by Toby Minton
Chapter 33
Nikki
When Nikki’s heart started to give out, all she felt was relief. The shooting pains and dizziness pulsing through her with each stuttering heartbeat were nothing compared to what she’d suffered over the past several hours. If her heart stopped, the torture would stop with it. She’d black out, for good this time, and they wouldn’t be able to hurt her anymore.
The old Nikki would have bowed up at the thought of giving up like this. She would have spit into cowardice’s eyes, kicked it in the crotch for good measure, and then cursed and taunted her way into the next wave of pain.
That Nikki had left the building. She’d fled hours ago, unable to withstand the horrible sounds ripped from her throat when the electric fire water was shredding her insides. The Nikki who was left couldn’t muster the first curse or spit. She hung limp in the warm gel, her arms and legs too weak to do more than quake with each jolt of pain radiating out from her chest, her throat too raw from screaming to make more than a broken moan.
She bit her already bloody lip as the pain in her chest flared again, trying to keep from drawing attention to herself. If they realized she was dying, they’d send the magic soothing fairy pulses through the BioGel. They’d stabilize her, keep her going, and then they’d send the fire water again. But if they didn’t notice until it was too late to save her…
With everyone focused on the Gateway, her chances were looking good. For the third time today, Nikki had filled their energy collector enough for them to make an attempt—
You go, girl, she thought with a smile that never made it out of her brain. Maybe the old Nikki was still in there somewhere after all.
—and for the third time today, all eyes were on the oversized doorframe at the far end of the room as they tried, yet again, to open a doorway to another world.
They would fail, Nikki knew, just like they’d failed the first two times. She wasn’t lucky enough for them to succeed and end this suck fest. She’d gone from being on luck’s bad side to being directly under its backside. Nothing else could explain the last few days.
The expressions on the faces she could see were still desperately hopeful. The scientists and technicians bobbing their attention between the Gateway, their screens, and each other had the same bouncy glow to them, diminished only slightly by ten hours of build up, fail, repeat.
Savior, not so much. Even though Nikki couldn’t see his face—he wasn’t the type to bob or bounce, so he stayed facing the Gateway—she could tell by his posture and total lack of motion that he was still as sober and distant as he had been all day. The man was more than just cool and reserved, he was zoned out like a grade-A tweaker. He’d been that way since the first wave of hurt. Didn’t seem fair for the man responsible for all this to get to hide out in his happy place while she suffered.
Nikki’s vision blurred and everything before her eyes went from normal to streaky red to black in the space of what should have been a heartbeat. But her heart wasn’t beating. It felt like a knot of pain, like somebody was squeezing her ticker in a fist to cut off everything going in or out.
When her vision cleared a little, several minutes seemed to have passed. The lab coats were all in a tizzy as they poured energy into the Gateway to no effect other than steadily draining what she’d worked so hard to build up.
Savior just stood and watched. He didn’t shout orders or demand updates. He didn’t direct the increasingly frantic activity in any way. He just waited, like he knew their efforts were all for naught.
Nikki’s vision went to black again, but this time as the room blurred and faded away, the pain went with it. Instead of the pulsating burn from her chest, she felt…nothing. Numb, cool emptiness.
She floated in the black nothing for who knows how long, luxuriating in the lack of sensation. No pain, no body, just emptiness.
After so much pain for so long, she knew the release afterward should have had a sweet ache of its own. Like relaxing onto a nice hard mattress after a night of non-stop dancing followed by an umpteen-K hike out of the Wasteland. That first moment when her muscles totally relaxed after tensing for so long had a delicious ache of release that was one of life’s few universal pleasures.
Not this time. This time, Nikki truly felt nothing at all. That’s how she knew she was dead.
I failed, she thought. I tried to be strong, brave, unstoppable, the way I am with Michael. But I wasn’t with Michael. I was alone. And all I could do was scream and give up.
