by Minton, Toby
"That's my point—" Nikki tried to take back over, but Savior rolled on.
"Then there was the fallout, which reached even farther. If you're looking for an accurate tally of lives directly affected, I believe the number would be closer to 34.7 million."
He paused but went right over her when she tried to cut in again. "Did you think I was unaware of the consequences of my actions, or that I hadn't dealt with that guilt long before you were born?" His voice was calm, controlled. He wasn't shaken or upset in the least.
Is this going like you thought it would? she asked Michael.
He didn't answer.
My turn.
"Good for you. You can count," she said, stepping close enough to feel the energy a breath away from her face. "How about just one then?"
He tilted his head just slightly, smiled just enough to let her know he was either interested or about to be condescending. "I'm intrigued. Go on, please."
"What about me?" she asked, proud of her voice for staying strong and clear despite the tremors starting up inside. "What about what you owe me? Have you made peace with me? If so, I don't remember that conversation."
His expression sobered. The way he looked at her—she knew she had him. That, or they were about to kiss.
He started to speak, so she reached out her hand to stop him before she thought it through. Her hand hit his shield and every nerve in her body lit up, but not in a bad way.
She jerked her hand away, but not before she drew another rush of his power into her. She felt it rippling through her again, hardening her skin, strengthening her muscles.
She wanted to laugh, or roar, or smash something metal just to feel it give under her bare hands. Instead, she smoothed her expression and shook her head.
"Don't apologize for what you did to me. I don't want to hear it." She paused and swallowed.
The shaking was starting. The supercharged adrenaline flooding through her was begging to be put to use. Every muscle was starting to quiver with the need.
Savior just looked at her with that small smile. He'd felt what she'd done—he had to have felt it—but he was too good to let whatever he was thinking show on his face.
"All I want is for you to come with us and fix this mess," she said. "Make this right. If you're serious about being done with this Gateway horseshit, then come help us stomp it out once and for all."
He didn't say a word. Nobody did, even though Nikki could feel the disapproval and concern in the room behind her like it was crawling up her back. Savior simply nodded all formally like they were in someplace fancier than an underground lab and he was simply asking her to dance. Not at all like he was agreeing to help her stop the end of the world.
Chapter 38
Elias
"He's what?" Coop laughed, hard. He sobered quickly though, once he realized Elias wasn't joking. As the smile faded from his face, he looked at each of them in turn, like he was still waiting for the punch line. "Are you all high?"
Elias was suddenly glad he'd ordered the corporal to stay topside while the rest of them had gone below. Questioning Elias's judgment was fine in private, but if he'd reacted like this in front of Savior…
Not that Elias blamed the younger man, or disagreed. Working with Savior was the worst kind of foolishness—the deadly kind. Elias had agreed in the lab primarily to get Nikki out of there. He could tell she'd dug in her heels, so he'd played along to get her moving. He'd assumed Gideon was doing the same, but now that they were back at the transport, Gideon remained rooted to this insanity.
"Did he drug you guys down there or what?" Coop nearly shouted, heat entering his voice. "You can't be serious."
"Keep it down," Ace said, glancing toward the back of the transport. She didn't call him down for questioning their orders though, which said something.
Elias shielded his eyes from the glare of the floods to glance back as well. The four of them were near the edge of the clearing under the transport's nose. The others were either already onboard or finishing a visual check of the engines, so the chances of them overhearing were slim.
Ace was right to be concerned though. Shaking the rest of the team's faith in their leadership was even more disruptive than showing dissent in front of an enemy. Perceived weakness could be overcome; actual weakness within was debilitating.
"As much as I hate to say it, Coop's got a point," Ace said, looking back at Gideon. "I'm not seeing the upside."
Gideon didn't see the look in her eyes. His own were fixed on the trees beside them, or at least fixed in that direction. Elias could tell Gideon was still shaken, visibly so, by what they'd seen and heard in the lab.
"Better an enemy under our watch than behind our backs," he said softly, his gaze staying distant.
"I'd rather this enemy be neither," Ace replied.
"Amen," Coop backed her.
Elias nodded and cleared his throat. "Tell me you're not buying Savior's change of heart," he said to Gideon.
Gideon did look at him then. He looked at each of them like he'd just woken up. "No. I wish that I could, but no, I am not."
Elias knew there was pain behind those words, even though Gideon refused to let it color his voice. Elias couldn't see the emotion in Gideon's eyes or hear it in his words, he knew it was buried in there, somewhere.
"I trust him no more now than I did before—"
"Good," Coop cut in. "Then let's drop this dumb-ass plan before it drops us. The last thing we need is him tagging along."
Gideon's gaze hardened on Coop, but Elias doubted the corporal was the focus of the dark thoughts behind those mismatched eyes.
"Savior is the one who found the site," Gideon replied. "He will be there if he chooses, regardless of what we want. This way, at least, we ensure he comes alone."
"And we can keep our eyes on him," Ace said with a nod. She sounded relieved, in a way, to see the logic behind Gideon's decision—not any happier, but relieved.
