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

condition.
    “I don’t know,” I
said, refraining from giving a smart ass retort to a man holding a gun.  If I
had known the answer to my question, I wouldn’t have asked it.
    “I’ll tell you
why,” he said refusing to look away from my eyes like the act would make me
feel some sort of shame.
    “Ben,” a woman
walked up and put a hand on the man’s shoulders.  His shaking became less
violent as he looked at the woman by his side.
    The woman didn’t
look much older than thirty.  She was thin but who in the outside world
wasn’t?  Her dark brown hair fell down past her waist.  Years of malnourishment
stretched the skin across her face into a thin mask.
    “Why don’t you go
help the others and see what’s in the transporters these good people brought
up?”
    “Ok, Margaret,” he
said completely submissive to the woman as he slowly turned his back to us and walked
to the vehicle we had escaped in.
    After Ben walked
away, Margaret turned to face us.
    “You’ll have to
excuse some of us,” she said.  “We’ve been planning this for quite a while and
the excitement of everything that’s happened is a bit overwhelming.”
    “So killing
thousands of people is what you call exciting?” My father’s voice brimmed with
anger.
    “Of course not,”
Margaret replied, little atonement in her voice, just tiredness.  “Lives on
both side of this battle were lost but hopefully not in vain.”
    “Then why
sacrifice your own people?  What did you hope to gain from their suicide
mission?”
    “Salvation,”
Margaret said.  “I knew if we tripped your self-destruct you wouldn’t have any
other choice but to come out.”
    “How did you know
this is where the tunnels led?” I asked.
    A sad smile
stretched Margaret’s thin lips.  “My father helped build the facility down
there.  When I was a little girl he showed me everything about it, even the
emergency fail safes.”
    “Why weren’t you
living down there if your father helped build it?” I asked.
    “My parents were
among the first to be taken by the harvesters.  I only escaped because they
sacrificed themselves to give me a chance at a life.”  Margaret let out a harsh
laugh.  “I’m not sure if they would have gone to the trouble if they had known
the way my life would turn out.”
    “But why force us
to the surface? Why sacrifice your own people?”  My father asked.
    Margaret was
silent.  I wasn’t sure she was going to answer.
    “You wouldn’t have
come up any other way.  Those who sacrificed their lives were the weakest of us
and most likely to die anyway.  They gave us the gift of their lives so that we
might have a chance to live.  There wasn’t any other way to find the other
underground haven.”
    “What makes you
think there is one?”  A man I had only met once asked, as he stepped up to join
the conversation.  He was in his sixties with wild grey hair and a mustache. 
His eyes looked almost black against his pale skin in the dim torch light.
    “My father told me
there was one and my father never lied to me.  If you don’t take us there,
we’ll kill all of you where you stand,” Margaret said without hesitation. 
“But, we are offering you a chance to begin again if you allow us to join you.”
    “The stunt your
people pulled killed almost half our population,” the man accused angrily. 
“Why would we want murders living among us?”
    “I would be
careful who you call a murderer.  Your people have been trading us off to the
harvesters for years.  There’s hardly anyone left here on this side of the
barrier because of you!”
    “If you had just
come to us, we might have been able to work something out,” my father said.
    Margaret shook her
head.  “No thanks.  I didn’t feel like being made into harvester spare parts.”
    “We don’t deal
with harvesters,” the man said, but even I could hear the lie clear enough.
    “Either you take
us to the alternate location or you die,” Margaret said