by Minton, Toby
Why'd she have to start them down this path?
"Nobody's after me anymore," she said, trying her best to sound nonchalant. If disappointed and nonchalant sounded the same, she succeeded.
"I wouldn't say that, love," Corso said. "Those beasties out there could only come from one place. That sugar daddy of yours is still after you."
Corso knew about the offer Savior had made to Nikki, the offer to stay with him as his…something. It didn't take a master lip reader to tell what had been going on in Savior's transport before she'd jumped, and Corso had a front-row seat. He was the only one who knew, the only one she was comfortable telling. She didn't think anyone else would understand how tempting that offer could have been, under other circumstances.
Corso had a point. The aliens had to be Savior's doing, but Nikki wasn't so sure they were after her. For one thing, why would Savior go to such bizarre trouble to hunt her down when he could find her so easily if he wanted to? For another, she wasn't the only one who'd been around for both attacks. Gideon had been there too.
A growl from the darkness behind them made Nikki's heart lurch. Her imagination had no trouble putting form to that sound, especially considering where her thoughts were loitering. She shot to her feet, her battered muscles doing her proud, surprisingly.
Corso started to do the same but only made it halfway to a crouch before he recognized the source and relaxed.
"Bloody oath, mate," he said to the hulking shadow behind them as he stood much more casually than Nikki had. "We should put a bell around that neck."
Magnus Cole stepped closer into a weak pool of orange light, the crags in his face looking even more sinister in half shadow than they had in darkness. He didn't respond to Corso. He just looked around the hangar from where he stood, oblivious to the effect of his entrance, or ignoring it. His eyes stopped on the skimmer and he nodded to himself.
"I need a vehicle. Where are the keys?"
"I thought you guarded the bunker at night," Nikki said, her voice sounding weaker than she'd like, especially in front of Corso. But the thought of Cole in here conjured up thoughts of glowing red eyes closing in out there in the night, and shame got overruled.
"I'm no guard dog," Cole growled. "Keys."
"They're in the cabinet." Nikki pointed to the secure box mounted on the wall over one of the workbenches. "But it has a thumbprint scanner."
"Can you open it?" Cole asked Nikki in a rumble, but it was Corso who answered.
"Could do." Corso's composure was fully intact again. He leaned against the side of the transport and crossed his arms. "What's in it for me?"
"That's Sam's," Nikki said to no one in particular, her gaze drifting to the skimmer. No one paid any attention to her.
"You get to live," Cole said to Corso, his stare flat but not challenging. It wasn't a threat, just a statement. "To find those things, I need to hunt. Waiting isn't getting it done. They won't come to me. I need to go to them."
Corso knew who Cole was supposed to be hunting. He'd gotten a watered down brief from Elias after dinner. He'd taken it all in stride, but he'd looked at Nikki with something other than his usual smirk a time or two, and what she'd seen in his eyes then had been a little too close to brotherly concern for their honest relationship, despite his casual tone a minute ago.
"Good enough," Corso said, sauntering past Cole toward the lock box.
"But…" Nikki made herself trail off. She'd been about to say the skimmer was Sam's, again. Why should she care if Cole took it without asking? Why should the sight of Corso bypassing the lock to take Sam's keys make her so anxious? He was doing it, not she. So why did it feel like she was betraying Sam?
She looked over to see Cole watching her with an unreadable expression. She got the funny feeling he knew what she was thinking. She was getting tired of that feeling around here.
Corso popped the lock with surprisingly little effort and plucked a key from inside. He tossed the key to Cole, who caught it without a word of thanks and walked to the skimmer.
"Wait." Nikki stopped herself again. Feeling bad about this situation was starting to make her mad. This was exactly why she liked the simplicity of her relationship with Corso. No confusion. No guessing. So instead of the objection on the tip of her tongue, she voiced her more pressing concern.
"If you leave the island, what's to stop them from coming here?"
Cole straddled the skimmer and fired it up, his weight settling it closer to the ground in a low hover. He looked at Nikki and held her gaze for a dozen heartbeats, his pale green eyes catching enough of the weak light to nearly glow.
