Reap (The Harvest Saga Book 1) (21 page)

We were stopped outside an
enormous three story building. Its sparkling glass facade glistened in the moonlight. The large panes were settled in between pieces of white metal.
What is with this preoccupation with white?
Screams of the girls in the other cars echoed through the metal and glass of the train car, and out into the early morning air.

They were herded into the sterile building like cattle. Guards, dressed in head-to-toe black, armed with large black guns slung across their shoulders escorted the women and stood guard outside of our car. Crew raised the windows, but his eyes took in the scene unfolding around us. We couldn’t see all of the cars, but could clearly see the three ahead of us and what was happening to them. Some were being dragged by arms and hair into the building where they disappeared behind heavy wooden doors, silence and sterility swallowing them whole.

Laney stepped off of the car that was just ahead of us. She planted her feet and raised her hands. I’d never known her to be much of a fighter, but I understood her primal need to protect herself.

My eyes were torn away from her when a sucking sound of air filled the cabin and a tall guard stepped up into it. His hair was black and short around the sides. The top half of his hair was longer and it fell lazily into his eyes. The signature golden rings of his eyes were surrounded by a strange brown-orange color. “She has to be processed, Sir.” He addressed Crew, glancing briefly at me and then back at him.

“No.”

“Your father sent me. She must be cleaned and processed. The King has ordered it.”

“Tell my father that she will be cleaned by our staff, not here. Not like this.” Crew positioned himself between the guard and me. He was protecting me. I couldn’t help but feel grateful and at the same time wonder if this was another act, another manipulation.

“I can go with him.”

“No,” his eyes pierced mine. “No.” He shook his head almost imperceptibly.

The guard looked outside the door. “He refuses,” he shouted to someone below.

More footsteps. Two more guards stepped into the small space.

“Crew.” I tried again.

“No, Abby.”

“Crew, just let me go.”

“No!” he roared, causing me to jerk backward from his harshness.

One of the guards pointed a small device at Crew. Crew looked haughtily at him until the man pushed a series of buttons. Immediately, Crew grasped the back of his neck. He dropped like a stone to his knees, and then collapsed face-first onto the floor.

“Come with me, now.” The guard who aimed that strange device at Crew and his partner, exited the train car. The guard with black hair and strange eyes, stood before me extending his hand. “Easy way or hard way, Lesser. It’s your choice.”

I looked at Crew beside me and back at his large hand. His skin was tan, unlike Crew’s and his family’s. “What did you do to him?”

“He was immobilized. He’ll wake up shortly, so we need to hurry.”

“Will he be okay?”

He snorted. “He’ll have a headache, but don’t worry. Can’t kill the Crown Prince.”

I huffed and gathered my skirts. “Fine.” Ignoring his hand, I stepped away from Crew. His chest moved up and down rhythmically. He was still alive.

The guard chuckled at my blatant refusal. “That’s a first. Most of the other girls are terrified. A couple of them even tried to climb me.”

“I’m not like the other girls.” I stomped around him, down the steps and out into the cool dawn.

∞

I moved toward the building
where the other girls had been shoved into, with the guard following close behind. My hands shook violently as I lifted the skirt of the gown to ascend the few stone steps leading to that dreadful wooden door. I turned to look back at the train car before I grasped the handle. Strange eyes looked at me. “What happens in here?” I gulped down my nervousness.

“You will be cleaned, evaluated medically, and screened for disease,” he answered automatically.

“Then why are they screaming?” His jaw clenched as I opened the door and we were assaulted with the sounds of terror and the harsh smell of disinfectant.

“I don’t know,” he muttered.

I stopped before gathering a deep breath of fresh air.

“Go on.” He poked me in the back with his gun.

“Not necessary. I’ll walk in of my own accord. My dignity is the last thing I will allow you Greaters to take from me.” And with that, I gathered my skirt and walked inside, shoulders back, confidence fueling my steps forward.

The scene in front of me was more horrible than I had imagined from the opposite side of the door. The women were being lined up, forcibly stripped of their clothing, shoved into strange white paper dresses, and herded from one station to another.

Greaters wearing the strange glasses were examining their heads and hair, before ushering them into tiny stalls from which huge billows of steam erupted. Others were having lights shone into their eyes and ears, flat wooden sticks shoved on their tongues.

Their bodies were being poked and prodded. Machines were squeezing their arms and then beeping frantically. One was lying flat while a doctor scanned her stomach with some sort of wand. A square on the wall projected a grainy black and white image of what the strange wand saw inside the girl’s stomach, my guard explained.

A skinny, middle-aged woman with sharp cheekbones and a matching nose approached me. “Take her to the first line,” she ordered the guard behind me, refusing to address me. The look in her beady eyes said that I’d been found wanting. I watched as her dark pony tail swished away behind her. Before he could poke me in the back again, I turned sharply. His hand was already moving his gun forward. I pushed my finger into his face. “Don’t poke me with that thing again. I’m not fighting you.”

He nodded toward the furthest line and moved the gun back closer to his chest. I walked across the room and settled in at the back of the line. Laney stepped out of the steam closet and gasped when she saw me. “Abby!” she yelled. “Abby!” She tried to run toward me. I shook my head, tried to motion for her to be quiet but she refused. She was frantic. Two guards seized either of her arms and a Greater male stepped forward and quickly injected her with something.

