Children of Evolution (The Gateway Series Book 2) (18 page)

Nikki tried to watch the slowly closing doors, but her gaze kept dropping to the shuttle that was now on the deck and powering down. Through the dirty, tinted rear windshield she could see two heads moving, but she couldn't make out who they were. Was one of them shorter than the other? Her heart lurched, in a good way, and she immediately felt ashamed, a feeling she knew well but usually could pin on Michael. Not this time—he was nowhere to be felt.
 

What kind of person was she to be relieved that Sam wasn't the one bleeding out? Elias and Mos were good people too, better than just about anybody Nikki had met. They didn't deserve to suffer any more than Sam did. She shouldn't be relieved if it turned out to be one of them instead of Sam. She wouldn't.

"Go," Ace said, nodding to Impact and Nikki and slinging her weapon over her shoulder as the blast door thudded shut.
 

They lifted the stretcher and started for the shuttle. The driver door swung up and Elias stepped out to motion them his way. Nikki wanted to run, but Impact was setting the pace from the front end. The one time she wanted him to show off his speed, he seemed content with a normal jog. Nikki wanted to scream.

When the back door swung up and Sam stepped out, she almost did scream in relief. Then she saw the blood soaked into the front of his shirt and already dark pants, and she caught sight of Mos lying motionless on the back seat, and shame sent relief packing.

Nikki held her end of the stretcher like a statue as everyone but Impact clustered around readying Mos to move. She was suddenly glad her job was so simple, just stand and hold. She didn't think her feet would have moved if she'd told them to. Looking at Mos lying there, his shirt cut away, his skin all ashy and slack, where it wasn't smeared with blood or covered with dull white ridges of quick-clot foam.

"Is he ali—"
 

"When we lift him, slide the backboard under," Elias cut Impact off. "On my count," he said to everyone. "One, two—lift."

Nikki moved as if in a daze, letting Impact position the stretcher and pushing when he did. She'd felt useless pretty much every day for the last four months, but it had never shaken her so thoroughly. She couldn't focus on this simplest of tasks. She didn't even argue when Coop stepped in to take over, gently but firmly pushing her aside.
 

A loud but outnumbered part of her bowed up at being sidelined. Any other time she would have torn Disney a new one, told him she could carry Mos just fine, and no doubt added that balls didn't make lifting any easier. But her temper couldn't gain a foothold. It disappeared entirely when Ace took over for Impact. The look on her face as she did so said what Nikki had taken as a slight was nothing of the sort. She was getting to know that look well. It said this was a duty thing, a soldier thing that couldn't, or wouldn't, be explained.

Ace and Coop headed for the door with quick but smooth steps. Sam kept pace between them, one hand holding the breather on Mos's face, the other carrying the IV bag. Nikki started to follow, but Elias called her back.

"I could use a hand getting to the infirmary," Elias said from where he was leaning on the shuttle. Only then did she notice the blood-stained rip on the outside of his left leg and the fresh dressing showing through.

Impact started toward him, but Elias waved him off. "Nikki can help me." He flattened his hand on top of the shuttle. "I need you to take the body bag in here to the command center."

Nikki's gaze shot to the open back door and the gear inside. Her eyes had gone straight to Mos before, slipping past everything else inside and completely passing by the bag. Now the lumpy black bag was impossible to miss. She couldn't take her eyes off it.

"Nikki," Elias said. His voice was short of a bark, but not by much. His eyes, when Nikki finally pulled her gaze from the bag to meet them, were tight with pain, enough so to deepen the already noticeable wrinkles around them. "Sooner would be better."

Without argument she moved to help, which was as much a surprise to her as it must have been to him. Together they made their way out of the hanger and into the wide corridor, Elias setting the pace with one hand on Nikki's shoulder for support. He moved a helluva lot faster than Nikki thought he would, and the pressure on her shoulder was next to nothing, making her wonder just how injured he really was. Still, their pace was slow enough that Impact passed them with the misshapen body bag, and at normal-guy speed. Nikki had plenty of time to convince herself the silence was more awkward than any conversation could be.

"So…" She dragged her non-segue out for a solid three beats.

"What happened?" Elias asked.

"Yeah," Nikki agreed with relief. "Exactly."

