The Harvested (The Permutation Archives Book 1)

by Kindra Sowder

  “Get out of here! Go down the corridor and follow the red line on the floor. That is the evacuation route, and it will take you to the bunker. You, and everyone else, will be safe there until we get this under control,” he said in a rush.

  Because of the electric zaps, yelling, and people running around us, I had to strain to hear his words. I hesitated for fear that one of the electric shocks flying in all directions from the man in the center of the hall would hit me. We both ducked as one exploded over us.

  Ryder yelled, “Go!”

  I took off as fast as I could on the freshly waxed floor, following the red line on the ground. I turned in enough time to see a soldier fire a Taser gun at the source of the trouble. The prongs hit home but did absolutely nothing to slow him down. He pulled them out of his shoulder with a grunt and began to stalk toward the man who stung him.

  The guard’s hands flew to the gun at his hip, but he was too late. The man with the electric touch descended on him with lightning speed and reached for the soldier, the muscles in his arms flowing with purple veins of current as he squeezed the guard’s throat.

  While I didn’t like being held captive, I didn’t want to watch anyone die. If we wanted to be trusted, we needed to earn their respect, but this was the wrong way to do it. No one had been hurt yet. The fear was only making us stupid.

  I stopped in my tracks and took a few slow steps forward, not letting the fear raging inside of me show. It was possible I was no match for him, but I had to try something to slow him down before he got everyone, himself included, killed. There had to be a better way. We just had to find it first.

  I reached out with my bandaged arm and focused all my energy on the man’s back as another jolt of purple ran through him, lighting him up like a Christmas tree. It made his bronze skin glow like the aura that had once separated us from our captors. The man stiffened as soon as my energy reached him He dropped the guard to the ground and turned towards me with a look on his face that almost caused me to bring my power back as quickly as possible. I chose to hold my ground. If he wanted to revolt against our jailers, it wasn’t going to happen that way or how would we escape? There had to be safeguards. He must have known that. At that point, I didn’t care if I had to show him through words or violence, as long as he knew.

  He walked in my direction as if nothing I did would faze him. I pushed even more of my power into him as he continued to stalk toward me, and panic began to flood through me when nothing worked. I screamed and let as much as I dared flow into him, and he finally stopped.

  He trembled as he tried to fight the effects of my power. Instead of flinging him into the nearest wall, I focused on the cells that floated through his veins. Another purple jolt of clean electricity flowed through him, and I felt a small tingle slither across my skin, causing the hairs on my arms to stand erect. I felt each volt of electricity he tried to push into every cell of my body, causing a slight tingle throughout almost like tremors.

  I imagined large, invisible hands closing around him so that he couldn’t move as his power built inside of me, causing me to shake and break out in a cold sweat as he pushed against me. He tried to break me, but little did he know it wouldn’t be that easy because I had an iron will.

  I focused on his blood cells, but I needed to concentrate harder. I needed to concentrate on the atoms of those cells and cause them to vibrate inside of his veins. Once I had those particles within my sights, I sent my energy into them, causing them to move and rub against one another with excessive speed. The friction caused heat to build up in his veins until his blood boiled, and there was nothing he could do to stop the onslaught.

  A stunned look crossed his features as he stood immobilized. A questioning look replaced it as if he was asking why I would do such a thing to him when the enemy was holding us captive.

  I didn’t know what else the government flunkies were going to do to us, but I had a feeling it would be much worse if we fought against them. I also knew that there was a better way to gain our freedom than killing everyone that crossed our paths.

  Sweat broke out on my skin again, a single bead of it rolling down my forehead and over my temple as I caused his blood to boil inside of his veins. I was beginning to see the neat networks and pathways of veins turning black underneath his skin and breaking open to form purple patches and bruises.

  Then, he did something I hadn’t expected. He took a single, labored step in my direction, the veins popping underneath his purplish casing. Red blossomed on his face from the effort of fighting my energies. The giant man taking feeble steps in my direction and fighting me with everything he had was a sign that much more force was needed.

  I took a deep breath and pushed even more of my energy into his body, and after a few more steps, he finally stopped. I could see Ryder out of the corner of my eye, his gun trained on the man. From the look on his face, he wasn’t sure what to do, and the confusion in the air was palpable, pulsating around me just like the energy from the dying man. That and fear.

  I could see the distress in Ryder’s eyes and his posture, but it was too late to stop. I focused even harder on those vibrating atoms and pushed them to rub against one another as fast as possible. A hissing sound, so quiet I could barely hear it, flowed through the open expanse like the rattling of a snake.

  The man’s veins turned to the deepest black, the color of his bursting veins spreading throughout his skin. He fell to his knees, and I released the grip of my invisible hands but continued to make his blood bubble.

  “Mila, no!” Ryder yelled.

  I barely heard him over the rushing of blood in my ears. I looked at him, and his gun was still trained on the man, but I could see the tension around his eyes as if he was trying to decide if he should point it at me instead. Then I saw a small change in how he held his body as he made his decision. He turned the gun on me, swinging it on the strap across his chest with ease.

