Children of Evolution (The Gateway Series Book 2) (51 page)

He didn't believe point number two for a second. No poker face could convince him Nikki would honor that pledge. As for her third point, even though she clearly thought it was the strongest, it was an obvious tug. She was right about point one though. Clearly the alien creatures could find her regardless of how far she fled or how well she hid. She'd be safer surrounded by all the firepower they had at their disposal, even if that meant accompanying them into the unknown.

He glanced up to share a look with Padre, who'd heard all.
 

"OK," Elias said to Nikki. "You're in."

Nikki's look of surprise quickly gave way to a wide smile.

"On one condition," he went on. "You stick to Padre and do what he says, when he says it. Copy?"

Nikki didn't hesitate. "Donesies. Or copy, I guess. Major." She smiled again, but Elias could see the tremor poorly hidden behind it. He hoped his instinct was right that whatever was bothering her wouldn't become an issue. If he was wrong, he hoped Padre could keep Nikki out of trouble, and in one piece.

Nikki

If this were any other night Nikki would have fallen asleep long ago.
 

She was stretched out on the cool grass under a clear night sky filled with stars. The crest of the gently sloping hill under her belly felt better than a cushy bed, especially after the stress of the day. A chilly breeze brushed through the pine needles overhead, making a soft rustling backdrop for the chirping chorus of Canada's more outgoing insects, composing a rhythmic drone that could put anyone to sleep. An occasional low whisper into the com from Sam nearby and the distant hum of the facility's power generators were the only unnatural sounds she could hear, and even those were soothing in their own ways.
 

Not enough to quiet Nikki's mind though. Not tonight.

She shifted her chin on her doubled-up knuckle pillow and lowered her gaze back to the building, or what she could see of it through the trees on the downslope before her. Something in that place was generating more than just electricity. Somewhere in that quiet office building, something or someone was cranking out genesis energy by the buttload. Or so Gideon said.
 

If he was wrong, they'd wasted half the night creeping around and watching the place, missing out on rest and recovery they all needed. If he was right…

Nikki felt a tremor in her chest and clenched her jaw with the effort of keeping her gaze from going to her hands again. She couldn't help taking note of how the rest of her felt though.
 

She was tired from a long day of seemingly pointless chores followed by the short but terrifying fight. She should have been more than just tired though. She should have been exhausted and aching from the morning's workout alone, not to mention the countless bangs and bumps she'd taken over the past few weeks.
 

But she wasn't. She was pain free for the first time in months. In fact, she didn't have a scratch on her. The bone bruise on her knuckles—the one she'd aggravated nearly every day in training—was gone. The skin on her palm where some idiot had stabbed her with a fork was smooth and perfect, like it had never happened.
 

A disappearing injury was nothing new to Nikki. She'd lived with the phenomenon her whole life. More than lived with it, actually. When she felt her skin sealing, her muscles knitting back together, her bones realigning, her pain melting away—she felt powerful. It thrilled her in a way she couldn't fully explain to anybody, not even Michael.
 

He described the sensation as a relief, a reset that undid the mistakes of the past few minutes. For Michael, instant healing was a reminder that he'd done something wrong in a fight. For her, it was a reminder that everything was right in the world, a reminder that she was doing what she was made to do. For Nikki, it was a reminder that she was unstoppable.

Except she wasn't, not anymore. She couldn't heal on the fly like she used to. Without Michael, the slightest tweak lingered for hours. A strain could hang around for days. A broken bone could lay her up for weeks. Without Michael, she was always in pain, or so she'd thought. But she couldn't remember feeling any of her injuries since her morning PT session. Not a single twinge. Not since her run with Impact.

That's when everything changed, she was sure of it.

At the time, she'd thought the tingle she'd felt as Impact carried her down the trail had just been adrenaline, the rush of abandon at unbelievable speed. It was something more. She hadn't just imagined being able to sense the genesis energy building around him. She'd felt it—more than felt it. She'd reached out and touched it, and then she'd pulled it into her, as impossible as that seemed.
 

