Dawn (3 page)

Jace walked over to me and took my hands into his. He looked into my eyes making sure I didn’t look away as he said his next words.

“I thought we were partners in this, Skye?  Why are you trying to leave me behind?”

“Please,” I almost begged, “I need to know the children are in the safest place they can be with the one person I trust most in this world. I trust Ian but not like I trust you. I know you would lay down your life for them if it came to that. You’re their father, not Ian. They need one of us to stay with them. We can't both abandon them at the same time.”

“Then I’ll go south and get your father,” Jace said. “You stay here with the kids.”

“My father doesn’t know you,” I said, shaking my head. “No, I have to be the one to go. He’ll listen to me. He’ll come back with me.”

“I don’t like it.” Jace squeezed my hands tightly to make his point. “I don’t like the idea of us splitting up.”

“I don’t either, but we can’t exactly take the kids south. We have to keep them away from that woman at all costs. You know I’m right.”

Jace sighed in acceptance, and I sighed in relief. I knew then he would do as I asked. I wouldn’t have to worry about him falling into the hands of the queen.

“Did Jackson have any problem electrifying the cage?” I asked.

“No, it worked like you thought it would. The batteries seem to be keeping their charge too.”

“Now that we have him, I’m not sure what we should do with him,” I admitted.

“I don’t see why we don’t just kill him.”

I smiled at Jace's bluntness.

“And I thought I was the one in this relationship who was supposed to think like a Harvester?”

“He’s crazy, Skye!  Anyone who’s that fanatical about the queen is past saving.”

“I know you’re probably right. But, we should at least try to save him from himself.”

“Even before she put that chip in his head he was her number one fan. I don’t think the virus is going to change him the way you hope it will. He’s like a rabid dog that just needs to be put down. It’s for his own good, as well as ours.”

“I won’t be like her,” I said firmly. “I won’t treat life like its expendable. If he remains a threat, then yes we’ll dispose of him. But we need to at least try to save him, Jace. Don’t think of it as doing something for him. Think of it as doing something for me.”

Jace sighed heavily. “That’s the only reason I didn’t rip his fool head off back at the house. I knew you wanted to save him when you built that crazy cage of yours.”

“I’ve got enough blood on my hands,” I reminded Jace. “I don’t need any more than necessary.”

“You have to forgive yourself for their deaths at some point, Skye,” Jace said. “You weren’t yourself then.”

“No, I was me, just the worst part of me.”

I could still remember the little girl whose family I destroyed just because she went outside before curfew was over in the Roanoke camp to get her little teddy bear, an incident which cost not only her family but twenty other innocent bystander’s lives and countless others in the riot which followed. I had the blood of the innocent on my hands and no amount of washing would ever completely clean them. But in order to find redemption, I knew I would have to stain my hands one more time with the queen’s blood. With her death, I knew I could breathe life back into the world. I had already seen the future, and I vowed to do whatever it took to make it come true.

CHAPTER THREE

Jace and I went to make sure Lawrence was safely trapped inside his cage before I made my way southward. We found Jackson standing by the armored vehicle which had been outfitted by us with a metal cage built in the back big enough to hold Lawrence comfortably.

When I first met Lawrence at the queen’s castle, she told me then that only an electric field could disable his ability to walk through solid matter. The metal cage we built was electrified by batteries Jackson was able to charge with his gift. When we escaped the Roanoke camp, Jackson absorbed a great deal of energy from the electrified fence we had to go through. Ever since then, he seemed to have an unending supply of electricity at his fingertips.

I looked into the cage and saw that Lawrence was now wide awake and drinking from one of the water bottles we had stocked inside it for his consumption. His eyes became filled with unadulterated hatred when I came into his purview.

“Come to gloat?” He asked me, eyeing me warily as he lowered the water bottle from his lips.

I shook my head as I looked at him. “No, I’m hoping we can save you, Lawrence. You don’t have to be her lap dog, you know. You can become your own person if you want to.”

“The queen loves me for what I am.”

“She loves you so much she sent you on a suicide mission,” I told him, trying to make him see reason. “You understand that, don’t you?”

“She had faith in me to do my job and return to her side. I’m only sorry I’ll have to disappoint her.”

“You can try to delude yourself all you want,” I said. “But the truth of the matter is she cares about you as much as she does a bug on the ground. You’re expendable just like everyone else around her.”

“Except you for some strange reason,” Lawrence spat out. “She still wants you even after all you’ve done to destroy what she’s worked so hard to build. How is that fair?  I would die for her and you probably want to kill her. Yet, she still wants you by her side.”