"Nothing."
Nikki sidestepped out of his way. It was that or get run over as he started forward. Corso stepped past her and palmed the controls to open the ivy.
Cole stopped when he got to the edge and looked over at Nikki. "I'd lock this place down, little slip, if I were you." Then he glided forward and dropped out of sight.
Corso reversed the direction of the ivy then hit the button to close the blast doors.
Nikki stood staring at the closing door, struggling to push back images from her latest nightmares. Nightmares were nothing new to her. She'd suffered a few choice recurring scenes since she was a little girl, most of them tortuous trips down memory lane where faceless men stalked and overpowered her no matter how hard she tried to fight. Since her run-in with the creature in Seattle, however, the faceless men had started morphing into black-armored, red-eyed monsters.
Nikki closed her eyes and took a long, steady breath. Corso's hand closed on her shoulder. He left it there, squeezing in silent support.
Nikki opened her eyes and shrugged like nothing was wrong. She lifted the snap-flash and cracked it in half. Blue light flared out of the exposed ends, coalescing into a spinning, twirling form that circled her hands twice before it hissed up into the air and out over the transport in a widening spiral.
This one did have wings, pointed and ribbed like a bat or dragon. She'd found a bird after all—not that it mattered. The innocent joy of the night was gone, thanks to Cole. All the dancing light managed to do as it twisted and flared was make the darkness around it that much heavier.
Chapter 21
Nikki
"Push," Ace said from behind.
She didn't have to tell Nikki twice. Nikki went from steady jog to full sprint on the tree-shadowed trail, pushing herself as close to top speed as she could manage. Thanks to her hyperactive imagination lately, she came pretty close.
Ace called this flavor of punishment a drag run—a casual jog broken up by sudden bursts of flat-out sprints. Nikki thought it was aptly named. Too much more of this, and Ace would have to drag her back to the bunker.
The old Nikki might have called it quits three sprints ago. These days, however, she had enough fear fuel swirling in her tank to keep going for hours, or at least another few minutes.
Since Cole's assisted skimmer theft almost a week ago, Nikki had been as jumpy as a cat in a ration shortage. Every rustle in the undergrowth gave her heart a jolt. The deeper shadows under the big pines—usually a source of peaceful relief on these runs—were filled with imagined red-eyed horrors crouching just out of sight, waiting to pounce.
At least it was keeping her heart rate up.
"Jog," Ace called from right behind her as the clearing overlooking the bluff came into view.
Ace was always right behind her, no matter how fast she ran. The woman was tireless. No matter how grueling or repetitive the task, she always joined in alongside Nikki. As a result, Nikki couldn't make herself quit, no matter how much her body begged her to collapse, not when Ace—a woman twice her age—was still grinding along. Nikki wasn't sure whether the woman was a genius or a masochist. Either way, she was effective.
Nikki ignored the command this time though and kept pushing until she broke from the shadows into the clearing. Then she staggered to a halt and slumped over, hands to her knees. Her heart felt like it was about to pound its way
out of her chest, if her lungs didn't push it out first in their mad attempts to catch her breath.
She heard Ace jog up behind her saying something, but her voice got all muddled right about the time Nikki's vision stretched to black.
Next thing Nikki knew she was lying flat on her back on the damp grass, blinking her eyes open to find Ace squatted beside her. She sat up with a jerk, and instantly regretted it. As soon as she sat up, a thousand angry wasps tried to sting their way out of her brain.
"Oh, son of a—aah," she groaned. "What now?"
Ace laughed and steadied her with a hand on her shoulder. "Easy, kiddo. You just fainted a little."
Nikki scowled at her as she wiped at the grass and dirt she could feel plastered to the side of her face. "How's that work? Isn't that like getting a little pregnant? Fainting is fainting."
"Not when you do it," Ace said. "Like everything else you do, you did it harder and faster than the rest of us, including the recovery, it seems. Take it easy."
Ace pressed on Nikki's shoulder, forcing her back down as she tried to get up. "Lesson learned, right?"