What, are you kidding me? old Nikki asked, the thoughts seeming to come from outside of her, if there was still a her at all. There was only one way out of that tank, honey, and you found it. We won.
The black nothing around Nikki grew brighter and took shape. It happened fast, like in a dream. One second she was surrounded by formless nothingness, the next she was in the lab staring at the empty tank.
The lab was empty and silent and very much a dream version of the room she’d seen from the other side of the glass tube in front of her. And just like a dream, the only thing that felt truly real was the surge of emotion that came with looking at the tank.
“Don’t even try to feel ashamed,” old Nikki said. “This is a solid win.”
This time the voice was definitely coming from outside her head. Nikki turned to see herself sitting on a lab table nearby.
The girl on the table was everything Nikki wanted to see when she looked in the mirror. She was confident, graceful, powerful. She was wearing Kate’s phoenix T-shirt, brand new jeans, and the most kick-ass pair of boots Nikki had ever laid eyes on. And, of course, she was smoking hot—and very much alive.
“How’s it a win?” she replied. “I let them kill me.”
“No, you didn’t," the old Nikki said. "They wanted us alive so they could keep playing shock the hottie. We told them where to stick it and escaped.”
“I screamed like a baby and died.”
“Potato, potahto. We did the one thing they didn’t want, the one thing that put us beyond their reach. Quit trying to feel sorry for yourself, or ourself, or whatever.”
Old Nikki hopped off the counter and sauntered to the tank. She crossed her arms and gave it a good long disdainful glare before looking back at new Nikki. “You do this every time, you know.”
“Every time what? Every time I die?”
“God, we can be an idiot sometimes,” old Nikki groaned. “Every time you find yourself alone, you get all whiney and self-absorbed—”
“I’m self-absorbed?”
“—You shut me out and curl up into a little ball.”
“How do I shut you out? You’re me, right?”
“Well, yeah. I guess. But you’re all logic and numbers. I’m the other stuff. The good stuff.” She smiled a slanted smile Nikki knew the feel of but never really got to see from the outside. “I cuss better, I fight better, and I for damn sure would have made a better afterlife than this. What are we doing here, anyway?”
Nikki looked at the tank, the shame rising again. “I’m not ready to leave. I just—”
“Yeah, got it. You’re not ready to let go. That’s your problem. You never let anything go.” Old Nikki grabbed her arms made her look into her own strong eyes. “Let it go. You’ve been scared and doubting us since Chicago, and I’m sick to death of it. Pun intended.
“Look at that thing if you want,” old Nikki went on, “but realize what it was, honey. Worst case scenario. It doesn’t get any uglier than what we went through in there, and we did it, alone.”
“That was all you,” Nikki replied. “We both know that.”
Old Nikki laughed. “No, it wasn’t. I hate to admit it, but you were the one who stared them in the eyes and told them to turn up the juice. Not me. You’re stronger than you think. The sooner you realize that…” She trailed off and started laughing, just a giggle at first, but it quickly grew into a full blown fit.
“What’s wrong with you?”
Old Nikki looked at her, the laughter tapering off slowl
y. “Here I am trying to get you to wake up and smell the reality, and I’m the one wearing nose plugs. We’re dead. The time for self-discovery is over. That train has sailed.”
“So what do we do now?”
“Anything we want.”
“What could possibly entertain both of us? We don’t have a whole lot in common.”
Old Nikki smiled that smile again and shook her head. “You sure about that?”
Unbidden, thoughts of the skimmer ride with Sam flooded Nikki’s mind. Racing over the ground, the wind rushing past, closing her eyes until it felt almost like—
Old Nikki was bouncing on her toes in anticipation, like she knew exactly what Nikki was thinking.
“So I made this room, you say?” Nikki asked her eager other self.
Old Nikki just nodded and bit her lip, still bouncing.
“And I can make it anything I want?” She felt her smile match old Nikki’s.