Elias wasn't convinced that was the real reason Gideon wanted Savior with them, but further argument was futile, he knew. Gideon was right; there was nothing to stop Savior from descending on them with an army at his back if they left him behind. Elias had seen that from the start, but he'd refused to let himself accept that they'd been boxed into this course of action, by Nikki, of all people.
Savior was determined to accompany them now, thanks to her. She'd been uncharacteristically persuasive in Savior's lab, desperately so. That scared Elias far more than the thought of working with the madman again. What he'd seen between Savior and Nikki in the lab had been unsettling, to say the least, but it shed some light on why Nikki was suddenly so desperate to stay close to the man who'd taken everything from her.
"Coop, fire it up and plot a course," Elias ordered. "Ace…"
She nodded. "I'll get them all saddled up."
Gideon waited beside Elias as the others headed to their tasks, like he knew what was coming.
As soon as Ace and Coop were out of earshot, Elias shifted his gaze to Gideon. "He doesn't set foot on this transport," he said, keeping his voice low and even.
"Agreed," Gideon said quickly. "I'll bring him in the shuttle. Just the two of us."
"And once we get there," Elias went on, "he doesn't spend a second with her without one of us standing between them." He didn't need to say who "he" was. His tone left no room for doubt. "Not one second. Understood?"
"Understood," Gideon agreed, again without pause. He didn't blink at the commands. Clearly he remembered their deal. Even if not, he had to see Elias was close to the breaking point.
At the edge of the clearing closest to the facility, Savior stepped from the trees and started toward them, looking calm, completely at ease, perfectly pleased with himself.
Gideon gave Elias a final nod and moved to head Savior off.
Elias watched the two of them engage in a low discussion. He watched Savior cast a look back at the transport as they walked to the shuttle, his expression controlled but almost
amused. Elias continued to watch them until they climbed into the four-seater. Despite the distance and the darkness, he thought he saw a smile on Savior's lips before the shuttle door swung down.
No, he thought. Not again. Not this time.
He'd marched one child right into Savior's hands. Then he'd buried that child with his own hands. Not again. He wouldn't let Savior take the other—not while he had breath.
Elias pulled his gaze from the rising shuttle and headed for the transport's ramp, one thought steady in his mind.
He would keep Nikki safe.
No matter what it took.
Choices
Chapter 39
Nikki
Nikki tightened her hands on the front of the copilot seat between her legs and leaned closer to the windshield. On the camera feed superimposed before her, Elias and Coop breached the building under the dome, moving into the darkness with weapons at the ready. Somewhere on the other side where she couldn't see, Ace and Sam were doing the same.
Breached was the wrong word. They didn't have to work to get in. The doors were lying in twisted heaps on the crater floor—not the team's doing. Whatever was hidden under the fabric and wire dome was in no way secure. Not anymore.
That didn't do anything to ease Nikki's tension though. Any number of those creatures could be in there, waiting to pounce on people she cared about, people she was finally willing to admit she cared about.
They weren't just creatures though, she knew. They were…descendants. They were people. Or what people would become, in a timeline that may or may not have anything to do with hers, maybe.
"Aaagh. Makes my brain hurt," she mumbled.
"What was that, love?" Corso asked from the pilot seat.
"Nothing. Just…" She trailed off into a shrug.
He nodded and rolled his eyes into a twisted smile. He got it. Some things just weren't worth thinking too much about. Others…
Nikki let her eyes focus past the feed and through the windshield, on the four-seater parked in front of them. Per Elias's order, Corso had parked the transport with its back to the dome to provide quick egress if the team needed it. The fact that this position let them keep a naked eye on the shuttle holding Gideon and Savior might have had a little something to do with the order.
She couldn't make out more than general silhouettes in the smaller shuttle, which was probably a good thing. Nikki didn't want to see him staring back at her with that knowing look in his eyes. She didn't want to see him acknowledge the hunger she knew was in her eyes.
She wanted to go to that shuttle. She wanted to go to him, and she hated herself for it. She was keeping her emotions in check though, hard as it was at the moment. She didn't want to get too upset and draw Michael out. Her self-disgust was bad enough. Having him feel her temptation would be more than she could bear right now.
"Clear," Elias said over the com. "Gideon, you need to see this."
Nikki stared at the transport's com as the doors of the four-seater swung open in the distance, mainly to keep her eyes off the man getting out to go inside with Gideon.
"That's it?" She gave the com an eyebrow raise, but it stayed silent. "What about us?"
"Us" was just the two of them. Impact and Cole had gotten the job of checking the area around the dome as soon as they landed, while Nikki and Corso got the job of sitting and waiting.
"Come now, love. Is the company so bad?" Corso asked.
Nikki ignored him.
She knew what Elias was doing. He was trying to keep Impact, Cole, and her away from Savior. Impact because he'd probably try to attack Savior, despite or because of the whole father situation. Cole—probably the same concern, minus the father part. Nikki—she had no idea what Elias thought she was going to do. How could she when she hadn't figured it out for herself?
On the camera feed, Gideon and Savior disappeared into the darkness under the dome.
"Well, I'm not just going to sit here," she snapped, pushing out of the seat. Corso made some argument, but Nikki didn't register it. She'd already hit the hatch release and started down the steps.
