Children of Evolution (The Gateway Series Book 2) (11 page)

"Why is it I came out here again?" Nikki grumbled, only half to Coop. She was really asking herself, even though she thought knew the answer.
 

Walking beside her through the low grass along the bluff, Coop made a sound that wasn't even close to a word as he took a huge bite of an apple. "To watch Cue Ball make an ass out of himself," he said when he could get out a recognizable word.
 

That didn't make any sense. She'd watched Impact train before, and while it wasn't always the most exciting thing in the world—unless you had a treadmill fetish—it was never short of impressive seeing him reach speeds on foot that put hover cars to shame. She couldn't imagine what he could be doing out here to make a fool of himself. Also, that wasn't the real reason they were out here walking the bluffs with the setting sun in their eyes.

"And," Coop said after he swallowed, "to keep you out of trouble."

There it was. No doubt on Ace's orders. She must have called Coop the second Nikki got out of earshot. As soon as Nikki had reached the top of the stairs from the lower level, Coop had waylaid her to drag her out here—the spanker.

That wasn't entirely fair. Coop
was
a spanker most of the time, but in this case he was just following Ace's orders. Plus, he'd led her out through the small vestibule hidden in the back of the sanctuary, then across Sam's garden, which was a painstaking process if you wanted to avoid stepping on any of his carefully tended plants—and you did. The route was way longer and way more difficult than just using the main doors, especially considering where they were now. Nobody in their right mind would take it. Unless there was something out front they wanted to avoid.
 

Like somebody's grave.
 

Nikki looked out at the water as they walked so Coop wouldn't see her grateful smile. Maybe he wasn't so bad after all.

None of them were—bad, that is. Despite her griping and complaining, Nikki was growing attached to everyone at the doomsday bunker. They'd all gone out of their way to give her what she needed to get through the worst time in her life, and not just free food and shelter. They'd given her time and space to grapple with her feelings and a ready distraction when she couldn't. Without coming right out and saying it, each one of them had made it clear they were there for her, ready to do whatever she needed, whenever she needed it. They said as much with every pity-free nod, every cutting joke, every trip to the city at odd hours, every iced coffee. Somewhere deep inside, Nikki knew she wouldn't have survived the past four months without these people. Or if she had, she would have come out of it a different person. Damaged goods, at best.

For a while now Michael had been harping on her to thank them, but she'd been unable. Each time the thought showed up, panic followed hard on its heels. Thanks led to handshakes, gushy smiles, or worse. Those things led to feelings of attachment, feelings of belonging. If she let those feelings take hold, she'd really start caring about these people. And that led only to pain.

On the other hand, accepting their support without paying them back, with thanks at the least, sounded an awful lot like falling into emotional debt. Nikki liked the idea of debt about as much as she liked briefings and classrooms. Owing somebody was its own kind of attachment—the worst kind.
 

Maybe Michael was right. Maybe it was time she settled her account.

As they started up the short rise to the highest overlook south of the church, Nikki struggled to come up with the right words to say. She wanted to sound sincere yet hang on to her keep-your-damn-distance nonchalance. No mean feat.

She waved a hand in front of her face to shoo a buzzing something and glanced over at Coop, having settled on words that felt workable. He caught her looking and met her gaze. He chomped into his apple and gave her a creepy eyebrow bob that poisoned her gratitude before it left her tongue. The wink that followed shot it dead.

Maybe she'd start with somebody else.

They stopped near the edge of the bluff where the trail they'd been following ended in a narrow clearing with grass worn almost completely away like it had been trampled by a thousand drunken ravers.

Coop waited like this was where they'd been heading, continuing to work on his apple and eyeing the tree line on their left instead of the impressive view of the Sound on the right.

Nikki chose the view.

When Coop hooted and elbowed her, she turned just in time to see Impact race into the clearing. When she realized what he was doing, her heart nearly stopped.

Impact

Impact took a long, slow breath, closed his eyes, and tried to block out the distractions trying to undermine his concentration. He focused on the steady beat of his heart, the soft rustle of the wind through the trees around him. Anything but the voices.

There was no one else around. Gideon's base was the only inhabited structure left on the island, his team the only people who used the trails twisting through the sparse woods. And Impact was the only member of that team who'd be out here at this time of day with the last rays of the setting sun filtering through the canopy. The others preferred their PT early in the morning. Soldier's habit. He had the woods to himself. But he wasn't alone. Lately, he was never alone.

As always, he was at the mercy of the little voice inside his head, the one constantly pushing him to train harder, driving him to develop his abilities beyond Savior's intended design. The voice was relentless, fueled by an inexhaustible stockpile of resentment, frustration, and repeatedly wounded pride.
 

He'd never been able to ignore the voice when it was on its own. Now it wasn't. Since his last confrontation with Savior, he had a second voice to deal with, one that showed up less often, usually when he was training at peak intensity. One that did more to confuse than motivate him, with a shout here, some undecipherable babble there. One that managed to unsettle his already bleak thoughts.

This new player in his head didn't sound like him. It sounded and felt like a different person entirely, enough so to make him wonder if he was joining the growing ranks of those losing their grip on reality in this team.
 

Despite this worry, the new voice actually gave him hope. It showed up only when his thoughts were at their darkest. Wherever this new voice came from in his tortured mind, it seemed to despise his bouts of frustration and self-doubt as much as he tended to indulge them. So as alien as the voice was, he'd convinced himself it was a positive influence.

This new layer of psychosis came as no surprise to Impact, considering its timing. Savior brought out the worst in him. Fighting with Savior supercharged that worst and then sent it back inside to torture him for months, even years, afterward. If a new splinter of his personality was all he had to contend with after their latest encounter, he'd take it, especially when weighed against that day's other revelation.

