I really hate when I have to kill my clients. It happens to everyone who signs a Harvester contract eventually, but that hasn’t made it any easier over the years. Guzzling down other people’s emotions and attributes, no matter how cleanly I filter out the bad stuff, leaves traces behind that fester over long periods.
The woman across the street has all the typical signs. She’s trying to drink her coffee at an outdoor cafe like she’s normal, but she’s as twitchy as a jumping spider. There are permanent grooves in her greasy hair from where she’s repeatedly dug her fingers into her scalp. Comes from wanting the ability to read people well. Eventually you start seeing what someone will do before they do it, but then it rewinds and happens again. By the way her jaw is clenched, she’s unlucky enough to hear voices too.
She drains the dregs of her coffee—a poor choice, given her symptoms, but people who get tangled with Harvesters aren’t known for their good decisions—and I step out from the alley. The gazes of tourists and prim-suited businessmen slide over my shadowed figure (cliche I know, but my bosses are fond of the Grim Reaper imagery, minus the scythe), and I have to wait for the traffic to stop because it never stops for me.
“Good morning, Olivia,” I say as she’s about to get up from her table.
Now that I’ve spoken, she can see me, and her gaze locks on for dear life. Her pupils are so big the blue is almost gone from her eyes.
Olivia swallows, rubbing her hands nervously. Even with all the Insight I’ve given her, I’m the one person she can’t read. “Harvester. What are you doing here?”
I pull a vial out of the inner pocket of my cloak. “Thought I’d come to you for delivery this time. Consider it an anniversary present. Ten years today, you know.”
“Oh!” She laughs and her shoulders relax half an inch. After all, we’re in a public place; she must be safe. “That’s wonderful. Things have been getting really rough at work lately. I could use the extra boost.”
I nod, trying to exude an air of gentle sympathy. “Of course. Happy to be of service.”
Olivia greedily takes the vial and rips the cork out like it’s champagne on New Year’s Eve. The dark blue vapor that drifts into her nose looks the same as her monthly dose of Insight. And there is a good deal of that in there, otherwise she’d notice the difference, but there’s also an incredibly high concentration of carbon monoxide mixed in. She’ll be dead a few minutes after she gets back to her apartment.
Her shoulders ease down to their normal level and she smiles the relieved smile of a junkie given her fix. “I better get going. I’ve got a good feeling about today. See you next month.”
The cafe slowly empties as people head to work, but I stay at the table, hands flat against the cold wrought-iron. That had gone as cleanly as I could’ve hoped—in fact, it’s a method I’ll probably use next time—but there’s a skin-prickling feeling I can’t shake. It comes from the knowledge that all Harvesters have: if we fuck up, if we miss one client, they slip past just crazy and go to something scarier. Crazy and calculating.
Because anyone can siphon the attributes of another person if they’re willing to kill for them. But Harvesters are the only ones who can tease them apart into something useful. We are the filter, unable to hold onto any of what others feel for ourselves. And when your head is full of voices, or you’re so charismatic people won’t leave you alone, or you can bluff so well you don’t even know if you’re being honest to yourself anymore, feeling nothing sounds pretty damn good. So if I miss even one client, they’re liable to take my place, and I wind up in the ground.
My own inheritance was an accident. I was in high school, driving too fast at night and maybe a little drunk from my first time trying beer. Not that that mattered; I wouldn’t have seen him anyway. I don’t think the Harvester was crossing the street so much as he jumped in front of my car. (But that hasn’t stopped me from triple-checking every road I’ve crossed since.) Then bing bang boom, magic powers, messages from Beyond. Running away from home without leaving so much as a goodbye note.
There’s a reason most of us don’t make it far past thirty. I’ve had to be so, so careful. Today marks ten years of my contract with Olivia, but it’s also the big Four-Oh. That makes me the oldest Harvester in history. The one with the most notches in my belt.
Happy birthday to me.
I peel myself off the seat and head home for a celebratory hour of staring blankly at the ceiling.
There’s a letter waiting for me on my kitchen table when I walk in. I don’t know who or what gives out our assignments, but my bosses told me right at the start what happens to those of us who disobey. We don’t get killed; we get erased. Even so, I take a moment to sigh (inwardly). A break would’ve been really nice.
