by Minton, Toby
Nikki crested the rise just as Ace called, "Five seconds—pick your target."
Nikki lifted her eyes, rapidly scanning the trees ahead as she leveled out into a gentle curve in the trail. She caught a glimpse of clear blue sky and a view of the lake through the thinner trees on her left, but she ignored it. No distracted thoughts. She needed a target, now. One of the wider trees on the right was her best bet. It had a low branch that looked just about—
"Go!" Ace barked. "Climb."
Nikki was a little disturbed at how easily Ace had programmed her to obey without question, but she was too focused to dwell. Plus, this was the most fun she'd had on a workout in…ever.
Nikki jumped and just caught the drooping lower branch with one hand, the rough bark digging into her palm. She slapped her other hand on the branch and hauled herself up with a grunt. As soon as her belly hit the branch, she swung a leg up, pushed off, and kept climbing. She climbed as fast as she could, kicking off from each foothold, pulling on each handhold with everything she had. She climbed like death was at her heels, which wasn't too hard for her to imagine.
As it did every time she hit this level of exhaustion, her mind reached for some distraction from her protesting muscles. This time it tried to figure out the right word to describe what she was doing, a word for climbing with a vengeance. Something like scurry, but more strenuous. What was the run version of climbing? Or the sprint version?
Rimbing? Clinting?
Nope. Those sounded terrible.
"Down. Go," Ace called.
How she knew when to order the switch was a mystery. Nikki was almost positive the earpiece didn't have a camera, but she still had a tinkle of doubt. Ace always knew when the branches were getting a little too flimsy, when the trunk started to get a little too thin, when the tree started to sway a little too much.
Nikki scaled down as quickly as she'd come up. No quicker though. Going down was a fair bit trickier. She didn't want to take another pinballing tumble down through the branches. Once was plenty. Her earlier fall had left her dazed and shaken more than injured, but it had also left her vulnerable when she wanted to be anything but.
They'd been at the cabin for four days. Four days of grueling workouts and training sessions broken up by more chores and duty shifts than she'd thought possible. Four days of watching the empty woods around her with growing unease, waiting for black-armored nightmares to come leaping out.
Cole had stopped checking in almost two days ago, which had nearly sent Nikki into heart failure, but Elias shrugged it off. He said he'd expected as much. Cole apparently had "issues with technology." Elias remained positive, saying Cole would find a way to let them know long before the creatures got close. If they were holding their pace, they were still a few days out. He said not to worry.
Helpful.
She dropped the last couple of meters to the ground and had a couple of seconds to catch her breath before Ace called, "Up, Nikki. Push."
Three times she rimbed the same tree, each time a little faster than the last. Each time she made it just a little higher before Ace called the switch. Finally Ace called a halt when Nikki was so high the tree was swaying back and forth enough to get her stomach.
"Good job, kiddo," Ace said. "I think that's enough for today."
Nikki let her huffing and puffing respond for her.
"Take it easy climbing down," Ace went on. "I know you're shaky."
Nikki did because…well, she was. Her breath was coming in heavy drags, her legs were next to numb, and her arms felt like they were made of rubber. She held on where she was for a minute, mesmerized by how high she was, then started the slow climb down.
When her feet reached the thick, low branch near the bottom, she stopped to take in the view and let her heart rate get down out of the danger zone. From her perch she could see a broad curve of the lake's western shore, the blue water rippling under the wind into tiny waves that kissed the pale white rocks of the uneven shore. She'd run a long way this morning to be this close to the lake. A long way into a quiet, empty nowhere.
Some might call it peaceful, Nik, Michael thought. Or perfect.
She wasn't surprised to hear from him, not after the punishment Ace had put her through. He showed up during most of her workouts. His voice was an intensity gauge, of sorts. If he didn't show, she wasn't pushing hard enough.
So you like it here? she thought back. It's kind of empty, don't you think? It feels hell-and-gone from…everything.
That's what I like, he replied. You can almost forget the rest of the world exists up here. I could be happy here.
Nikki shifted her position on the branch. That didn't sound like Michael. He'd never wanted to get away from the world before. He'd always been too caught up in one cause or another, too obsessed with helping everybody who asked, not to mention a bunch who didn't. Hearing him talk of leaving the world behind, feeling the weariness behind his words—it just felt wrong. Scary wrong.
A dark head broke the surface of the water just off the shore. The man it belonged to slung his dark curls away from his eyes, sending an arc of water into the air behind him, and started swimming for the shore.
Nikki felt a crooked smile start as she recognized him, but the feeling coming through from Michael should have been accompanied by scowling and growling. He wasn't exactly Corso's biggest fan. The growl actually became an audible thought as Corso strode up onto the beach wearing only his skivvies. He wasn't all sharp muscle and hard angles like Coop or Mos, but he didn't need to be. He was dark, long, lean, and shapely enough to conjure all manner of inappropriate thoughts, mostly due to the way he moved, the way he held himself.
The weather had warmed a bit over the last couple of days, but it was still way too cool for a swim. Corso didn't seem to mind. He took his time toweling off.
"Looks like you're on your own for the run back," Ace broke in on her fantasy.
