Resist (The Harvest Saga Book 2) (20 page)

When his bare hands touched my stomach, I flinched.

“Shh. I’ve got you.”

I nodded and nuzzled into his neck. My fingers curled into his dark hair. It wasn’t long before my hands were moving. I wasn’t moving them, his head was. His lips touched the left side of my abdomen so reverently and sweetly that I wanted to cry. I bit my lip to stop the whimper that tried to escape.

“So beautiful,” he murmured against my skin.

Gray showered me with kisses, making me wonder what it would feel like to be with him-with him. He left burning trails of kisses across my body and ignited a fire deep inside me. Before I got too worked up, he kissed my lips possessively, covered us both with the blankets, and fell asleep rubbing his thumb across my stomach. I was pretty sure I went to sleep with a feeling of hope and a smile on my face for the first time in my life.

∞

The following morning, I woke
up in bed alone. The sun was almost up. It was late and so was I. Where was Gray? He always woke me up. I threw open the blankets and stepped into the cold air, regretting it almost instantly. But I had to get moving. Vesuvius had put us back to work. Winter was slowly loosening its grip on the Village. The first signs that spring was just around the corner began to show.

I rushed to layer my clothes and tugged my hair back into a knot on the back of my neck. Pulling on my coat and gloves, I sat to lace my boots. It was getting more difficult as my bump got bigger. I smiled thinking about last night with Gray. He loved me like Abby and he loved my bump even more, I thought.

I grabbed some bread, cheese and a jar of water before rushing out the door. We were to report to the Main Hall to get our assignments each day. I was among the last to show up, so I quickly found my name. Beside it were the words, “Report to Kaia Kelley.”

I entered the Main Hall in search of my mother. I found her in a very familiar place. Just thoughts of Councilman Preston behind the same desk sent a chill up my spine.

“Abigail!” A bright white smile flashed in my direction. She seemed genuinely happy to see me. “You’ve been assigned to me.”

I returned her smile. “Yes. For today, anyway.”

She winked. “We’ll see about that. We have much work to do.”

“What sort of work?”

My mother stood from behind the desk and shuffled through a stack of papers. “You know the Village and its people. You can help me.”

The smile slid from my face. “Help you with what?”

“We need to schedule work teams for the remainder of the Winter to begin with. Then, we must get started on spring planting, and continue the pruning and general care of the orchards. With the double harvest planned, we must work diligently when spring does arrive. I saw the first Jonquil stems rising from the earth this morning!”

As she basked in her excitement, a thought occurred to me. “Kaia, when did Vesuvius develop such a growth method?”

She stood taller, more proud. “It has been in development for many years now, but we have perfected it in the last three.”

“Is it apple-specific, or will it work on all crops? Will all crops have a double yield?”

“We are working on making similar serums for the other crops, but for now, it is specific to the apple crop.”

She asked me to be seated across from her. She began asking questions about who the strongest young men in the Village were, who the past team leaders had been and who might not physically be able to work in the orchards themselves.

We worked down a list of individuals. But it kept bothering me. And, like most things, what was in my mind, slid through my lips.

“Mother, when did Cole poison the other Greater cities?”

“Earlier this year. It was so horrible, Abigail.” She lowered her papers, stood and moved to close the door. “When we got word of the illnesses, there was nothing we could do. If we sent people in to help, our own would have been infected. The virus had been engineered to specifically effect Greaters. We could do nothing but sit, wait, and hope that some would develop a natural immunity to the disease. None did. And our hope was soon extinguished. It was tragic.”

“Kaia, if Olympus only earlier in the year poisoned the cities with the virus, why had Vesuvius been developing the growth serum? Olympus was given charge over Orchard. Why didn’t
they
develop the serum?”

Her eyebrows scrunched together. “We have been working on this for years. I am not sure how it came to Vesuvius. Perhaps Olympus asked for our assistance.”

I snorted. “No way. Cole would never ask for outside help. His ego was too big.” Lowering my voice, I asked, “Do you think it’s at least possible that Vesuvius had planned to take control of the Lesser Villages? To get rid of Olympus’s hold on so many of them? How many did Vesuvius control before the virus and fall of Olympus?”

