Children of Evolution (The Gateway Series Book 2) (60 page)

Nikki turned to see Impact streak through the Gateway, slowing steadily as he closed on them. He jogged the last few meters, squinting against the heat as the wind started to reach him. Then he walked to stand on the other side of Elias, never once looking in Savior's direction.

"They're right behind me," he said simply.

Nikki saw them. They bounded onto the dance floor and through the Gateway with sickening speed, their glossy black hide taking on a red tint as they charged into the dust-filtered light, their eyes glowing with hunger—far more of them than she'd imagined.

Kate

"He's through," Padre reported. "Tangos following."

"Copy that," Kate said. She touched the blue dot representing Impact and slid it off the 3D model of the op site. She slid it into the "Gateway" holding area she'd created on the side of the tac table, where Elias, Cole, Nikki, and Savior waited.

She could have pirated off the government satellites allowed to survey the area, but she didn't want to risk getting detected and calling attention to what was happening. The team was trespassing on restricted land. Yes, they had Savior with them. He had access codes. He was authorized. He could keep them out of trouble. But Kate didn't trust him. How could she? How could the others?

Kate didn't even want to think about what was happening on the other side of that Gateway. She couldn't. The lives that were in Savior's hands—

"Keep your focus on your job, Kate," she mumbled to herself. "No distractions today."

"Hmm?" Gram grunted from the end of the table.
 

"Nothing," Kate said. "Just talking to myself."

Gram nodded and sipped his coffee, his eyes going back to the model. He was used to how Kate worked. Beside him, Max didn't react at all. He continued to stare through the model, his mind probably somewhere else entirely.

There were no distractions today aside from Gram and Max, of course, but Gram always stayed out of her way when she was coordinating an op, and Max was—Max. He was giving her a break today though. No random attacks on her mind. No distracting images and sounds for her to ignore. He knew she was running the op today. He understood how important that was.

"Ghost—Command," she said. "Are you seeing any stragglers?"

"Eyes on two so far, Command," Padre replied. "Engaging."

"Copy, Ghost," she said. "Eagle—Command. Any contacts in your area?"

"That's a negative, little lady," Corso purred back. "Widening the radius as we speak."

Kate glanced up at the monitor on the opposite wall and frowned at the dot moving through Utah. Him she could track—he was outside the restricted area—even though she'd rather not. She wasn't Corso's biggest fan.

She could understand what Nikki saw in him, from an intellectual standpoint. She understood that he had that suave and dangerous thing going for him. She understood that he could be charming, in his way. She understood that he had plenty of appeal for women who liked the bad boy. She just wasn't one of those women. She wasn't attracted to anything Corso had to offer. She'd tried dating a bad boy once in college, to see what all the fuss was about, but it didn't last long.

Nikki liked Corso though, and he'd proven his worth on multiple occasions, so the rest of the team put up with him for her sake. Kate could do the same.

"Wasp—Command," Kate said. "You're clear to move in."
 

"Copy that, Command," Ace replied. "We're inbound."

Kate tapped the model of the transport and moved it down beside the Gateway.

"OK, honey," Becks said from the doorway. "It's done."

Ace's ex walked in wiping icing from her hands with a towel stained enough to look tie-dyed. Her plain white T-shirt had several bright smears on it as well. "I'm telling you though, those colors are too bright and cheery for that girl."

"She'll love it," Kate said. She smiled at the thought of how surprised Nikki would be—how surprised they'd both be. It was Michael's birthday too, after all.
 

It felt bizarre to be worrying about a surprise birthday party with an op underway, especially since she'd just reminded herself not to get distracted, but Padre had insisted. Her birthday might have come and gone by the time they got back, but Nikki deserved a little normal. Kate wasn't about to argue. They all could use a little normal.

"How's it going?" Becks asked, walking up behind Max's chair to look at the model of the op.

"She's got it under control," Gram replied in a low voice.
 

So it seemed, but you never knew when an op was going to "go sideways," as Elias liked to put it. You had to keep an eye on everything. You had to—

Corso's dot on the wall monitor had changed direction. That wasn't so strange, if he'd spotted something, but he'd also increased speed and not called in.

"Eagle—Command," Kate said. "What's happening?"

The squawk that replied quickly turned ear-piercing.
 

Kate waved her hand through the volume control, muting the channel, and took a quick breath. Heart suddenly pounding but hands steady, she checked her encryption and ran a quick network diagnostic. What she saw was impossible, or so she'd believed until now.
 

Mind racing, Kate accessed every satellite in the area, not bothering to cover her tracks. It was too late for that.
 

At the same time, she started initiating emergency protocols she never thought she'd have to use.

"Katie girl, what's wrong?" Gram asked.

"Cut the lines," she replied calmly, her focus on the many tasks she was trying to do at once. Too many.
 

"What?" Becks asked.
 

"You're sure," Gram said, already rising. It wasn't really a question. He knew her well enough to know she wouldn't have said it otherwise.

"Cut them all. Now," she repeated.

"Go!" Gram barked at Becks as he hobbled for the steps as fast as he could. "That wall. Network port in the corner."

Kate heard them rushing to do as she ordered—Becks to the primary connection, Gram to the satellite backup lines. She was racing against them now, racing to pull as much data from her system's killer as she could before the death blow fell.

The main network went down before she could piece together a full sat map of the Wasteland, but she got close, enough to see what she was praying she wouldn't. She executed the remaining protocols as quickly as she could, an icy spike boring into her chest, until the final satellite backup went dark. Then she started pulling what she'd gathered onto a data chip.

"That's it," Gram called from the server pit.
 

"Now the power, Gram," she said, raising her voice just enough for him to hear. She had trouble being loud when she was focused. "Not enough bandwidth left over for your mouth," her favorite professor had joked once.
 