That's why she'd insisted on coming tonight. If something was pumping out genesis energy in this place, Nikki wanted to be there when they found it. She wanted to know whether her imagination was just playing tricks on her. She wanted to know if there was a chance her power was coming back.
 

She needed to know.

"Time to move," Sam whispered next to Nikki's ear.

A different kind of tingle rippled through Nikki, mostly from being startled. Sam had been a half dozen paces away the last time she looked over. How did he get so close without her noticing?

She recovered and nodded, sliding her hands back to push herself up and back onto the balls of her feet.

"Head straight in," Sam said, shifting his eyes toward the trees she'd been staring through for the past hour. "Remember what I taught you—move slowly, keep your steps small and roll your feet from the outside in, move with the wind when you can. And move slowly."

"You said that part already," she said, reaching out to poke him in the shoulder.

"I know. I don't want you to forget it," he countered. "If it takes you less than twenty minutes to reach the building, you're going too fast."

"Twenty!" she choked. "The building is right there. That's less than a hundred meters!" Expressing the full depth of her outrage in a soft whisper was a challenge, but she thought she pulled it off. It was all about the eyes.

"Um-hm," Sam nodded, his eyes looking more amused than cowed by her stare. "Like I said, move—"

"Slowly," she cut him off. "I got it the first two times."

He nodded again and started to slip away. Nikki grabbed his sleeve to stop him.

"Hey, where are you going?" she whispered.

"A different way," he replied with a small smile. "I'll meet up with you, unless you get caught."

He ghosted off into the darkness before she could reply. Just as well. The words that jumped to mind weren't pretty.

Nikki took a second to get her blood flowing and let her muscles loosen up—she'd been lying still for a while—then she eased forward in a low crouch.
 

For the first few steps she sounded less like a fifty-something-kilo girl trying to be quiet and more like a one-ton moose trying to dance—a blind one. In her defense, it was a lot darker under the trees. Sam couldn't expect her to avoid every branch and twig and loose rock when she couldn't even see them. She didn't have to blunder into every single one though.

She stopped and eased down lower. Holding still, she watched and listened to everything around her for a few minutes, waiting for the inevitable shouts and blaring alarms. But none came.
 

When she started moving again she did so much more slowly, keeping her knees bent and her back straight, just like Sam taught her. She couldn't see what was under her feet, so she had to feel it out. Keeping her weight on her back foot, she eased the outside of her front foot down and gently rolled her weight onto it. Then she repeated the process with the other foot. If she felt something hard or unstable under her front foot, she stopped and shifted it to a new spot before she put any weight on it.

Sam was right; moving this way made much less noise. It was also insanely slow. Maintaining such a creeping pace took extreme patience—not exactly Nikki's strong suit. However, Sam had basically challenged her not to get caught, the way Nikki saw it, and rising above a challenge took mostly stubbornness—exactly Nikki's strong suit. So she crept on as slowly and carefully as she could.
 

Unfortunately, it took more than stubbornness and a light smear of grace to become a ninja. Nikki lost track of the number of crunched twigs, brushed branches, and dislodged rocks. The last of which tumbled at least a dozen paces down the hill, smacking against every other rock it could find along the way.
 

Nikki froze and waited for the clattering to die away, which took a while. Just when she thought the embarrassment was over, the rock started tumbling again, like it had only paused to teeter on the edge of its next drop. She closed her eyes but couldn't will the sounds to stop no matter how hard she tried.
 

It took a few seconds for logic to break through the embarrassment to tell Nikki what she was hearing couldn't be the rock. The sounds were coming closer, not moving away.

Nikki opened her eyes and scanned the thinning stretch of trees remaining between her and the base of the hill. The scattered floodlights mounted on the building backlit the trees, stretching their shadows into one another, making a thousand likely hiding places for whatever was approaching. It didn't take long to spot him though. A man for sure, judging by his silhouette—an armed man.
 

