Read The Harvest for Free Online

is more than that. She’s a problem-solver. A fixer. A flare gun you can shoot into the air to bring light to a situation—or straight at your enemies to set them on fire. She’s a farking moonbat, wild-eyed and unhinged. And Lane is incredibly glad she’s working for the Heartland.
    Everything about her is sharp-angled and severe. Jawline like an ax-blade. Cheekbones like bullets. Eyes big and bright, blazing with the craziness of youth (she’s only a year older than Lane, after all).
    The two of them take the elevator down into the city center—what Lane has named Boxelder Circle—and above them, the reconstructed flotilla rises like broken teeth. It’s slapdash, haphazard, ugly as a shaved shuck rat, but it’ll do. The ships of the Sleeping Dogs were able to pull the buildings upright. Men and women died anchoring the structures back together with chains thrice as thick as Lane’s own (admittedly lanky) body. Most of the city had crumbled or was worthless to them, and some of the Saranyu never fell (or fell too slowly to be of value, buoyed as they were by giant balloons). But from the wreckage remained enough of value. And now those broken teeth composed their city.
    The elevator door opens. They ripped out the mechanical man that once controlled it—now it’s moved with cables and pulleys, hand-cranked by men, not machines. Been a lot of anti-machine sentiment recently, and anything that even looked like a mechanical in the crashed Saranyu was dragged out into the light and crushed with boots, sticks, stones.
    Luna and Lane step out of the box.
    It’s then that Lane sees five men lined up in the circle, kneeling.
    Burlap sacks over their heads, bound loosely at the neck with wire.
    Luna hoots and cackles. “We took a few prisoners, boss.”
    Jeezum Crow.
    All around stand Sleeping Dogs, many with their wolf and dog masks pushed up over their heads, sweaty faces staring out. Transmitting hatred toward the kneeling men. More are gathering, too, curious to see.
    “Wh-what do we do with them?” Lane hisses to Luna so that nobody else can hear.
    “We make an example of them,” Luna says, then winks.
    She pulls out a sonic pistol.
    Lane steps in her way. “Luna. Luna . Wait. Hold up. What do you mean, make an example of them?”
    “C’mon. C’mon .” She gives him a look, like, You’re joking, right? But he presses her with a stare, and so she sighs and says, “The boys and girls of the Dogs like a little justice now and again. We got five traitors to the Heartland here, boss. Two Babysitters. Two facility workers. And the facility boss, man named Hale. These ain’t Empyrean. They’re Heartland folk who chose a different side. And so they need to be made to understand what happens to folk like that.”
    The gathering crowd is starting to murmur now. And people are closing in on the five kneeling men. They’re not touching them yet, but already Lane can smell the bloodlust in the air. Anger, carried on the wind like a vibration, like a frequency everyone can hear and none can resist.
    They’re Heartlanders, he thinks.
    “You want to hurt them,” he says, nodding, starting to accept that.
    “We gotta kill ’em,” she says, smiling.
    “Luna—”
    “I can do it if you want. But the Dogs wanna follow you, not me. And you don’t want them following me more than they follow you. You’re the top of the pops, the big boss with the red pepper sauce.” She spins the sonic pistol around, tilts the grip toward him. “They wanna see you do it.”
    He takes the pistol.
    The grip is warm in his hand. And yet it sends chills up his arm.
    The men and women gathered—hell, even a few kids hanging around, nestled in between the knees or at the hips of parents or guardians—see him take the pistol. And they start to chant.
    May-or.
    May-or.
    May-or.
    MAY-OR!
    Grungy, dust-caked faces stare on.
    Dark eyes watch.
    Mouths open, some in happiness, others in anger. All yelling for him.
    Every part of him feels