Children of Evolution (The Gateway Series Book 2) (58 page)

"I'm not a fool, Nikki, and I've known you since you were born." That caused a twinge, for both of them, but he pushed on. "I saw what happened when you got close to Savior. I saw the look in your eyes. You only get that look when you and Michael charge each other up. Am I wrong?"

Nikki swallowed and considered denying it, but neither she nor Michael really wanted to lie to Elias, whatever that meant. She breathed a laugh and shook her head.

"I also saw the way Savior responded. If this goes sideways—when it goes sideways—there's no one I trust more than you and Michael to deal with Savior. You're the only ones who stand a chance of talking him down—or taking him down, if it comes to that."
 

He leaned closer. "If and when he turns on us, you do whatever you have to do."

Nikki held his gaze for a minute, trying to figure out which feelings were hers in the mixture she and Michael were sharing. Surprisingly, the warm rush of pride was mostly hers, she was pretty sure.
 

"I'm on it," she said.

"Good. I'll take the first shift. Help Ace get everything squared away and set up. Once Corso gets back and we get the cameras up and running, you can relieve me."

"You got it," she said with a smile and her best salute. She turned away, but she didn't get far before he called her name again. When she looked back, he nodded toward the dance floor and the dead creature.

"You seem to have a knack for finding those things."

He wasn't wrong there. He wasn't joking either, judging by the look in his eyes when they swung back to her.

"Everyone they're hunting is now under this dome," he said. "If there are any more of them left on this side of the Gateway, they'll come this way, and we're stuck here until this is done. Keep your eyes open, and be ready."

The first she could do. She doubted she'd be able to sleep at all now, as a matter of fact. The second—she wasn't sure she'd ever be.

Nikki

Three days in, Nikki decided she hated the early night shift most—not that she liked any of them. Saying she hated it more than the late night shift or either of the day shifts was like saying she hated chewing glass most, over chewing nails or sharp rocks. There were no good options.

It wasn't the staying awake that bugged her, per se. It was the not going to sleep. Subtle distinction, but an important one.
 

Over the past couple of weeks, she'd gotten used to going to bed at a decent time—a necessary adaptation to survive Ace's early morning PT sessions. That decent time just so happened to fall dead in the middle of the early night shift, as her body loved to remind her.
 

To make matters worse, Gideon and Savior usually grabbed a few hours of sleep during this shift, which was just rubbing Nikki's nose in it, in her opinion.

Not tonight though. They were close to a breakthrough—she'd heard Gideon say as much to Elias before he turned in—and they showed no signs of stopping any time soon.
 

She stifled a yawn and stood to take a better look around over the tops of the monitors. They'd set up the monitor station on top of one of the sleeping modules, the one closest to the control module, where Gideon and Savior did most of their work. From her elevated vantage, Nikki could see most of the corral. On the monitors, she could see all of it, including inside the sleeping modules, as well as every quadrant of the perimeter, which were green-tinted night vision images at the moment. But switching back and forth between the two was key to staying awake, or so Mos had told her with a wink before her first shift.

He was right. Jumping up and down helped too, but she held off on that for now. Elias was sleeping in the room under her at the moment. She reserved her random noise making for when Coop was down there.

She could see the back of Savior's head where he was comparing readings on a couple of consoles below. Off to the left of the dance floor, Mos kept a casual watch on the Gateway, where Gideon was working at the moment.
 

Gideon was working without his coat tonight, which made him hard not to watch. She hoped Mos was paying close attention. If he forgot Gideon was out there and just happened to glance over at the wrong time and see only Gideon's creature side—bam.
 

When the creatures came through, there was no warning, and sometimes very little sound from them. With a camera and a guard on the Gateway, they hadn't missed one yet, but tensions were only rising.
 

They'd had no major incidents yet, but everyone knew that was going to change, and soon. The creatures on this side were coming. It was only a matter of time. In fact, Sam had taken one down at range this morning, and Cole said it wasn't alone. He said the others were out there; they were just being cautious. Apparently, finding all the prey they wanted in the one corral was making them suspicious.
 

They weren't alone in that regard. Elias was the same with Savior. He reminded Nikki at every shift change to keep a close eye. Thing was, Savior had been nothing but the busy scientist. He'd also been quiet, polite, humble—shocking as that was. At times he was even—

"Quiet night?" Savior asked from behind her.

Friendly. And sneaky. Nikki nearly jumped out of her boots. She did bump her chair and send it rolling toward the edge. Savior caught it deftly.
 

"I didn't mean to startle you," he said, offering the chair.

Nikki sat and spun to face the monitors, mostly to hide the flush in her cheeks, a flush that was only one part shame. She'd kept her distance from Savior for good reason, and not just because she didn't trust him. She didn't trust herself with him.

"No drama," she said, as lightly as she could. "Aren't you supposed to be down there though?"

"I wish none of us had to be down there," he said.
 

Nikki glanced up to see if he was joking. He wasn't, as far as she could tell, and if he was lying, he was selling it like he lived on commission. He was staring out at the Gateway with what looked like genuine regret in his eyes.

Don't fall for it, idiot,
she snapped at herself, looking back at her monitors. But she felt a hope fire start inside her, or start smoking, at least. If Savior's kinder, more repentant self was real—

She couldn't finish that thought. The thought of having her power back was overwhelming. If she entertained it, her focus was shot. She had a job to do. Elias was counting on her. He'd entrusted this mission to her. Only to her.

Nikki kept her eyes on her monitors, on the screen showing Elias sleeping, which kept Savior out of all but the far edge of her peripheral vision. Until he leaned on the desk beside her.
 

Dammit
.

"He cares for you," Savior said.
 

"Of course he does," she replied, then grimaced at how cocky that sounded. She'd meant because of the whole family issue, but there was no fixing it now without more talking, which was what she wanted to avoid.

