by Toby Minton
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Excerpt from Journal
According to Plan
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Hunter and Hunted
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Separation Anxiety
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Underground
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Elias…15 years ago
Chapter 16
Necessary Risks
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Mistakes
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Restless
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Alone
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Out of Time
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
At Any Cost
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Second journal entry
Books by Toby Minton
Note from the Author
Toby's Haunts
About the Author
Children of Genesis
by
Toby Minton
Book One of the Gateway Series
Cover design by Indie Designz http://www.indiedesignz.com
Edited by JB Associates
Copyright © 2013 Toby Minton
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 0989691209
ISBN-13: 978-0-9896912-0-8
Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person with whom you share it. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should delete it from your device and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is coincidental.
This book is dedicated to my mother, for patiently listening to my stories for countless hours when I wasn’t lost in la-la land, and for making me believe I could do anything.
To Michelle, for your boundless enthusiasm for my stories, and for making a certain character so easy to write.
To Donna, for literally showing me how to make my dreams come true, and for giving me those little nudges to get me moving.
And to Christine, for believing in me unconditionally, for supporting me in every way, and for pushing me to chase my dream.
I never wanted to be a hero. In fact, you could say I did everything in my power to avoid it.
If you looked up “hero” in the dictionary, there’d be no mention of me. Not even a side note. Maybe I’d be under “wrong crowd,” as in don’t-run-with, or maybe “ne’er-do-well,” if that’s even in there.
I couldn’t tell you. I never read a dictionary, or an encyclopedia, or a textbook for that matter. In fact the only book I ever picked up and read was an old romance novel I found under a cot in a hostel, and I didn’t even read that whole thing. I got bored and skipped ahead to the sex, but that just got me worked up, and a hostel in the free zone is the last place you wanna scratch that kind of itch. Trust me.
I guess I’m not that good at telling stories. I just started and already I’m getting distracted and talking about sex. At least I haven’t cussed yet. Believe me, you should be impressed. You have no idea.
So I’m really not the one who should be telling this story. I never was good at it. I tend to skip to the good stuff, like with the romance novel. But the one who should be telling it…well, I’m all you got. I guess that’s the way of it with the real heroes. They don’t get stuck telling stories.
Like I said, I never wanted to be a hero. But in the end, I didn’t really have a choice.
-From a partially burned journal
found in the Wasteland
According to Plan
Chapter 1
Elias
The creature lunged at Elias, an ululating roar tearing from its human throat. The heavy chains snapped taut, stopping the creature in a half crouch, but it didn't fall back this time. Pinning Elias with both eyes—one deep-set, brown, and decidedly human; the other narrow, red-tinted, and clearly not human—the creature strained forward against the thick shackles. For a few heartbeats, it appeared the chains would win the struggle again. The creature held motionless except for a faint tremble in its human lips. Then the bolt holding the chains on the creature's dark side shifted a fraction of a centimeter in the pitted concrete with a grinding creak.
Elias took a slow breath as he shifted his finger from the guard to the trigger of the M4 he had trained on the creature. His own hard gray eyes never wavered from the creature's, but he shook his head, silently pleading with the beast to stand down.
Elias didn’t want to shoot the creature straining to reach him. For the better part of the past two decades, this creature had been his friend. Or at least half of it had, the half that was still Marcus Gideon, the half that was currently not in control of the body straining at the chains enough to cause the bolt to shift another centimeter.
“Come back, Gideon,” Elias breathed, cutting a quick glance at the bolts. “Don’t make me do this.”
The creature quieted at the sound of Elias’s voice, tilting its head to study him. It was an animal-like gesture, not unlike a dog reacting to a high-pitched noise. But thinking of this thing as an animal was a mistake, one Elias knew better than to make. Gideon had told him time and again that the creature sharing his body was more intelligent than it let on during the rare and necessarily brief periods when Gideon gave it control. Those periods were usually so short-lived the creature wasted the whole time raging like a cornered animal waking up in a strange place surrounded by enemies, which was really the case, as Elias understood their relationship.
While the physical bodies of Gideon and the creature were fused into one, their minds were completely separate and only aware of each other’s thoughts when control of the body shifted from one to the other. Only one of them could control the body at a time; the other went somewhere Elias didn’t really understand. Gideon described it as a non-physical plane, like some sort of ghost image of our world, a place where normal rules of time and space don't apply. There the past, present, and future of the physical world flowed like foggy eddies that Gideon struggled to comprehend. Or so he said. Part of Elias suspected it was all just in his head. Maybe he was just running around in his imagination while the creature had control, and vice versa. Easier to wrap the mind around than the alternative.
