Children of Evolution (The Gateway Series Book 2) (31 page)

"You're dead, girl," he said, holding her over his head in one hand with no sign of strain or effort. "Again." He tossed her aside.
 

She hit the mat flat on her back this time, knocking the wind out of her. From where she lay, she could see Elias start toward her, but Gideon pulled him back, speaking in a low voice she couldn't make out.
 

"Get up," Cole barked.

Nikki didn't need the order. She was already climbing to her feet with gritted teeth. Getting tossed around was starting to get old.
 

"Stop fighting like they do," Cole's hard voice didn't do her mounting anger any favors either. "Get out of your head, girl."

She would have loved to take that advice. Her head was pretty crowded at the moment—not to mention confused—with the training she was struggling to remember and Michael's good-intentioned image assault.

Cole stalked toward her. "You fight with this." His finger jabbed her in the padded stomach. "Not this." He jabbed her in the forehead, pushing her back half a step. "What's your gut saying, girl?"

To punch you in the face,
she thought.
 

No,
Michael responded right away, his voice louder than usual. Her sense of him was getting stronger by the second. It was so strong now she was having trouble telling where she stopped and he started.
That's what he wants, Nik. He's trying to rattle you.

Cole stepped closer and leaned down, putting his blazing eyes a breath away from hers. "What's holding you back, slip?" His stare bored into her. "What's making you so weak?"

She heard a growl, but it was a higher pitch than Cole's. It took her a second to realize it was coming from her.
 

Don't, Nikki,
Michael thought.
Hold your ground. Keep your head and look for his weakness.
 

Nikki didn't attack, even though she was literally shaking to. Michael's voice—so loud it made her feel like the passenger in her head—held her back.
 

No, it wasn't just his voice.
 

For a second she forgot all about Cole and the many things she wanted smash into him. In a cold flash of clarity, she realized she had zero restraint at that moment. Every quivering muscle in her body wanted to bring the fury. She wasn't the one holding herself back. Michael was.

Her shock rebounded as Michael shared her realization.

How are you doing that?

I'm not,
he answered quickly. Too quickly.

Tell me another one.

Not on purpose, Nikki,
he sent back.
I feel—stronger.

Cole was watching her, waiting for an answer, looking for one in her eyes, and not patiently. Whatever he saw set him off.

"Not with this," his finger jab to the forehead sent her back several steps. "With this!" His punch to the gut knocked the wind out of her, even through the padded vest. She dropped to her hands and knees, gasping.

She heard several raised voices, but none of them overpowered Michael's.

Nikki, I can help, if you'll let me,
he said, voice calm despite its excessive volume.

She sucked in a ragged breath and lifted her head to give Cole the death eye.
Yeah. Bang-up job so far. No offense, but I'd like to survive this.

I don’t mean like this, Nik
, Michael said.
I mean—
He stopped himself. The feelings coming through from him were strong enough that she could pick out frustration as the foremost of the pack. He wanted to say something, but he wouldn’t let himself do it.
 

You trust me, right?

That was a dumb question, one she didn’t bother to answer. Even if he wasn’t feeling everything she felt, he had to know he was the only person in the world she really trusted. He’d never asked her that before, not even before his worst plans, the ones he’d known she was going to hate. Why now?

Nikki,
he said, his voice sounding somehow both resolved and nervous.
Forgive me for this
.

She didn’t get a chance to ask what
this
was. She pushed off the mat and stood up. Then she readied herself to fight, but not of her own will. Her body was moving, but Nikki was no longer in control—Michael was.

Mind Games

Michael

It started the way it always did—with Nikki’s pain.

When Nikki’s power kicked in and the energy her pain generated started to flow, it woke Michael from the darkness. That’s all he knew to call it—the still place he now called home. His sense of Nikki, and through her of the world around her, grew steadily stronger with every blow she suffered, with every tumble she took. Nikki’s pain gave Michael strength, almost like nothing had changed.
 

