by Minton, Toby
This might be the dumbest idea you've ever had, Michael said in Nikki's head. And that's really saying something.
Michael's voice threatened to bring back Nikki's other memories from that day, which sucked the joy right out of her fantasy. She dropped her arms and opened her eyes to the moonlit night. She took in the staggered buildings of the southern Seattle waterfront, the patchwork of lights in the taller buildings from late workers, the buzz and hum of the traffic on the busier streets a block away, the unholy blend of smells from competing restaurants mixing with the salty breeze coming in off the Sound. She drew in the city's ambiance with a couple of big breaths before she tucked a chin-length strand of blue-black hair behind her ear and sat back down on the ledge to resume her stakeout.
"Yeah, well," she said aloud, her gaze dropping to the nightclub entrance across the street three stories below, "nobody asked you."
Actually, you did.
"What?"
You said, "It's gotta work, right?"
"No, I didn't."
Yes, you did.
"Whatever. I was talking to myself," she grumbled.
You realize how that can be confusing, right?
"You realize you're a boob, right?" Nikki shifted her butt on the damp concrete lip of the roof, trying to find a position that wasn't supremely uncomfortable. No such luck. She twisted all the way forward to dangle her legs over the edge and pressed her hands down against the concrete on either side to ease the pressure off her butt bones. Doing so made the pain in her shoulder flare though, which shut Michael up. Ironic, since that pain—courtesy of her fall from a slick fire escape ladder onto a dumpster—was what had brought him out of hiding tonight in the first place.
For the millionth time, Nikki wished Michael was still alive, like in-the-flesh alive all the time instead of in-her-head alive on random occasions. And for maybe the thousandth time, that wish came from frustration instead of loneliness.
Michael had always displayed a natural talent for getting on her nerves, the effectiveness of which she'd associated with physical things like his frustrating stares, his disapproving posture, and his occasional stubborn refusal to move when she wanted to do something fun. She'd totally underestimated the annoyance factor of a simple tone and a few poorly timed words, something Michael had turned into an art form since his…since she'd almost lost him.
In fact, now that he was a sporadic voice in her head instead of a constant presence by her side, Michael was somehow more annoying than ever. Granted, Nikki hadn't been her usual tolerant self lately. She'd be the fourth or fifth to admit she wasn't as hard to annoy as she'd once been. She just wasn't the rock of patience and acceptance she used to be. Not surprising, really.
The past four months had been the worst of Nikki's life. She used to pride herself on being strong, independent, tough enough to handle anything life could drop on her, but losing her twin had crippled her, in more ways than one.
Not only had she lost her brother, mostly, but she'd also lost the power they shared, the ability to heal and get stronger with every blow the other suffered. That power had been the root of her boundless bravado, not to mention the main shaping force in her life until now. It was easy to be confident knowing her brother could make her strong enough to wrestle a tank, easy to be brave when she knew her brother could heal any injury she sustained. Losing that power…
The feeling of vulnerability had consumed her at first, kept her curled up in her bunk, which in turn made her feel like a selfish twat, which of course made her want to stay curled up in her bunk. The guilt of missing her power was overwhelming. She hated herself for it. She should have been thinking only of Michael. All she'd lost was a crazy ability. He'd lost his life. For her.
You're doing it again. His voice broke in on her thoughts.
"No, I'm not. Shut up." The lie was weak, especially voiced to the empty rooftop. He always knew when she was about to spiral toward the dark place she'd been unable to escape that first couple of months after her rescue. He wasn't around in her head all the time, didn't always answer when she called, but every time she started to feel guilty for his death, he showed up to call her on it. Every time. How he always knew when the suffering train was about to hit was a mystery she had yet to solve.
Nik, when I'm in your head like this, I can hear what you're thinking, especially when you do it so loudly.
"Well—stop. It's none of your business what I think."
Even if it's about me?
"Especially, boob. You shouldn't listen to what other people are thinking about you."
You're listening to what I'm thinking.
"Only because you're thinking it out loud."
She enjoyed a nice long pause before he said, Wow.
"Yeah. I win."
The fact that you think so scares me, almost as much as this plan.
Raised voices preceded a man stumbling out of the club below and right into the giant bouncer working the door. Nikki perked up. This could mean it was showtime, that all her hard work had paid off—"hard work" meaning waiting on this roof for an hour. Doing nothing was hands-down the hardest work Nikki could imagine.
The bouncer righted the man with one hand and steered him around a couple of scarf-wrapped ladies on their way in. The man weaved as the ladies passed. He nearly toppled when he tried to turn to check them out, but somehow he kept his feet. The party gods were still smiling on this one.
Maybe not. Maybe they were just laughing at Nikki. This guy looked like yet another harmless false alarm.
After a few unsteady steps up the steep road in front of the club, Captain Stumbly thought better of the climb and reversed course. Going downhill to the parking tower was a lot easier than uphill to the taxi call. Probably not the best city planning for getting drunkards home, but in the planners' defense, this club could have been a factory when the parking tower was built, and no doubt had been a dozen other businesses in the years since.
