Children of Evolution (The Gateway Series Book 2)

by Minton, Toby

  Savior glanced at her briefly before continuing. "But the reduced mental capacity, the increased aggression, the ability to sense genesis energy, and even more telling, the unreasoning animosity toward those who wield it—those traits were carefully manipulated, encoded. They were engineered by someone with extraordinary skill."

  "Let me guess," Ace said. "You?"

  "Possibly," Savior replied with no hint of ego. He lifted his gaze to the creature's genetic model. "The technique is familiar. Perhaps in this creature's timeline I did not give up such pursuits. Fascinating, though, that I would choose to engineer something with an irrepressible desire to exterminate anyone like me."

  "Fascinating," Elias said flatly. The silence stretched again before he turned to Gideon. "You've been quiet. What do you think? Do you buy any of this?"

  If he could have felt the emotions roiling on the other side of the barrier, Gideon might have had a hard time answering truthfully. Shielded as he was by the alien's—no, by the creature's—barrier, admitting he'd been wrong for the past sixty years was as simple as forming the words.

  "I do."

  The silence that answered his words lasted minutes, possibly. Gideon was too caught up in his thoughts to keep track. Not surprisingly, Nikki was the one who broke it.

  "Call me dumb, but none of this tells us where these things came from, right?"

  She looked around at the others, then back at Savior. "I get that you don't care about the where, just the when. Good for you. But me, I'm sick of running from these things. If you didn't make them, or not yet or whatever, where are they coming from?"

  "The only place they could," Savior replied, keeping his gaze from Gideon. "Someone, somewhere, has opened another Gateway."

  Chapter 37

  Nikki

  Nikki knew the idea of another Gateway should matter to her, but at the moment she didn't care.

  She didn't care whether Savior was still messing with genes or building space suits, or even playing with model rockets. She didn't care about the tension he was trying to hide or his rivalry with Gideon. She didn't care whether the Gateway had been a space door or a time door, or both. She was guessing the millions of people who'd suffered after it exploded couldn't care less either. The distinction meant exactly jack and squat to people worried about little things like starvation and dying of exposure.

  In fact, the only thing she did care about was where the angry nightmares with teeth were coming from, and even that concern was struggling to compete with the buzzing elephant in the room.

  She'd noticed it the second they stepped out of the elevator—a tiny vibration just behind her ears, a buzz just outside of hearing. When everyone else started playing "Who's the Bad Guy?" Nikki followed the vibration deeper into the room. She'd started on the edge, even though she had a pretty good idea where it was coming from. Sure enough, every time she turned toward the wall, her eyes steadily gravitated back to the center of the room—to Savior.

  It was him. He was the genesis source. And she could feel him. She could feel it. He was generating the energy right now. He was surrounded by it, and she could feel it. She could have pointed to him with her eyes closed.

  The energy was calling to her, begging for her to get closer. Begging for her to reach out and draw it in.

  She held back though. She didn't want to be obvious. Until she knew whether her power really was back and how to charge it up, she didn't want to let anyone know what she was thinking.

  So she bided her time while the others talked. She kept her wandering casual to throw off suspicion. She trailed her fingertips across the armored suit Savior was working on. The wires and needles inside were baffling though, unless the thing was supposed to dope you in the middle of a fight.

  She managed to maintain an air of distraction but still pay attention, for the most part. She even managed to get in a shot or two when Savior needled her about Price. Truth was, though, she was more surprised he was alive than she was guilty over his injuries. She'd been out of her mind when she'd seen him last. She'd hurled half the lab at him before she'd busted out to avenge Michael. She'd thought she'd killed Price. She'd hoped she had.

  She didn't spare Price much thought. Nor did she pay as much attention as she probably should have to the rest of the debate. Her wandering had taken her close enough to Savior to feel the buzz on her skin, and she was too preoccupied trying to figure out how to get close enough to test the only theory that mattered to her at the moment.