The room dissolved around them and Nikki was suddenly dropping through empty air, through cold clouds, falling toward the sunlit ground far below. Old Nikki let out a yell of joy from somewhere beside her, and as one they angled their bodies toward the ground in a head-first dive. Then with a thought, they swooped up and flew.
The sensation was even better than Nikki had imagined. Much better than the dream after her fall from the train. Better even than her ride with Sam, at least as far as the flying went. She was graceful, fast as thought, and totally in control. She was free.
Nikki dropped down near the ground and wove around trees and buildings both familiar and fanciful. She played cat and mouse with her wilder self, alternating between chaser and chased, soaring through landscapes as quickly as her mind could conjure them.
Until the pulse hit.
With a deep thrum she felt more than heard, a shock wave rolled across them, and in its wake she and the wild Nikki blurred together into one for a split second. When they separated, they were falling, and a tingle of pain burned across Nikki’s chest as she dropped.
She recovered her balance and soared back up into the air, the other Nikki right beside her, but she knew something was different. The burn in her chest was growing, and the energy she could sense moving through her was familiar, almost like—
Michael!
She knew that wasn’t right as soon as she thought it. The energy was similar, but harsher, cruder.
THRUM
The second shock wave was stronger than the first. When it hit them, she and the other Nikki slammed together, merging back into one with jarring force, and her control crumbled. She dropped from the sky, and this time there was nothing Nikki could do to stop her fall.
She split apart again just before she hit the ground, and the world around her shifted.
Nikki was on her hands and knees on the cracked red earth of a desert floor. The other Nikki was facing her in the same position. When she lifted her head, the other Nikki did the same. They looked at each other and then turned to look at the oversized doorframe nearby with the glowing blue light filling it.
Nikki knew this place. This was the other side of the Gateway on the day of the Event. The alien world. Or, at least, it was what she’d pictured when Gideon had described it.
Through the doorway, she could hear murmuring sounds, like muffled voices on the other side of a thin wall.
She stood up slowly and took a few steps toward the door.
“Did you feel that?” she said. “It’s Michael. It has to be. He found us.”
“I don’t think so,” the other Nikki said from behind her. “It felt…different.”
She was right, Nikki knew, but maybe it was different because he was trying to bring her back from wherever here was, from death or close to it. That had to feel different. Didn’t it?
“Stop!” the other Nikki called from behind her, but Nikki stepped closer to the door. One voice from the other side was clearer than the others, stronger. She could almost make out what it was saying.
The other Nikki grabbed her arm and tried to pull her back, but the voice from the other side spoke again, clearer than before. “Breathe,” it commanded.
Michael?
The Gateway pulsed. The shockwave threw Nikki back, into and through the other Nikki, and they merged. She was whole again, solid again, and being pulled through the Gateway into blinding light and pain.
Nikki sucked in a shuddering breath and squeezed her eyes shut against the light. When she blinked her eyes open and focused, she was staring into Savior’s crystal blue eyes from a distance of about half of nothing.
They were standing in the ruins of the tank, his arms wrapped around her to hold her up, the BioGel soaking into his uniform and spreading out around them carrying bits of broken glass in snaking rivulets running under the workstations.
“Welcome back, Nikki,” Savior breathed, an almost smile on his perfect lips.
Michael wasn’t there. She should have known he wasn’t there. Half of her had known. More than half of her, really, deep down, but the disappointment was still enough to start the bile climbing toward her throat.
She tried to push away from Savior’s embrace, but whatever he’d done to restart her heart hadn’t worked any magic anywhere else. Her arms and legs were completely spent.
“I apologize. My power is not as effective as your link with your brother. My abilities are more suited to destruction than repair, and I had to expend more energy than I could contain to bring you back.” He broke the stare between them and glanced around them.
Nikki followed his gaze, realizing that more than just the tank’s glass had paid the price of her revival.
The area around her, which should have been crammed with monitoring equipment and conduits, not to mention the tank itself, was completely empty. The equipment had been pushed back, smashed and compressed—like they were standing at the epicenter of a tiny explosion, a perfect sphere of clear space. The pulses from Savior had crumpled even solid steel like it was paper.
