Children of Genesis (The Gateway Series Book 1) Page 12

  Hunger almost forgotten, Nikki snagged an apple from a bowl next to the dish rack, and then a pack of granola from the shelf beside it, and an energy bar. OK, hunger remembered. Juggling her food as she tried to unwrap the energy bar, she took the spiral steps two at a time. When she climbed through a heavy hatch at the top, what she saw was not what she was expecting. Not at all.

  She was in an honest-to-god, pun intended, old-school church. She was standing where the presenter, or whatever, would stand on a little stage overlooking the audience. It was mostly one long room made of old looking wood, with a high vaulted ceiling, thick exposed rafters, and hanging brass chandeliers. Tall stained-glass windows down the sides gave the place a warm glow in the morning light, and at the far end, the entrance had been converted to one huge, multi-paned window with a view of grass and wildflowers stretching out to a bluff overlooking the ocean and several close islands. This place couldn’t be real.

  Instead of those long church benches, the audience area had one long banquet table running down the middle with tall ladder-back chairs all around it. Michael was sitting in a side chair at the near end, a half-eaten bowl of something oatmealy in front of him, and right next to him was a girl.

  The girl, Kate, was definitely not what Nikki had expected. For one thing, she was about their age, give a couple years. For another, she was kind of cute, in an understated way. She had honey-brown hair falling to her shoulders, retro eyeglasses, and clothes that looked like she was actually their first owner. She was sitting cross-legged in a chair beside Michael, leaning toward him like he was the most interesting thing in the world.

  “Hey,” Michael said, spotting Nikki.

  The girl turned, and her face lit up like it was mac & cheese day at the soup kitchen. “Hey, you’re up!”

  “Yay,” Nikki said with mock enthusiasm, earning a squinty look from Michael. He could be a real grumpus sometimes, especially when dealing with unwanted female attention. He'd taken off that stupid handcuff bracelet though, so at least he was done beating himself up over the Sky City job. Small blessing.

  Nikki chipmunked half the energy bar and stepped down off the stage. She took a seat across from them and eyed Michael’s breakfast as she awkwardly chewed the tough bar. The oatmeal looked kind of yummy close up.

  “You believe this place?” she said around her mouthful, glancing around.

  “It’s pretty cool, isn’t it?” the girl said, looking over at the view. Something about her voice was familiar to Nikki. “Want to know the story?”

  “Go crazy,” Nikki mumbled as she crammed the other half of the bar into her mouth.

  “The church here was a bit of a doomsday cult back in the day,” the girl said, apparently unfazed by Nikki’s lack of enthusiasm. “They built the bunker underneath to protect the congregation during the apocalypse. When E-Day hit, they thought it was the day. They locked themselves up in the bunker to ride out the worst of the chaos. Then when they thought the time was right, they ascended.”

  Nikki looked at her like she was crazy.

  “Well, maybe not really. They committed mass suicide,” she said, “which I guess isn’t so—”

  “Cool,” Nikki said, nodding her head, her eyes on her uncooperative granola wrapper.

  “Yeah, well, Gideon got his hands on it after that,” the girl went on after a pause. “About twenty years ago, he and my grandfather starting renovating it to better fit their needs.”

  “Your grandfather?” Nikki said without looking up.

  “Gram,” the girl replied. “Big teddy bear looking guy, covered in engine grease. You’ll see him around. I’m Kate, by the way.”

  Nikki slid Michael’s bowl her way, dumping the granola in as she did so. As she stirred, what was familiar about Kate’s voice clicked in her head.

  “You’re Command,” she said, looking up.

  Kate smiled and nodded, darting an almost shy look at Michael. “I’m the resident IT. I usually coordinate ops from the command center. Been at it since I joined Gram here when I got back from college in Hong Kong.”

  Nikki let the ensuing silence stretch to what she hoped was Kate’s breaking point as she turned her attention to the oatmeal. It wasn’t great, but she was hungry enough that she powered through.

  “I should let you two be alone,” Kate said. “I have to work on our com situation anyway. See you later.”

  Michael responded appropriately. Nikki just smiled around a mouthful.

  “Oh, yeah,” Kate said before she got to the hatch. “I saw that you didn’t have much in the way of clothes when I was settling you in last night.”

  “That was you?” Nikki said after she swallowed.

  Kate nodded and smiled again.

  “Yeah, you can blame my brother for that,” Nikki said.

  “He told me.” Kate gave Michael a fake glare. “He really should have given you better warning.”

  “I know, right?” Nikki said, giving Michael a real glare.