  The holographic model gave her a decent excuse to get even closer—the hair on her arms started standing up—but not close enough to touch Savior's shield. That's what she was feeling. That's where the buzz was coming from. Had to be.

  She didn't get any closer though. Savior finally said something that got her attention. She stared down the inside-out creature on the table, horrified at the thought that it could be her great, great, great—however many greats fit into two hundred million years—grandchild.

  Staring at it brought the full terror of her every encounter with them back to the forefront, pushing thoughts of her power to the background at last.

  Then Savior dropped the real bomb, and everybody started talking at once.

  Another Gateway. Screw that.

  Savior looked pretty pleased with himself and the way he'd kicked the beehive. Everybody was keyed up and talking over each other trying to figure out who could have created another Gateway. Everybody except Savior and Gideon, that is. They looked on in silence as the others voiced their theories. They both seemed to have a pretty good idea who was to blame.

  Watching Savior and Gideon observe the others, Nikki was convinced there was no justice in the universe. Savior had been the one to walk through the Gateway before it was ready all those years ago. He'd been the one who'd refused to leave his precious specimens on the other side. Gideon, on the other hand, had gone through only to bring Savior back. He'd just been trying to save his friend. And now look at them. The one who'd tried to play hero was half man, half monster, while the one who'd caused the whole mess in the first place was forever young, beautiful, and insanely powerful.

  Where the hell was karma?

  Probably the same place it was when it left Nikki alive and put Michael in the ground. Same situation. She screwed everything up, and he came to save the day. Now look at them. Nikki was starting to see a pattern.

  "Where is it?" Gideon's low voice cut through the hubbub. He wasn't louder than anybody else, but everybody heard, and everybody shut it.

  Savior smiled and turned toward the workstation again, but to get there he had to pass closer to Nikki. Before she could talk herself out of it, she stepped with him, let her hand trail out just far enough to—

  Touching his shield was like grabbing a live wire. The jolt made Nikki gasp. She drew in a sharp breath, and power came with it.

  The energy rippled through her body, spreading from nerve to nerve faster than she could process. She'd been afraid she'd never feel it again. The power spreading through her, hardening her skin, strengthening her muscles, flushing away the last of her fatigue and doubt—it was life itself.

  Control it, Nikki, Michael said. His voice was loud, but it was calm, controlled, the way he was when he was scared.

  I've been controlling this all my life, she argued. This is what I—

  Your face, he cut her off. Don't let Savior see. Don't let him know.

  Nikki blinked and pulled the joy and wonder from her face with an effort. It was too late though. Savior had stopped at the contact and was watching her. At first his expression was unreadable, but then he smiled like the sun, bright enough to burn through every cloud ever made.

  Gideon grabbed Nikki's arm with his creature hand and moved her away. Well, she moved away. He wouldn't have been able to budge her if she hadn't. Just that one touch had given her enough juice to do some serious damage. Michael would have had to give her three unanswered shots to charge her that much at once.

  "Careful, ch
ild," Gideon said, his eyes hard. "Despite his implication to the contrary, he's protecting himself."

  Nikki nodded and took another step back. She caught Elias looking at her with concern, and she gave him a sheepish nod. He might be fooled, the others too, but Savior knew.

  So does Gideon, Michael said. He can sense and channel that energy, Nikki. Remember?

  She hadn't, but she did now. Gideon didn't give her a second glance though. He just moved between Savior and her, presumably to get a better look at the images Savior was calling up.

  "My former partners, it seems, established a B site," Savior said as a wide satellite image started zooming closer. "Possibly the instant you destroyed my New Mexico site, if not sooner. And, it seems, they found someone—"

  The image zoomed in on the Wasteland.

  "—intelligent enough to fill in the gaps."

  The image zoomed to Colorado.

  "They succeeded where I intended to fail."

  The image zoomed in to a barren patch of desert with a shadow waving slightly in the wind in the center of the frame.