"Have you truly not discovered your own limitations?"
His father's cold words snaked out of his memory, coiled around the brittle frame of Impact's self confidence, and started to tighten.

He wanted to believe Savior had been lying to unnerve him. It was possible. His father was a masterful manipulator of more than just genes. He'd handcrafted his own legend through equal parts power and charisma, shaking hearts and minds by performing god-like feats and then capturing those hearts and minds with carefully chosen words delivered with perfectly feigned emotion. He gave people hope, then he used it to bind them to him, to place them on paths of his choosing in order to further his own agenda. He got what he wanted by convincing the world his desires were their salvation. In other words, he lied.
 

But not to Impact—not about this.

When it came to Impact's origin, his purpose, his strengths, and especially his weaknesses, Savior didn't need lies. When it came to Impact, Savior could wield the truth to much more devastating effect.

"The girl wasn't the first person you vowed to protect."

The memory of those words temporarily quieted the old voice that was demanding Impact get back to training instead of standing around contemplating his failings.

Vowed to protect
.
In other words,
you can't hurt me,
Jon
, because I made you. You are physically incapable of breaking a vow and, weak-hearted fool that you are, you promised to protect me when you were too young to realize what kind of monster I am
.
 

Physically incapable. Just thinking those words threatened to torque his tension to the next level, but Impact wasn't about to let his thoughts get the better of him. Doing so would mean giving in to weakness. Doing so would mean accepting yet another limitation. He wasn't out here to labor under limitations. He was out here to break them.
 

One step at a time.

Impact opened his eyes and took another deep breath to quiet his mind. Then he started running.

The charge built quickly, the field forming around Impact growing stronger with each stride.

He saw the field, the envelope of genesis energy, for what it was now. He saw the individual particles racing around him as he sped down the trail, each step faster than the last. He could control those particles, if he focused hard enough. He could control the amount of friction they converted. He could manipulate the field, use it to do more than absorb impact damage, more than just change direction.

He rounded a slight curve in the well-worn path, registering the flash of yellow from his marker flag as he did so. Two more turns until the clearing.
 

He poured on the speed and concentrated on the particles, navigating the narrow path by muscle memory alone.
 

He could do this. He had done this—once.
 

He broke from the trees and had only a split second to register the clearing, the cliff edge, and Nikki and Coop standing nearby, then he ran out of ground.

Momentum alone carried him beyond the steep slope, past the rocky shoreline far below, and well out over the water before he started to drop.

Fists clenched, he pressed his arms tightly against his sides and straightened his body out like a bullet as he arced toward the water head-first.

He blocked everything from his mind except the field. Nothing else existed for him. It continued to strengthen as he fell, but not as rapidly as before. Without his feet on solid ground to propel him forward, he had to rely on air friction alone to maintain the charge.

As he dropped, he felt the particles racing around him with gradually increasing speed. Then, true to his blood, he began to manipulate them. He hardened the particles passing under him, shifting them from reducing friction to magnifying it, but not at a single point.
 

That's where he'd failed before. That's what had almost stopped him from saving Nikki. He used to think of the envelope as a fixed object instead of a torrent of speeding particles. This time he didn't harden a single batch of particles under him only to watch them zip by. Instead, he hardened and released them in a cascading wave matching their speed, his speed, keeping a curved shield of hardened air right where he needed it.
 

Immediately, his angle shifted. He leveled out as the friction did its work, and he skimmed over the water, barely a meter off the surface.

He was doing it. He was flying—for now.
 

Teeth clenched as tightly as his fists, he struggled to maintain his altitude, but it was a losing battle. He was used to processing sensory input at a blistering pace, a necessity for his abilities, but keeping up with the particle cascade took everything he had, and even that wasn't enough. Maintaining altitude was leeching power from his field faster than friction could build it. Despite the extra charge he'd built into it with his running start, despite his intense focus, the envelope was weakening, as usual.

For every two meters forward, he dropped another centimeter closer to the water. At less than ten centimeters, water and field collided, and Impact's control crumbled. He skipped across the water like a stone until the field collapsed entirely. Then he cartwheeled into the cold water and went under.

Another failure.
 

The old voice in his head told him to get to the surface. It snapped at him to swim to shore and go again, but Impact ignored it. Instead he let himself drift under the water, his arms slowly rising up as his body sank away from the light.
 

Anybody can give up
, the old voice told him,
but you're not just anybody, are you? If you want to do what no one else can, you have to train like no one else can. Anything less is accepting your limitations—just like Savior expects you to
.

With two strong strokes he broke the surface and sucked in air. Once he got his bearings he started for the shore, as he had so many times before.

As he swam he thought about the handful of vows he'd made in his life, the ones where he'd felt the tingle he now knew was his biggest limitation taking hold. Some he was proud of—the defiant shout of a little boy at his father that he wouldn't destroy his favorite bike, the heartfelt promise to Michael that he'd protect Nikki, and somewhere in between, his promise to Elias that he'd make him proud, no matter what it took. Other vows he wished he could forget.

Forgetting wasn't the answer though. This new limitation was nothing but another wall to break through, and breaking walls was what Impact did best. He would break through this wall, he knew, because he refused to fit the mold Savior had made.

He'd considered the possibility that his unbreakable vows could be used to his advantage, but the thought of doing so terrified him. He had no idea what conflicting vows would do to him, but some part of him believed making too many vows would cripple him in ways he couldn't even imagine. Maybe it was the old voice, or maybe something the new voice had shouted during one of its sudden appearances. Whatever it was, he trusted it. This limitation was part of Savior's plan, which meant Impact wanted no part of it, even though it had helped him save Nikki—even though it had helped him fly.