by Minton, Toby
Chapter 40
Nikki
Three days in, Nikki decided she hated the early night shift most—not that she liked any of them. Saying she hated it more than the late night shift or either of the day shifts was like saying she hated chewing glass most, over chewing nails or sharp rocks. There were no good options.
It wasn't the staying awake that bugged her, per se. It was the not going to sleep. Subtle distinction, but an important one.
Over the past couple of weeks, she'd gotten used to going to bed at a decent time—a necessary adaptation to survive Ace's early morning PT sessions. That decent time just so happened to fall dead in the middle of the early night shift, as her body loved to remind her.
To make matters worse, Gideon and Savior usually grabbed a few hours of sleep during this shift, which was just rubbing Nikki's nose in it, in her opinion.
Not tonight though. They were close to a breakthrough—she'd heard Gideon say as much to Elias before he turned in—and they showed no signs of stopping any time soon.
She stifled a yawn and stood to take a better look around over the tops of the monitors. They'd set up the monitor station on top of one of the sleeping modules, the one closest to the control module, where Gideon and Savior did most of their work. From her elevated vantage, Nikki could see most of the corral. On the monitors, she could see all of it, including inside the sleeping modules, as well as every quadrant of the perimeter, which were green-tinted night vision images at the moment. But switching back and forth between the two was key to staying awake, or so Mos had told her with a wink before her first shift.
He was right. Jumping up and down helped too, but she held off on that for now. Elias was sleeping in the room under her at the moment. She reserved her random noise making for when Coop was down there.
She could see the back of Savior's head where he was comparing readings on a couple of consoles below. Off to the left of the dance floor, Mos kept a casual watch on the Gateway, where Gideon was working at the moment.
Gideon was working without his coat tonight, which made him hard not to watch. She hoped Mos was paying close attention. If he forgot Gideon was out there and just happened to glance over at the wrong time and see only Gideon's creature side—bam.
When the creatures came through, there was no warning, and sometimes very little sound from them. With a camera and a guard on the Gateway, they hadn't missed one yet, but tensions were only rising.
They'd had no major incidents yet, but everyone knew that was going to change, and soon. The creatures on this side were coming. It was only a matter of time. In fact, Sam had taken one down at range this morning, and Cole said it wasn't alone. He said the others were out there; they were just being cautious. Apparently, finding all the prey they wanted in the one corral was making them suspicious.
They weren't alone in that regard. Elias was the same with Savior. He reminded Nikki at every shift change to keep a close eye. Thing was, Savior had been nothing but the busy scientist. He'd also been quiet, polite, humble—shocking as that was. At times he was even—
"Quiet night?" Savior asked from behind her.
Friendly. And sneaky. Nikki nearly jumped out of her boots. She did bump her chair and send it rolling toward the edge. Savior caught it deftly.
"I didn't mean to startle you," he said, offering the chair.
Nikki sat and spun to face the monitors, mostly to hide the flush in her cheeks, a flush that was only one part shame. She'd kept her distance from Savior for good reason, and not just because she didn't trust him. She didn't trust herself with him.
"No drama," she said, as lightly as she could. "Aren't you supposed to be down there though?"
"I wish none of us had to be down there," he said.
Nikki glanced up to see if he was joking. He wasn't, as far as she could tell, and if he was lying, he was selling it like he lived on commission. He was staring out at the Gateway with what looked like genuine regret in his eyes.
Don't fall for it, idiot, she snapped at herself, looking back at her monitors. But she felt a hope fire start inside her, or start smoking, at least. If Savior's kinder, more repentant self was real—
She couldn't finish that thought. The thought of having her power back was overwhelming. If she entertained it, her focus was shot. She had a job to do. Elias was counting on her. He'd entrusted this mission to her. Only to her.
Nikki kept her eyes on her monitors, on the screen showing Elias sleeping, which kept Savior out of all but the far edge of her peripheral vision. Until he leaned on the desk beside her.
Dammit.
"He cares for you," Savior said.
"Of course he does," she replied, then grimaced at how cocky that sounded. She'd meant because of the whole family issue, but there was no fixing it now without more talking, which was what she wanted to avoid.
"I'm glad he's forming a connection again," Savior said. "When I realized he'd sent you away all those years ago, I second-guessed my decision to create a connection in the first place."
Nikki snorted. She couldn't help herself. "Create a connection? That's a funny way of putting it."
Savior reached out and turned her head to face him with a gentle finger on her chin.
Nikki opened her mouth to put him in his place, but her voice wouldn't respond. His touch, the tingle his finger left on her skin—he wasn't generating any energy, but she could feel it inside him. It was calling to her, begging her to reach out for it.
"It was the only way out I could see at the time, Nikki," he said. "If I had openly disobeyed the government's order to destroy my previous work, everything would have fallen apart. Generation would have dissolved before it developed its first treatment. Countless lives would have been lost. Letting Elias believe he was your father was the only way I could see to protect you."
"What?" Her voice finally responded. Thoughts of her power slipped away. Not far away, but away.
"It was the best I could do. I knew he would do the right thing. I knew he would protect you when the time came, but only with proper motivation. Convincing him he was your father was the only way to guarantee he acted, to guarantee he saved you."
