Hope (Book 2, Harvester of Light Trilogy; Young Adult Science Fiction) (20 page)

“I don’t know what
you’re talking about.”

“You know exactly
what I’m talking about.  I know when you saw those bodies stuffed in that can
like sardines you felt something.  You tried to ignore it but you won’t be able
to for much longer.”

I looked away from
my future self and noticed Rose had a melancholy smile on her face.

“And what’s your
problem?” I asked.

“I just feel sad
for what you have to go through,” Rose said.  “You don’t know how much I wanted
to warn you about what was coming.”

“But you didn’t, did
you?” I said, the words sounding like an accusation.  “You just remained the
loyal little bitch to this one.”

I felt the sting
of future me’s hand across my cheek before my mind even registered what was
happening.  The force of the blow was so hard it knocked me back a step.

“Don’t you ever
call her that again,” my future self growled.  “You owe her more than you
know.  She has done nothing but what I asked her to do for your benefit.”

Future me turned
to Rose.  “It’s just the harvester in her lashing out at you.  Don’t take it to
heart.  You know that’s not how I feel about you.”

“I know,” Rose
replied, giving me a pitying look.  “I just feel sorry for everything you had
to go through.”

“Don’t,” future me
touched Rose on her arm.  “It was all worth it in the end.”

“This is all heart
warming and stuff,” I said rubbing the sting away from my cheek.  “But I would
really like to go home now.”

The older version
of myself looked back at me.

 “Just remember
what you saw,” future me said.  “I have faith you’ll do the right thing when
the time comes.”

“Will you be
making more of these heartfelt trips to me?  Or can I count on this one being
the last,” I asked her.

“This will be the
last time you see me until you look in a mirror one day in the future.”

“Are you going to
be sending Rose and Simon to bug me anymore?”

“They’ll only come
when they need to, like they always have.”

“Well, they don’t
need to come anymore.  I don’t need their help.”

“The world will
need their help in the end.  It’s their destiny.”

Future me took
hold of one of Rose’s hand and squeezed it tight in a reassuring manner.  Then
she held out her other hand for me to take.  I grabbed it and soon found myself
standing back in my bedroom.

The door to the room
was open but Grant was still sitting unconscious in the chair I left him in. 
Daylight seeped through the curtains marking the beginning of a new day.

“Don’t burden yourself
with regret about what happens today,” my future self told me.  “You won’t be
able to change her fate.”

“Whose fate?”

But before I could
get an answer, Walsh walked into the room.  When he saw Rose and future me, he
automatically drew his gun intent on pulling the trigger.

“Mom!” I heard
Rose yell as she grabbed future me’s shoulder and vanished.

Chapter 20

I stood there
stunned into silence.

Why had Rose just
called me Mom?

I heard Walsh say
something to me but his words were having a hard time breaking though my
temporary stupor.  Rose had called future me Mom, but why?  I thought back to
the future scene of the boy and girl playing together realizing the girl had to
have been Rose.  If Rose was the girl, then the boy had to be Simon. 

I had always
assumed Rose and Simon were related in someway.  Their resemblance to one
another could only be genetic.  The day Rose visited me in the Southern Kingdom
I asked her point blank if Zoe was Simon’s mother and she refused to answer
me.  When my mother revealed her little experiment with Zoe and Ash, I knew then
who at least two of the children within her womb were:  Rose and Simon.  Only
the offspring of my friends union could produce children with Zoe’s shielding
capabilities and Ash’s time travel gift.

But why had Zoe
called my future self Mom and Simon call Jace Daddy?  How did Zoe and Ash fit,
or in this case, vanish from the equation?

“Skye!”

Walsh’s voice
finally broke through my self-contemplation.

“What?” I asked
slightly perturbed by the interruption of my thoughts.

“Did they hurt
you?  Are you all right?” He asked with true concern.

I felt sure he was
only concerned about his own hide if I was hurt.  My mother would have his head
mounted on a pike if he allowed any harm to come to me.

“I’m fine,” I
said, tightening the sash of my robe around my waist.