Nikki didn't respond. She was too busy trying to pick the grass out of her mouth. Ace didn't seem to need an answer.
"When your body says stop, listen," Ace said, her expression and tone a strangely comforting blend of motherly and amused. "Maybe just a bit more gradually next time though. And that little maneuver where you went from sprint to leaning over to standing back up in the space of a few seconds—you might want to cut that from your MO altogether. Unless you like face plants."
"I'm not a big plant person," Nikki said around a deep breath. "Just ask Sam."
Nikki tried to get up again, and this time Ace helped. Nikki was trying to decide just how embarrassed she should be when Ace interrupted her thoughts in the last way she expected.
"I'm proud of you, kiddo," Ace said, starting toward the trail on the other side of the clearing at an easy stroll. She paused long enough for Nikki to nudge herself into motion and join her. "You're attacking this training with a passion, and you're sticking it out."
"Sticking what out?" Nikki asked with a barely suppressed smile. "If you say the word 'hippy' again, we're gonna fight."
"The training." Either Ace was world class with deadpan expressions or her sense of humor just wasn't as refined as Nikki's and Sam's. "You're making my job easy. I haven't had to hold back nearly as much I expected."
Nikki was surprised, to say the least. If she had to evaluate herself for the past week, she wouldn't rate any one thing as praise worthy, and definitely not her performance as a whole. She'd been struggling from day one and hadn't seen much progress worth mentioning. The thought of Ace being impressed made her amused smile soften toward something deeper. Then she processed the rest of what she'd heard.
"Wait, did you say, 'hold back'? You've been holding back?"
The full horror of that implication made Nikki stop in her tracks. Ace took another couple of steps before she stopped and looked back with a smile.
"Um-hmm. You didn't think I'd go all out with you this early in your training, did you? Do you think I'm some kind of monster?"
She didn't seem to grasp the reason for Nikki's tone, and her word choice left a lot to be desired. Nikki didn't need a reminder of why she'd pushed so hard this morning. She was already having to wrestle down the urge to break back into a run. The shadows under the nearby trees were plenty deep enough to hide one of Gideon's aliens.
"How are you…Why…How do you do it?"
If Ace didn't get her humor, there was no way she'd be able to interpret that jumble, but at the moment Nikki's tired, jumpy brain wasn't cooking up anything clearer.
Ace smiled again. "Good genes, I guess." Her smile died pretty quickly though, probably because she realized how that could be a touchy subject for a lab baby. "And a lot of hard work. Although, to me it's more of a way to unwind and less of a chore. It's a way to forget the rest of the world and let go. Training is how I relax."
Nikki nodded. She knew that feeling. Or she had known it. That's exactly how it had felt when she and Michael used their power, when she got so charged up she could forget everything else and cut loose. She could do what she was made to do. That thought didn't give her pause anymore, if it ever had. Michael it had nearly driven crazy—Nikki not so much. They weren't born—they were made. She was designed to be a weapon, a weapon that was now broken.
They walked the rest of the way back to the bunker, chatting like they didn't have a care in the world, which was a bit of a trick for Nikki. Coming outside at all this morning had been an act of pure will. But talking to Ace was easy, comfortable. Her calm demeanor and easy confidence helped Nikki push thoughts of stalking predators to the back of her mind. Or close to the back. Maybe more like the middle. They weren't right on the surface, at least, which was better.
They didn't run into anybody else on the way to the galley, despite the lazy mid-morning hour. Ace blended up a couple of her power shakes, a concoction of greens, fruit, seeds, and protein paste that rarely tasted anything but awful. Nikki choked hers down without a single grimace, which wasn't easy, but Ace was being so nice and easy on her this morning, she didn't want to do anything to break the spell.
Nobody came in while they talked and "ate." In fact, they didn't see another soul until they neared the gym half an hour later and ran into Coop. He stepped into the hall from the storeroom and swaggered toward them, beaming. He was decked out in a suit of black pads that covered all his vital bits, including a helmet that obscured most of his face. He looked like a prize goober, albeit a pretty intimidating one.
