Harvester of Light Trilogy (Boxed Set)

by S. J. West

  “You can’t come.”

  Jace’s eyes narrowed on me. “I am coming.”

  “No,” I said more adamantly. “It’s too risky. She might find a way to capture you both, and I can’t go through that torture again, Jace. I can’t count on Ash swooping in and saving us a second time. I need to know you’re safe.”

  “I’m not staying behind,” Jace said, a firm set to his jaw, steeling himself for a fight with me. “He’s my son too. It’s not like I can’t fight, Skye. I don’t need to be protected by you. And, if you’ll remember, it didn’t exactly work the way you hoped the last time you left me behind.”

  I sighed, realizing Jace was right. My plan to keep him and the babies safe by sending them to Michael’s new camp had been an epic failure. If I had just taken him and the babies with me to find my father in the Southern Kingdom, Lucena wouldn’t have been able to get her hands on all of them at one time.

  “Ok,” I relented, knowing I couldn’t come up with a good enough argument, “you can come, but we leave Rose here.”

  “Agreed,” Jace said, leaning in and giving me a kiss on the lips. “And thank you.”

  “What are you thanking me for?”

  “For not fighting me on this,” he said, giving me a lopsided grin. “You’re so stubborn sometimes it makes me crazy. It’s nice to know you’ll listen to me on occasion.”

  “I always listen to you,” I replied, not wanting Jace to think my mind was closed to the things he said. “I just worry. I worry about what the Queen might try to do to us next. She’s crazy Jace, and I’m not being facetious when I say that. She’s completely insane.”

  Jace grinned. “Yes, I know that.”

  “What if …” I wasn’t sure I could finish what I was thinking but needed to share my thoughts with him. “What if I end up like her? What if something happens that sends me off the deep end and I become just like she is?”

  “Now, you listen to me,” Jace said in that no-nonsense voice of his. “You are nothing like her. You will never be anything like her. You are the strongest person I know, and there is nothing in this world that would make you into the monster she is. Do you understand me?”

  “But I was a monster,” I reminded him. “I did things as a Harvester I never thought I would do to other people. What if … what if she finds a way to make me like that again?”

  “It won’t happen,” Jace said with a fierce certainty. “I won’t let that happen.”

  I sat there looking at him, wondering if I should tell him my plan. I didn’t like keeping secrets from Jace and my request to Doc Riley was a major one.

  “I’ve asked Doc Riley to find a way to remove the Harvester chip,” I told him.

  Jace’s brow furrowed. “I thought that was impossible to do without killing you.”

  “She said she would look into it for me.”

  “You won’t become her, Skye,” Jace said adamantly. “It’s not worth risking your life over something that will never happen.”

  “It is to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I can’t live the rest of my life fearing I will become like that again. It’s killing me, Jace. It might not be a quick death, but I feel like this giant shadow is following me around just waiting for its chance to pounce and take control of me again. I can’t live like that. I won’t if I don’t have to. You and the kids deserve to have all of me, and I can’t really give any of you that until the chip is removed. I need to know I’m my own person again and not on the brink of becoming what she made me into.”

  “What did Doc Riley say when you asked her about it? Does she think it’s possible?”

  “She told me not to get my hopes up. She said she wouldn’t do anything unless she thought I would be completely safe.”

  “Good. At least we agree on that.”

  “If she does find a way, safe or not, I have to do it, Jace. I have to.”

  Jace sighed heavily. “Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it. It will take her some time to research what needs to be done. Right now, let’s concentrate on getting our son back.”

  I nodded. Getting Simon back was our first priority.

  But removing the Harvester chip inside my head was a close second.

  We held the funeral for my mother within one of the cemeteries in the city. She was buried in a coffin with a spray of artificial flowers covering the top, something one of my father’s soldiers found in the abandoned funeral home on the property. Underneath a bare oak tree, facing the distant mountain range, my mother’s body finally found the rest it so richly deserved. Beneath six feet of dirt, she would find safety from the Queen’s greedy clutches.

  I held onto one of Jace’s hands as a preacher who had traveled with my father’s group from the Southern Kingdom gave some flowery speech about God and heaven over my mother’s grave. I knew he was trying to bring us comfort in our time of grief, but his words were falling on deaf ears as far as I was concerned. All I could think about was how much I wanted to make the Queen pay for what she had done to my mother. I wanted to rip out her organs just like she had Emma Blackwell’s. She didn’t deserve anything less.

  I tried to temper these thoughts as much as I could because I knew how close I was to the edge, the edge of thinking like a Harvester again.

  Kirk, Teegan, Kale, and Lux didn’t attend the funeral. I put them in charge of taking care of Rose back at the mansion. It had been so natural to welcome my friends back into my world. I knew we would all be lifelong friends if future Simon’s words held true. He and Rose would come to think of Kirk and Teegan as their aunt and uncle—two more people in their lives they could trust besides just me and Jace. I hoped that in the future we were trying to build, my children would have a host of people in their lives who they could love and who would love them back. Love was so important. I guess I didn’t realize just how important until Hope shared hers with me. If love could change one person, perhaps it could change a world of them.

