by Minton, Toby
Luckily for her, the creature didn't stick around to do worse. By the time Ace righted herself and brought her weapon back up, the creature was almost to the steps leading to the main level, its powerful alien limbs propelling it through the dim light with nauseating speed.
She had time for one shot, but she didn't get a chance to take it. As soon as her finger touched the trigger, fifty-five kilos of teenager blindsided her, and they both went down.
Chapter 13
Elias
Elias followed Padre across the empty road, one eye on the CX-9's smart-scan display, the other on the more menacing looking shadows crouched under the buildings on the other side. The high-end optics were little more than pattern analyzers that scanned the field of fire and highlighted anything resembling a human outline. They weren't foolproof by any stretch, but they were a step up from his aging eyes in the cloud-filtered moonlight.
Padre hadn't elaborated on who they were tracking, other than "a possible survivor," but Elias could tell the sniper was more on edge than tracking a wounded Runner warranted. There was more to this than Padre was letting on, but now wasn't the time to question him.
Padre moved slowly along the front of the buildings, pausing to take a closer look at the ground every few steps, his tension as contagious as it was obvious. When he passed the alley beside the broken factory where they'd watched the shack for hours, he held up a fist. Elias froze behind him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mos do the same where he was shadowing them from the other side of the street.
After several long beats, Padre signed for them to hold position and crept forward on his own, his progress painstakingly slow but utterly silent. Elias scanned his weapon in front of the sniper, but the optics detected no threat around the yawning hole where the factory door had once stood. Padre studied the ground for only a few seconds before moving slowly to the side of the opening and signing again.
One hostile inside.
Elias immediately signed back to hold position and signaled for Mos to move up. Padre's pistol could be just as deadly as the CX's, but the optics Elias and Mos were using just might put them on the right side of what could potentially become an ugly engagement.
When Mos joined them, Elias signed his intent and received an answering nod from each man, albeit a grudging one from Padre. The downside of Elias and Mos going in first was the probable destruction of the trail they'd been following. If their hostile had just passed through the factory and moved on, they might lose him. Elias was willing to take that risk, despite Padre's disapproval. The alternative carried a much higher risk. Walking into this likely ambush was a fool's errand to begin with. It was a walk Elias wouldn't make under other circumstances, but this mess had to be cleaned up and any word of it contained.
Cursing Gideon again for forcing them into this position, Elias gave the signal and stepped into the ruins, acutely aware of his lack of body armor. He moved smoothly but quickly through the opening and into the shadows along what was left of the right wall, scanning ahead as he went, sensing more than seeing Mos doing the same on his left.
From inside, the factory looked even more the wreck than its crumbling outer shell implied. Most of the second story floor had collapsed into irregular piles of rubble strewn about the ground floor. The roof was even worse. Only a few rusted skeletal fingers stretched across the expanse overhead, letting the weak moonlight stream through virtually unimpeded. But instead of banishing the shadows in the numerous nooks and alcoves created by partially toppled walls, the contrast deepened them into pockets of pitch darkness only the optics could penetrate.
Elias moved as quietly as he could, watching the small screen and the shadows beyond for any sign of their target. He cleared half the right wall with no contact and was just stepping out to circle around a larger pile of roof debris and a slanted slab of mostly intact wall from the level above when a hiss from Padre halted him in mid-step.
Padre was crouched near the center of the long room, only twenty meters away, when Elias glanced over. The sniper signaled to his feet, then slowly swept his hand up toward and over Elias.
Elias nodded and rotated, bringing his sights up the slab of wall toward the sizable section of second floor that was still intact. The optics didn't pick up any target, but right away he could see what Padre had spotted. Blood, a smeared and speckled trail of it climbing to the second level.
Elias hesitated, waiting for Padre to get Mos's attention before he started his ascent, then took a single step onto the wall to test its stability. As he did so, he let his muzzle drop slightly down and to the right of his sight line. It was a rookie mistake, one he would have thrashed a recruit for making, but it saved his life.
