The Harvest (39 page)

He felt weak, too feeble to have a
conversation, but he knew he had to take this opportunity to learn
as much as he could. He also didn’t want to give away too much just
in case she was the one who got rescued first.

“Why do you think someone helped us?” he
finally asked.

“Oh.” She groaned, pain seeming to crush her.
Panting for a moment, she then said to him, “You needed to know too
much to do this.” She huffed again. “It had to be the rebels,” she
added, whispering with uncertainty, like she was trying to convince
herself.

He didn’t reply, afraid she might catch him
in a lie.

“But they couldn’t have gotten here—they
didn’t have any long-range vessels,” she said, sounding tormented
by the question.

“Then I guess it’s a mystery,” he replied,
fighting off a wave of dizziness.

She chuckled weakly and coughed. “Humor is
definitely one of your species more admirable characteristics.”

Shane pressed his good elbow down on the
control panel, trying to lift himself once again, but he couldn’t
move.

“At least we beat you,” he said, laying his
head back and sighing wearily.

“Beat us? Why would you want to do that?”

“You were here to take over the planet,”
Shane played along. “You leaked technology to our stupid government
that caused them to kill our parents. And that,” he paused,
explosions and screams echoing in the distance, “is the sweet sound
of revenge.”

She moaned again, and he suspected the end
was near for her. With the way he felt, it probably wasn’t far off
for him either. He strained his ears for the sound of approaching
helicopters, hoping help would be on the way soon.

“How do you know we are responsible for your
parents’ death?” she asked wearily. “Who told you?”

“We figured it out,” he replied
cryptically.

She let out a sound of frustration, and then
fell quiet.

“What’s your name?” he asked, hating the
silence.

“I’m Hanne,” she replied. “And until you
attacked us, I thought we were here to help you.”

“What do you mean?” He felt weaker and cold.
He must be losing blood. “Help us?”

“Yes,” she replied. “We were passing near
your solar system, and we picked up the signal of a very powerful
weapon being activated on your planet. We came to investigate.”

“Investigate?” he said incredulously. “Why
activate the slave gene and start arming kids? It doesn’t look like
you’re here just to see if we’re alright.”

“How can you know so much?” She coughed a
wet-sounding cough. “I’m dying,” she said quietly. “Why would I lie
to you? I have nothing to gain.”

Shane lay silent. What was her angle?

“You didn’t answer my question,” Shane
groaned, pain flaring up in his shoulder as he shifted his
weight.

“Why were the kids hypnotized?” She coughed
again. “Thousands of years ago, we came to this planet and enslaved
humans. We genetically modified you, infecting you with our genes
to make you more advanced. We also put in a gene that makes it easy
to control you.”

“So we are the perfect slaves?”

Her frustration seemed to give her a burst of
life. He fed on her energy, goading her to say more.

“No, you
were
the perfect slaves,” she
corrected, sounding irritated. “We have long since abandoned such
behavior, and as a people, we are sorry for what was done in the
past.”

It sounded eerily similar to the story the
rebels had told them.

“So why control us now?”

“We did it to help protect you. We feared
your planet was under attack, so we activated the gene and armed
you so you could defend yourselves. Once your assailant was
identified and defeated, we planned to release you, and help you to
rebuild your world.”

Shane couldn’t imagine what she hoped to
achieve by this, but her deceit was starting to piss him off. His
head spun. What was he supposed to think? Maybe she was trying to
turn him on the rebels. If she died and he lived, she could be
hoping to undermine her enemy through him.

“It seems impossible,” she said quietly. “But
how else could they know enough about our ships to do what they
did? How else could they resist the slave gene?” She paused, and he
heard her take a little gasp. “Anunnaki rebels helped them. It had
to be.”

It almost sounded like she was talking to
someone else. He suddenly worried that she might be in
communication with her comrades and was too delirious to realize he
could hear her. It was just as likely that her mind was coming
undone and she was talking to herself. He didn’t answer, didn’t
want to say anything that might be used against the humans.

“But we crushed the rebellion so long ago,”
she said distantly.

A screech cut through the darkness. The pod
shifted, and he sensed they were about to fall.

“Do not trust them, Shane,” Hanne said
desperately.

The pod broke loose and flipped, flinging him
into the opposite side of its hull. There were loud crashing
sounds, and he was slammed back and forth like a pinball, banging
his head again and again. It felt like the craft was bouncing down
a steep hill. When it came to a rest, Shane landed on something
padded.

“Hello?” he called once he caught his breath.
“Are you there?”

Listening intently, he could no longer hear
her labored breathing.

She must have died. The rest of his team
might be dead too. What were the chances Kelly survived? Grief tore
at him. It took all his strength to roll onto his side, and he
welcomed the pain exploding from his shoulder. He wished he could
feel pain below his waist, or anything down there for that matter.
An image of Matt, lying on the asphalt with his leg sheared off,
flashed through his mind. Then Aaron, his guts spilling from the
gash in his abdomen. Now it was his turn, but no one was around to
see him off.