But it had. Physical pain wasn’t the only thing that drew Michael out of the darkness. Her emotional pain fed him now as well, and as the fight with Coop wore on, Michael was hard pressed to tell which type of pain was working harder to bring him back.

Nikki didn’t realize how her power had changed. In fact, she didn’t even realize her power still existed. At the moment she was living in a haze of ignorance, unable or unwilling to make the connection between her pain and Michael’s presence. She believed her power had died with Michael, a misconception he was happy to foster.

He knew Nikki’s loneliness. He felt her sense of abandonment each time he woke. He also knew her courage. He was afraid of what she would do when she discovered what was bringing him back from the darkness, if only for a short time. She wasn’t above hurting herself, or worse, not where Michael was concerned.

That’s why, be it fair or not, he kept Nikki in the dark. He felt guilty for doing so, but not much. Nothing was stopping her from putting two and two together. Even she could do that math.

Nikki, however, had a habit of ignoring the obvious, a habit she clung to as the fight with Coop wore on. He was going easy on her, telegraphing his attacks, but she ignored the signs. She was too preoccupied trying to sort through the counters she’d been learning. She was doing something she never did during a fight. She was thinking too much.

Before long Michael’s presence, his connection to the world, grew so strong he began to fear he would push his sister right out of her own body. And as always when he reached that point, he pulled himself back.

Michael didn’t know how he restrained himself. He didn’t even know if doing so was necessary. He just knew that the stronger he grew, the more crowded Nikki’s body seemed to become, and the more firmly his fears took hold. Each time he reached what his admittedly paranoid mind told him was the point of no return, the wall went up.
 

The wall was just an extension of Michael’s will, he knew, but it was effective. It separated him from Nikki, kept his swelling presence contained. It also had the added benefit of letting him choose what thoughts crossed the divide. With the wall up, their thoughts were their own, for the most part, a side effect that had proved invaluable for maintaining Michael’s sanity, considering Nikki had no such restraint.

Michael held his tongue as long as he could, which wasn’t long. Feeling Nikki take a beating was no easier now that he was a captive audience than it had been when he was alive.

So he tried to help, even though he knew Nikki didn’t want it. When he saw an attack coming, he sent an image showing her how to defend against it. But that wasn’t enough. She wasn’t getting the message in time. He tried adding words—mental shouts, really—but that only made the situation worse. In his haste his suggestions came across too much like commands to be effective. Nikki’s threshold for pain far outweighed her tolerance for taking direction. Far, far outweighed.

So she suffered, and with every blow Nikki’s senses felt more like Michael’s own. He felt the sweat running down her forehead, the cool air on her cheeks. He smelled the blood from her tingling nose as she lay on the mat, dazed after Coop’s side kick. He even felt the pain.
 

Then Cole interrupted the session, and Michael felt something he’d not felt from Nikki in years, something he’d thought he’d never feel from her again. When Cole got in her face and tried to call her out, Elias came to her defense, which was a sure way to get on her bad side. Michael expected a spiky burst of outrage to flare up in response, or maybe the flash of instant fury she was so good at summoning. What he wasn’t expecting was the soft warmth that bloomed instead. She was…grateful. More than that, the unfamiliar warmth implied a budding affection for Elias, something deeper than what she felt for the rest of the team.

Michael firmed the barrier between them to try to hide his resulting thoughts, but there was little he could do to mask his emotional response. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, their emotions were more tightly connected than ever. He had yet to discover how to block what he felt from reaching Nikki, and vice versa. Nikki picked up on his flash of hope, and in true Nikki fashion, she tried to blame her temporary lapse into humanity on Michael.

Stop it
, she thought.

Stop what?
he replied, even though he knew arguing was pointless. When Nikki decided to project her feelings, she did it so well she convinced even herself.

She rolled her eyes.

How do you know that's not your feeling?
Michael asked.

Because,
she replied.