From the corner of his eye, he caught the flare of a red outline registering on the scan screen as someone uncoiled in the shadows beside him. He spun to fire and two red eyes fixed him out of the darkness. He fired without hesitating, even as his brain was racing to process what he was seeing. But he wasn't fast enough.
Nikki
"I said don't open the door!" Nikki shouted as she and Ace tumbled to the floor.
She wasn't trying to run Ace over. She was trying to chase Gideon, but her body wasn't cooperating like she wanted. Her legs were still all shaky and wobbly, their strength scared away by Gideon's nerve-fraying screams.
She should have been dead. Gideon should have ripped her apart in that cell. There was nothing she could have done to stop him if he'd tried. She'd never felt so helpless, not even in Savior's torture tank.
But Gideon hadn't laid hand or claw on her after the door slammed shut. He'd raged around the vault, tearing at the door and deafening her with his roaring, every now and then fixing her with that one red eye, the only thing she could see in the pitch black room. Each time he'd looked her way, she shrank back against the cool stone wall a little more, as much as it shamed her. But not once did he come after her. He just wanted out.
Whomever he wanted to maul, and Nikki had no doubt that's what was on his mind, they were outside the vault. He wanted them enough to claw and pound relentlessly on the heavy steel door, and even the solid stone around it, despite the fact that he was getting nowhere.
When Ace had knocked, Nikki's relief had nearly choked her. But it was a selfish, short-lived kind of relief, the instinctive kind that made her feel dirty afterward. She was safe from Gideon's mindless rage after all, for some crazy reason, but that didn't mean everyone else was.
Once shame had dragged her courage back to the surface, Nikki shouted to keep the door shut, but Ace either hadn't heard or she'd ignored her. Either way, Gideon was now free, and Nikki was clumsily giving chase.
"Stay put," Ace barked as Nikki kicked her leg free of the gun strap and lurched to her feet. How she'd gotten so tangled up so quickly, and how Ace had ended up on her backside was a bruised blur. But she wasn't about to burn any brain power sorting it out. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except keeping Gideon from hurting Kate.
Nikki didn't know that was where Gideon was headed, but she and Michael didn't care. Kate was upstairs—rage-monster Gideon was headed that way. Even Nikki could do that math. She sprinted down the hall, ignoring Ace's shouts.
By the time she hit the steps Nikki could hear Ace closing fast behind her, barking orders at Coop as she ran, which the logical part of her brain registered as a good thing. Nikki was armed only with desperation, mostly Michael's. Ace and Coop had actual weapons.
Nikki bounded up the last steps with her heart pounding in her throat and stumbled to a stop when she reached the hall. Gideon was nowhere in sight, but Kate was slumped against the wall across from her. Her pounding heart nearly stopped with her.
Kate! Michael shouted in Nikki's head, making her choke on her own cry.
Kate twisted and looked up. Eyes wide, she pushed to her feet, looking at Nikki like she was some kind of hero instead of the panting, shaking lump of worthless she felt like.
Then she leapt into Nikki's arms.
She'd always felt an echo of Michael's emotions, especially when they were charged up, much more so now that she was carrying him around inside her. But this was something different, something deeper than anything she'd felt since Michael's fall. For a precious moment with Kate in her arms, Nikki wasn't just carrying Michael's ghost inside her. She was inside him as well.
She'd always known her brother better than anyone else possibly could, but she'd never truly known him until this moment. As sweet as it was, it hurt like hell.
To make matters worse, she was flooded with memories of time spent with Kate, complete with all the feelings that went with them. Memories of events Nikki had never witnessed, and an aching, desperate affection she couldn't have felt.
The combination was killing her, but she wanted it to last forever.
Kate made a sound into Nikki's shoulder, equal parts laugh and sob.
"I knew it," Kate laughed as she leaned back. "I knew you couldn't be—" The laugh in her voice cracked then crumbled as her hand trailed down Nikki's side to her hip.