Elias moved his finger back to the trigger guard as the creature relaxed back into a crouch. He didn’t want to risk an accident
al shot if the creature surprised him again. If and when he fired on his friend, he wanted it to be a conscious choice. And fire he would if the chains gave way. Gideon’s orders had been clear, just as they had been every other time he’d given up control.
Gideon had been a colonel before the accident, back when the country had still been in one piece and still had armed forces. Elias had been a Force Recon major in the final days of the Corps. Even though as a military scientist Colonel Marcus Edward Gideon had never commanded men in battle, and even though the military had long since ceased to exist, Elias would follow Gideon’s orders. He would follow them because he knew that if the creature got loose in control of the body, the destruction and chaos it could cause would be unthinkable.
On its home world, the creature had been the penultimate predator, the top of a brutal food chain. It was strong, fast, calculating, and ruthless. And while most of the left half of its body was now human—therefore weaker and more vulnerable—Elias had seen firsthand what the right half could do. The unarmed, underfed, and miserably unprepared humans sleeping in the free zone around them right now wouldn’t stand a chance.
The creature scanned its surroundings, no doubt looking for something to use to escape its bonds. Fortunately, there wasn’t much to work with. They were in a small HVAC shed on the roof of what was once one of the biggest casinos in the city. Like nearly everything else about this particular building, the floor and walls were heavy concrete and mostly bare. Most of the metal and all the electronics had long since been scavenged from the industrial air conditioning units, leaving skeletal husks along one wall. The lone door, to Elias’s back, was good steel with a heavy padlock.
As the creature studied the room, Elias studied the creature, something he normally avoided out of respect for his friend when Gideon was in control. Not that he could get a good look even if he wanted most of the time, what with the oversized, hooded coat Gideon always wore to keep as much of himself covered as possible.
The fusing of Gideon and the creature had been eerily symmetrical. A sinuous line bisected his body, a sharp divider between the human left side and alien right. His right arm and leg were longer, thinner, the skin a shiny black carapace extending past the fingertips into sharply hooked talons. The back of his neck and head were likewise armored, the dividing line angling down his forehead and across the bridge of his nose to cut back across his right cheekbone, leaving most of his face human except for his right eye. But with the creature in control, even the mostly human face was contorted in a snarl that was purely feral and alien.
The creature threw back its head and roared again and lunged against the chains over and over. With each lunge the bolt on its right side shifted a little more, and the creature noticed. Wrapping the chain twice around its black arm, the creature gripped it in its taloned fist and pulled, its powerful right leg muscles bunching and straining with each repeated lunge.
Once. Twice. The bolt rose another two centimeters, maybe more.
“Dammit, Gideon,” Elias breathed, finger moving back to the trigger, his aim tracking the vulnerable face of his friend.
It lunged again, and again. A few more good pulls and the bolt would slide free.
Gideon was out of time.
“I’m sorry, old friend,” Elias whispered as the creature squatted and tightened its grip on the chain, looking up at the last second to meet Elias’s eyes.
Elias hesitated for a split second, willing Gideon to come to and recognize him, but even though the eye was human, the look in it was filled with unfiltered hatred. He eased the trigger to the breaking point, hardening his mind to what had to be done. Then he saw the shift.
One second his friend’s eye was watching him like a hawk would a mouse. The next it softened, widened, and confusion and weariness replaced the rage.
“Elias?” his friend croaked with a raw voice. “Elias, I’m—stand down. It’s me.”
Gideon
Gideon watched Elias’s eyes soften and the muzzle of the assault rifle lower. The relief on his friend’s face was evident, and the slight shake of Elias’s head as he let out a long breath was all Gideon needed to know how close he’d come to ending.
He glanced down at his still-clenched right hand and forced it to release the chain. He could feel every nerve under the hard black hide, but he still had trouble thinking of it as his arm now. He knew though. After nearly fifty years of trying, he knew without a doubt that there was no reversing the merge. He and the beast from the other side of the Gateway were inextricably fused, for good or ill.
After what Gideon had seen tonight, he was glad he had never succeeded in reversing his condition. He was going to need all the strength of his new body to do what was needed in the coming days. More importantly, he was going to need the emotional hardness the fusing had given him, the ability to detach his mind from his human feelings.