He waited, briefly entertaining the futile hope that she would admit to feeling something other than apathy for anyone but him. He didn’t have to wait long.

I don't feel that way about anybody,
she said.
Not anymore.

If will alone could stop feelings, that might have been the truth. But it couldn’t. Sooner or later—much later, knowing her—she was going to have to admit to the instinctive connection she felt to Elias, and then it would be time for the talk. If Elias didn’t tell her why she felt that kinship, Michael would. Nikki needed family—living, breathing family—and it was right under her nose.

Now wasn’t the time though. Michael felt Nikki’s apprehension swelling as Padre and Ace helped her shed most of the pads. By the time she squared off with Cole, Padre, and Coop, that apprehension was edging toward anger.
 

Michael shared the feeling. Cole was taunting Nikki, trying to get her upset. He was succeeding, more so than he knew thanks to Michael’s swelling emotions compounding Nikki’s.

A surge of energy pulsed through Nikki as Cole threw her to the mat. She didn’t feel it, of course. All she felt was the impact and her adrenaline. The energy flowed through her like it was searching for something, like it was trying in vain to find the body it used to flow into—Michael's body. Most of the energy gathered in useless pockets inside Nikki, unable to power her, eventually dispersing slowly as her adrenaline faded. But a trickle remembered where it used to go. A fraction of the power fed what was left of Michael, making Nikki’s senses come alive for him.

Michael felt everything like Nikki’s skin was his own as she squared off with the three men again. He also felt the distraction that would cost her the fight if she didn’t shake it off. She was so preoccupied with Coop and Padre, she didn’t sense Cole moving in.
 

Nikki, don’t
— His shout was too late.

She hit the mat harder this time—they hit the mat harder.
 

Don’t what?
Nikki asked.

Don’t forget about Cole
, Michael said.
 

Nikki’s frustration answered more loudly than her words, and Michael’s answered in kind. Their emotions were feeding off each other, threatening to grow out of control for both of them.
 

Their frustration surged when Coop caught Nikki from behind. Michael tried to tell Nikki how to break the hold, but she couldn’t hear him. She was too caught up in the emotion. It wasn’t all frustration though. It couldn’t be. Nikki turned frustration into fury, and fury into finesse. That’s how she fought. That was her gift.
 

This was something else.
 

Their vision started going black as Coop tightened his hold. When the darkness started to fall, the hidden feeling surged above the frustration, and Michael cursed himself for not recognizing it sooner. It was the one thing that had haunted Nikki all her life, the one thing she tried so hard to keep locked safely in her subconscious, the one thing she let only Michael see.
 

Fear.

Their vision cleared with a rush as Cole pulled Nikki free and held her up over his head. Despite his age, Cole was massive, a scarred beast of a man with a look in his eyes that would shake the toughest soldier. But it wasn’t Cole Nikki was afraid of. Nor was it Coop, and definitely not Padre. She wasn’t afraid of anyone else. Nor was she afraid of the pain she was suffering. In truth the pain was nothing compared to what they’d endured countless times before. What she was afraid of was something inside of her.
 

Michael relaxed the barrier between their minds a second before they hit the mat flat on her back, the wind slamming out of them. In that vulnerable moment, he saw everything in her mind, everything she wanted to hide, and everything she wanted to hide from.

Nikki wasn’t just afraid. She was terrified. She was terrified she’d lost everything she’d once been, that she’d become weak, like Cole said, that she’d never be able to fight again. And that fear was crippling her.

Michael’s urge to protect his sister was suddenly overwhelming, a flood of raw energy to rival the power flowing into him from the blow. Michael grimaced and balled his fist to contain his rage. It worked, somewhat. He’d always been good at shifting that one emotion aside, unlike his sister.
 

Then he realized what he’d just done. It wasn’t his fist he’d tightened. It was Nikki’s.
 

If Nikki noticed, she didn’t let on. She was too busy climbing back to her feet, pulling the rage back around her in an attempt to smother the fear.