Alas. The unmarked envelope opens at my touch, paper unfolding to ink that appears on the page as though someone’s writing it in front of me.
Naseer Karam, Harvester No. 405
You’ve done very well these past few years. We think it’s time for a more influential project. Meet your next assignment in the basement of the Hillwood Estate. Arrangements have been made so you two will have the place to yourselves.
Client Desires: Diplomacy, Intimidation, Insight, Influence, Memory, Confidence…
The list keeps going. Longer than any I’ve ever received. It will take weeks to put a package like this together, to track down all of the people necessary to Harvest these traits from and kill them quietly. But it’s the line at the bottom of the page that stills me.
Contract Length: 18 months, with the option of a 4-8 year extension.
I read the demands again, think of the type of person that would require a boost to so many attributes. The ink disappears, the paper scattering to ash soon after, but combined with the time frame and D.C. location, there’s really only one answer.
They’d assigned me to someone who wants to be the next President.
#
The Hillwood Museum is an opulent mansion set among acres of sprawling gardens, so it’s only fitting that our meeting is in the basement. It’s dark save for a string of fluorescent bulbs, cluttered with ladders and old paint and toolboxes.
I settle down on a rickety workbench that feels like it’ll fill me full of splinters if I breathe too hard, my biometrically locked briefcase by my side. Luckily I don’t have to wait long.
The footsteps on the stairs have the distinct sound of high heels. I stand to greet my client, concentrating hard to make myself visible—though not recognizable—through whatever magic The Powers That Be cloak us with.
The woman who emerges from the landing nearly stops my heart. Arwa Afzal’s beautiful brown eyes pierce right through twenty-three years of numbness to a seed of my childhood I’d thought long dead. We were best friends, once. Two nerdy brown kids in a sea of white private school privilege. Her rainbow of glittery makeup and loud prints is gone, replaced by a navy pantsuit and subtly floral headscarf.
She stops a few feet from me with impeccable posture. There’s the tiniest trace of the old awkwardness I remember when she says, “So… How does this work exactly?”
I’m still reeling, and it takes far more effort than it should for me not to shout, “Arwa, it’s Naseer! Remember me?” But then I see the American flag pinned on her lapel and recall a half-heard memory from the news several years ago saying first Muslim woman elected to the Senate.
We’re not under contract yet. I can tell her who I am, tell her how much this isn’t worth it, even if she could make this country all the things it ought to be.
A cold tingling pressure blooms at the base of my skull. A warning that this is not some cushy sales job where I can cherry-pick my clients.
Fuck.
I turn back to the workbench where I set my briefcase, muscles wound tight, and press my thumb to the lock. It opens, revealing the row of vials—a multitude of colors, like Arwa used to be—I’d gathered for her to sample.
“It’ll take some time to get everything you need, but this should be a good start.” My voice comes out infuriatingly dispassionate. No way for her to recognize it, combined with the passage of time.
Arwa peers down at the vial rack, lips quirked to the side. “Is it improper for me to ask where these came from?”
Her voice catches, right on the word ‘where’ in a way that tells me she couldn’t bring herself to say ‘who.’ That’s a good start. Not everybody cares. And this is the first time I find myself caring about who everybody is. I can’t reject an assignment. But maybe I can make it so she doesn’t end up like the others. The idea of giving her a large helping of carbon monoxide makes me want to vomit.
I point to the dram of Confidence. “Courtesy of a man named Pranav. Sixty-two, just divorced his third wife and has firmly decided the problem is his taste in women. Arrogance, stubbornness, and sexism filtered out of course.” Arwa raises her eyebrows at me—she used to complain that she could never just do one. Why do I remember that?—and I point to Diplomacy. “Calvin, a car salesman from the ritzy part of town. Persuasion was about the closest I could get on short notice without making any political vacuums.”
“I guess I assumed you’d be pulling these things from more...specialized people.”
“Specialized people are known for what they do. They’re missed when they’re gone.” I lean in a little closer. “And truthfully, if you’re talking about things like Hollywood, you’re likely Harvesting second- or third-hand attributes anyway. Diluted to hell. Not worth it.”