She whispered. “Two. We controlled only two. Olympus controlled the most, at twenty-four. Several others were divided between the other Greater cities who were closest to them.”

“You understand what I’m asking, right?”

“You are asking if it is possible that Vesuvius is responsible for the virus and for destroying Olympus? You wonder if it was all a ploy to gain power and the trust of the Lessers?”

“Yeah. Basically.”

She swallowed. “I honestly do not know, Abigail. And if you are smart, you will not speak of this to anyone again. If your theory has any merit at all, you would become a target for such rhetoric very quickly.”

I nodded. We went back to work. It was the longest and most awkward day of my life. In my heart, I knew exactly who had engineered the Greater virus and why.

After I was dismissed by my mother, I walked home along the same trail that had carried me to the Main Hall. Kyan yelled behind me.

“Abby Blue!”

“Hey!” I smiled. He rushed to me, a stern look on his face, and grabbed my upper arms. Something was wrong.

“Have you seen Gretchen or Marian?”

“No. I’ve been working in the Main Hall today. I haven’t been home yet.”

He blew out a breath. “I came home and they’re not in the cabin. It looks like they haven’t been all day.”

“Do you think they were put to work?”

His eyes looked off in the distance. “What about Gray?”

“He was gone when I got up, so I’m not sure. I’ll go check.” I started toward the cabin. Kyan fell into step beside me. A feeling of dread settled in and my feet instinctively moved faster.

I was almost running when we crested the small hill from which I could see the tiny wooden cabin. No smoke curled from the chimney and I knew before I even stepped inside that Gray wasn’t there. No one was.

“Where is he? Where are they?”

Kyan shook his head. “I don’t know. But, I’m damn sure gonna find out.”

I nodded. “Ky?”

“Yeah.”

We stepped inside and he started building a fire immediately. It was freezing and the embers left in the hearth this morning had long since burned themselves out.

“Kyan, I need to tell you something.”

He looked up at me. The tinder in his hand caught flame and I nodded toward it before it burned him. He didn’t panic. Kyan never did. He just eased it under the larger sticks and brushed his hands on the pantlegs of his jeans.

“What’s up?”

“I think Vesuvius is behind everything. I think they made the virus that took out the Greaters in the cities. Olympus took the fall. I know that Cole was evil and that he and Crew were the architects of the Harvest, but I think Vesuvius has been planning this for a long time.”

“What do you know, Abby Blue?”

I sat down on the couch with Kyan and told him everything. In the end, he agreed with me. The Vesuvians, like all Greaters, could not be trusted. They wanted power and control, and didn’t care who they had to eliminate to get it.

“This has to stop, Ky. We’re people. We aren’t slaves. No matter what they say, we are not lesser or beneath them. I can’t raise my baby like this.” Tears spilled down my cheeks and dripped off my jaw.

Kyan hugged me to him. “I know. I just don’t know how to stop them. We could probably find a way to get rid of the Vesuvians in the village. But, unless we take out the city itself, they’ll just keep coming back. And my bet is that they’d be pissed when they came and found out what we’d done. It would just make it worse on everyone.”

I nodded. He was right. Vesuvius had to be taken down. The city itself and all the Greaters in it. But how? And if we did this, would we be more evil than they were?

In the days that passed
, there was nothing. Nothing from Gray. No information or news about Marian or Gretchen. It was as if they’d all three disappeared. Kyan had even walked to the prison at night. Lessers were now in charge of some security there, so he’d gotten inside easily. They weren’t there. They weren’t anywhere.

Julia had tried to help locate them using her comm and computer. No luck. Not even a trace of them was found. Kyan begged her to stop looking. Someone was sure to notice eventually. She reluctantly agreed to stop her search.

It was over a week later in the middle of the night that I learned what was happening and began to formulate a plan to end this, once and for all. Tapping at my window woke me up. It was Laney. I’d recognize that pattern anywhere. Knock-knock-tap-tap-tap.

I rushed to the front door and unlocked it, letting her inside. She pulled me toward the fire. Her skin was red, chapped and freezing to the touch. “Laney? What in the world?”

“I know where Gray is.”

“Where?”

“They just loaded them onto the train heading for Vesuvius.”

“Why are they keeping them there? What are they going to do with them?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. But it’s not good.”

“We have to do something.”