This close, Nikki saw the change in Kate's brown eyes. She watched her expression slide from joy to misery in the space of a heartbeat as Kate jerked her hand away and stared at Nikki like she was seeing her for the first time.
Kate pulled away from Nikki in stages, starting with her gaze, which dropped to the floor and stayed there. By the time her back hit the wall, she had her head cradled in her hands and was muttering to herself in a way that gave Nikki a chill.
Michael said something, but Nikki just shivered and didn't respond—his words didn't make sense.
"Copy, Coop," Ace said, brushing past Nikki to squat next to Kate, who had crumpled down into the crook where wall met floor. "Do not pursue. Lock it down and get to the hangar so he doesn't slip in that way before they land. Repeat, do not pursue."
Nikki registered the words but didn't process their meaning. Her brain was starting to go numb along with the rest of her. Her adrenaline dump was wearing off, making her shaky limbs feel even less stable and bringing on the sleepies something fierce. But that wasn't what had her standing there like a dummy.
She knows I'm here, Michael said again, too loudly and with too much emotion for Nikki to ignore it this time.
Nikki could only shake her head. She wanted to believe Michael's voice in her head was real. She wanted it more than anything. She also wanted someone else to tell her he was really there, to confirm he was real, to tell her she wasn't nuts. But the thought also terrified her.
She hadn't put much thought into why she was keeping Michael's voice to herself. Introspection rarely made it onto her to-do list. Insanity was the obvious answer. Appearing insane, that is. She'd seen the look in Gram's eyes after his visits with Kate, heard the quiet conversations between Ace and Elias. They never came right out and said it, but it was obvious they thought Kate was not all there. If they learned Nikki was having regular conversations with Michael…
That wasn't the only reason she was keeping Michael to herself though. The mind-numbing fear holding her in place and freezing her tongue told her as much. She knew this feeling, even though she'd felt it only once before. This feeling had almost crippled her the first time, when she'd felt Michael give up his life. She'd tried to hold on to him then, to cling to her sense of him. She'd latched on to it like a badger and refused to let go. And she'd been rewarded for it. He'd come back to her, in a way.
It didn't make sense for fear of losing him to take over now, but that thought didn't loosen her tongue or force Nikki's limbs into motion. Apparently somewhere in her crowded head, some stubborn part of her thought telling the others about Michael would break whatever spell she'd anguished up the day he died and send him packing. Then he really would be gone. That fear didn't make a lot of sense, but neither did having him in her head in the first place, so she wasn't about to take the risk.
"Kate, are you hurt?" Ace was saying. Nikki looked down to see her gripping Kate's shoulders. "Honey, are you hurt? I need you to answer me."
Kate shook her head, her jaw clenched tight and her eyes still firmly shut.
"Good," Ace replied, her voice just as firm, "because I need you. I need the infirmary prepped and the surgical uplink established. And I need it now. We have incoming wounded."
Chapter 14
Nikki
"Not yet," Ace said evenly. She shifted her gaze from the incoming shuttle to give Nikki a sideways glance that stopped her in a half-crouch.
Nikki rocked back on her heels and tried to settle her nerves as the shuttle cleared the fake ivy screen and rotated smoothly to set down facing out. Her pulse picked up its already frantic pace as the four-seater eased toward the deck with agonizing slowness.
Somebody was hurt, and hurt badly, but Ace hadn't said who. Nikki had stopped herself from asking, even though doing so was an exercise in lip biting. She stopped herself because she realized maybe Coop and Ace hadn't said who it was for a reason. Like it shouldn't matter. Like an injury to any one of them was a bad thing and that's all they needed to know. Maybe it was an every-team-member-is-equal sort of thing, or some soldier superstition. Or maybe it was just their way of staying focused on the task at hand. If that was the case, it wasn't working for Nikki.