He looked down at Elias, who was unlocking the shackles on his legs and wrists. His friend was almost as strong and fit a soldier as he had been when Gideon met him, but Elias was starting to show his age. His hair was steadily graying at the temples, and his hands and face were showing more lines with each passing year. He still moved like a man in his prime, but physical strength alone wouldn't carry him through what was coming.
Gideon couldn’t tell Elias all he’d seen tonight. He’d have to tell him some of it, of course, to keep Elias on track, especially after this extended stay on the other side, but he feared his friend wouldn’t be able to play his part if he knew what must happen, what they must allow to happen.
Major Elias Henderson had been an emotionally strong man when Gideon met him twenty years ago. He’d been commanding Savior’s security team, a team comprised mostly of soldiers from Elias’s former unit before the military was forced to disband. What he’d seen and been party to working for Savior had hardened him even more than the constant fighting that came before. But as hard as Elias had become, and even though Gideon knew his friend would sacrifice almost anything to oppose Savior, Gideon still doubted his resolve this time considering what was at stake.
“Get what you needed?” Elias asked as he tossed the last of the chains aside and stepped back.
Gideon rose slowly and picked up his worn coat, still processing what he’d seen and how much he would share.
“I did,” he replied quietly, trying not to irritate his torn throat further. “I was right. They’re here.”
Slipping on his coat, Gideon unlocked the door and stepped outside, leaving Elias to clean up before he could follow. The look he’d seen flash through Elias’s eyes at the mention of their quarry firmed Gideon’s resolve to keep his friend in the dark. Feeling his own twinge of sympathy for his friend’s feelings, Gideon retreated behind the cold barrier the creature had given him. He couldn’t afford to waver. Not now.
Elias joined him on the roof a few minutes later, shouldering the pack holding the now well-padded chains and lantern.
“We collecting them tonight?” Elias asked as he secured the pack on his back and rested his hands on the assault rifle hanging from a sling down the front of his chest. “You know where they are now, right?”
“No,” Gideon lied without pause. He took a long breath of the cool desert night air as he surveyed the nearly dark city below them. “But I know where they’re going to be.”
He let his gaze trail up the tower of Sky City looming over the crumbling city it had all but replaced.
Elias followed his gaze and nodded. “We better move if we want to make it back to the others before first light,” he said, checking the time.
“Go. I need to run, work off the adrenaline it built up,” Gideon replied.
“You need backup,” Elias said evenly, his eyes showing concern for Gideon, and maybe a hint of doubt. “I know I can’t keep up, but I can at least keep you in sight—”
“No,” Gideon snapped, hearing the hardness of his voice. He tried to soften his tone, but he couldn’t mask the coldness, sheltered as
he was from his emotions. “I need some time. You go. Get the others ready to move.”
From the look Elias gave him before nodding and heading for the stairs, Gideon knew he’d picked up on the detachment. Elias was still a soldier at heart though, so Gideon knew he wouldn’t question him, for now.
He waited on the roof as Elias disappeared into the stairwell. Then he scanned the slums below. The desperate people who lived in this free zone, what was once the Las Vegas strip, lived mainly in the existing buildings. Structures that were once businesses and places of pleasure had been converted into makeshift housing and marketplaces as much as possible. Where the buildings had been completely gutted or leveled, the clinging residents had put up prefab shelters, lean-tos, or tents for the less well-off. Gideon’s gaze skimmed across them, his alien right eye automatically focusing in far closer than his left could manage, forcing him to close the left.
He stopped his scan on what was once a parking garage, now a hostel of sorts thanks to shipping container walls enclosing the bottom two levels. The look of it was unmistakable. That had to be the one he’d seen on the other side.
Turning away, Gideon moved to the other side of the roof and picked his route, his gaze shifting from one roof to the next, gauging distance and elevation. Then he smoothly vaulted the low wall and dropped toward the roof of the west wing of the building six stories below.
He plummeted through the night, the talons on his outstretched right hand trailing along the building rushing past him, throwing up sparks when they grazed the wall. The fall should have terrified his human side, but with his emotional wall in place even the natural fear of falling was deadened, especially now that he’d become accustomed to what this body could do.
Landing on his right leg, he rolled to dissipate the force of the impact and came up in a crouch. He crept to the edge silently, scanned the area, and then leapt off his right leg, the powerful alien muscles launching him in a high arc. Coat flapping behind him, he sailed silently through the night air across the street and down several more stories to land near the center of the next roof. Without pause he bounded to the edge and leapt to the next building, and then the next.