She fell limp and they dragged her to the table where they proceeded to scan her stomach. After Laney’s outburst, the other girls turned their attention on me. I kept my head up, held high and waited patiently. Soon, a calm seemed to fall over the others.

Some who had been in other lines first, fell in behind me and I was ushered into a seat. A Greater combed and separated my hair several times, raking my scalp in different places as if looking for something. Before he allowed me to get up, I saw my name on a communicator.

Abigail B. Kelley—negative for lice.
Lice? What is a lice?
Whatever it was, I was pretty sure it was a good thing that I didn’t have one. I was ushered into another line, the one waiting for the steam closets, my guard only one step behind.

“Is it really necessary that you’re here?” I asked. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.” I motion to all of the Greaters around us.

“Following orders.”

“Of course you are.” I grumbled. “Looks like you always do as you’re told regardless of whether or not it’s right.”

“I—”

“Abigail Kelley, move forward,” barked another faceless Greater. She shoved me into the small box, instructed me to undress and stand still, closing my eyes tight. Pushing down the gown, I stepped out of it and then my undergarments and shoes, throwing each over the top of the stall at her. I hoped she lost an eyeball from the point of my heel, but knowing those freakish glasses, they would protect her.

No sooner than I closed my eyes, my entire body felt like it was being fried or steamed rather. I was being scalded. When it finally stopped pouring into the small compartment, I peeked out and saw that my hair was wet and my skin was tinged pink. The compartment door flew open. Covering my intimate parts as best as I could, I looked up to see a raging bull where the Greater woman had stood. The Greater that I’d tried to assault with my wardrobe stood there with a look of rage on her face. Her lips shook. “Lesser, get dressed. Now!” she roared, shoving me backwards with one of the white paper gowns.

I put on the strange garment, which left my rear end exposed. Clamping the paper closed at my derriere, I stepped out of the box. Her face was still red. She looked like she’d gone a round in the steam box. I smirked at her and looked over her shoulder at my guard whose shoulders shook in restrained laughter. Smiling sweetly, I stepped toward him. He would protect me from her, right?

I clenched the back of my gown closed. It was barely long enough to hit my upper thigh and cut low enough in front to nearly show my breasts. Settling on one hand on my behind and one on my chest, I inched through the line. My guard laughed. “You haven’t got anything I haven’t seen before, Lesser.”

“You know, I really wish you’d stop calling me that. You Greaters have no manners at all. It’s disgusting.”

He smirked. “What would you have me call you, if not Lesser?”

“Abigail is my name. You could start with that. And, what should I call you? Guard?”

The line moved ahead and I was next for the stomach scan. “Guard is fine. I probably won’t be with you much longer. My orders were just to see to it that you were processed with the others and then taken to the palace.”

“Palace?”

“Where the President and his family reside.” He looked at me as if I were dense.

“Great.” I deadpanned.

“Next!” barked the man standing beside the table holding the strange wand. He motioned me over and I climbed up onto the table. The man tugged a scratchy sheet up to cover my bottom half, and then raised my short paper dress. I clenched it under my breasts, holding it tight to my body. Sweat began to bead on my head and chest and I found it difficult to breathe all of a sudden.

“What are you doing to me? What is this for?”

“Do not speak unless spoken to, Lesser.” I opened my mouth to argue, but he squeezed some sort of blue gel like goo onto my lower stomach and began to smoosh it around with the wand. Stopping occasionally, he would punch something into a communicator and begin digging into my flesh again. Nothing about it was gentle. Though the probe glided over my skin and flesh easily with the gel lubricant, the man dug it deeper and deeper across my stomach, bruising my skin.

When finished, he wiped the goo off of my skin and gave me permission to go with his sharp dismissal as he screamed for the next in line to step forward. I pulled down my gown and then carefully moved my legs together and off the table, trying to remain as modest as possible under the circumstances.

Guard refused to make eye contact with me. He led me by the elbow to the next station where three Greater women used strange devices to scan my hands and fingers, and then my eye. A retinal scan, they called it. When the scanner wouldn’t work, one woman banged it on the table. When it refused to scan my eye again, they called for a male Greater from another section to help. He couldn’t get it to scan me either and became very irate.

“What kind of trick is this? It’s worked all day.” The portly man jammed the machine at my eye causing me to yell out in pain.

“That’s enough,” Guard told the evil man. “It’s broken. Get it fixed. If you need to scan her later, she will be at the Palace.”

“Let me just try one more time.” He tried to thrust the small rectangle at me again, but Guard caught his arm, stopping the assault about an inch away from my eyeball. My eyelashes nearly brushed the cold, metal contraption.

“I don’t think so. You’ve damn near blacked her eye already. I have to deliver her and I prefer her to be unscathed. Unless you want to answer to the King himself, back off,” he warned.

The evil man backed away and held up his hands in surrender. “Just doing my job.” He slapped the device back into the palm of the woman who’d summoned him to help. The girl behind me stepped forward, tears streaking her face, nose red and swollen. She peeked at me from behind now stringy blonde hair and sniffed. The woman held the retinal scanner up to her and it worked fine.