"So you're saying he's not?"
The sympathy in Savior's smile was strong enough to touch Nikki's heart. If he was faking it, he was beyond good.
"He is a good man," he said, without a hint of sarcasm in his eyes. "But when I created you, I used only the best."
Nikki didn't ask the obvious question. Of course he was going to tell her who her father was. That's why he'd come to see her, right?
He didn't though. Instead, he stood and looked up through the big tear in the dome. A couple of stars were peeking through.
Nikki was trying to find the words to ask when Savior said, "Ask Mr. Cole about her sometime, if you get a chance."
Nikki's voice failed her again. She wanted to ask what "her" he was talking about, but her throat knew exactly whom he meant. If his sympathy act before was good enough to touch her heart, what she felt coming off him now broke it in two.
"He knew her better than anyone," Savior said, his voice soft. "He was lucky enough to spend a lifetime with her."
Savior's watch beeped, and he looked down at it and blinked, breaking the spell he'd been weaving. Then he smiled slightly and met Nikki's eyes again. "Happy birthday, Nikki."
It took her two tries, but she finally found her voice and managed a weak laugh. Savior's mind was all over the shop tonight.
"Thanks, I guess. But you're a few months early."
His smile pulled to one side and he shook his head, turning his watch to her. "March twenty-third. I should know."
"Savior," Gideon said from the bottom of the ramp. His hard eyes looked somehow more menacing without his hood. "She has a job to do. So do you."
Savior didn't flare at the rebuke. He simply nodded and raised his hands. He walked to the ramp, then stopped and looked back.
"I've missed too many of them, Nikki," Savio
r said. "I do not intend to miss any more."
"Hale," Gideon said, his voice as hard as his eyes.
Savior turned and walked down the ramp.
Nikki looked back at her monitors, but every one could have been filled with raging creatures and she wouldn't have noticed. She didn't know where to start processing what had just happened. There was so much to wrap her mind around, so much to shatter her calm. All she could focus on was the most trivial.
She was eighteen. That was supposed to be a big deal. Eighteen was a milestone birthday, one of the big ones.
She and Michael were going to have a bash to put all other parties to shame on their eighteenth, he just hadn't known about it. She'd made all sorts of plans, once upon a time, but since New Mexico, she hadn't given it much thought. She thought she had until August to tackle it. August eighth, that was the date they'd always celebrated—the date in the foster system database. Turned out even that was a lie.
That wasn't what was really bothering Nikki though. She knew it was just a number on a calendar. Savior had dropped much bigger bombs than that. But after a few minutes of staring blankly at the monitors, she realized that what was bothering her most wasn't all the things Savior had said, but what he hadn't.
Not once had he mentioned Michael.
Gideon
Savior stepped past Gideon, his expression neutral, controlled. He walked back to his monitors and restarted the simulations as if nothing had happened.
Safely behind his emotional wall, Gideon considered the possibility that the man he'd fought to destroy for so many years was not the threat he believed him to be.
Perhaps in Savior's mind, he hadn't crossed a line by talking to Nikki alone just now. Perhaps he simply wanted to connect with the child who looked more like her mother—a woman Gideon believed Savior had truly loved—with each passing day, not seduce her into trusting him and then use the abilities he'd given her to further his own agenda.
It was possible.
Perhaps he was sincere in his desire to stop the monsters he and Gideon had unleashed on the world through their hubris.
Also possible.
Perhaps he truly wanted to make amends for decades of misguided mania and put the Gateway project to rest once and for all.
All possible, if unlikely.
In the three days they'd been together, working side by side, Savior's mask—if mask it was—had not slipped once. For every minute of every day, he'd seemed as open, earnest, and unburdened as he'd been before the Event. Gideon was inclined, therefore, to entertain the possibility that he'd been mistaken about his friend, just as he'd been mistaken about their creation.
Gideon moved to another console and called up the power escalation algorithm, but his gaze drifted back to Savior.
All he had to do to accept Savior's change of heart, to believe in his friend again, was step out from behind the wall and let his emotions make the call. He wanted to believe in Savior. He wanted to give up this crusade. The good they could do working together was limitless. His heart knew as much. His heart remembered, all too well despite the years, how it felt to love Christopher Hale. To let the rest of him remember, all he had to do was let go and feel again.
But Gideon didn't dare.
He knew what waited in the darkness outside the barrier. His memory held every moment of pain he'd caused in his crusade against Savior, every dream he'd crushed, every life he'd ruined, perfectly preserved like it had all happened yesterday. If his crusade had been misguided, then every sacrifice he'd made, every sacrifice he'd forced upon others, had been for nothing.
He couldn't open that door. Emotion was a weakness he couldn't indulge. Cold logic was what he needed. Humanity couldn't afford for him to waver or hesitate, not now. The time for second-guessing was long past. His course was set.
Gideon looked at Savior, who was fixated on his simulations with unwavering focus, and he wondered, not for the first time since they'd arrived, which of them would betray the other first.
Chapter 41
Nikki
Operation Two Birds, as Nikki was calling it, was about to start, and she was pretty sure she was going to be sick.