She couldn't stop picturing Sam fighting for life in the shuttle, no matter how hard she tried. She knew she should be calm like Coop standing by the closing hangar doors, his gaze and weapon trained on the narrowing gap, or like Ace doing the same from this side of the landing shuttle. But Nikki couldn't even come close to mimicking their apparent icy coolness, not with her insides doing backflips. Even grumpy Impact looked cool as a popsicle crouching by the front handles of the stretcher Nikki was gripping like it might make a run for it.
What are these people—robots? She regretted that thought immediately. Mixing thoughts of robots and severe injuries led nowhere good. Better to think of Sam being hurt than travel down that path. Not much better, judging by her stomach's reaction.
Nikki forced her hands to relax their death grip and eased back far enough to rest her butt on her heels. From her vantage at the bottom of the three steps leading down into the hangar, she could see everybody and everything in the cavernous room. She wasn't going to miss Ace's signal for them to move up; she just needed to relax and wait. Ace had been specific that Nikki and Impact weren't to move a muscle until she gave the all clear, which she wasn't going to do until the hangar was sealed up tight as a towny without a raging Gideon inside.
Nikki tried to watch the slowly closing doors, but her gaze kept dropping to the shuttle that was now on the deck and powering down. Through the dirty, tinted rear windshield she could see two heads moving, but she couldn't make out who they were. Was one of them shorter than the other? Her heart lurched, in a good way, and she immediately felt ashamed, a feeling she knew well but usually could pin on Michael. Not this time—he was nowhere to be felt.
What kind of person was she to be relieved that Sam wasn't the one bleeding out? Elias and Mos were good people too, better than just about anybody Nikki had met. They didn't deserve to suffer any more than Sam did. She shouldn't be relieved if it turned out to be one of them instead of Sam. She wouldn't.
"Go," Ace said, nodding to Impact and Nikki and slinging her weapon over her shoulder as the blast door thudded shut.
They lifted the stretcher and started for the shuttle. The driver door swung up and Elias stepped out to motion them his way. Nikki wanted to run, but Impact was setting the pace from the front end. The one time she wanted him to show off his speed, he seemed content with a normal jog. Nikki wanted to scream.
When the back door swung up and Sam stepped out, she almost did scream in rel
ief. Then she saw the blood soaked into the front of his shirt and already dark pants, and she caught sight of Mos lying motionless on the back seat, and shame sent relief packing.
Nikki held her end of the stretcher like a statue as everyone but Impact clustered around readying Mos to move. She was suddenly glad her job was so simple, just stand and hold. She didn't think her feet would have moved if she'd told them to. Looking at Mos lying there, his shirt cut away, his skin all ashy and slack, where it wasn't smeared with blood or covered with dull white ridges of quick-clot foam.
"Is he ali—"
"When we lift him, slide the backboard under," Elias cut Impact off. "On my count," he said to everyone. "One, two—lift."
Nikki moved as if in a daze, letting Impact position the stretcher and pushing when he did. She'd felt useless pretty much every day for the last four months, but it had never shaken her so thoroughly. She couldn't focus on this simplest of tasks. She didn't even argue when Coop stepped in to take over, gently but firmly pushing her aside.
A loud but outnumbered part of her bowed up at being sidelined. Any other time she would have torn Disney a new one, told him she could carry Mos just fine, and no doubt added that balls didn't make lifting any easier. But her temper couldn't gain a foothold. It disappeared entirely when Ace took over for Impact. The look on her face as she did so said what Nikki had taken as a slight was nothing of the sort. She was getting to know that look well. It said this was a duty thing, a soldier thing that couldn't, or wouldn't, be explained.
Ace and Coop headed for the door with quick but smooth steps. Sam kept pace between them, one hand holding the breather on Mos's face, the other carrying the IV bag. Nikki started to follow, but Elias called her back.
"I could use a hand getting to the infirmary," Elias said from where he was leaning on the shuttle. Only then did she notice the blood-stained rip on the outside of his left leg and the fresh dressing showing through.