  I looked back at the man, who was on all fours and looking back up at me, the whites of his eyes turning bloodshot. My stare met his, and as I watched the capillaries in the whites turn black, the purple began to spread through the whites of his eyes, taking over the pink. They were wide with fear and pain.

  Everything went silent, except his death, and all guns turned to point in my direction. All eyes were on me, and I had a crucial decision to make. Did I stop and save myself, or did I continue and let them kill me for saving their lives?

  I took a deep lungful of air as I heard Ryder say my name again with an entirely different tone of voice than before. He sounded concerned and terrified. He was trying to talk me off the ledge of slaughter, but I was upset, not angry. I just wanted the violence to stop. We couldn’t accomplish anything that way, and if I knew it, everyone else had to know it as well.

  I took another shuddering breath, chose to live, and dropped my hand to my side. I let the power flow back into my body, away from the man on his hands and knees ten feet in front of me. The unnerving rush as I pulled it back made my body shake nearly to the point of collapsing. The soldiers hesitated for a moment, but then moved to the man on the ground.

  It would take some time, a few transfusions, and possibly dialysis for him to recuperate. As Ryder cautiously walked to me, gun still out and pointed at my chest, I knew it was only the beginning, and it was the building blocks of something massive.

  Chapter 16

  Once things had calmed down, we were led along the red line Ryder had directed me to run and toward a confinement space. After what they had seen me do, we walked in a single-file line, hands placed behind our backs. I hadn’t killed the man, but I wanted to, and not entirely for selfish reasons.

  Someone had to save those around us who didn’t have our advantages and we had to earn their trust and respect instead of their fear. Killing them wasn’t the way to do it. I just hoped it stayed that way. In the movies and on television, people like us were always taken advantage of, trapped, isolated, and experimented on.

  We
shuffled into the containment room, and I wanted desperately to break the line and run. My patience could only last so long. I sighed and continued to take baby steps along the red line. The entrance was only a few paces away and I watched as those before me were pushed into the room, one right after the other. Everyone was taking their sweet time choosing a place to sit within it, and I was getting antsy. I wrung my hands to work out some of the nervous energy, knowing it wouldn’t do any good until I saw my friends were safe and alive. I hadn’t spotted Cato, Julius, or Nero yet, but I was beginning to think they were already waiting in the room like the rest of us.

  Those running the compound were placing us there until they could get the auras functional again. The man’s electric power had nearly fried the system. I heard someone saying it could be a few hours before we could go back to our cabins. I liked the confinement and the quiet of my cabin sometimes. It was clean and sterile and safe. Well, as far as that went in the compound. People were messy, dirty, and chaotic. The only ones I trusted were my friends and my family. No one else had been able to earn that trust as they had. Maybe that could change. Ryder and Doctor Aserov seemed okay, but how long would that last?

  I glanced toward the back of the line. It stretched all the way down the long hallway and I couldn’t see the end. Entirely too many people cramped into one space and I couldn’t see anyone I knew among the mass of flesh. Turning back around, I found the line had moved a foot since it had lost my attention. I quickly closed the gap between the person and me. Within five minutes, I was standing in front of a soldier. He took my arm and looked at the numbers neatly printed on the bracelet King’s men forced me to wear.

  A number on a flimsy bracelet was how the soldiers and scientists identified us. Our names were only something they found in the computer when they typed our number into it, but Doctor Aserov had known mine before she had looked in the computer. Maybe she had known from studying my chart.

  The soldier’s grating voice dragged me away from my thoughts.

  “You may take a seat. Don’t stand until we come to get you,” he said in an authoritative voice. It was unyielding and tinged with a discriminatory tone as if we were scum beneath his feet that needed to be scraped off and thrown into the trash.

  He squinted down at me with accusatory brown orbs as I nodded in return and took a seat. I wanted to look him square in the face and poke him with a stick as if he were a bear, but I had a feeling that wouldn’t be my best idea. I hurried past him and scanned the thick crowd for my friends. Julius and Nero were inseparable, so I had always been able to find them together. That even seemed to be the case there. I discovered them and Cato huddled in the back corner, leaning their elbows on their knees as they sat on a bench next to a man who looked to be in his early thirties and completely run down.

  Blond hair was stringy and down to his shoulders. I couldn’t even see his eyes through the golden locks as I approached the trio, taking the stress in their postures into consideration.

  There was enough space for me on a bench across from the three men. Everyone else had their backs to them, but I chose to sit facing in their direction so we could talk. I sat down between two women, both redheads, and leaned toward my friends with my arms on my thighs. Both women glanced at me and quickly turned their gazes away as if I wasn’t worth their time. Looking at the three men, I couldn’t help but notice how exhausted they were. I was sure I looked the same way. I hadn’t slept since I had been taken back to my cabin, even though I had been ordered to do just that. I had been too anxious about what had transpired during my surgery, so I wondered if maybe my friends had had the same problem.

  “Mila, you look awful,” Nero said.