Still, the drunken downhillers were no more danger to the world in their cars than in taxis, unless they were savvy enough to bypass the BAC readers in their rides. From the look of Captain Stumbly, he wouldn't be pulling off that feat tonight even if he did have the know-how and trouser weights to give it a shot. He'd be lucky to make it to the tower before he passed out.
Yep. He was a wash all right. Back to the waiting.
Let's call it, Nikki. Michael's voice was quieter than before. He was starting to fade out again, to slip back to wherever it was he went inside her head when she couldn't hear him. I think the universe is telling you this was a bad idea.
"The universe or you?" she mumbled. "Sounds a lot like you."
I feel like I've made my opinion pretty clear.
"Yep."
But if you need a rehash— His voice was barely a whisper.
"Nope, I got it. Plan bad." What she didn't get was why he was so set against it. After all, she was trying to do something right here. She was trying to play hero.
Well, play hero and get her powers back. But the good for her shouldn't cancel out the good for the lucky putz she helped in the process. In fact, waiting on a rooftop for an hour and a half to spot someone in trouble surely put her well into the positive in her karma pool.
She didn't feel in the positive though. If anything she felt worse now that she was thinking about why she was up here, but living without her brother and her power was no kind of living. If that was selfish thinking, so be it. She had to get some part of her old life back or she was going to lose her mind. No amount of wishing could bring Michael back, but maybe, just maybe she could kickstart her ability back into action. If she could feel that strength surging through her again, feel the rush of the power tingling through every muscle and nerve, she'd feel at least halfway alive again. And halfway living was better than what she was doing now.
Her plan was simple. She was going back to the beginning, sort of. She was going to recreate the scene from the day she and Michael first felt their ability an
d realized how it worked. Again, sort of.
They'd been in foster home number three at the time, possibly. Nikki remembered only foggy images and snippets of voices and feelings from the earliest years of their life, memories that felt more like pieces of dreams than anything else. That particular foster home, with Miss Sayi, was the first one she could really remember with any clarity. She and Michael had been almost five years old.
Miss Sayi had been like a dream herself, in a way. She'd made them feel like they belonged. She showed them what it felt like to be cared for, to be wanted. She would hold them both in her lap for what felt like hours and talk to them about things Nikki barely understood at the time, or now for that matter, and tell stories that would make them giggle uncontrollably or get completely lost in their imaginations as they put pictures to her warm words. Then she'd rock them and hum in a way that would put them out like lights. Just thinking about her soothing deep voice made Nikki yawn now as she watched a laughing couple leave the club below her.
Those weeks, or months maybe, with Miss Sayi made up one of the few bright spots in Nikki's childhood.
Miss Sayi had made the world seem beautiful, magical, and far safer than it really was at the time. But she'd been sick. Her colorful head wraps that had given Nikki so much amusement had been hiding the side effects of black market cancer drugs, the kind as likely to kill as save—roulettes, the dealers called them.
When Miss Sayi's luck ran out, Nikki and Michael were lost. They were too young to know what to do, to know how to get help when they couldn't wake her up. They were too scared to go to the neighbors. The San Diego outskirts were just starting to buckle at that time, having the honor of being the last major city to succumb to overcrowding and disease after the conflicts. The atmosphere in the neighborhood was growing more dangerous and less human by the day. Miss Sayi's strong, calming presence had been the only thing keeping the three of them safe.
When someone finally broke into the tiny apartment three days later, they didn't come to check on Miss Sayi or her scared and hungry foster kids. They didn't come to help. They came to loot.
Seeing the dirty men pawing through Miss Sayi's carefully maintained home was more than Nikki could bear. She'd fought back the only way she knew how at the time. She'd wailed at the top of her lungs.
When one of the men casually slapped her, she just screamed that much louder. Then he hit her again. The second blow wasn't a swat to quiet a noisy child but a full backhand with all his greater size and strength brought to bear.
That's where it all started. That was the first time Nikki had felt the tingle leave her body and the strength respond in Michael's. When one of them hit Michael, Nikki's own strength responded for the first time. That was the day—the first day she truly felt alive.
She had to get that power back. It was who she was, as much a part of her as her badly dyed hair, hand-me-down clothes, inappropriate belches of humor, and terrible attitude. Michael's description, not hers. The best way to do that, the only way, really, that she could come up with was to do what she'd done that day in Miss Sayi's living room. She had to make somebody mad enough to hit her, and then let them keep hitting her until her power decided to show itself again.
That was the selfish part.
She wasn't going to pick a fight with just anybody though. She was going to find someone more than deserving of a little knuckle justice, someone out to hurt or screw over somebody else. She was going to find a real douchebag.
That was the hero part.
A solid plan, she didn't mind saying. Michael disagreed. He had a big steamy pile of objections, most of them too boring to recall. Her favorite was the one that included the words "hell and gone from the realm of scientific plausibility, or even basic common sense." He could be a real hoot sometimes.
Nikki waited for a minute to see if Michael would jump in, but it was a pointless wait, she knew. He'd faded back to—wherever. She was alone again, for now.