  I supposed the preacher had run out of pontifications about a person he knew nothing about because his eulogy was short and sweet. As they were preparing to lower my mother’s coffin into her grave, I let my gaze drift to Jace as he stood steadfast by my side.

  I squeezed his hand, causing him to look down at me. The sorrow he held for me in his eyes seemed to be a mirror of my own pain, further proof of just how much he loved me. As I continued to look at him, I felt the hate in my heart for the Queen become overshadowed by the love I felt for the man at my side. I knew without a shadow of a doubt I would always be able to count on Jace to have my back no matter what might happen to us in the near future.

  “I love you,” I whispered to him.

  Jace looked a little surprised by my declaration, but I knew why. Those three little words hadn’t crossed my lips since the first time I said them to him that night by the barrier. I’m not sure why I held myself back from saying them for so long. I wasn’t even sure it was a conscious decision. I supposed I just took for granted he knew how I felt about him. But sometimes you need to say the words. You need to tell the people in your life just how much they mean to you so they will never doubt your feelings for them and always remember.

  Jace grinned and nodded, silently telling me he knew how much I loved him, even if I hadn’t said as much in the past few months. He tightened his grip on my hand. I drew strength from his touch as I watched my mother’s coffin be lowered into the ground.

  As we were walking away from the funeral and back to the car we had come to the cemetery in, I felt like I was being watched. I stopped walking to turn and look behind me. Ash was standing off to the left of where we buried my mother, staring at me.

  “Ash is here,” I said to Jace. “I should go talk to him.”

  Jace kissed me on the forehead. “I’ll wait for you in the car.”

  I made my way back through the cemetery.

  “I’m sorry I left you like that in the past,” Ash said. “How did you make it back? Did one of
my future selves come get you?”

  “No. Rose brought us back.”

  “Rose?” Ash asked in surprise. “But she’s just a baby.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter. She was able to make a shield to protect us when we ran into trouble, and she time jumped us back to our present.”

  “But how? I just assumed her power would be like mine. That she would only be able to travel between the people she loved.”

  “Her power is like that,” I said, not sure if I should tell Ash the whole truth but seeing no reason to keep it a secret either. “She brought us back to Jace.”

  “Jace?” Ash asked, looking confused.

  “To her, even as young as she is, she thinks of him as her father.”

  Ash shook his head in disbelief and ran an agitated hand through his hair.

  “So he gets everything and I get nothing,” he said, bitterness in his voice. “He gets to have you and he gets to be a father to my children. How is that fair, Skye?”

  “It’s not fair to you,” I told him. “But this is the way our lives are. You need to accept it, Ash. The sooner you do, the easier it will be on Rose and Simon. The easier it will be on you too.”

  “And what if I can’t accept it?” Ash asked, his expression angry. “What if I refuse?”

  “Then you can’t be a part of our lives anymore,” I told him bluntly. “You need to think about what’s best for Rose and Simon and not yourself. Ash,” I said as I took a step forward and touched him on an arm, “please, you’re better than this.”

  Ash looked away from me.

  “I don’t think I am,” he confessed. “I don’t know if I can be the better person here, Skye. I don’t know if I can just suck it up and take it.”

  “You’ll do what’s right. You always have.” I squeezed his arm. “Please, Ash. You can’t let this make you bitter. You’ll never find happiness if you let it eat you up like this.”

  “Maybe I can help,” a familiar voice said.

  Both Ash and I looked off to the far right of us. Standing a few yards away was the older Ash who placed Zoe, Simon, and Rose in stasis after they combined their powers to make the shield.

  I heard Ash gasp as he took two steps back from himself. I suddenly realized this was the first time my Ash had met one of his future selves. His breathing became labored, and I worried he might start to hyperventilate.

  “Let me show you our future,” older Ash said, standing completely still as if he knew moving might send his young counterpart off the deep end. “I think you might find it interesting.”

  “Show me?” Ash asked. “Show me what exactly?”

  “How you can be happy again,” older Ash said. “We will find happiness if you have the patience to wait for it to happen.”

  Ash was silent as if he were thoroughly thinking through older Ash’s offer.

  “Then show me,” Ash said. “Because right now I don’t feel like I have anything.”

  Older Ash smiled at me as he walked over to us.

  “Told you I would be a complete ass to you,” he joked.

  I laughed a little. “Yeah, thanks for that warning by the way.”

  Older Ash looked at his younger self. “Ready?”

  I saw Ash’s Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed hard.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m ready.”

  Older Ash reached out and touched my Ash, whisking him away to points unknown.

  I just hoped he helped my best friend discover his happiness.

  CHAPTER TWELEVE

  When I got into the car, Jace started the engine and looked over at me.

  “Are you sure you want to do this today?” he asked me. “We could always do it another day.”

  “No,” I answered. “It needs to be done as quickly as possible. They deserve to be released just as much as my mother did.”