“Oh,” she says. She’s quiet, studying the contents of the briefcase.
My heart speeds up a bit, such a difference from its usual steady chug that it makes me light-headed. If she backs out now, we’re both free. I won’t have to watch her decline until I have to kill her.
But I recognize by her intake of breath that she’s doubling down, not reconsidering.
“When I ran for Senate, so few people had anything to say about my platform,” she whispers. “It was all ‘too shrill, too brown, too bossy, too Muslim.’ I know this won’t do anything to change that. But if I can make people look past that… I can’t help but think I could do something wonderful.” She looks up at me with a bit of fear, but mostly excitement, and I’m reminded of a moonlit night in our treehouse, talking about our dreams over peanut butter sandwiches in brown paper bags. “I want to sign a contract.”
I’m cold all over—my own trepidation, not the flash freeze of disobedience—as I take the mirror shard out of its compartment and slice my hand with one jagged edge. The blood swirls into the glass and disappears, and as it does the cut heals. Arwa visibly steels herself before doing the same. Simple as that, her life is bound to mine.
“The campaign officially begins next month,” she says. “Will you have what I need by then?”
I nod because for a moment that’s all I can manage. “I’ll have the components you requested. My employer will contact you with our next meeting place.”
Senator Arwa Afzal rubs her thumb over her palm where the cut had been before nodding as well. She leaves without another word, and I watch her go.
A month will be just enough time to Harvest the attributes, but I won’t have what she needs. A way out of the pit she’s just jumped into is going to take a lot longer to find.
#
Operation Save Arwa keeps me so busy I barely have time to watch the progress of the campaign. Weeks pass by in blinks. I have to expand my search to other continents. To my bosses it looks like I’m being a responsible Harvester, spreading out the killings. But I’m also looking for ways for her not to need me, to wean off the vials without arousing suspicion for how she’s changed. Arwa’s polling well, from what I can tell during our meetings. She’s been setting herself up for success long before me, as all Presidential candidates must. Not quite so smooth on my side of things. All I’ve got is the seed of an idea that might go poorly for both of us.
Six months in I seem to be reverting to a teenager around her because I’ve lost the filter between my brain and my mouth. I ask her perhaps the stupidest question of all time.
“Have you thought about trying this without my help?”
She gives me what I used to call The Look—a withering expression that asks if my synapses are firing on all cylinders. Because of course she had; people don’t ask for a Harvester unless they are desperate.
I backpedal a bit. “It’s just, when we met, you didn’t seem like you needed half the things I’m giving you. That’s not something I’m used to seeing in my clients.”
Arwa snorts. “In this job you have to fight for what you want. That means bolstering your weaknesses where you can and learning to hide them where you can’t. It takes effort that would be put to far better use elsewhere.”
My insides curl in on themselves. It’s not right to put her in this position without asking, but the idea in my head keeps sounding better and better. I can change the potency of the stuff in the vials. I think. Let her prove to herself that she can do this alone. A little bit of extra effort versus losing her life? She’ll thank me later. As long as the bosses don’t catch on.
#
After a month of trial and error, I get the filtering to work. Arwa hasn’t been taking the stuff long enough to recognize a difference—or she’s on so many she can’t even tell I’ve lessened them.
But oh God, I am wrong about the outcome.
People notice. They don’t know why exactly, but they don’t like her as much as they did before. She gets slammed in the polls. My faith in humanity wasn’t high to begin with, but what’s left of it goes right down the crapper.
Our next meeting is the day I fly back from Australia, hellaciously jet-lagged but with a briefcase full of half-baked vials that I want to smash against the wall. But I go to the abandoned warehouse like the obedient dog I am.
It’s clear Arwa hasn’t slept in days. She’s got a wild look in her eyes that scares me. The look of someone who’s been feeding off Harvests for years, not months.
“I need more,” she says. “It’s not enough. Either my tolerance has sky-rocketed, or my competitors got ahold of one of you too, or…” She throws her hands up. “The Iowa Caucus is in a month. If I don’t do well, I’m pretty much screwed.”
Yes. Her dropping out would be the best thing for both of us. Out loud, I say, “I’ll see what I can do.”
