Hope (Book 2, Harvester of Light Trilogy; Young Adult Science Fiction) by S.J. West Read Free Book Online

father
delegated jobs for the rest of us.  He asked Ash, Zoe and I to gather up as
much dry wood as we could to make a fire against the cold. 
    “We’ll be staying
here for the rest of the night to take inventory and make a list of everyone
who made it out.  Tomorrow we’ll travel to the alternate settlement,” my father
told us.
    “Alternate
settlement?” I asked.
    “There’s another
underground facility further south of here,” he explained.  “But we need to
wait for the others so we can all travel there together.”
    “So there are two
Southern Kingdoms?” Zoe asked.
    “The alternate
site isn’t as nice as the one we just lost,” my father told us.  “But it has
everything we need to survive.”
    Two Southern
Kingdoms…
    I wanted to ask
why the leaders of the old world didn’t use the alternate site to save more of
those left behind in the Eastern Kingdom, but I didn’t really need to ask when
the answer was so obvious.  They wanted to save the alternate sight for the
scenario we found ourselves in now.  They wanted to make sure that if they lost
their first nirvana, there was a second one ready for them to use as a back up. 
The selfishness of such a plan wasn’t lost on me.
    Ash, Zoe and I
walked toward the woods to do as we were asked.  We were all silent as we
gathered up fallen branches to take back to camp.  Zoe was a few feet to the
left of me when I felt Ash rest a hand on my shoulder and turn me to face him.
    “Are you ok?” he
asked.
    “Probably better
than I should be considering things,” I admitted.  “This might sound stupid but
I’m more comfortable here on the outside than I was down in paradise.”
    Ash’s lips spread
into a grin.  “Were you feeling a bit too pampered down there?”
    “You think I’m
silly to feel more at home in a wasteland, don’t you?”  I sighed and didn’t
wait for his answer before I continued.  “It’s just that everything down there
was an illusion.  They tried to remake the old world but nothing ever felt real
to me.  Things were just too perfect.”
    “It may have been fake
but at least it felt safe,” he said.
    “Even that turned
out to be an illusion,” I reminded him.
    “Stand still.”
    The click of a gun
made both Ash and I freeze where we stood.
    “Put the wood down
and turn back towards the lake,” the man ordered.
    We did what he
said.  As I turned, I saw Zoe facing the same situation we did with another
armed gun man.  In that instant I wished I had mental telepathy instead of the
power to heal.  I wanted to scream to Zoe to not use her power.  I knew if she
erected a shield around herself our captors might not ever let her go.  They
could have all our food and transportation for all I cared.  Things could be
replaced.  Zoe couldn’t.  If these were the same people who invaded the
Southern Kingdom and ultimately destroyed it, I feared what they might do to us
if they knew we had supernatural powers.
    With our hands on top
of our heads, we walked back to the lake.  Lit torches made a circular jail for
the survivors from the Southern Kingdom.  My father was anxiously waiting for
us within its perimeter.
    “What’s going on?”
I asked him as we walked inside the circle of torches.
    “Outsiders,” he
whispered.  “They’re the ones who invaded the Southern Kingdom and set off the
self-destruct.”
     “Why would they
want it blown up?” Zoe asked.
    “My guess is to
force us to do what we had to do to survive:  come outside.”
    “But why?” I
questioned.
    “Why do you
think?” I heard the man who brought Ash and I back ask from behind me.
    I turned around
and saw that he was in his mid-fifties with white hair balding at the temples
and a shaggy white beard and mustache covering over half of his face.  His dark
brown eyes felt like they were boring holes into my skull.  He was shaking
slightly, but I couldn’t tell if it was because he hated us that much or if it
was a medical