"Is that an answer?"

"No," Nikki replied, starting to see where this conversation had stumbled on its first step. "You weren't guessing what I was about to ask, were you?"

"No, I was asking." Elias said, sounding less amused by the mix-up. "What happened here?" He looked even more serious than he sounded.

Nikki gave him the short and sweet version, which was good since the walk wasn't that far. She finished as they reached the intersection only a few steps from the infirmary door.

"He didn't hurt you?" Elias asked. His eyes still looked all firm and stern, but his tone was noticeably softer.

Nikki shook her head. "He didn't want to hurt me. I don't think he wanted to hurt any of us. He just wanted out. Only knocks we took were when we got between him and the door. Safety tip: don't do that."

Truth was she'd taken more than just a knock. She'd hit the metal bed frame hard enough to maybe crack a rib, and pounding on Gideon hadn't done her bruised hand any favors. But for some reason she felt defensive of Gideon's monster side. It wasn't the creature's fault Gideon played with people's lives. It wasn't the creature's fault it was here in the first place. Why should it be punished? It just wanted to go out and do its thing, whatever that was. It just wanted to be free. Nikki knew that feeling. Nobody should be locked up. Nobody.

Elias held her gaze for a minute like he wasn't buying her story, so Nikki gave him a smile she wasn't feeling, especially now that she could hear the stress in the voices coming from the open door of the infirmary. Her eyes drifted that way and her pace lagged as they got closer.
 

She stopped in the doorway, unable to go any farther but unsure why. Inside, the surgical suite was buzzing, its delicate metal arms spinning and flexing in increasingly complex motions. Gram stood just outside the buzzing arms with a tablet and headset, communicating with the surgeon on the other end of the link. From the attached terminal, Kate was nodding to Gram's comments and fine tuning the signal. At the industrial sinks on the right wall, Sam and Ace were scrubbing up as Coop arranged two sets of coveralls and gloves on the table beside them and read off Mos's vitals from a display screen over their heads. In the center of it all was Mos, lying motionless on the contoured table in the center of the suite, the thin crackle of an electrostatic sani-field the only thing between him and the whirring arms.

Nikki's breath was coming in shallow drags all of a sudden, shaken by her pounding heart. The pressure on her shoulder increased, but she barely noticed.
 

That's not me lying there, Nikki,
Michael said quietly in her head. She didn't know when he'd shown up, but the relief that washed over her at the sound of his voice was painful.
Those machines aren't going to hurt him, Nikki. They're going to help him.
 

"It looks worse than it is," Elias said, squeezing her shoulder again to get her attention. "He'll pull through." He looked into her eyes for a minute then gave the room a once over.
 

"Why don't you start some coffee and see if you can pull together some warm food? Padre and Ace are going to need it when they're finished. It's been a long night for them already." He didn't meet her eyes again. "We have too many people in here as it is. You would just be in the way."

He was lying of course. The infirmary was almost the size of the command center. They could fit two of everybody in there without bumping into each other. But Nikki wasn't about to call him on it, not when she knew the gratitude welling up inside was mostly hers.

She gave Elias a real smile and nodded as he took his hand away. She started to turn away, but Gram's raised voice caught her attention.

"Did you hear me, Katie?" Gram said over the hum of the machines. "Arm six is lagging."

Kate didn't look like she'd heard, at least not Gram's words. Her fingers had gone still on her keyboard, and her eyes were squeezed shut like she was in pain again.

"Darlin'," Gram said louder, "are you with me?"

Kate's eyes snapped open and she nodded, not looking at Nikki so hard she might as well have been staring.
 

It's us, Nikki
, Michael said softly.
We're distracting her.

Don't be stupid. It's not us
, she answered. But Kate's eyes darted her way after Michael's words, a little too quickly for Nikki to write the look off as coincidence.
 

Nikki retreated to the kitchen, but not before catching a look of equal parts suspicion and concern from Ace.

Elias

"He's sleeping like a big-ass baby," Coop reported over the com with his usual tact. "Vitals are on the up. Doc says no major organs got hit. He oughta pull through. We gotta keep an eye on him tonight though."

