Children of Evolution (The Gateway Series Book 2) (35 page)

She glanced over but Ace was focused on the sky outside as she piloted the shuttle through the darkness. Night had fully fallen before they left, and their southerly course had taken them over and beyond Seattle, replacing the lights of civilization with cloud-filtered starlight.
 

If Nikki was being honest with herself, she did want to talk about it. Elias, that is. She'd thought about little else since Michael's revelation. The wanker. He'd known Elias was their father for who knew how long, but he'd said nothing. Sure, she'd told him repeatedly for years that she had no desire to go haring off to find their parents, but that didn't mean she didn't want to know when one of them was right under her nose. What kind of jackass would hide something like that from her?
 

Two kinds, apparently. Elias had kept his trap sealed all this time too, and that's what was really twisting her up inside.
 

She knew Michael's silence was driven by love. He was simply trying to protect her the way he always had. He knew how much she was dealing with at the moment, and he didn't want to add to the mix. His execution may have been thumb-fisted, but his intentions were lovely. Elias, on the other hand, was more of a mystery. She couldn't feel what he was feeling the way she could with Michael, so she could only imagine why he hadn't said anything to her, not even when she was at her lowest and thinking she was now a family of one.
 

Speculating on Elias's motivation was a frustrating and time-consuming exercise. It had her asking questions she'd never thought she would have to wrestle, like, "Why didn't he want her to know he was her father?" Or worse, "Was he ashamed of the way she'd turned out?" The obvious answer to both made her squirm in the worn seat.
 

She knew she wasn't what fathers pictured when they imagined the perfect daughter. She could be a little stubborn, a touch argumentative, a tiny bit unreliable, and occasionally, rarely, suffer the odd violent outburst. She'd gladly own up to every one of those traits, but that was just the way she acted. It didn't describe who she really was deep down. He had to know that. Didn't everybody know that?

Does it matter?
she asked herself.
You've never cared before. Why start now?
 

Her stomach burned in answer to that question, a feeling she didn't want to examine too closely, so she squirmed in her seat again and changed the subject.
"Where are we going anyway?"

Ace laughed and checked her watch. "Fifty-three minutes. Coop owes me another five."

"What?"

"You're predictable, kiddo," Ace said, shaking her head but not looking over. "You'll hop in any transport heading out without any idea of where it's going or why. Coop said you'd ask within five minutes. I said longer."

Nikki considered being upset, but after a little thought, she decided she'd rather not care. She snorted a laugh. "What a boob. He keeps leaving bets wide open like that? You'd think he'd learn his lesson."

Ace smiled. "He is a slow learner, but I don't like to give up on a student. As long as he's dumb enough to throw away his money, I'll be kind enough to take it, to keep him in check of course."

"Of course."

Ace settled back into silence like she'd forgotten the original question, so Nikki gave her a friendly reminder. "So…where are we going, again?"

"To someone who might be able to help Kate," Ace replied evenly.

"What? I…but you all…I told you she's not crazy." Nikki felt the stirrings of panic. She'd thought this was settled. She'd confessed about Michael to make it so.

"Relax, kiddo. We believe you," Ace said, looking over. "But sane or not, Kate has no control over what's happened to her. I'm sure you noticed."

Nikki nodded dumbly, but she wasn't sure what Ace meant. She'd noticed Kate needed a volume knob for her mental shouting, but otherwise everything had seemed fine. She also didn't know why Ace would ask her to come along if they were trying to talk somebody into helping them. The last time she'd gone on such an outing, she'd turned it into a spectacular cluster.

"Why'd you ask me to come?"

Ace looked at her like she was joking, but her smile slipped when she realized Nikki was serious.
 

"Didn't you see what being next to you did to her? Kiddo, she was barely holding it together." Ace turned back to her driving. "Until Kate gets a handle on whatever this is, the farther apart you two are the better."

"Oh," was all Nikki could say. She shifted in her seat again, even though her squirming hadn't done anything to settle her twisting stomach yet.