"What? Why?" Nikki's sharp spike of senseless alarm made her grip the branch in her hand with enough force to dig the bark into her already stinging palm.
"Max needs my help with Kate."
The alarm spiked harder. "Is she OK?"
"She's fine," Ace replied. "Better than fine, actually. She and Max have really taken to each other. You should see them together. They're practically inseparable. She's acting like herself for the first time in months. Max is just being an Achterberg. That's all."
"Come again."
Ace laughed, mostly at herself by the sound of it. "He responds to her every success with a push to do more. Sound familiar? Guess it's a family trait. He has some experiment he wants Kate to try today, and he needs my help."
"Oh." Nikki smiled, but only slightly. Hearing Kate was getting better was a relief beyond words. The thought of Max and Kate getting along so well should have been just as exciting. It should have made her happy. But for some reason she felt more like she'd eaten a bad burrito. What she was feeling could have been Michael's reaction, but that thought didn't ease the ache.
"So you're just leaving me alone out here in the middle of nowhere?" Nikki asked, ignoring her reaction.
"You're not alone," Ace said over Michael's identical reassurance. She hoped Ace wasn't referring to Michael too. Having him around was great, but he'd be useless for helping her back to the cabin.
"Com tracker shows Impact less than a quarter klick south. That's the way you were heading," she clarified before Nikki could ask.
On the shore below, Corso was checking his fancy tablet. Whatever he saw there made him laugh. Nikki wasn't surprised he didn't show up on Ace's tracking system. If his tablet had ever had a tracker, he'd no doubt disabled it the second he got his hands on it.
Ace signed off, leaving Nikki to climb down in silence. She dropped to the ground and dusted her hands off, wincing at the sting in her palm. Being normal apparently meant being injured pretty much constantly. As soon as one annoying little pain started to fade away—her bruised knuckle—two more popped up to take its p
lace—a fork wound on the back of one hand and now a scraped palm on the other. How did normal people live this way?
From the ground she could still see a bit of the shore, enough to see Corso heading back into the water. He wasn't all that far from her, surely closer than the quarter klick to Impact. Granted, she had no concept of how long a klick was. But even if it was next to nothing and Impact was right around the bend, the choice between his grumpy ass and Corso's nearly naked one was a no-brainer.
Her feet didn't agree. She started off up the trail toward Impact.
"Are you doing this?" She knew he wasn't, but it felt better to blame Michael than to examine her own choices.
No, Nikki. His voice was somber. The feeling coming through from him, though faint, was tinged with a pulse of regret. I won't do that again, not unless you need me. Not unless you ask me. I promise.
"Relax," she said, feeling like a jackass for what was intended to be a nothing dig. "I'm just messing with you. I know this is all me."
He didn't respond. He wasn't gone yet, she could tell, but he didn't say another word. Good thing too. It wouldn't take much to make her turn around and head for Corso. She wasn't entirely sure why she wasn't heading that way already. It wasn't like Impact was going to open up about what had been bothering him, regardless of what she said—not that she'd tried. Elias had though. He'd talked to him repeatedly, to little effect. Impact had grown more surly and withdrawn with each passing day up here in nowhere land.
A quarter klick turned out to be a lot farther than she'd imagined, but Nikki didn't give up and turn back. She stayed the course, following the winding, climbing trail until she rounded a curve and found Impact standing at the edge of a sheer drop, contemplating the breathtaking view.
He looked over at her as she stepped off the trail and started toward him. He looked about as sour as she'd expected.
"Ace talked to me," he said by way of greeting. "I'll lead you back."
"No need to rush," she said, climbing up to take a seat on one of the smooth-topped rocks close to the edge. "Keep doing what you're doing. I could use the rest."
She leaned over to take a look at the drop. It was a dizzying one—a sheer face stretching a long, long way down with nothing to break a fall but the occasional sharp rock poking out. "What exactly are you doing?"
He stared over like he was going to snap at her, or like he was suspicious of her motives, or maybe like he was delighted. It all looked the same on him. One eye narrowed after a second though, tipping the scale toward the negative. Nikki braced herself, emotionally and physically—she was entirely too close to the edge of the rock.
"I'm training."
She should have guessed. That was all he ever did. The fact that she'd even asked made her want to cuss herself.
"Well, I think you've mastered cliff standing. Check that one off." As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she winced. She hadn't come up here to be an ass.
He didn't seem to notice. If he heard her at all, he showed no sign. "I'm trying to win for once," he said after a pause, staring out at the view. "I'm trying to beat him." His voice was letting fly with the expected venom all right, but none of it seemed to be directed at Nikki. "But I can't. He's out there somewhere laughing at me."
She bit her lip to keep from blurting the sarcastic question that tried to get out. Impact was being cryptic—Gideon cryptic—but he was talking to her, which was the last thing she'd expected. She didn't want to break the spell with a terribly timed bout of teasing. She wanted to help. That's why she'd come up here.
Impact, for all his social faults, was the one person who could really relate to Nikki's identity issues, and vice versa. He'd started out in the same place, created by the same man. In a way, they were almost brother and sister. He wasn't the most likable person in the world, but Nikki, in her post-workout euphoria, was willing to admit she wasn't much better. She didn't want to see him suffer.