“Who were those
people?”

“They’re none of
your concern.  And don’t mention any of this to my mother.”

“She’ll want to
know about this.”

“What exactly were
my mother’s orders to you about me?”

“To do whatever
you needed and to keep you safe.”

“Then I’m ordering
you to keep your big mouth shut about what you just saw,” I snapped.  “I’ll
tell my mother when I’m ready for her to know.”

I could see the
uncertainty in Walsh’s eyes.

“I don’t like
keeping secrets from the Queen,” he said.  “But she did order me to do what you
wanted so I’ll keep quiet,” he relented.

“Good.  Now get
rid of Grant.  He’s completely useless to me now.  They drugged him with
something but he should wake up eventually.”

Walsh walked over
to Grant and lifted him easily over his shoulder.

“Come back in an
hour,” I told Walsh.  “I’ll be ready for my tour of the camp then.”

“I’ll be back,”
Walsh promised as he walked out of my room with his burden.

I closed the door
behind him and leaned my back up against it.  The uncertainty of Zoe and Ash’s
future bothered me.  Why would Jace and I become their children’s parents?  Why
didn’t they seem to have a place in the future?

I decided to leave
the future alone for a while and concentrate on the present.  The first thing I
needed was another bath.  The bottoms of my feet were completely covered in
dirt from my time travelling experience.  It didn’t take me long to find Mary
Anne but Grace was no where in sight.  Mary Anne told me Grace had gone back to
serve my mother.  After I instructed Mary Anne to prepare me another bath I
told her to bring me up some breakfast.  For some reason I seemed to be in a
constant state of hunger. 

Walsh was punctual
in coming back an hour later.  I instructed him to drive through the camp until
something of interest caught my eye.

It was almost eight o’clock in the morning and the humans were just creeping out of their dwellings to
travel to their assigned jobs.  Most of them were men since a large majority of
the women were made to stay home while they were pregnant.

“What type of work
do people do here?” I asked.

“Well, we have the
normal operations of food production and general maintenance but this camp also
manufactures new harvester chips and nanites the Queen designs.  It’s probably
one of the most important camps she has.  I think that’s why she tends to
invest so much time here.”

“Does she allow
many humans to become harvesters?”

“No, not many,”
Walsh admitted.  “But she holds a contest once a month to choose new harvesters.”

“What type of
contest?”

“Two families are
chose at random by the Queen.  One member of each family is allowed to fight
for the right of them all to become harvesters.”

“What happens to
the losing family?”

“Depends on
whether or not we need organs at the time.  If we do, we take them to the harvesting
facility to be culled.  If we don’t, we place them in a warehouse.”

I knew for a human
family either alternative meant death.

“What is the
contest exactly?  A fight to the death?”

“Not usually.  The
Queen changes it up sometimes but normally it’s an obstacle course or a puzzle. 
Part of it tests who is the smartest and part of it see’s who is the
strongest.  Most of the time the Queen throws in something the contestants usually
don’t see coming.”

“Do you know
Freddy?” I asked, remembering all too well what Freddy considered entertainment
for harvesters.

“Yes, I’ve heard
about the tournaments he used to host in Alliance.  You’re mother is far more
inventive than him.  Plus Freddy’s games were more to relieve boredom for the
harvesters there.  I sure would hate to catch the Cain virus.  I couldn’t
imagine living trapped like an animal in a cage.”

“What have you
been told about the Cain virus?” I asked, remembering Wilford telling me my
mother invented it.

“I know those damn
people fighting with Michael use it against us when they attack.  Whoever they
infect with it becomes very contagious.  If you come into contact with someone
who has it, you get it.  That’s about as far as my knowledge goes though.”

I made a mental
note to ask my mother why she would invent such a sickness to ail her own
creations and aid her sworn enemies.  It didn’t make much sense to me, but I
knew she would only do it for a good reason.

“Take me to the
harvesting facility.  I’ve never been in one before.”