She saw his face now. Then she thought of the plants in her room. She'd have to water them. And Nikki's cake.
Oh, Nikki's cake.

The systems started powering down per her programmed sequence. She lost monitors, the tac table, then her virtual controls. The control station on the platform went dark, then the steady red lights in the darkness around her, her constant companions, started winking out one at a time.
 

She still had voice control for another few seconds. It was so much slower than her virtual controls, but that was OK. She had only one command left.
 

"Execute program Doomsday Daisy one five eight," she said.

There was no confirmation, but she didn't need it. The last of the power went down, but not before the first of the charges went off. One by one, the drives on the servers flashed and melted, filling the command center with the acrid stench of ozone and burning plastic.

"Jesus," Becks said. "That's that. What now?"

"Now we run," she said, turning to meet Gram's eyes. "We have to run."

She started moving then, rushing through the physical tasks that were so much slower, so much more so because she was distracted by a single thought that kept looping over and over in her mind.
 

They're counting on me, and I can't even warn them.

Max disagreed.

Nikki

Nikki slammed her fist into the armored chest of the creature before her, sending it flying.

Another slashed at her head, and she ducked, punching down into its knee, crushing it. She was moving before it fell, spinning under another slash and coming up with an uppercut that took yet another out of the fight.

Nikki wasn't worried. There were more. There were always more. The more she fought, the louder she yelled, the more they swarmed. The more they swarmed, the more she got to do what she was made to do.

She fought without thought, without fear, without hesitation, striking at every snarling face, every roaring mouth. They'd hunted her for weeks, terrorized her even in her dreams. Never again.

A pulse of energy washed across her from behind, pushing her forward. Savior's pulse sent a ripple of renewed strength through Nikki's body as it toppled the creatures facing her. She was on them before they could stand, tearing through them like a whirlwind.

She kicked the first out of the pack, backhanded the second into the air, and caught the arm of a third as it tried to rise. She spun, swinging the creature into the others, sweeping them aside.

Sounds of battle washed over her as she fought, but Nikki had surrendered to the battle lust. Sound meant nothing unless it pointed her toward her next target or alerted her to an attack. Everything else she blocked out, ignored, no matter how loud it grew. She could listen later. Right now, she had work to do.

Savior pulsed another wave to her right, and Nikki followed, tearing into the dazed creatures in its wake.
 

They fought well together. Not as well as she and Michael had, but it would do for now.
 

Michael.

His voice was thundering inside her head, but she'd blocked it out as well. This was her kind of fight. They'd agreed on that at the start. This wasn't a fight for careful skill and defensive tendencies. This was a brawl. So no tips from him—no distractions. She'd fight this battle her way.
 

But he was shouting, desperately.

"STOP!" she bellowed into the roaring face of a frenzied creature. Then she whipped her fist into its jaw hard enough to crack vertebrae.
 

That word didn't come from her mind though. It came from—

A creature reared and slashed. Nikki twisted and swept the arm across her, locking the joint in a maneuver she didn't know, and snapping it. She spun under the next creature, sweeping its legs, then following up with a flipping hammer kick she'd never mastered.

Only she didn't do any of that. She was a passenger in her own body. Michael had taken over.

What are you doing?
she shouted in her mind.
You swore you'd never—

"Didn't you hear her?" he said through her mouth, which was more than a little disorienting.
 

Her battle lust was shaken when he took over. It crumbled now.
 

Another creature pounced, and Michael reacted. Nikki's body spun and caught the creature in a scissor kick, driving it face-first into the hard ground. She rolled to her feet, ready for the next attack, but there were no creatures close enough to be a threat—none moving, anyway.

"It was Kate," Michael said. "She was reaching out to us. She said—too slow. Here."

Images flooded Nikki's mind—government war ships closing on them, Ace and the others outside overrun, warrant bulletins for each and every one of them—

She got it. Time to go.
 

She'd lost her com early in the fight though, if it would even work now. Kate wouldn't have reached out the way she did if the coms were working. Speaking of which, how had Kate—not important right now.
 

Michael started to release control but Nikki stopped him with a quick,
No. Stay where you are. You're better at explaining than I am. We don't have time to fumble.

"Nikki are you—"

I trust you,
she said.
You've been living like this for months. I can handle it for a few minutes. Just go.

Nikki focused through eyes Michael was controlling, seeing the battlefield with a clear mind for the first time. It didn't look good.
 

A mass of creatures rose in front of her, piling up in a growing mound on top of Savior's shield. It was hurting them though. They were falling off as fast as they climbed up. She caught a brief glimpse of Savior's calm face when one fell away, then the gap was covered up again. They were swarming him, and he was letting them. He was drawing them in to finish this fight with one massive pulse like he'd used on the dome. At least, that's what she would have done in his place.
 

She couldn't see Elias or Cole anywhere. She hoped they were inside Savior's shield. She hoped he was continuing to protect them. Maybe he didn't know about his partners heading this way. Maybe this trap was for him as well. Maybe.

Regardless, she couldn't get to Savior, Elias, and Cole to warn them. Not without a gruesome fight that would take up too much time.
 

Then Michael turned her eyes toward the Gateway.

Ace

They were off the ramp before the transport touched down, moving across the deck plating toward the Gateway, covering every angle. It was a clean debus—by the numbers—the kind that made Ace proud.

She kept her rifle in continuous motion, scanning for tangos as she and Mos hustled to the Gateway. She panned across the com module and hesitated for a fraction of a second. Not yet—the timing had to be perfect. Every part of this plan had to go by the numbers.
 

She finished her sweep and took up a position against the right strut of the Gateway. Mos took cover against the left, taking one last look behind them before swinging his gaze through the Gateway.