Nikki's heart rate double-timed, but she stayed motionless. If he hadn't spotted her already, any movement would give her away for sure.
 

He was no better at sneaking through the woods than Nikki, but that was little comfort. His lack of stealth did nothing to help keep Nikki hidden, and it proved he wasn't Sam.
 

The man stopped ten paces downhill from Nikki, his head turning as he searched the woods. Then he clicked on the light mounted on his machine gun.
 

So much for stealth.

Nikki closed her hand on one of the rocks under her and prepared to charge. If she could close the distance quickly enough, she could get inside his reach before the light hit her.

As soon as the man started to pan the light, he tripped and fell from sight. He dropped to one knee with a grunt, then tumbled into the brush as the loose rocks underneath him gave way. At least that's how it sounded.
 

Nikki was so surprised she held her charge. She recovered quickly though and lunged forward when the rifle dropped onto the rocks, the light going out with a crack. She abandoned stealth for speed, counting on the guard's thrashing to cover the sound of her approach.
 

The guard stopped his scrabbling by the time Nikki reached him, but not because he was getting up. He stayed motionless in the brush, or at least the lumpy shadow she thought was him stayed motionless.
 

She froze again, second guessing her night vision. If she'd lost track of him—

"I could use your help, if you're done with that rock," Sam's whispered voice said from the direction of the lumpy shadow.
 

The shadow moved, and the guard's body rolled out into the weak strip of light painting the ground near Nikki's feet. Sam followed, moving into the light in a silent crouch and fishing a set of zip ties from his small pack. He held them out to Nikki. "Secure his feet while I get his hands," he whispered.

"Little overkill, don't you think? Didn't you…" Nikki slid her finder across her neck.

Sam looked up. "He's just unconscious, and not for long."
 

Maybe it was the way the mottled light was hitting his dark features, but Nikki thought he looked offended, or even hurt, which made no sense. Sam had killed five of Savior's men in a matter of seconds the night she met him. Who knew how many he'd taken out when the team stormed Savior's compound to rescue her a few weeks later. Clearly he didn't have a problem putting holes into people.
 

His eyes disagreed.

"There was no need to kill him," he said, his voice low and even.
 

Nikki didn't know what to say. "Sorry" seemed like the right thing, but considering the situation, she just took the zip tie and set to work without a word. By the time she finished tightening the tie on the guard's ankles, he was starting to wake up. Being awake didn't improve his situation though. Sam already had him gagged and was tightening the ties holding his wrists behind his back. The guard started to grunt until Sam leaned close to his face and silenced him with a few low words Nikki couldn't make out.
 

At a gesture from Sam, Nikki grabbed the guard's feet and helped position him on his side against a stout tree, where Sam connected the wrist and ankle restraints behind the tree with another tie. Once Sam was satisfied the man was suitably immobilized, he nodded and started to move away, but Nikki caught his arm.

"That was close," she whispered. "How did we not see him patrolling out here?"

Sam looked over at her but didn't say a word. His mouth just quirked into a small smile.

Oh. Sam hadn't missed him at all. Just Nikki. Which meant…

Nikki's eyes widened and she barely kept her voice at a whisper. "You knew he'd hear me. You used me as a distraction."

"You did well," Sam replied in a quieter whisper. "You got closer than I thought you would before he heard you."

The praise felt good, really good, but she kept her glare in place. The fact that he'd counted on her failure had shifted the moral high ground back under her feet, and she wasn't done staring down from it.

Sam broke eye contact first and gestured for Nikki to follow. He led the way through the trees to the edge of the clearing surrounding the building, his steps slow and silent.
 

Nikki did her best to mimic his movements. She was more determined than ever to master this skill now, and spite was a hell of a teacher.

They stopped at the edge of the trees and crouched in the shadow of a tall pine. For several minutes Sam scanned the flood-lit expanse of uneven ground and the single plain door in the window-heavy wall ahead of them.