  "Someone with either a twisted sense of humor or an unhealthy desire to repeat history," Savior finished, straightening up and taking a step back.

  "I don't get it," Nikki said for the second time tonight. "Where is this?"

  "Ground zero, kiddo," Ace said quietly from behind her.

  "The site of the original Gateway project," Gideon clarified, his voice flat and emotionless.

  Nikki looked at the screen. "But there's nothing there."

  There wasn't. It was a flat, empty patch of desert with a few shadowy mounds no bigger than large rocks. Definitely no Gateway to be seen.

  "It's camouflaged," Sam said. He pointed past her at the moving shadow that looked like a piece of the ground had peeled back and was flapping in the wind.

  Savior zoomed again until they could see the shape of the dome painted to look like the desert around it. The shadow was from a V-shaped tear in the dome, the fabric catching the desert wind every few seconds to reveal the darkness underneath.

  "Somebody needs a talking to," Nikki said. "Whoever's running this place is a slob."

  "I believe they have more important matters than maintenance demanding their attention," Savior said. He shifted the image to center on a shape it took Nikki a minute to figure out. "Or had, rather."

  It was a body, or what was left of one. Something vicious had done a number on it.

  "It's overrun," Elias said.

  "And they just left it that way?" Nikki asked, voicing the question Michael had fed her twice now. She ignored it the first time, despite its volume.

  "I saw your partners," she went on when Savior looked at her, adding the air quotes that term deserved. "Government big deals, by the looks of them. They have just as many fancy satellites as you, right? They could see this if they wanted. Why just leave a Gateway running out there?"

  "Anonymity was ever their primary concern," Savior said with a twist to his tone. "For such a powerful splinter group, they were cautious to a fault. At the first sign of trouble, they were inclined to retreat. I would hazard they cut all support to this site the instant they lost contact."

  "Also, explain to me again why you needed partners?" Nikki prodded. "Generation makes buttloads of money, right?"

  "It does well," Savior understated with a self-congratulatory smile. "But Generation is my legacy." He looked at Nikki. "I didn't want it—"

  "Tarnished?" Ace supplied.

  Bloodied, Michael corrected. Connected to something as inhumane as it is insane?

  Savior wasn't fazed. "For lack of a better term," he agreed with a nod to Ace. "Therefore I needed outside backers, those with deep pockets."

  And shallow consciences, Michael bit off. He was as worked up as Nikki had felt him in a while.

  "Regardless," Savior's tone attempted to shift attention to the matter at hand. "You now have the location of the Gateway, the source of this…infestation. Deal with it as you will," Savior said, shutting down the workstation with a wave of his hand and nodding like their business was done.

  "Wait, you're not going to help?" Nikki asked.

  She tried to swallow the panic that thought caused, or at the very least keep it from showing on her face. Staying close to Savior was supposed to disgust every part of her, but having her power back was worth fighting those feelings.

  "I have no more interest in the Gateway project," Savior replied. "I have developed new ways to appease my investors."

  He cast a weighted glance around the lab at his tinkering puzzles. "Deal with this development as you wish. I will not impede your efforts. Nor, however, will I assist you. These are my investors we're talking about."

  "Then why did you let us in?" Nikki asked. Michael's question, not hers. It was a good one. Nikki had been so preoccupied with finding a genesis energy source, she hadn't stopped to consider how wrong this whole situation was, how easy Savior had made it for them to get to him.

  "And why tell us all this? What is it you want?" she added.

  Savior didn't answer for a minute. He milked the pause until even Gideon tore his eyes from the screens and looked over.

  "I want you to stop fighting me," Savior said at last. "I am not your enemy."

  His eyes sought Gideon's, probably because he couldn't handle the disbelief that had to be painted on every other face. Nikki knew hers was slathered in it.