She has no space in her mind for me, and I have no energy in mine for pleasantries. I give her the attributes and go, ready to collapse into bed the second I get home.
When I get there, a letter is waiting for me on the kitchen table.
It opens and text starts scrolling before I even touch it, an oddity that frightens me, the emotion an oddity itself. But the words are not the condemning ones I expect. They are instructions.
This situation is far more delicate and volatile than we expected. We’ve pooled our resources and have come up with a solution we’re calling Siphoning. Think of it as a half-Harvest. A way to drain someone’s proficiencies without killing them. Take only one from each of the following so as not to arouse suspicion. It’s up to you to decide which attribute is most important to take.
Twelve names follow. All the candidates Arwa is running against.
#
The letter haunts me through the February and March primaries. I can’t figure out if this is some sort of test for me, or if They are desperate for Arwa to win, or something else entirely that only their alien (I assume) brains can conceive. Regardless, Their new technique works—she regains her footing, raises funds, holds rallies big enough to fill arenas. Through all of it, I have no time for sleep. Between Siphoning and Harvesting, I am also doing the thing that goes against our biggest unspoken rule: seeking out others like me. I’m number 405 out of who knows how many. Someone must know of a way out.
They’re hard to find, at first. It seems we’re hidden even from each other. So I look for people who have Client written all over them. Sooner or later their dealers show up, a blurry outline in the air in front of a person who’s talking to themselves.
Some run when they see me. A lot of the ones I find in the beginning are just kids beneath their cloaks. Frightened, following instructions to stay alive. I wonder if they run because they’re told to, or because they see in my face a future that’s just more of the same.
I finally meet a girl in San Francisco, no more than seventeen, who stops right before slipping away into the shadows.
“I’ve heard a rumor about a man in Wyoming. Found a loophole in his contract and hasn’t been given a new one since. Still alive, though. Maybe he can help you.”
Wyoming’s a big state, and it’s the end of May by the time I track some very loose rumors to Yellowstone. A little over five months to election day. Hard to believe I’d forgotten what panic feels like before this year.
The pines carry a blanket of peace, though, and once I leave the bustle of the trails the quiet is enough to calm me. I wander through the woods, focus on keeping my magic low so he can find me, but not so low that the wolves will come eat me for lunch.
There’s no sign of another human being for three days, and I start to realize how ridiculous this all is. Arwa is holding a rally in D.C. right now, prepping for the slew of primaries in June, and I’m taking a goddamn nature walk. I could be here for months and never see another soul.
I give it two more days. Still no mystery man, but there’s something different about the trees, the clouds. They’re looking for me. I’ve been away from my duties too long. The wind rustles the pine needles, and I swear it sounds like voices, whispering.
I leave the park empty-handed before the cold prickling my skull freezes me solid.
But for the first time, Their prodding doesn’t quell me. I am teeth-grinding, nails-cutting-crescents-into-palms furious on the flight home. Those other Harvesters used to be sons and daughters, fathers and mothers. Someone’s best friend. As were all the people they had to feed death to by the tablespoon.
Perhaps it’s not my caution that’s kept me alive so long, but my voluntary blindness.
Two realizations judder through me with the impact of the plane’s wheels on the tarmac. The first is that I’m a colossal ass for believing a teenager who was definitely just trying to get me off her trail—where would she have ‘heard a rumor’ like that anyway? We don’t talk to each other. The second is that it doesn’t matter if this is a test or a move on a board game too big for me to see.
I am never going to be able to kill Arwa.
#
It’s the night before the candidates of each party are officially nominated. Just over a year since this all started. The race is tight; Arwa wants another batch of attributes before her big speech. Our meeting is set in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, eerily empty, courtesy of Them. Her eyes trace the location of every sound, the only indicator of the way she’s been destroying herself.
Then I see the outline of the gun hidden beneath her clothes, which means only one thing to a Harvester. She’s ready to turn on me if I fail to deliver.
I’ve never had a client spiral this fast. Then again, I’ve never had one with this much weight on their shoulders. I should have known this was coming. Hell, I did know, but I didn’t want to believe. Some suspicious back corner of my brain made me prepare for this tonight.