"Like the outfit, ladies?" He pulled the soft helmet off and gave them a poncey twirl. "Do I know how to dress to impress or what?"
"What," Nikki and Ace said at the same time.
Nikki glanced over at Ace with a smile. Maybe there was hope for her sense of humor yet. Nikki might have underestimated her.
"Ha ha," Coop sneered. "Laugh it up now, shorty. It's sparring day. You're going down."
"I spar every day, idiot," Nikki snapped. She also went down every day, but she didn't feel like that needed to be said. She was starting to get used to Elias and Sam knocking her around. It didn't embarrass her nearly as much anymore.
"Not like this," Coop said with an expectant grin. "Full speed today—no holding back." He stepped closer until his padded pecks pushed her back a step. He gave her his biggest smile and most exaggerated eyebrow raise. "Plus, today you're facing me, not little Padre or soft-hearted Elias. You're. Going. Down."
"Feel like putting money on that, or have you learned your lesson about betting with me?" Ace asked. She crossed her arms and eyed Coop with a hint of amusement playing with the corners of her mouth.
"In your own words—done," Coop said, glancing over at Ace. "Don't look so cocky there, honey. We're betting on me and the kid here, and I don't plan to lose." His grin turned positively triumphant. "The ball's in my court, not yours."
"Good," Ace said. "I hate balls."
Nikki barked a laugh. She'd underestimated Ace all right.
"Tell you what," Ace said. "I'm so sure you're going to lose, I'll sweeten the pot. If you win, I won't tell the major you just called him soft-hearted."
Coop's smile faltered. Ace's disappeared entirely.
"And if you're really lucky, I'll forget you called me 'honey' before you and I spar again," she said.
Coop had no response to that. In fact, he was starting to look like he'd just choked down a couple of Ace's shakes.
"I'll be by later to collect." Ace turned and headed back the way they'd come. "Do me a favor, kiddo," she said over her shoulder to Nikki. "Make him feel it."
* * *
"I feel like a big idiot in this," Nikki complained as Sam tightened the last strap on her padded suit. She looked over at Coop, who was looking more intimidating to her by the second.
"You don't look big," Sam reassured her. He checked her head guard position,
nodded, and stepped aside.
She didn't process his omission until she stepped onto the mat to square up with Coop. When she turned to give Sam a glare, Coop charged and sent her sprawling.
That was the high point of her morning.
Nikki wanted Ace to win her bet. She really did. But it just wasn't happening.
Coop was bigger and stronger, for one thing, both of which meant so much more to Nikki now than they ever had before. She couldn't get close to him without taking jarring jabs to the head that made it impossible for her to focus. With his freakishly long arms, he turned her every attempt to close the distance into an exercise in frustration.
The pads weren't helping. Yeah, they softened Coop's blows, and they actually made getting thrown to the mat kind of fun, but they were a serious mobility hindrance. Whoever had designed the suit had done so with a taller girl in mind. The straps adjusted, but that just made the pads bunch up, limiting Nikki's range of motion at the worst possible times.
Michael wasn't helping either. Well, he was trying to, but as usual his voice was more distraction than advantage.
High block, Michael snapped, sending a matching image.
She ducked to the side instead, which would have worked fine—better, in her opinion—but she was half a second too slow choosing her way over his. Coop's down-swinging fist caught her shoulder and spun her off balance. He followed with a slow but powerful side kick that she should have avoided with ease, if she'd been of one mind about how. Her instinct was to duck under it and charge. Michael's was to twist and catch the leg. What she did was somewhere in between, and it earned her a heavy foot to the head.
When the little lights flashing in her brain cleared, she found herself flat on her back staring up at Elias. She caught the concern in his eyes before he masked it and gave her a nod.
"You OK?" he asked as he offered his hand.
She nodded as he helped her up, but that didn't wipe away the concern. She'd ended up on her back plenty since the sparring session started, but this was the first time she'd needed a hand getting up. She knew what was coming next.
