want to know, but right now I’m so tired I’m not sure how coherent I would be. Rest might not be a bad idea for the two of you either,” Michael said, leaning back in his seat and crossing his legs at the ankles before closing his eyes. “It’ll be a while before we land.”