Wild me was right, she thought. I won. The torture tank is toast AND I’m still alive. She would have smiled if she’d had the energy. As it was, she could only collapse further into Savior’s arms in a heady mixture of exhaustion and relief.
Savior leaned down and scooped her up into his arms like she weighed nothing, which felt about right. She felt like she’d been wrung dry of everything that should have been inside. He turned and walked toward the door, Price and his guards preceding him.
Nikki let her head sag against Savior’s shoulder and caught sight of the technicians they were leaving behind. A few years ago, she’d seen footage of executions being carried out. She’d seen the faces of the officials who’d had to witness, and those of the spectators who’d thought the whole thing would be cool to watch. The looks she saw now were much the same. Granted, half of the looks of horror and unease were directed at the destruction of one of their precious machines, but a few, most notably the kid with the crazy hair and glasses, were staring at her. When she met his gaze, Kid Technician blinked and his mouth worked like he wanted to say something. From the look in his eyes, that something was a plea for her forgiveness. Then Savior was through the door and turning down the hall, and she lost sight of them.
Another win, one worthy of a weak smile. That kid would make a run for the hills first chance he got, and he wouldn’t be alone in deserting if she had read some of those other faces correctly. They wouldn’t make it far, she’d bet, not with the likes of Savior and Price running this prison. But stay or go, their days of presiding over torture sessions like hers were at an end.
She drifted in and out of consciousness as Savior carried her back to her room, not aware enough to hear what was going on around her until he eased her onto her bed. Savior’s quiet, “Rest, Nikki Flux,” as he pulled the covers up to her chin was so kind and fatherly, it almost roused her enough to open her eyes to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. But even that was beyond her. Instead, she relaxed into the sterile-smelling pillow and drift
ed off.
* * *
When Nikki woke up, really woke up, she had no idea what time it was or how long she’d been out. It was dark in her room and in the hall she could see through her bank of windows, so she guessed it was the middle of the night, but she could have sworn she’d been out longer than a few hours.
She remembered half waking up more than once when trays of food were brought in and later removed, and one time when they hooked her up to an IV, and maybe another time when something was tapping against her door, but those memories were foggy and more like bits of dream than reality. Maybe it really had been only a few hours.
She felt surprisingly good for having almost died. She felt rested and virtually pain free. Aside from a rumbling stomach, she felt almost back to normal. Actually, the rumbling stomach was pretty normal too, the last few weeks notwithstanding.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Nikki spotted a covered tray on the low cabinet by the door. Her stomach responded immediately.
“OK, OK. Hold your horses. I’m going already.”
She sat up in the bed and took a minute to get the blood flowing in her legs, despite her stomach’s protests. Then she stood and crossed the dark room. By the time she lifted the cover, her mouth was watering like she hadn’t eaten in a week.
The cold fare in the divided sections of the metal tray might have turned off a lesser girl, but to Nikki, the mashed vegetables and baked chicken breast looked like a glorious feast. She sat down against the door, with more force than intended, ripped off part of the chicken breast and used it to scoop up at least half of the veggies before cramming it in her mouth.
The vegetables were under-salted, the chicken overdone, neither had known warmth for hours, but they were absolute perfection to Nikki’s ravenous palate. Even so, when something tapped against the door right by her ear, she almost spat her mouthful against the wall. Almost.
In the free zones, possession in the belly equaled ownership under survival law. Those who could chew and swallow fast could thumb their noses at both hunger and angry merchants. Nikki excelled at nose-thumbing. She’d been known to put away whole raw vegetables and greasy mystery-meat wraps alike while weaving through crowds at a full sprint. She wasn’t about to let a little startle deprive her of this feast. She pulled her knees in to better hide in the corner between the cabinet and the doorframe and got another scoop on deck while she forced down the first.