Walsh drove to
what looked like a large hospital.  I remembered the harvesting facility in the
camp I lived in with my parents was housed inside an old hospital also.  But, I
was never allowed to go inside.  Emma Blackwell was part of a group of people
known as grief councilors who were allowed to go into the harvesting facilities
and provide comfort to those who were scheduled to be harvested.  Now that my
mother had decided to store the humans in warehouses, I doubted such a position
was needed anymore.  The humans wouldn’t have the ability to feel much of
anything much less grief.

As we pulled into
what used to be the emergency room entrance, a violent commotion was ensuing
between a group of humans and harvesters.  The humans were being stunned into
submission but they still tried to fight the guards anyway.  One female
harvester stood near the sliding glass doors to the hospital holding back a
distraught girl no older than seven years old.  She had blonde hair put up in
pigtails and was carrying a little threadbare teddy bear in her hands.  The
child was crying hysterically with her arms out stretched screaming something I
couldn’t quite make out inside the car.

I stepped out of
the car and then realized she was calling out to her mother.

“Mommy!” the girl
screamed at the top of her lungs.

“Please don’t take
her,” a woman begged from the front of the crowd.  “She didn’t know it was
wrong to go out.  She was just trying to get her teddy bear.”

“The rules are the
rules,” the harvester holding the little girl back said.  “We can’t just let it
slide because of her age.”

“But she didn’t
know what she was doing!” The mother screamed.

“What’s going on
here?” I asked stepping up to the harvester holding the child.

“The girl was
caught out this morning before curfew was over, ma’am,” the guard said,
suddenly caught off kilter by my presence.  “As you probably know, anyone
caught out during curfew hours is sentenced to immediate harvesting.”

“Yes, I’m aware of
the rule,” I said, not needing a lowly guard to feel the need to instruct me
about camp regulations.

“I’m sorry, Ms.
Day.  I wasn’t sure,” the guard stammered, knowing I could have her life if I
wanted it.

I looked down at
the sobbing little girl and knelt down beside her.

“Why were you
outside when you weren’t supposed to be?” I asked her.

She looked up at
me with her blue eyes shimmering with tears and held up her little teddy bear.

“I had to get Oscar,”
she whispered.

I ran my hand over
the bears head and tweaked its ear.

“And where were
your parents when you went outside?”

“Sleeping,” the
little girl replied.

“We didn’t know
she had gotten out,” the mother yelled past the guards holding her back.

I stood and walked
over to the woman.  Everyone, human and harvester stopped fighting as I came to
stand among them.

“Do you know who I
am?” I asked the mother.

“Yes,” the woman answered,
swallowing hard.  “We were all told you would be coming and to do whatever you
wanted.”

I looked the woman
up and down.  Her hair was as blonde as her daughters and her belly protruded
with the growth of another child. 

“Your little girl
was chosen to become a breeder right?” I asked, knowing a child of her age
wouldn’t exist in the camp if she hadn’t been one of the few lucky ones picked
to carry on the line of her parents and be allowed to grow to adulthood.

“Yes, she was
chosen.”

“And yet you let
her break a law which demands she be put to death?”

“We didn’t think
she knew how to get out of the house,” the woman cried.

I looked back at
the little girl and motioned for her to come closer to me.  The guard holding
her back relinquished her grip on the girl’s shoulders.  The girl immediately
ran to the awaiting arms of her mother.

“Oh, Lucy,” the
mother said as she hugged her daughter.  “What were you thinking?”

Lucy held up her
bear, “I forgot Oscar all night long.  He needed me.”

The mother hugged
her daughter close before looking back at me.

“Thank you,” she
said and turned to leave.

“Wait,” I said. 

The woman turned
back around.

“I didn’t say
there wouldn’t be a punishment.”

“Oh,” the woman’s
composure faltered, “I’m sorry. I thought you were letting Lucy go.”

“I am.”

“Then I don’t
understand.”

“It seems to me
you are the one at fault here.  You should have kept a closer eye on your
daughter if you love her as much as you profess.  I’m giving you a choice.  You
can either hand your daughter back over or choose to take her place.”