 
"Cheer up, kiddo," Ace said. "At least I'm taking you somewhere interesting." She nodded toward the windshield. "Take a look."

Nikki didn't have to look far to see what Ace meant. They were coming up fast on a maelstrom of lights on the forest floor. At first Nikki couldn't understand what she was seeing. The lights swirling and lancing out into the darkness looked almost alive, like the whole thing was some glowing woodland creature nobody had ever seen. If that was the case, the secret was out. People were swarming toward it now. As Ace banked the four-seater around a massive, shell-shaped structure at the center of the spectacle, Nikki stared at the slowly waving spotlights and the multi-colored lasers illuminating people streaming toward the building from every direction. For several seconds, her mind struggled to comprehend a rave of this scale. Then it hit her.
 

She knew this place. She'd never seen it from this angle, of course, which had to account for her slow reaction, but she'd been here, twice—two nights she would never forget.
 

Built off the I-5, in the heart of the no-man's land equidistant between Seattle and Portland, the theater Ace was slowly circling was known to every zoner breathing. She'd said as much about Avalon before, but this place was known to more than just the club rats and dance junkies. Everybody, literally everybody, knew about the Zone Theater, the one place anyone and everyone could go to see Max perform for free.

He wasn't the only performer who used the theater, but he was the one every zoner breathing hoped to see, not just because of the free admission, and not even because Max was one of the biggest live performers in the known world. Zoners loved Max because he'd built this theater for them. More accurately, he'd built it to cater to anyone who couldn't afford even discount ticket prices for his shows, but the zoners took it as a personal gift. They adopted him as one of their own, something they didn't do for anyone rich and famous.
 

Normally, Nikki would steer clear of anything or anyone so popular with the masses, but for Max she made an exception. Max was just…different. He was special. He could do something no one else could do, and the world loved him for it, which was one reason Nikki was drawn to him with a funky mix of kinship and envy. She used to be able to do something no one else but Michael could do, and it ended up bringing her nothing but grief.

"Funny place to find a doctor," Nikki said as Ace continued her circuit above the naturally forming traffic lanes, studying the ground below.

"Not a doctor," Ace replied distractedly. "A brother."

"You mean like Mos?"

"I mean like a sibling," Ace replied with a short laugh, leveling out the four-seater and preparing to set down in the middle of some official looking vehicles behind the theater. "My sibling."

"Your brother is a zoner?" Not in a million years would Nikki have pegged Ace for a former zoner. Nor would she have pegged Ace for the type to leave a brother behind in the free zones while she lived the posh life at the bunker. Maybe she'd misjudged her entirely.

"Not exactly," Ace said.

"Hmm," Nikki replied, trying to keep at least part of her attention on the conversation as she scanned the transports in what was obviously a secured staff landing area. She saw no indication of whose staff was bustling around the brightly lit lot, however. "So, who's performing tonight?"

"That would be Max."

Nikki caught a jubilant shout before it could burst out, and swallowed it hard, nodding like this news was the least interesting tidbit she'd heard all week. She gave Ace her most innocent and nonchalant look, even though it was wasted. Ace was focused on landing.
 

"I don't guess we'll stick around long enough to catch any of the show," Nikki said. "Meet up with your brother and run, right?"

The four-seater touched down and Ace glanced over after shutting down the power. "How mean do you think I am, kiddo?"

The words "shuttle run" and "burpee" jumped into Nikki's mind. "Is that a serious question?"

Ace gave her a grin that was balanced by a raised eyebrow. "We have time to take in the show. We can't talk to my brother until after he's done anyway."

"Done what?"

"Performing," Ace said, the eyebrow climbing.

"I thought you said Max was performing tonight?"

"I did."

"So…exactly how many people are performing?" Nikki asked, starting to think Ace was messing with her. The older woman must have guessed how much she liked Max and was proving just how mean she could be.

"Just my little brother," Ace replied, her smile filling with fond amusement. She was enjoying this dumb game way too much.