  “Why don’t you just let Doc Riley handle it?” Jace asked. “Why do you feel like you even have to be there?”

  “Because I need to be the one who releases them. I owe them that much.”

  “You don’t owe them anything. The Queen is the one who put them in those tanks, not you.”

  “I know that,” I said with a tired sigh. “But I didn’t do anything to help them the last time I was here. I need to help them now. Please, just take me there, Jace. Arguing with you about it just makes it harder on me.”

  “But have you thought it through, Skye?” Jace asked, not letting the subject drop so easily. “All those souls being released at once. …”

  “I know,” I whispered, feeling the strain of what I was about to do like a physical weight pressing against my chest. “It’s why I have to do it now. Please, just take me there so I can finally have at least a small part of this nightmare behind me.”

  Without any further argument, Jace put the car in gear and drove us out of the cemetery toward the growth facility.

  I could still vividly remember the first time I was taken to the growth facility by Walsh, the Queen’s right-hand man, in the Roanoke camp. The large black metal drums, which were in fact living tombs for more humans than I liked to think about, haunted my thoughts. Their limbless bodies wrapped in white latex, floating in the murky depths of the river water used to maintain their bodies at the perfect incubation temperature was a living horror. Even as a true Harvester, their fate had disturbed me. But I had ignored the small voice which had screamed at me to do something to help them then. I had simply turned my back on the humans the Queen had trapped in limbo.

  When we reached the group of warehouses that comprised the growth facility, my father met us at the door of the main building as we drove up to it. He opened the car door for me and extended his hand to help me out.

  “We don’t have to do this today, Skye,” my father said.

  “You sound just like Jace,” I said in exasperation. “And like I told him, I have to do this now. The longer they remain like they are, the more they suffer. The more I suffer. So please, just let me do this.”

  My father nodded, but he didn’t look pleased by my decision. “If this is what you feel like you need to do, then I won’t stop you.”

  I waited for Jace to come around from the other side of the car. I took his hand into mine, drawing strength from just his presence before we walked into the warehouse together.

  Classical music played within the large cavernous space of the building. I knew it was used by the Harvesters to keep the humans trapped within the oversized cylinders calm while in their forced, partially aware stasis. I saw Doc Riley standing on the platform of the cylinder closest to the door. She was studying something on the control panel with a troubled frown on her face when I finally made it up to her side.

  The top of the cylinder was open and the lights were on. Illuminated within were the limbless white latex-covered bodies of people hanging from rods with an array of black tubes attached to various portions of their bodies.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked Doc Riley.

  She took in a deep, troubled breath and sighed heavily before answering.

  “I’m just trying to figure out the most humane way to end their horrible lives. There are so many of them,” she said, her voice haunted by the tragedy before her. “There are five thousand trapped souls here.”

  “What’s the best option?”

  “The most humane and quickest way we have available to us right now is to cut off their oxygen supply.”

  “How long will it take them to die if we do it that way?”

  “It would vary from person to person, but no more than three to four minutes for brain death to occur and seven to eight minutes for them to be completely dead.”

  “Can we kill them all at once?” I asked.

  “Yes. This panel controls all of the cylinders in all of the warehouses. It was probably easier to have one centralized set of controls than separate panels for each cylinder.”

  I walked in front of the control panel Doc Riley stood by.

  “
What do I need to do?” I asked.

  “Child, I can do it.”

  “No,” I said, diverting my eyes away from the lights on the panel to look at her. “It needs to be me. Just show me what to do.”

  “All right,” she said reluctantly.

  Doc Riley set up the sequence so all I had to do was press the Enter button on the keyboard.

  Before I pushed the button, I looked at the people within the cylinder in front of me and hoped they found peace by what I was about to do. Jace came up behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders, silently letting me know how much he supported me.

  I pressed the button and waited.

  After a minute, the bodies in the cylinder in front of me began to thrash, twisting at the waist and neck. Within the whole warehouse you could hear the death throes of the dying. Thankfully, it didn’t take long for them to become completely still again. Doc Riley watched the monitor on the control panel, waiting to tell me when they were all dead. But she didn’t have to tell me. I knew when it happened because I was witness to the mass exodus of their souls.

  The warehouse became filled with hundreds of lights flying through the air. None of them seemed interested in sticking around for very long. Almost as soon as they appeared, they flew up past the ceiling into the sky above.

  “They’re finally free,” Jace said to me.

  I nodded, becoming choked with emotion. I wished them all well and sincerely hoped they found a peace in death which was denied them in life.

  I sat in the car not really paying attention to where Jace was driving. I guess I just assumed we were going back to the house we were using as headquarters—the Queen’s mansion. I didn’t question what we were doing until he pulled into a parking lot in front of a city park.

  “What are we doing here?” I asked, looking at the swing set, slide, carousel, and see-saws dotting the open lawn. “I thought we were going back to the mansion. Your dad might be here by now.”

  “He’s not here yet,” Jace reassured me. “If he were, someone would be here to tell us.”