 
Elias nodded to himself, running his eyes over the empty seats around the tactical display and breathing a long sigh through his nose before his gaze came to rest on the only other person in the command center. "Copy," he said. "You have first watch, Coop. Gram will relieve you in three."

"Roger that, boss." Coop signed off.
 

Gram acknowledged with a nod and scratched his head, his gaze drifting again to the body bag next to the rail. Elias followed the older man's eyes, his thoughts turning inward. He had mixed feelings about what was in that bag, but chief among them was relief. He was relieved Gideon's creature wasn't behind the attack in the free zone, that his friend hadn't unknowingly become an indiscriminate killer. But that relief gnawed at Elias. He should have been disappointed, in a way, that he didn't have an excuse to put down the man responsible for the loss of the son he'd barely gotten to know. Gideon's creature might not have turned to murder, but Gideon had proven he wasn't above orchestrating a death.
 

Elias should have been angry. Angry that his sense of duty made him need an excuse to deal with Gideon. The cold machinations that led to Michael's death should have been reason enough. He should have put things right months ago.
 

But he hadn't, and deep down he knew he wouldn't. He wasn't angry at Gideon, not anymore. The only anger he felt was at himself for being cold enough to understand why Gideon had done what he had. Despite the unyielding front he'd maintained, Elias had made peace with Gideon's mistakes, if not forgiven him, and that told him he had no business trying to play father to Nikki. How could he hope to connect with one child when he couldn't make himself do what any father would do for the other?

Impact walked in, drawing both men's attention. "She's asleep," he said without preamble or clarification.
 

Elias and Gram both nodded, the latter with obvious relief. Impact didn't need to explain. Kate's wellbeing was near the front of everyone's mind, especially after her near breakdown in the infirmary. Not long after Elias had arrived with Nikki, Kate seemed to lose focus. She began muttering about their voices being too loud, more so once Impact showed up. Gram was able to calm her and get her back on task, but not without effort.
 

Elias couldn't help thinking the time had come to find real help for Kate, more help than their med-uplinks could provide. She needed someone to talk to, someone not emotionally tied to her trauma. She needed professional help, and soon, but that meant sending her away. He wasn't sure any of them were ready for that.

Impact crossed to the steps and walked slowly up onto the platform to join them, the bright lights over the tac table reflecting off his smooth scalp as he approached.

Elias had dialed the artificial skylight up to maximum, as if doing so could banish the shadows in the room. It couldn't. The light was centered over the command platform and penetrated the darkness of the server pit only so far before succumbing to the gloom. Not that those shadows were what was bothering him. The real shadow, the one thing he'd been attempting to banish, however subconsciously, was still inside the body bag.

Ace and Padre walked in, both looking a little ragged and damp from their hour and change in the infirmary assisting the surgeon. Ace had a tall glass in her hand, milk, most likely. Padre had his water bottle in one hand and a plate with a half-eaten egg wrap in the other. Elias didn't know how Padre could stomach Nikki's creations, and it was obviously one of hers, judging from the tongue-curling combination of eggs, random greens, whatever fruit she'd found in the pantry, mayo, and what looked like syrup, all messily wrapped in a tortilla.
 

The night Nikki had invented that creation was a night of firsts on multiple fronts—the first time Coop didn't finish his food, and the first time Nikki flashed a genuine smile and laugh since Michael's death.
 

"Good job in there tonight," Elias said once everyone was settled around the tac table.
 

Padre and Ace both nodded back, and Gram gave Elias a wink. That was about as touchy feely as they got. Impact didn't look up. He was staring at the tactical display and its sensor-rendered image of the church on the surface and the surrounding grounds. Padre was keeping an eye on it as well, but he at least divided his attention.

Maybe Elias's parental conflict was getting the better of him, or maybe Gram's come-to-Jesus talk regarding Nikki and her need for direction was still working on him, but he couldn't help thinking he'd been oblivious to Impact's needs. Impact had father issues no one could hope to tackle, so Elias had always given him space, let him play the outsider. Maybe too much. He took part in ops just like everybody else, but Elias had let him have all the leeway he needed and hadn't treated him like a true member of the team. Until now he'd thought he was doing the right thing, but maybe the lack of structure and sense of belonging had been to Impact's detriment.