Hope (Book 2, Harvester of Light Trilogy; Young Adult Science Fiction) (13 page)

I stared at the
face of my father on the computer screen.  His hair was an uncombed mess on top
of his head and a short beard hid half of his face.  It didn’t look like he was
taking very good care of himself.  His eyes held so many emotions: guilt,
worry, love.  Looking at how quickly he had deteriorated in such a short amount
of time worried me.

“Skye…” he began
but became choked with emotion and had to stop to compose himself.  He cleared
his throat and began again.  “Skye, you don’t know how sorry I am.  I never
thought she would take you back so soon.”

“You knew she
planned to do this to me?” I asked, not able to believe what I was hearing him
say.

“I thought I had
more time.  I was trying to figure out a way to hide you before she had a
chance to come and get you.”

“But you knew she
wanted to make me into a harvester?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t
think that was important enough to warn me about?”  My voice got higher the
angrier I became.

“Skye, please.  I
didn’t want to worry you unnecessarily.  I thought I had time…”

I looked away from
my father not wanting my last words with him as a human to be in anger.  Even
if he had been able to take me somewhere and hide me, it wouldn’t have
mattered.  Lucena would have just forced Jace to find me again.  There was no
where in the world I could hide.  She controlled everything.

“Did you know
about my mother?” I asked, needing to know if he had played a part in what
Lucena was doing to my mother’s body.  “Did you know she has her here?”

The shock in my
father’s eyes gave me my answer.  “Emma’s alive?”

“Her body is,” I
said.  “Lucena’s been using her organs when she needs them.”

My father’s shock
was soon replaced with an anger of his own.

“No, I didn’t know
that.  I swear to you if I had known I would have done something to stop it or
at least died trying.”

“Say your
goodbyes,” Lucena told me sharply.  “We have work to do.”

I looked at my
father hoping it wouldn’t be the last time I saw him and felt an emotional
connection to him.  Once I was converted into a harvester, I would probably
care about him as much as I would a fly on the wall.

“I love you, Dad,”
I said, meaning every word.  “Don’t forget that.  No matter what happens after
this.”

“I love you too,
Skye,” tears clouded my father’s eyes.  He held his hand out and I knew he was
touching my face on the computer screen in front of him.

The top of the
laptop in front of me snapped close.  Lucena leaned down to look me in the
eyes. 

“Now let’s go make
you who you were always meant to be.”

I stood from the
chair and followed Lucena out of the library.  Before I knew it, we were
walking down to the sub-basement floor.

“Can I see my
friends first?” I asked.  “I would like to say good-bye.”

Lucena stopped
walking down the hallway and turned to me.  “Zoe and Ash aren’t here anymore,
but I suppose you could speak with Jace.”

“What do you mean
Zoe and Ash aren’t here?  Where are they?”

“I sent them
somewhere else.  After the operation I’ll tell you what I have planned for
them.  It just seems cruel to tell you now.  I don’t want you upset before the
conversion.”

“Well too late. 
I’m already upset!”

“You’re too human
to think about my experiment with them logically.  I’ll tell you afterwards. 
If you still want to, I’ll even take you to them personally.”

I knew there
wasn’t any way to force the information out of her.  She held all the cards and
was playing them like an expert.

“Where’s Jace?” I
asked.

Lucena walked down
the corridor a little further and pressed a red button on one of the steel
doors.

“Jace,” Lucena
said looking inside the cell.  “Skye wants to speak with you before her
surgery.”

I walked up to the
cell door and saw Jace walking towards me from the set of bunk beds in the
room.

“Why are you in a
cell?” I asked.

“Because he was
being a complete idiot,” Lucena answered for him.  “He lost his mind when I
told him I planned to convert you the moment you came back with Ash from
wherever it was the two of you went.”

“I tried to warn
you,” Jace said pressing the palms of his hands against the glass.

I pressed my hands
over his wishing I could feel the warmth of his touch one last time.  Would my love
for him survive the conversion?  Would love even be an emotion I would still be
able to feel?

The helplessness I
felt was mirrored in Jace’s eyes, that more than anything else frightened me. 
He was the only one in the world who knew the person I would eventually
become.  If he held no hope for me, how was I supposed to?

“What happens to
me?  Will you still love me after I become a monster?” I asked, desperately
wanting to know this wasn’t the end of who I was.  I needed to know good would
conquer evil and that by some miracle I would remain the same person.

“You’re too good
of a person to become a monster.”

“But what if I
do?” I asked, feeling scared and uncertain.

“I will always
love you.  There is nothing you could ever do to change that.  Do you remember
when we were at Freddy’s house?”

The question
caught me off guard.  Why would Jace waste the last moments we might have
together talking about that night?

“The party?”

“Remember what I
told you then,” he said to me.

My mind raced back
to that night.  What was Jace trying to tell me without actually telling me in
front of Lucena?  I honestly didn’t know but hoped I would have time to figure
it out.

Before I knew it,
Lucena pushed the red button on the touchpad.

“What’s so
important about what Jace said to you at Freddy’s?” Lucena demanded.

I thought back to
the night Freddy hosted a party in my honor at his house.  It was meant as an
opportunity to give the people who had bought spots in the tournament to meet
their virgin prize.

“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 which 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 half way 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 said. 
“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.  They placed my head in
some sort of 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 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 which 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 which 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 13

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 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 flood lights slowly took their place.