It occurred to her when she stepped off the ramp onto the dry, rocky ground, that this was her first trip inside the crater. She and Michael had made a couple of forays deep into the Wasteland, of course, when they were younger. That was the thing to do for most teens, a right of passage, of sorts. Not all of them came back though. The place was essentially a barren desert with no help to speak of if you ran out of supplies. She and Michael had gotten lucky both times.
Once they even made it all the way to the edge of the crater, close enough to read the "restricted area" signs and the radiation warnings. Nikki had wanted to press on—Michael hadn't. He won the argument that day. That was before she figured out his tells in paper-rock-scissors.
From the outside, the edge of the crater was pretty dramatic—a sharp ridge line curving into the distance as far as the eye could see in either direction. From the middle, where Nikki was walking now, it looked just like the rest of the Wasteland, if a little more stark. She couldn't tell she was in the center of a crater at all. It was too big to see when you were in the middle of it.
Made sense. Problems were the same way, which was why people paid attention to little problems rather than the big stuff.
Your food stash gets low, you make a trade to get more. A rock gets thrown through your window at night, you make a trade to get it patched up. Your kid gets hassled by burn pushers, you make a trade to have them run off. All little stuff you can see the whole of. But the fact that rival gangs running your section of the free zone are causing all that stuff to happen—you can't see the whole of that problem when you're in the middle of it. It's too big, so you ignore it.
The bottom of the dome arched up several meters off the ground in front of Nikki, yawning around the open doorway of the building underneath. The darkness beyond slowed her steps, but she wasn't about to back down now that she'd started moving. Getting left out of the loop was a little problem, after all, one she could see.
She stepped through the open doorway into an airlock, the modular kind. She'd seen plenty of these in the free zones. When flu outbreaks got bad enough to start jumping into the cities proper, the government assembled emergency quarantine centers made up of modular containers.
Airlock modules, like this one, had the latest scanners and seals to control who came in, and to make sure nothing gross got out. At least, that was the idea. This one was lit only by the reflected sunlight coming through the gaping hole Nikki stepped through. At the other end, the security panel stared at the floor with blind eyes, the doors it was supposed to seal buckled and pushed inward, letting the dusty wind whistle freely through.
Nikki eyed the doors as she walked across the empty airlock, her boots grinding crater grit into the floor plating. The tops of both doors were scored and torn with what had to be claw marks on the other side where something had forced its way through.
"Here's hoping we've already dealt with you," she whispered, pulling her gaze away as she turned sideways to shimmy through the gap.
The open area on the other side was bigger than she'd imagined, and even less secure. A handful of the modular rooms, including the busted airlock, were spaced evenly around the edge of the wide dome. Prefab wall panels connected the rooms to form an open-topped corral covered only by the dome's camo fabric, which had a number of small holes, plus the big one they'd seen from the satellite.
"Why'd they bother with an airlock?" Nikki said to herself, softly. Nobody had noticed her yet, and she was happy to keep it that way.
At least, she didn't think they'd noticed. Her eyes were still adjusting to the dim, fabric-filtered light. No lights were running under the dome. Nothing was running, actually, despite what looked—and probably walked and quacked—like the mightiest generator in the world.
On the other side of the generator, Gideon and Elias were in deep discussion next to an open-sided control module filled with dark equipmen
t. By the looks of them, they wouldn't have noticed if Nikki had come in screaming.
Neither would Savior. He was transfixed by the centerpiece of the corral. Centered under the middle of the dome, standing on a big open dance floor of deck plating, was the mother of all Gateways.
The Gateway Gideon had first described, the original, had been barely more than door-sized, Nikki was almost sure. The copy Savior had built in his torture lab had been the same. The one he was staring at now was easily big enough to drive the four-seater through, maybe even the bigger transport.
"Solid thinking," she mumbled, nodding to herself. "If one the size of a door jacked up half the country, make the next one three times as big. That's education at work."
"You know what you're not good at?" Ace asked from nearby, making Nikki jump.
Nikki looked behind her to see the older woman standing next to two dark cabinets beside the airlock. The look in her eyes was more amused than Nikki expected—still plenty disapproving, but almost fondly so.
"Being bored?" Nikki tried.
"Close," Ace replied. "I was going to say following orders."
"Isn't that what I said?"
Ace nodded and glanced briefly at the debate near the dance floor. "I'm afraid you think so." She looked back at Nikki. "Well, if you're here, you're helping."
"What am I…" Nikki let the words die as she followed Ace's gaze to the body wedged between the cabinets—what was left of it.
It was a man, or had been. He'd been dead for a while though. Centuries, it seemed. He looked like a mummy in a jumpsuit.
Ace finished shaking out the body bag in her hands and laid it on the ground. Nikki didn't move until Ace prodded her, twice. "Come on, kiddo. No one deserves to be left like this."
Nikki nodded and moved to help. She tried to harden herself as she knelt beside Ace and took the offered gloves. She tried to ignore the tide of despair trying to well up inside her. It was a memory of pain, not the real thing. She knew that. She just had to remind herself it wasn't Michael under this torn and slashed jumpsuit.