So here she was, trying to help with whatever was eating at her bald, angry almost-sibling. But she had no idea what he was talking about, and no idea how to ask without sounding like a bitch.
"What…does that mean?" She was so bad at this.
"He never intended for me to fly," Impact answered quietly, not looking at her. "I know he didn't."
He did look at her then, and this time she saw the pain behind his eyes. It was covered with anger, but it was there. "If I master this, I am more than he intended. I'm better."
His pain was covered with a lot of anger, a big seething pile of it. That was something Nikki understood, maybe better than anyone. She smiled.
"Then let's do it," she said. "Let's beat his ass." She hopped off the rock, well away from the edge. "How can I help?"
For a second, the dark look in Impact's eyes softened, and Nikki felt a surge of triumph. But the hope in his eyes disappeared as quickly as it had flared, sealed away behind the determined mask he loved so much.
"You can't. But…thank you." Those words sounded even harder for him than they were for Nikki, and that was saying something.
"I don't believe you," she said quickly. "You did this before, right? You did this with me. You caught me. You saved me. Didn't you?"
"That was different."
"Well, yeah, we were higher up, I guess. But that shouldn't matter. Should it? Does that matter?"
"There was more to it than that," Impact said, looking away from her again.
"I don't get it," she said. "What more? I was falling and you caught me. What more is there?"
"You don't understand."
"Which is why I keep asking questions you keep not answering. Do you need someone to catch? Is that it?"
"No."
"Because I'll do it," she pushed on. "I'll do it right now." She looked over at the edge of the cliff. "I'll ju…jump." Weak and breathless her support might have been, but it was there. She would do it. She would help him if it killed her, and him.
I might be the worst helper in the world, she thought.
She started to turn toward the edge and suddenly he was in front of her pushing her back. "NO!"
He was always a little intense, actually more than a little, but she'd never seen him like this. His eyes were like burning steel. He pulled his hands away from her arms like he'd been burned. He stepped back but stayed between her and the edge.
Relieved didn't begin to cover how she felt about not having to jump to both their deaths, but action was the only way she knew how to help anybody. If she couldn't fling herself at the problem, she wasn't sure what to do. Except argue.
"Maybe you're over-thinking it," she said. "Like I was with the fighting. Maybe you just need to let go and let the frenzy take over. If I jump—"
"You can't."
"But if I did—"
"I would catch you," he said, but he didn't look happy about it.
She didn't get it.
"So—problem solved, right?" she asked.
"No. You don't understand."
"Clearly," she said before she could stop herself or moderate her tone.
"I would catch you because of Savior. Because of the way he made me." His voice was low but he looked like he was on the verge of shouting. "Sometimes when I make a promise, something happens, and I can't break it. Physically can't."
"I don't get it. You mean even if you want to?"
He nodded. "If I don't choose to act, my body will." He took a half step back but continued to eye her like she was going to make a run for the edge. He was still wary, but he was looking a little more at ease by the second.
Sometimes talking is all people need, Nik. You don't have to solve their problems to help, Michael said. He was almost gone. His voice was barely a whisper.
"How long does this promise thing last?" she asked, ignoring Michael and her urge to make fun of him for sounding like a fortune cookie.
"I don't think it ends."
"What—like never?"
"As far as I know," he said, defeat tarnishing his t
one.
"Ouch." That wasn't helpful. The look on his face told her as much. She scrambled back to the point. "What does that have to do with catching me?"
He shrugged and looked at her like it was obvious.
"You promised to catch me when I jump off stuff?"
He shook his head. "I promised Michael."
"Well, that was smarter, I guess," she said. "He doesn't like jumping off stuff nearly as much as I do."
Impact looked at her like she'd said something stupid—he was really good at that look—making her resolve to help him wobble.
"No. I promised I would keep you alive. The night the Hunter attacked you on the train."
"Oh," was all she could think to say. She remembered some of that night a little too well. The few parts she didn't remember… Better to focus on the problem at hand.
"Then why don't you just promise yourself you'll fly when you jump off this cliff?" she asked.
He clenched his jaw as he chewed on that one. The sour taste of that thought was nothing new to him, clearly.
"It doesn't work that way. It doesn't happen with promises to myself. Only other people."
The way around that snag was obvious to Nikki, but Impact took another half step back from her like he knew exactly what she was going to suggest.
"I won't promise you either," he said. "If I do it that way, he wins. I won't use the limitation he gave me. I will do this on my own."
That was just dumb. In a fight you use what you have at hand, regardless of where it came from or who put it there. In fact, using your enemy's own weapon against him added a special kind of insult to his injuries. Refusing to use what you have isn't going to hurt anybody but you.
Nikki kept herself from voicing those thoughts, but barely. Her face must have given her away though. Impact's expression darkened further.
"Look, I'm sorry I'm not more help," she said, wracking her brain for something worthwhile to say. Sure, people might think they just needed to talk sometimes, but what they really needed was their problem solved. Otherwise, what was the point of talking?