She stared at the nightclub in silence for a while, watching people come and go, trying her best to be OK with the solitude.
That went pretty much like she thought it would. She quickly found herself questioning her plan. She found herself thinking maybe Michael was right. Maybe she should try something a little less risky. But that just wasn't her style, and the whole point was to get back to who she'd been before, not to do things even further outside her comfort zone.
Without thinking, she started to pull her knees up against her chest, but the narrow ledge and her center of gravity got in a pushing match that nearly sent her tumbling forward off the roof. She slapped her hands back down and caught herself, but her strained shoulder paid the price.
Nikki grunted at the pain and ground her teeth to keep in the string of curses she so wanted to unravel. Being normal sucked. No two ways about it.
She spun on her aggravated butt to swing her legs onto the roof and stood up to stretch, letting out a long grumbly groan as she did so.
Does this mean you're going back to the transport? Michael said.
"I thought you'd left."
I'm not going anywhere, Nikki. Except maybe back to the transport, I hope.
That was pretty wishful thinking on his part, but Nikki wasn't about to give Michael another reason to criticize the night's activities. She'd left Coop loading up supplies on his own nearly two hours ago, something the man had to be getting used to from her by now. There was no way he was still waiting around with a transport full of controlled goods.
He would come back for her after he unloaded, of course. She had her run of the city now that the whole mess with Savior seemed to have blown over, but Elias and his crew never left her alone for too long. They didn't push. They never asked where she'd been or what she'd been doing, but they were always there waiting to give her a ride when she was ready to go…back.
Nikki rolled her shoulder to loosen up the stiffness that had built up during her wait and turned back to watch the club.
Why won't you call it what it is?
"I don't know what you're talking about," she lied.
It's your home now. It's not going to kill you to say that.
"It's not home. It's just a place where I'm crashing, for now."
It's a safe place where you keep all your things, and it's full of people who care about you. If that's not home, I don't know what is.
"And?" She knew there was an and, not just because she knew Michael as well as she knew herself. She could feel the "and" about to drop. She was good at sensing that sort of thing. She felt ands and buts with the best of them.
And you could ask one of them to help with this "plan" of yours.
She laughed and tucked her hair behind her ear again. "I don't need help picking a fight. You of all people—"
You know that's not what I mean. She could hear the frustration in his voice, or thoughts, or—thought voice. I mean you could spar with a friend instead of assaulting a stranger.
She shook her head but otherwise didn't bother responding. He didn't get it, and she didn't feel like explaining. He'd just make fun of her if she did.
A handful of girls stepped out of the club. Well, "stepped" was being kind—they'd obviously been partying since happy hour. They were clinging to each other and barely keeping their feet, mostly due to laughter that was hurting Nikki's ears three stories up.
They were townies for sure. Skimpy, spangly dresses, ridiculous shoes—not helping their stability issues—enough makeup to paint a free zone shack, and hair that was nothing short of magnificent.
Nikki's hand almost made it to her own hair before she stopped herself. She would NOT envy townies. There was nothing wrong with her style, which was why she'd had Coop help her maintain it for months. The only thing about it she'd changed was the color, and even there she'd kept it close to what Michael had done after Sky City. The black he'd put in had almost grown out completely, but she'd dyed the platinum underneath a blue so dark it was almost black, in the right light. Her
roots were already starting to show, but that was an easy fix.
The gigglers stayed put outside the front door to chat, much to the bouncer's amusement and Nikki's annoyance. Watching the townies fed a growing wave of contempt that could have been hers or Michael's. When he was in her head like this, she had trouble telling his emotions from hers. They felt the same to her now, which irritated her enough to make her question and battle everything she felt when he was around. Still, she didn't want to complain. She didn't want to risk pissing off the universe enough to make it snatch away what little of him she had left.
Michael was quiet all of a sudden, but she could tell he was still there. Nikki could feel him, almost like he was staring over her shoulder. Something had shut him up, and whatever it was started a trickle of unease creeping through Nikki's belly.
It didn't take her long to spot what was bothering him. She'd noticed the kid lurking in the alley earlier, but a skinny, dirty teenager seemingly half-conscious next to a dumpster, was white noise to a zoner like Nikki. Her eyes had moved past him without a thought. But looking at him now set off her trouble alarms. He was on his feet against the wall of the alley and looking all manner of shifty, his gaze glued to the townies. His body language practically screamed creeper.
On the plus side, it also screamed malnourished, strung out, and altogether harmless. The kid was probably as tall as Nikki, if not taller, but she would bet hard cash she outweighed him. On the threat scale, he barely registered, especially against four well-fed women, even if they were townies.
Still, that wasn't stopping him from eyeing them like they were a charity food drop. Definite creeper. Watching him reminded Nikki of the hunting lions she'd watched during her halo years. He stood motionless in the tall garbage, seemingly watching and waiting for a weak or injured member of the herd to fall behind before he made his move.
Good old halo years. Fun times. If Nikki ever met the gal who'd come up with the halo plan, she'd give her a big wet one. Sheer brilliance, that scheme, even if it didn't work the way they'd intended.