She smiled. “I have a plan.”

“What?”

“We need to get on the train. I’ve seen it. There are mountains of explosives on it. We need access to those. We need to blow the Greaters off the face of the planet.”

I pulled a blanket around my shoulders. “We can’t just commandeer the train and ride into Vesuvius.”

“No. We can’t. But you can get on board. We’ll figure the rest out later.”

“Me? How would I get on the train?”

“Your mother.”

I shook my head. “She wouldn’t sneak me in. As much as she might be softening, she’s loyal.”

Laney smiled. “Then we use her loyalty against her.”

∞

I lay in the bed
dressed in a white nightgown that Laney brought with her. Laney had told Kyan about the plan, but he was the only other person who knew what was happening.

Laney looked at me. “You ready?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I’m ready. I just hope this works.”

“It will. Kaia loves you. She’ll do anything to help you.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Laney pulled back the blankets and poured the warm cow’s blood between my legs. Not too much and not too little. Just enough. The smell almost made me vomit. My thighs were slippery with crimson and it was soaking in to my nightgown.

She winked. “Good luck, Abby.”

“Thanks.”

And, with that, she ran out the door like a woman possessed. It was time to put on the show of our lives.

Kyan burst through the door with Kaia in tow. “Abby Blue?” His voice was frantic. “Abby!”

“Help, please help.” The words were weak and barely loud enough for him to hear.

“Oh, God. No. Abby?” He rushed toward me.

“Abigail! Oh, no!” My mother pushed him out of her way. She was by my side before I could blink.
Hook, line, and sinker
. “Where is your healer?” she screamed at Kyan.

Kyan yelled back, “Laney went for her.”

“Will she be able to help her?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I doubt it. I’ve seen this kind of thing before.”

“What happened to the woman?”

“The child inside her died and she did, too, a few days after.” Kyan blinked back tears. Damn, he was good at this.

Kaia let loose of my hand and her fingers began furiously pecking at her comm. Before Evelyn and Laney returned, I had been strapped to some sort of thick plastic board, had a needle shoved in my arm and some sort of plastic bag of water was coolly being forced into my veins. I must have looked nervous. Kaia squeezed my hand as I was hoisted up by the Vesuvian medical team.

I’d only seen them once, the day the boy fell from the tree and broke his arm. Gently, they carried me outside, over, and across the land, to the depot. I was placed on the sleek red train in no time at all.

Kaia did have the pull we were hoping she did. Within the hour, the train’s engine roared to life and we were chuffing south toward the Vesuvian city. My mother had to stay behind, per orders, and I was relieved. I didn’t want her around if things went as planned, let alone if they went wrong. They couldn’t go wrong. This was our one chance at freedom.

I feigned sleep and listened intently to the conversation around me. The four members of the medical team were men. They all agreed that they would be happy to return to their beloved city. I wondered if they would feel the same in a few days or if they would all be looking to the heavens with the eerily vacant stare that death left in its wake.

∞

When the train slowed, I
grew nervous, or maybe frightened was the better word for it. Could I really pull this off on my own? The medical team appeared behind a glass door that slid open automatically when they got close enough. I looked up at them and gulped as they surrounded me. One placed the small sleeve around my upper arm and made the blasted thing squeeze the life out of me for the thousandth time.

“We’ve entered the walls of Vesuvius, Lesser.”

Here we go again. I’m not a person with a name, just a Lesser.

I nodded.

The tallest Greater, with a long nose and tiny beaded eyes looked at me and spoke. “We will transport you to a medical facility at once. You will receive better care than you have ever received in your pathetic life.”

Another snorted. “If she was not Lady Kaia’s daughter, she would not even receive this care. She would probably have hemorrhaged and died back in the Village.” He was short and stocky, balding with ruddy cheeks.

Lady Kaia? The other two barely looked at me and certainly didn’t speak. True to their words, when the train slowed to a stop, I was carefully placed onto a wheeled cart and removed from the train. PerTs ran on rails all over the city, much like in Olympus. But where Olympus had been covered in white, Vesuvius was red. The steel of the buildings was even red.

I had thought Olympus was grand. But it wasn’t nearly as enormous as Vesuvius. Red stretched so high into the sky that I imagined one could simply take an elevator into the stormy clouds hovering menacingly above. I guess they hadn’t managed to figure out how to control the weather.