“You would have to ask her why she still wants me. I’m not a mind reader.”

Lawrence let his eyes shift from me to the cage he was sitting in.

“What exactly do you plan to do with me now that you have me pinned in here like an animal?”

“I have hope the Cain virus will change you back to the way you were before you became a Harvester.”

Lawrence’s eyes opened wide. “Why not just kill me?  It would be the same thing.”

“No, the virus might help you start thinking straight.”

“And if it doesn’t?” He asked. “You know it works differently on everyone.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

“Why do you care what happens to me anyway?  Didn’t you just tell me you wished you had killed me back in Roanoke?  Why the sudden change of heart?”

“That’s really none of your business. Just feel lucky I’m not chopping your head off.”

“So how exactly do you plan on giving me the virus?”

“I’ve already given it to you.”

Apparently Lawrence wasn’t as stupid as he looked. His eyes fell to the water bottle in his hands. He shook his head and smiled sadly.

“I can’t believe I fell for the oldest trick in the book,” he said.

“Don’t feel too bad. I’ve fallen for it twice now.”

I turned away from Lawrence to face Jackson.

“You’ll need to stay with him to make sure the electric field holds. We’re moving everything to the new camp today.”

Jackson smiled. “Cool, means I get to see Ava again, been missing my girl.”

“I hear they’ve kept her pretty busy,” I said. “The crops she’s been able to grow over there have been enough to feed the whole camp.”

“Just imagine what she could do if she had some sunlight to help her out.”

I grinned at Jackson’s not so subtle hint. “Working on it.”

I heard Lawrence cough. I turned to look at him and noticed he was wiping his mouth like he had just taken a swig of water. Harvesters didn’t normally cough, but maybe the water simply went down the wrong pipe.

We left Jackson in charge of moving Lawrence. Jace drove me over to the tarmac where my helicopter was waiting for me. Michael was speaking to the pilot whose name I vaguely remembered as being Sam while Ian packed some supplies into the back. I tried to keep my distance from as many people as I could in the camp. I felt like I didn’t need to get personally involved in the lives of individuals who might not survive this war.

Before I could get out of the Humvee, Jace grabbed one of my hands making me look at him.

“Don’t take any unnecessary risks,” he told me. “Get down there, get your dad and friends and get out. You can’t save everyone so don’t even try. Understand?”

“Yes,” I told him, even though I felt like he was giving me orders. I knew his concern simply stemmed from his love for me. “I won’t take any unnecessary chances. I promise.”

“Just come back to us, ok?”

Rose and Simon made mewling noises in their baby carriers in the back seat as if to emphasize Jace’s request.

I leaned into Jace and kissed him deeply, making sure he knew I wasn’t taking his appeal lightly, and that I would do whatever it took to make it back to him.

“I love you,” I told him, as I pulled away slightly. “And I will come back to you.”

Jace pulled me in for another kiss and I didn’t complain.

I wasn’t completely sure how long we would be separated from one another. If things went perfectly, I hoped to be back in his arms sometime within the next twenty-four hours. But in the world we lived in, nothing ever worked out perfectly. If the worst case scenario happened and I ended up trading myself to Lucena for my father, our separation might end up being much longer than anticipated.

With this thought foremost in my mind, I turned into Jace, wrapping my arms around his neck soaking in as much of him as I could. Finally, I let him go and began to pull away. Jace didn’t let me go far before cupping my face in his hands and making me look him straight in the eyes.

“Why did that just feel like a goodbye kiss, Skye?  Is there something about this mission you aren’t telling me?”

“You never know what might happen,” I said vaguely.

“Now you listen to me,” Jace replied with fierce determination and a stubborn set to his jaw. “We’ve both seen glimpses into our future. Whatever happens you keep those images in your mind. We
will
watch Rose and Simon grow up. We
will
see the sun again. And I
will
see you run in that field of wheat laughing and chasing after them.”

I nodded. “I know. We will have that future.”

I simply didn’t know what the cost of that future would end up being.

There was a knock on the window on my side of the vehicle.

I looked over and saw Ian.

“Time to go, princess,” he said gesturing over his shoulder with his thumb towards the helicopter.

I nodded and turned back to Jace.

“I won’t be long,” I promised him. “I’ll be back with you guys before you even have a chance to miss me.”

I kissed him one more time and got out of the vehicle before I could change my mind.

“Did you tell him?” Ian asked me as we walked to the helicopter.

“No. He didn’t need to know. He worries enough about me.”

“So I get to be the bearer of bad news if you end up trading yourself over to Lucena for your dad?  Thanks, princess.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. Ian noticed and stopped to look back at me, obviously wondering why I was no longer moving.