She swallowed the rising bile and took a deep breath, then went back to trying to wrestle the last cable from the back of the last monitor. It wasn't cooperating.
"Got it, kid," Mos said. He reached past her and gave the cable a twist and press and it popped free.
Nikki gave it the dirtiest look she could muster, which was filthy, thanks to her roiling stomach. Mos just smiled at her and wound the cable around his open hand.
"I can finish breaking this equipment down on my own, you know?" Mos said. "I'm a big boy."
"Yeah, I know," she replied. "I just—I don't know. I feel—" Sick. Scared. Conflicted. "—attached, I guess. I've been staring at this stuff for four days."
Mos laughed. "I getcha. I spent a week in the four-seater with Coop on a surveillance op one time."
"God," Nikki groaned.
"Tell me about it," he said. "Wanted to kill Coop, but I still have a soft spot for that passenger seat. We bonded."
Nikki smiled for the first time today and stepped back to look around as Mos detached the last monitor and slid it into the padded case.
From atop the sleeper module, she could see for what looked like kilometers now. The walls connecting the modules were gone, removed by the team this morning. The dome was gone as well, pulsed away in a much more dramatic fashion by Savior just minutes ago. What had looked like a single structure hours before was now just a handful of containers in a wide circle around the Gateway, which was currently catching the afternoon sun—soon to catch dozens of blood-thirsty creatures.
"Nikki, it's time," Elias said from below.
Nikki looked down and met his steady gaze for a second, then she nodded and walked down the ramp. Elias met her at the bottom and fell in beside her as she walked to the control module where the others were waiting.
She could feel the concern coming off him. He'd made his feelings about this plan known. He'd argued that Nikki should be well away from ground zero, with Sam a couple of klicks out to watch the creatures' approach, or even with Corso in the assault shuttle.
Gideon had overruled him. For this plan to work, Nikki had to be here. Actually, for this to work, she had to be on the other side of the Gateway.
Bird one: Open the Gateway to correct the mess Savior's partners had made of it.
That part of the plan was seconds away. Gideon and Savior were running final checks now, by the looks of things. Ace and Coop were in position on the dance floor, watching the Gateway.
Bird two: Draw all the creatures from this side through the Gateway, putting them back where they belong.
To make that happen, the "bait" had to go to the other side. Savior, Impact, and Nikki were the bait, hence her queasiness.
Cole was going through with them. Dealing with a pack of genesis creatures on the other side wasn't going to be pretty, and everybody agreed Cole was the master of not pretty. He was waiting on the dance floor near Ace, staring back to the west like he could see the creatures gathering out there.
Elias was going through as well. Nobody liked that part of the plan, but he was adamant. If Nikki was going in there, with Savior, Elias wanted to be right beside her. Nikki had told him she'd be fine, but apparently she hadn't been convincing enough.
What she hadn't told him was that she had a plan of her own. Once things got hairy, she was going to find out once and for all if she could draw energy from Savior. If she could, if his power could make her strong again, she had no intention of hiding behind his shield as planned.
"Market—Command," Kate's voice said over the com. "Impact has them herded. The package is ready."
Nikki took another deep breath to try to settle her nerves. She was so done with being scared of these things. She was done feeling weak. If there was any justice in the universe, that was going to end, today.
"Stand by
for delivery," Elias replied. Then he looked to Gideon.
"Savior?" Gideon asked, his tone almost level.
"Power flow nominal," Savior replied without looking up from his screens. "It's ready, Marcus."
Savior's voice held a little more emotion, like he, at least, was feeling the gravity of what they were about to do.
Gideon didn't make a speech or savor the moment in any way. He simply input a series of commands and then lifted his uneven gaze from his screens to the Gateway.
Nikki turned as the buzz started, like a swarm of bees the size of cats. The little knobbies running along the outside of the oversized frame crackled one at a time as the buzz breached the pain barrier. Then the air in the center of the Gateway cracked, like a single bolt of lightning arcing from top to bottom, and the buzz died down to a deep hum Nikki could feel tingling in her chest.
"It's done," Gideon said, his voice cold.
For a second, Nikki didn't see any difference, but as the afterimage from the flash faded, she saw the bare earth on the other side of the Gateway where the back of the dance floor should have been—earth with a red tint, under a sky thick with hazy clouds.
They'd actually done it. She was staring into the future, or at another planet, if their original theory was right. Either way, Nikki was speechless.
"Gideon?" Elias asked.
He didn't respond.
Nikki looked back to see both Savior and Gideon staring at the Gateway—one with a look of wonder; the other with something closer to horror.
"It is the source, Marcus," Savior said, his tone vibrating with emotion. "Do you see it?"
Gideon didn't respond, but the way he continued to stare at the Gateway said he saw something all right, and he wasn't loving it.
Nikki looked back at the Gateway, but all she saw was the frame and the cracked desert floor beyond. Savior's excitement was infecting her though. The tingle was slowly spreading out from her chest.
"If the wormhole is the genesis source, it stands, Marcus," Savior said behind her. "The background levels we detected in that atmosphere—we put them there. When we opened the first Gateway, we created that world."