The team wheeled me into a larger PerT, painted red with a large white cross in the center. Soon, we were weaving between enormous buildings toward the medical technicians. I hoped their physicians and technology wouldn’t be able to tell that I’d lied about everything that had brought me here.

The building I was taken to was nondescript, which was strange considering the others around it. But the technology present everywhere else in the city was evident here. Doors slid open automatically; they had elevators. I was taken up a large one to a higher floor, wheeled down a hallway and into a small room where I was hooked up to several machines. Beeps and grumbles sounded from them rhythmically.

It wasn’t long before the sterile room’s door slid open with a whoosh and a female Greater marched over to my bedside. Her midnight hair was slicked back in a severe bun, pulling the skin of her middle-aged face taught.

A warm smile formed on her lips. “I am Vivian. I have been assigned to check your medical status.” Her dark eyes were nearly hidden by large plastic-looking glasses; similar to those that some of the Greaters in Olympus had worn.

“Why do you wear those glasses?”

She smiled slightly. “When the rings spread across our irises, it makes some people’s eyes more sensitive to light, especially to the sun. Many people simply choose to wear these for comfort. Others choose to wear them because it seems fashionable. There are many new styles of UV blockers available now.”

“Oh.”

She wheeled a tiny table over toward me and began typing things into a small computer. “You are very interesting, Abigail Kelley.”

“Yeah. So I’ve heard.”

Vivian laughed. “You are a mixture of Greater and Lesser, and likely the first of many given the predicament that we Greaters find ourselves in at present.”

“You think they will allow Lessers and Greaters to...”

Her eyes grew wide. “No. I did not mean to insinuate that the two groups would consort. I honestly do not know what will happen in the future, but Greaters will need the help of Lessers to continue their race. It is as simple as that. Without Lessers, the Greaters cannot reproduce. They will die out, as the current generation of Greater females are completely sterile. We’ve checked all female children in Vesuvius and are confident that none will ever be capable of reproduction.”

“So, you intend to steal the Lesser eggs like Olympus did?”

Vivian’s delicate, pale fingers stilled and hovered over the keys. “I do not think that our city’s leaders intend to steal anything from you, or any other Lesser. I believe they mean to ask for your help. They will be forthcoming and honest with you and with the Greaters who might benefit from receiving Lesser egg implantations.”

I pulled the thin white sheet up over my shoulders. It was freezing in that room. She stared at me as if expecting me to say something. What would I say?
Well, sure you can have my eggs as long as you ask nicely? No. I don’t think so.

Vivian suddenly walked to the other side of my bed and wheeled a large white plastic machine to my side. “Would you like to see your baby? Perhaps know whether it is a boy or girl? Our technology is state-of-the-art.”

“I’m not very far along, according to the healer in my village.”

She motioned to my stomach. “May I?”

I nodded and lowered the sheet. She tucked it around my legs and lifted the fabric over my stomach. Vivian grabbed a bottle and squirted warm blue gel onto my abdomen and pressed a button on the machine. A loud echo of static flooded the room. I looked around nervously. “It is the machine. Soon you will hear the beat of your child’s heart.”

“I will?”

She smiled and nodded slightly, moving the flat probe over my stomach. Soon, it sounded as if hooves were beating the ground.
Bump, bump. Bump, bump
. The sound was loud and strong. Tears flooded my eyes. “Is that her?”

“Yes. That is your child’s heartbeat. It is strong and very healthy. Perfectly normal for this point in gestation.”

“What is gestation?”

“Your pregnancy. It is normal for this point in your pregnancy.” Her motherly smile was very comforting for some reason. I wished Lulu could hear her heartbeat. My baby girl.

“Do you want to know the child’s gender?”

“It’s a girl.”

She smiled and nodded. “It’s early, but it does look as if she will be female. Our machine can predict these things from early on based upon hormonal fluctuations deep within your womb.”

“The machine can do that?”

“Oh, yes. It predicts much more. She will be born healthy. There are no birth defects present. You have nothing to worry about. I am not sure why you had a bleeding spell, but sometimes those things do happen, even in normal pregnancies. Do not worry for her. She is perfect.”