"I'm glad he's forming a connection again," Savior said. "When I realized he'd sent you away all those years ago, I second-guessed my decision to create a connection in the first place."

Nikki snorted. She couldn't help herself. "Create a connection? That's a funny way of putting it."

Savior reached out and turned her head to face him with a gentle finger on her chin.
 

Nikki opened her mouth to put him in his place, but her voice wouldn't respond. His touch, the tingle his finger left on her skin—he wasn't generating any energy, but she could feel it inside him. It was calling to her, begging her to reach out for it.
 

"It was the only way out I could see at the time, Nikki," he said. "If I had openly disobeyed the government's order to destroy my previous work, everything would have fallen apart. Generation would have dissolved before it developed its first treatment. Countless lives would have been lost. Letting Elias believe he was your father was the only way I could see to protect you."

"What?" Her voice finally responded. Thoughts of her power slipped away. Not far away, but away.

"It was the best I could do. I knew he would do the right thing. I knew he would protect you when the time came, but only with proper motivation. Convincing him he was your father was the only way to guarantee he acted, to guarantee he saved you."

"So you're saying he's not?"

The sympathy in Savior's smile was strong enough to touch Nikki's heart. If he was faking it, he was beyond good.

"He is a good man," he said, without a hint of sarcasm in his eyes. "But when I created you, I used only the best."

Nikki didn't ask the obvious question. Of course he was going to tell her who her father was. That's why he'd come to see her, right?

He didn't though. Instead, he stood and looked up through the big tear in the dome. A couple of stars were peeking through.
 

Nikki was trying to find the words to ask when Savior said, "Ask Mr. Cole about her sometime, if you get a chance."

Nikki's voice failed her again. She wanted to ask what "her" he was talking about, but her throat knew exactly whom he meant. If his sympathy act before was good enough to touch her heart, what she felt coming off him now broke it in two.

"He knew her better than anyone," Savior said, his voice soft. "He was lucky enough to spend a lifetime with her."

Savior's watch beeped, and he looked down at it and blinked, breaking the spell he'd been weaving. Then he smiled slightly and met Nikki's eyes again. "Happy birthday, Nikki."

It took her two tries, but she finally found her voice and managed a weak laugh. Savior's mind was all over the shop tonight.
 

"Thanks, I guess. But you're a few months early."

His smile pulled to one side and he shook his head, turning his watch to her. "March twenty-third. I should know."

"Savior," Gideon said from the bottom of the ramp. His hard eyes looked somehow more menacing without his hood. "She has a job to do. So do you."

Savior didn't flare at the rebuke. He simply nodded and raised his hands. He walked to the ramp, then stopped and looked back.
 

"I've missed too many of them, Nikki," Savior said. "I do not intend to miss any more."

"Hale," Gideon said, his voice as hard as his eyes.

Savior turned and walked down the ramp.

Nikki looked back at her monitors, but every one could have been filled with raging creatures and she wouldn't have noticed. She didn't know where to start processing what had just happened. There was so much to wrap her mind around, so much to shatter her calm. All she could focus on was the most trivial.

She was eighteen. That was supposed to be a big deal. Eighteen was a milestone birthday, one of the big ones.
 

She and Michael were going to have a bash to put all other parties to shame on their eighteenth, he just hadn't known about it. She'd made all sorts of plans, once upon a time, but since New Mexico, she hadn't given it much thought. She thought she had until August to tackle it. August eighth, that was the date they'd always celebrated—the date in the foster system database. Turned out even that was a lie.

That wasn't what was really bothering Nikki though. She knew it was just a number on a calendar. Savior had dropped much bigger bombs than that. But after a few minutes of staring blankly at the monitors, she realized that what was bothering her most wasn't all the things Savior had said, but what he hadn't.
 

Not once had he mentioned Michael.

Gideon

Savior stepped past Gideon, his expression neutral, controlled. He walked back to his monitors and restarted the simulations as if nothing had happened.

Safely behind his emotional wall, Gideon considered the possibility that the man he'd fought to destroy for so many years was not the threat he believed him to be.

Perhaps in Savior's mind, he hadn't crossed a line by talking to Nikki alone just now. Perhaps he simply wanted to connect with the child who looked more like her mother—a woman Gideon believed Savior had truly loved—with each passing day, not seduce her into trusting him and then use the abilities he'd given her to further his own agenda.
 

It was possible.
 

Perhaps he was sincere in his desire to stop the monsters he and Gideon had unleashed on the world through their hubris.
 

Also possible.
 

Perhaps he truly wanted to make amends for decades of misguided mania and put the Gateway project to rest once and for all.

All possible, if unlikely.

In the three days they'd been together, working side by side, Savior's mask—if mask it was—had not slipped once. For every minute of every day, he'd seemed as open, earnest, and unburdened as he'd been before the Event. Gideon was inclined, therefore, to entertain the possibility that he'd been mistaken about his friend, just as he'd been mistaken about their creation.

Gideon moved to another console and called up the power escalation algorithm, but his gaze drifted back to Savior.
 

All he had to do to accept Savior's change of heart, to believe in his friend again, was step out from behind the wall and let his emotions make the call. He wanted to believe in Savior. He wanted to give up this crusade. The good they could do working together was limitless. His heart knew as much. His heart remembered, all too well despite the years, how it felt to love Christopher Hale. To let the rest of him remember, all he had to do was let go and feel again.

But Gideon didn't dare.
 

He knew what waited in the darkness outside the barrier. His memory held every moment of pain he'd caused in his crusade against Savior, every dream he'd crushed, every life he'd ruined, perfectly preserved like it had all happened yesterday. If his crusade had been misguided, then every sacrifice he'd made, every sacrifice he'd forced upon others, had been for nothing.