Birthright

CHAPTER EIGHT

The old couple didn't seem surprised to find Kray standing at their door, a driffer in one hand and a duffel bag in the other. Mrs. Morrison ushered him inside, telling him she'd prepared a makeshift bed for him on the couch. He was unable to meet Mr. Morrison's gaze as he sat down.

"I wanted to thank you for trying to help me earlier." He cleared his throat and told the Morrisons what he had learned from his grandmother. He added, "I was hoping you'd let me stay here for a few days, at least until I Kindle."

"And then what?" Mr. Morrison asked gruffly. "Do you think that you'll go home and everything will return to normal? Is that what you're expecting?"

"No. I just don't want something to happen to me, like this harvesting you mentioned. What the hell is that, anyway?"

"Sheltered child," he muttered. "The official name for it is the essential extraction of natural resource—or the extraction process. We Sansers like to call it the harvesting behind closed doors."

"I know what the extraction is," Kray said. "It's when they take Sanser power and engineer it to create the enhancement for Metas. They also use it as a primary power source."

"Give the boy a cookie for getting it half-right. But I'm betting you don't know that the extraction only happens to children."

"I know that, too." He thought of his Sanser schoolmates, those who were permitted to live among the natives until they would disappear one day when their change began. They never returned to school, or even to the Mainland. But before they Kindled, the ANEF would extract the excess Sen from their bodies as they experienced their change.

Kray used to wonder how, decades ago when Metas were first created, the ANEF was able to successfully inject Sen into a human. He finally learned that the Sen used for creating Metas came from Sanser children. After Kindling, a Sanser's Sen would never accept another host. But before Sansers Kindled, while they were experiencing final changes called Flares, the potent Sen their bodies produced could be extracted and injected into a human's bloodstream.

The word harvesting to describe the process sounded crude and ugly, meant to depict the extraction in a negative light. But at that moment, Kray couldn't really blame them for hating it. They had no choice; all Sanser children were harvested regardless of personal consent. It was the price they had to pay for their existence.

"I don't want the ANEF to do that to me," he said.

"Why not?"

"I don't trust it anymore." He felt ashamed to say this out loud, especially in front of Sansers.

I'm a Sanser, too, Kray reminded himself. He had to stop thinking of himself as being any different from the Morrisons.

"There's a bigger reason why you shouldn't let them harvest you, Kray. You could die."

Kray frowned. "That's crazy. No one dies from the harvesting."

Mrs. Morrison crossed the room and opened a drawer. She returned to him with a photo in her hands, which she placed on his lap as she sat down. He studied the young girl in the picture. She looked at the camera with a small smile, her golden hair falling into her face in a way that suggested shyness. But her blue eyes sparkled with humor.

"Who is she?"

"Our daughter. Tera." Mrs. Morrison's voice caught on the name and it was a while before she could continue. "She was fourteen when this was taken twelve years ago. It was the last picture we ever took of her."

Her face was so full of life. "You're telling me that the harvesting killed her?" He shook his head, unwilling to believe it. "That's not possible. The ANEF never said that the harvesting kills anyone."