“I swear to god, Ian. If you call me princess one more time, I
will
kill you.”

Ian grinned a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. “Wondered how long it would take for you to finally say something about it.”

“Have you purposely been trying to provoke me all these months? Why?”

“Just wanted to see you get your spunk back. It’s like ever since you returned you’ve been trying to pretend you’re the kind, sweet Skye you used to be.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“It’s not who you are anymore.”

“And how do you know who I am?”

It was something even I didn’t know.

“I don’t but neither do you. Just because you regained your humanity, doesn’t mean you completely lost the Harvester part of you. That chip is still smack dab in the middle of your brain. It will always affect the way you think and act. There’s nothing you can do about that.”

“I’m not completely sure why it partially switched off in the first place,” I told him. It was something I hadn’t even admitted to Jace. “Michael says it has something to do with the love we feel for people, but even he doesn’t exactly understand it.”

“I don’t know either,” Ian admitted. “Too bad Wilford killed himself after you told him about the queen killing his granddaughter. I guess the guilt over betraying us for nothing was too much for him to handle. But, maybe if Doc Riley comes back with us, she can run some tests and figure it out for you.”

I nodded. “Yeah, I didn’t think about that. If anyone can find the answer for me, it’s her.”

“Come on,” Ian said tilting his head towards the helicopter. “Let’s go get your dad and our friends.”

We continued to walk towards the helicopter.

“Now don’t stay any longer than you have to,” Michael told us as we got into the helicopter to take our seats. “Sam knows where to go. It’ll probably take you about three hours to get there.”

“Once we’re there, how do we get inside the facility?” I asked.

“Odds are they’ll find you pretty quick,” Michael said. “Just hang tight until they come for you.”

I knew he was probably right. The first time we went through the barrier we were rescued right after we all passed out and were taken into the first Southern Kingdom. The protocol was probably similar for the new place. There would be people watching for trespassers.

The helicopter lifted off, and I saw Jace step out of the Humvee. He waved to me and I waved back, hoping our separation wouldn't last as long as I feared.

The murky light of day made it possible to survey the remnants of our world as we passed over it.

“I’m so sick of seeing things like this,” I told Ian as I continued to look out the window, unable to pull my eyes away from the dead earth beneath us.

“Well, all you have to do is kill the queen and we can have the sun back,” Ian said, like it was no big deal.

“I will kill her,” I told him, no emotion in my voice just fact.

I heard Ian snicker beside me. I looked over at him.

“What?” I asked. “You don’t think I can?”

He shook his head. “It’s not that I don’t think you can. It’s just the way you say it. She’s not just going to kneel down in front of you and ask you to chop her head off, Skye. And even if she did, do you really think you could do it?”

“I know it won’t be easy,” I admitted, leaning back in my seat next to him. “But, I don’t have a lot of other options available to me. I have to do it. You know I do.”

“Why don’t you let me do it?” Ian suggested. “I actually hate her. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings one bit to chop her head off.”

“And you think I don’t hate her enough to do it?”

“No, not enough to kill her. I have a feeling that when the moment comes a voice in the back of your mind will start shouting at you, reminding you she’s your mother.”

“She’s a monster.”

“And your mother. Whether you want to admit it or not, there’s a bond there. Can you really see yourself just cutting her head off?”

“Like I said, I don’t have a choice.”

Ian sighed. “I wish we could have just shut that stupid shield generator of hers off. Then it wouldn’t matter if she was alive or dead.”

“We were stupid to think she wouldn’t make it impossible to get to it.”

Not long after Zoe, Rose, and Simon made their shield, we went to the point of origin of the queen’s protective dome. Unfortunately, we learned she had the whole area booby trapped. There were over a hundred nuclear warheads scattered closely around the area ready to go off if anyone tried to come within range of the facility. If you set one off, they would all explode, producing enough nuclear fallout to make what was left of the world uninhabitable. The queen was no fool. She always planned things out to a T. I just had to find a way to exploit the one weakness I knew she had, and that was her love for me.  

That fact that she loved me was still a bit surreal considering who and what she was. How could the woman who destroyed the world have enough humanity left to love anyone?  Yet, I saw her love for me clearly in her eyes that day at the harvesting facility right before the human uprising. She tried to hide it by quickly turning away from me, but I saw it none the less.

She loved me.

And I wasn’t above using that misguided emotion against her. It seemed she had failed herself by not eliminating the instinct almost all mothers have to love their children. How Lucena Day could love a daughter she barely knew was a mystery, but I welcomed the small miracle because it provided me with a way to save the world.