  I looked up at him. Irritation must’ve been plain on my face because he sat up straight and crossed his arms across his chest.

  “Have you looked in the mirror lately?” I asked him.

  I attempted to be nice despite how tired I was, but he put me in a horrible state telling me I looked ill. Now all bets were off. He stared back at me in silence. I loved Nero like a brother, but that didn’t mean he didn’t get on my nerves, and I wasn’t about to be bullied.

  “So, what did they take from you guys? I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours.”

  Cato lifted one pant leg. He had a neat network of stitches over the edge of his shinbone. He dropped his pant leg and held out his arm. They had also taken something from it. The stitches there were just as neat and symmetrical as the ones on his leg—almost as if a robot had done the work.

  He stated, “They took some bone fragments and muscle and nerve biopsies. They also took a brain biopsy.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off the incision on the underside of his wrist. It perfectly mirrored my own.

  “They took brain, muscle—” Nero lifted up his pant leg “—lung, heart, and nerve biopsies.” He showed each incision, and all of them were stitched just as perfectly as mine and Cato’s.

  They had taken the most from him, and I wondered how he was walking without pain but felt it would be best not to ask.

  Julius showed us the dissolving stitches under his tongue and the nerve biopsy incisions in his hands.

  “I had a brain biopsy too.” He looked at me steadily with a steel gray coolness and said, “Now yours.”

  I showed them the incision on my wrist and stated, “They took a median nerve and brain biopsy.” A thought struck me as soon as I was finished. “Did they—” I paused, looking around “—give you some kind of injection?”

  They looked at me with grim surprise, and in that instant, I knew they had. They were quiet for what felt like ages, but I knew it had only been a few minutes—if not seconds. I started to sweat in anticipation as we quietly observed each other’s reactions to the question.

  “They have been developing that serum for quite some time now,” the blond man sitting next to Nero said.

  His hair hung over his face, but I could see the flash of his eyes. He leaned forward and looked at me with such an intensity, I almost shivered under his gaze. His eyes were bright blue under long blond lashes, and his face was tired and weary.

  “And you are?” Julius asked.

  “They had been working on it.” What exactly does that mean? How long did they know about this before announcing it? At that moment, I began to doubt everything I had ever been told, and apparently, with good reason. I couldn’t believe I had tried to be noble and save them.

  He reached his hand out toward Julius and said, “My name is Caius.”

  Julius made no move to accept the proffered handshake. I figured I would lead by example out of common courtesy, and shook the stranger’s hand. His grasp was firm and warm, but I could tell something was off about him. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Anxiety was like a solid pit in my stomach, and I had to swallow in an attempt to get rid of the choking fear, but I didn’t say a word. He obviously knew something we didn’t.

  “So—” Nero shifted uncomfortably in his seat to face Caius “—you said they’ve been working on this?”

  I could tell by the fine sheen of sweat on his upper lip that he was just as anxious as we all were. Caius licked his lips nervously while rubbing his hands together.

  “This serum they injected you with was based on findings from original subjects, and they’ve been working on it for years.” His words slurred as he spoke.

  I would have assumed he was drunk, but I knew he wouldn’t have access to alcohol there. Not with all the medication and surgical procedures.

  “Everything they do to you now was created based on the experiments they have been doing, and they are close to perfecting their methods.”

  I reached out and touched his moving hands. He froze and he even stopped breathing.

  “Caius, how do you know all of this?” I needed to know, more than anything, what those people were doing to us and what their plan was. I wouldn’t stop until I did.

  He had been there longer than anyone else from the look of it. It se
emed he had been living in the compound for years, and they had done something to him during his stay. The slur that I noticed in his speech was the result of those experiments. He was one of the original subjects. They had worked to perfect their procedures and methods on his body that I could safely assume triggered his lisp. Either that or they had only taken things and didn’t try to fix the issues that came from their removal. Who knew how many people in there really were like us or how many had been there since the beginning? It had all happened before they made the official announcement, but this was all just conjecture.

  “You’re one of their original subjects, aren’t you? They wanted to build the facility before they made the decision.” The words came out in a rushed whisper, so only the four men around me could hear me.

  Caius nodded, his blond hair gliding over the tops of his shoulders as he did so.

  “How many more of them are left?” I asked him.

  “There aren’t many of us. Some of us didn’t survive the procedures over the last five years. They didn’t want to bring any more subjects in until they had perfected them and expanded the compound.” He looked at each of us as we sat there quietly, stunned into silence by what we had just heard.

  Our government had kept something that expansive a secret for five years before making the official statement on the news and ordering all of us for testing. They ripped us out of our homes for a dirty government secret. I would’ve said I was in complete shock, but I had learned in history class that the government had been prone to that kind of behavior before then.

  As far as I could tell, this was on a much larger scale and there were fatalities and missing innocents that weren’t accounted for. That caused my father to cross my mind. He had disappeared from our lives when I was young, shortly after Gaia was born, and I had been told that he’d passed away. We even held a funeral, lowering an empty casket into the ground as we stood in silence.