“I don’t have it,” I say, and my vision goes white at the lie. My muscles seize like I leapt into the Arctic Ocean naked. They are keeping a much closer eye on me after Yellowstone. I unfreeze just as fast and amend my statement. “I don’t have it with me. It’s finishing brewing back at my apartment.”
Her frown smooths over quickly. “I didn’t realize Harvesters had apartments.”
Another man’s chuckle comes out of my mouth, and I gesture for her to start down the white marble steps.
Arwa follows me back home—such a breach of anonymity that I’m shocked I don’t turn into an ice cube again. I half-expect there to be a letter waiting for me, but the table is empty when I bring her inside. I head for the kitchen and take my pistol from its hiding place in the cutlery drawer. It’s my least favorite way to deal with clients. Horrible cleanup, and it feels so personal, even when I don’t really know them. But this is only for show.
She looks around at the sparsely furnished room, peeks through the bedroom door where my mattress sits directly on the floor. Trying to pretend she’s not searching for my stash.
“Nice place,” she says wryly.
Two little, inconsequential words that have nothing to do with anything. Yet something in my chest chips away and falls into the void at the practice clear in her expression. That she has to act for the whole world. Self-preservation of a very different kind than mine, but no less painful.
“Thanks.” My hand shakes as I tuck the gun into my waistband, wondering how many of us have had to confront the feeling of shooting a person we used to know.
Maybe that’s why the Harvester who turned me jumped in front of my car. Our contracts don’t have loopholes. You either disobey and get erased, or you die and pass your abilities on to the next unlucky soul.
Well, no matter what They want from Arwa and me, They must be pretty fucking stupid if They think I’m going to let her live as I have.
She clears her throat expectantly, and I break from my thoughts, skin prickling and alive like I’ve been scrubbed with some of those fancy spa salts. My brain feels that way too, in a way I haven’t experienced since I was a teenager, high on life’s possibilities. Free.
I cross to where her attributes are hidden in a safe in the pantry. But instead of the vials, when I unlock the safe, I reach for the shard that contains our contract. The glass can’t be shattered by any means I’ve ever tried. Except now that I’m ready for the guillotine to fall, I can do the one thing I never dared to do before.
I push all of my shadows away and let Arwa see me.
The world goes still.
I think even They are stunned. Arwa’s mask crumples. Her mouth opens and closes, shock and confusion and then disbelieving wonder on her face.
“Naseer?” she whispers. “I thought… I thought you were dead. You disappeared right before graduation, and we all looked for you—”
My eyes are wet, and at that moment I would’ve performed one final Harvest if it would give me just a little more time. But I close the distance between us and take her hands, wrapping them around the mirror shard.
“Keep this,” I say. My voice is rough, vocal cords starting to tighten as my limbs go cold. They must have knocked themselves out of it, but at least total erasure takes a bit longer than a traditional warning. “To remember me, and to warn anyone else who wants to sign a contract. Our clients all end up dead, eventually, or kill their Harvester and take their place. It’s not worth it.”
The ice is spreading faster. I move my jaw with great effort. “I’m sorry. I couldn’t let you become like me. You won’t win the election, but you can’t let that stop you. You have too much good to do still.”
Air stops moving through my lungs, and I can’t say any more. My fingers are frozen around hers, blackness creeping in from the edges of the room. Tears fall on Arwa’s cheeks, but the questions she asks fall on malfunctioning ears.
Swathes of darkness drift from me like smoke, the things that make me a Harvester being torn away, the rest of me soon to follow. But for a second, when the cloak is gone, I am slammed from all sides by colored lights. I recognize them from years of shoving them into bottles. They flood into my nose, mouth, eyes, ears, until I fear I may burst from twenty-three years of missing emotion.
No, not missing. Lingering at the edges. Arwa had made them start to sneak back in, and now here they are in full.
At the center is a little sphere of glittering gold. It’s tinged with blue because I never got to tell Arwa it was there before my life turned upside down. I hope when the dregs of her Harvests are out of her system, she’ll understand why I had to do this.
With the last bit of will my soul has left, I push the ball of light toward her. She cups her hands around it, and I can leave the world happy, remembering what it is for another to hold my heart, and knowing Arwa will never have to forget.