He rolled from the bench onto the floor,
cursing at the agony the short drop caused him. Raising his head,
he realized the pod had come to a rest with its open hatch pointed
at the necropolis. Half a mile away, Shane saw the command ship
he’d attacked. The moonlight reflected off its white marble
interior through the dark frame of the outer hull. The golden skin
must’ve been created by energy from the reactor, because it was now
gone. He could see the ship’s coliseum, stark white in contrast to
the barrel-turned-smokestack that had ejected the reactor’s core
into space.

A smaller ship, the one to which the Russians
were assigned, was in a similar condition. The last vessel, the one
Kelly, Jules, and the Australians were in, was lit up. No smoke
came from it, and the outer skin was intact. Flashes from plasma
rifles erupted around all three ships, but most of the battle was
focused on Kelly’s. Jones’ backup army was trying to disable it, to
prevent it from launching. There was a loud, grumbling sound, and a
cloud of dust obscured the necropolis. Terror seized him. The
golden pyramid lifted off the ground, rising into the night
sky.

“No!” he groaned.

Pulling his uncooperative lower half behind
him, he made his way to the hatch with his one good arm. He felt an
explosion of strength, intending to claw across the desert to the
retreating ship and drag it back to Earth so he could rescue her.
Managing to get out of the pod, he depleted this jolt of energy,
succumbing to his injuries. He collapsed a couple of yards away.
Dizzy from the pain and the apparent loss of blood, he noticed the
inside of his armor felt wet and sticky around his chest.

He wept into the sand. He’d lost her.

He was sprawled facedown. Holding on to the
last of the sun’s heat, the ground was warm against his cheek. It
was a sharp contrast to how cold his body started to feel. Pain
engulfed his abdomen, like he’d swallowed a bag of razorblades. His
armor’s first aid system must’ve stopped working. He gasped for
air, coughing when he sucked dirt into his throat. A measure of
strength returned, and he used it to roll onto his back.

The escaped recruit ship was still visible, a
golden pyramid rising up into the dark heavens. Climbing until its
shape was no longer discernable, its yellow glow and size
distinguished it from the stars. It adopted a speedy flight across
the night sky, entering into space and orbiting the planet with
man’s puny satellites.

Angry tears clouding his vision, he watched
it race toward the horizon. Off in the distance, the battle with
the two disabled Anunnaki ships grew quieter. He hardly
cared—didn’t care about anything except that Kelly was gone.

But there was no guarantee she was dead.

Staring up at the heavens, that desperate
thought sparked a little flame of hope in him. He was freezing, but
he was too weak to shiver. His abdomen seemed to inflate like a
balloon, pressing into his lungs and forcing his breaths to grow
shallow. How would he get her back? He didn’t have a clue. But
maybe Jones and the other rebels could help. If there was a way,
regardless of how dangerous, he was going to do it.

The flame of hope diminished as the ship slid
out of sight. It seemed to be tearing his soul away from his flesh,
dragging it beyond the horizon and surrendering his broken body to
the desert. Suddenly overwhelmed by exhaustion and heartache, he
trembled, exhaling all the air from his lungs. The natural
inhalation didn’t follow as it should. His head spun, and his
vision blurred. He focused every reserve of dwindling strength,
determined to stay alive so he could save her. Try as he might, he
couldn’t take another breath.

Darkness closed in and stole away his pain,
quieting his panic. Deafening and blinding him, it crushed his
senses and devoured his thoughts. It destroyed everything until
there was only one flickering image floating in the emptiness. It
was Kelly, standing close to him. Focusing on her beautiful face,
he knew as long as he could see her, he was still alive. He reached
out to her, trying to press his lips to hers one last time. His
fingers passed through her ethereal image like she was made of
smoke. He couldn’t stop her from fading—didn’t have the strength to
hold the shadows at bay. Lethal darkness billowed through her
ghostly image, and she was gone.

Shane
heard garbled conversation. Tracy barked orders, her voice louder
and firmer than the others were. She did it so well, like she was
born to be a drill sergeant. He wasn’t alert enough to understand
what she was saying. Hands pressed under his sides, raising him.
Pain erupted from everywhere. He opened his mouth to beg them to
stop, but he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs to speak. The
voices were muffled, and he passed out again.

“He’s coming around now,” Dr. Blain observed.
“Give him some space.”

Shane opened his eyes, blinking them into
focus on a cracked, white plaster ceiling.

“Kelly!” He sat bolt upright, and spots
flashed across his vision.

“Easy there, big guy,” Steve said, putting
his hand on Shane’s arm. “You were jacked up like nobody’s business
a couple of minutes ago.”

“Steve,” Shane said. “You’re alive.”

“Yeah,” he replied, a sad smile on his face.
“I’m fine.”

“But Kelly… ”

“She’s not dead, Shane,” Lily said ominously.
She was sitting at a table nearby, one of the advanced holographic
computers the doctor used in front of her.

“So we’re going to rescue her.” He tried to
shrug Steve off so he could stand.

“Not so fast,” Dr. Blain warned.

“In due time.” Lily looked away from the
computer. “But there’s something we must do now to save her
life.”

“They have to shut off their earbuds,” Steve
said, his voice cracking.

“You can’t,” Shane objected, terrified.
“She’ll be enslaved.”

“A part of her will remain conscious,” Lily
replied.