  "The day you walked away from our work, you told me you'd seen our world destroyed," Savior said. "You told me I would be responsible. We've been striking at each other ever since, because of your visions. But those visions are from a timeline created when we first opened that Gateway, Marcus. They are from a timeline that diverged from ours the moment we created it. Whatever path I was on then is fixed in that time, but not in ours. If I choose now not to create that—" He pointed to the dead creature. "—then the world in your visions does not exist. Not in this timeline. Not for us. Not for me."

  Damn he was good. Every time he opened his mouth, gold and rainbows just flew out. Nikki bet he could talk just about anybody into just about anything.

  "You have no interest in another Gateway?" Elias said, his disbelief blunt as a punch. He clearly didn't buy it for a second.

  Savior met his gaze. "I have no need of a Gateway. Everything I need is here, now."

  He looked at Nikki as he finished. He meant her. She knew it. He didn't need a Gateway if he had her. If his power started waning again, he could just charge back up from her, like he did last time. That thought started a fear knot in her belly, but she clenched her jaw and straightened it out.

  "My men will show you out," Savior said, gesturing toward the elevator doors that opened at just that moment like he'd willed it to happen. A couple of guards stepped out with lowered weapons in hand.

  Savior turned away, and Nikki panicked. She couldn't let her power walk away from her. Not again.

  "Hey, you have to help," she said.

  Elias shot her a look, but Nikki turned and walked after Savior, keeping her eyes off Elias and Ace and everybody else who was looking at her like she was nuts. "You owe us. And by us I mean pretty much the whole world."

  "I think not, Miss Flux," Savior said, continuing to walk toward the mirrored doors at the back of the room.

  "Really?" She stopped, crossed her arms, and cocked her hip in a way that told him what she thought of his argument better than words could.

  She added some words anyway, of course, in case he wasn't looking at her reflection. "Colorado called. They'd like their population back."

  Savior stopped. He didn't turn, but his tight posture and blank expression said her shot had hit home.

  Nice, Nik, Michael said, his mounting excitement coming through in his voice as well as through their link. Appeal to his humanity. Guilt can be a powerful motivator. Keep going. I've studied a lot of the numbers you…might not remember.

  Cute. He knew she'd never been much for studying anything. He
clearly didn't want to piss her off though. He wanted to help, to be a part of this. She liked feeling him this excited, but she wasn't sure why he was. Maybe he wanted to hang on to her power as much as she did. Or maybe it was something to do with keeping their enemy close, or some such nonsense.

  Say what I say, Nikki.

  I don't think so, she replied. I've got this.

  She wasn't the greatest convincer ever, but the confidence running through her wasn't all Michael's. She saw the way Savior looked at her now. He still wanted something from her. She was sure of it. She could use that. She could do this.

  Please, Nikki. Just trust me. I know how to get to him.

  Fine, she sighed—she was getting good at doing that in her head. Your show, for now.

  "Is that so?" Savior replied after the kind of slow turn and stare that probably made his underlings wet themselves when he sold it like that. Nikki and Michael weren't buying.

  What about the 235,000 people in Mesa County alone who died in the blast on E-Day. Or the 4.5 million who lost their livelihoods in the rest of Colorado—

  "Remember that Event thing you caused? Do you know how many people lost their lives in Mesa County alone? Over four point five. Mil. Yun."

  I said livelihoods.

  I know, she thought back. I paraphrased. Yours was too wordy, and nerdy. Means the same thing.

  No, it doesn't.

  Whatever, she snapped. My mouth, not yours.

  Do you have any idea how frustrating this is? he asked.

  You're kidding me, right?

  "In point of fact," Savior replied, stepping closer. Nikki could feel the energy hovering a few inches off his skin. The urge to reach out and touch it again was almost too strong to resist. "The death toll from the initial blast, in Mesa County alone, was 235,406, including all the men and women stationed at the facility, men and women I knew personally. If you're referring to the damage to the homes and infrastructure surrounding the blast, yes, the number of those who had to relocate was close to 4.5 million, but only in Colorado. Why stop there? The earthquakes the blast triggered claimed lives and leveled structures in neighboring states."