"Well how can that be, smart ass, unless your brother is—"

Ace nodded as Nikki trailed off into silence. "Give it a minute. It'll sink in." She checked her watch. "No more than a minute though. He starts in fifteen, so unless you want to miss the show—"

Nikki didn't say another word. She was too busy trying to unlatch her restraint, open the door, and jump out all at the same time. Her haste was self-defeating, of course, each rushed task slowing the others. And it was wasted. Once she managed to extricate herself from the four-seater, to the tune of a few choice curses and with a couple new bruises forming, she was forced to stand and wait while Ace took her sweet time.
 

On the plus side, the wait gave her a chance to realize she was on the brink of a full-blown fangirl geek out. She took a few breaths as Ace examined an imaginary ding on the rear quarter panel. By the time Ace strolled over with a smug little smile on her face, Nikki had herself back under control, her casual demeanor restored.

"OK," Ace said with a nod. "You read—"

"Yes, dammit!" Nikki snapped. Well, it was mostly restored.

Ace laughed and clapped her shoulder, then led the way to the gaggle of security goons that had multiplied since the four-seater set down. Apparently they didn't take too kindly to people landing in their secure area. Some of the dark looks lightened as they drew closer, however. A few of these people, at least, seemed to recognize Ace. She flashed an ID chip anyway as she stopped in front of them. Nikki wondered if it was the real deal this time. Every member of the team had a half dozen fake chips that Kate reprogrammed on a regular basis, or had reprogrammed before her breakdown, but Nikki doubted Ace used a fake ID to see her brother. Max, that is. Ace's brother was Max. The Max.
 

Nikki laughed, earning funny looks from several of the goons. She didn't care. Nothing could ruin the beauty of this situation.

A couple of the goons exchanged semi-familiar greetings with Ace, then led the way through a gate and between a couple mid-size transports toward the sloped concrete walls of the back of the theater. The goons buzzed them through a set of heavy duty scanners and led them through the heaviest doors Nikki had seen outside the bunker, and then down a sloping concrete hallway that looked to be leading them under the theater.

They took turn after turn, each one into another hallway identical to the last, making Nikki lose her sense of direction pretty quickly. She suspected the drab, repetitive design was a careful choice, a security precaution. If any whacked out fans made it down here, they'd get so turned around and lost they'd have as much chance of finding their way out as wandering farther in, giving the security goons plenty of time to deal with them.

After maybe a tenth turn, the hallway ended in a bowl-shaped room with a couple of identical side halls leading out and one nondescript door dead ahead. Guarding the door were a handful more security goons—how many did Max need?—led by a stocky, spiky-haired woman with an easy air of command that set her apart from the others, even though her plain, dark suit was identical to theirs. She looked over as Ace and Nikki entered, and a wide smile split her square face.
 

"Well, well. If it isn't Tess Eline," she said, stepping forward and puffing up her chest in a way that made her an even more imposing figure.

"It is," Ace replied, stopping a good two paces from the thicker woman.
 

The way they squared off against each other gave Nikki the distinct impression she was about to watch a scuffle, despite the smiles. After a minute of study, the other woman shifted her gaze to Nikki.

"Who's the candy?" she said, looking Nikki up and down in a way that made her feel weighed, judged, and found wanting.

"A friend," Ace replied. "Becks—Nikki. Nikki, this is Becky Campbell—"

"Becks," the stocky woman cut in.

"An old friend," Ace went on, "and my little brother's head of security."

Becks nodded then dismissed Nikki, returning her gaze to Ace. "I think that's the first time you haven't introduced me as your ex," she said, crossing her thick arms over her chest and giving Ace a baiting smile.

Nikki blinked and gave the stocky woman a closer look. Ex? Becks was everything Ace was not, with a gelled-up, unflattering haircut and a build that could at best be described as intimidating, not to mention the kind of features that indicated a great personality. Nikki couldn't imagine a stranger match for Ace. As athletic and tough as Ace was, there was no mistaking her for anything other than a woman, and a strikingly attractive one at that. Her fitted dark cargos and flannel shirt, which should have been a terrible choice for anybody, somehow accentuated all the right features.