  “Don’t worry,” Kate went on. “I gave him an earful for it. But, anyway, if you want, you can go through my stuff and borrow anything you like.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure. My room’s just down the hall from yours. I’ll show you later,” Kate said, giving Michael a parting smile and wave and disappearing down the hatch.

  Nikki finished off the oatmeal and stared at the hatch.

  “What do you think her angle is?” she said.

  “She’s nice, Nikki,” Michael said. “Leave it alone.”

  “That’s not it,” she said, leaning back.

  “Please don’t make up some—”

  “Got it,” she said over him. “She’s trying to impress you by being nice to your sister. Yep. That’s it.”

  “Leave her alone.”

  “Yeah, I’m disappointed too,” she said, picking up the apple and examining it. “That approach doesn’t make you squirm nearly enough. It really puts me in the hot seat instead.”

  “I don’t squirm.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure she’s fine,” she said, picking her starting point on the apple.

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m sure she was a real pickle spinner over in China,” she went on, taking a bite of the apple and continuing to talk around it. “But now that she lives with Grampa, she has to act all churchy.”

  “Do you hate me?” he asked, putting his head in his hands and rubbing his temples.

  Nikki laughed a real, warm, and genuinely happy laugh, pulling her legs up into her chair and hugging her knees with her free hand. “No. I’m just happy to be able to do this again.” She felt her smile drop a little. “I wasn’t sure I was going to make it for while there.”

  Michael lowered his hands slowly. “Me neither.”

  Nikki looked away first, turning to take in the impressive view. “Where are we?”

  “Washington,” Michael replied. “On an island north of Seattle.”

  “Seattle, huh?” she said, a slow smile forming. “I can handle that. I hear there are some insane clubs in Seattle. You ready to blow this place?”

  “We’re not leaving, Nikki. Not yet.”

  “Ooh, you’re right. I need to see what Hong Kong Katie has in her closet first.”

  “It’s Kate. And we’re not leaving until we talk to Gideon.”

  “There’s that name again,” Nikki said. “Who’s this Gideon everybody keeps talking about?”

  Michael stood and picked up the bowl and wrappers, giving Nikki a look like she should already know. “The guy who healed you,” he said.

  “You’re calling yourself Gideon now?”

  “Nikki—it wasn’t me this time,” he said, and Nikki could tell she’d struck a nerve with this conversation. She knew she probably had earlier, but now she could really tell.

  “Gideon is the one who sent these people to help us,” he said. He dropped his eyes to the bowl, one hand arranging and rearranging the wrappers inside it. “He also knows where we came
from, Nikki.”

  She swallowed an unchewed bite of apple, hardly noticing.

  “You’re serious,” she said. She knew he was. She could feel his tension rising again through the link. She also knew how important this was to him, too important for her to make light of it.

  Nikki had stopped caring where they’d come from a long time ago. After a few years on the streets, she’d decided that whoever their parents had been, they’d obviously turned their backs on their kids. They’d given Nikki and Michael over to a system that had no way to deal with them or their abilities. They’d thrown their kids away, essentially. Nikki didn’t feel like forgiving that, and she really didn’t want to meet the kind of people who could do it.

  But for Michael, the man who tried to believe the best about people, finding out where they’d come from had always been an obsession, perhaps the strongest one he had. For him, she’d play along.

  “Then let’s go find this Gideon.”

  Chapter 13

  Michael

  Michael approached the briefing room with a dragging sensation in the pit of his stomach, a sensation that felt too much like doubt. Since the day he’d learned what the foster system was, he’d wanted to know where he and Nikki had come from. He’d wanted to know for so long, and had pinned so many hopes and expectations to the knowledge, that now he was afraid of what the truth might do to him. Something told him nothing he learned today would make him any happier than he already was. That something was making him want to do what Nikki no doubt wanted to do—walk right out of this place and hit the road to Seattle.

  What kept him moving into the room, strangely enough, was the support he felt from Nikki through their link. For that he loved his sister. She might be a huge pain in the world’s ass most of the time, and she loved to keep her softer feelings under lock and key and pretend she cared about nothing but herself. But when it really counted, when she knew something was this important to him, she was there to back him up. When it really mattered, she was there for him one hundred percent, even when she thought what they were doing was stupid, which he was one hundred percent sure she did now.

  He glanced back at Nikki as he reached the door. She flashed him a cheesy smile, bobbing her eyebrows and giving him a double thumbs-up. He couldn’t help smiling back. Not even his superhuman capacity for worry was a match for his sister. Michael turned and walked into the room.

  The briefing room had obviously been designed as a small chapel, one Gideon’s people had done little to change. The door opened on a central aisle flanked by rows of seats on either side, enough for about fifty people, all facing a railed platform on the far side of the room. Electric torches made to simulate fire and a large artificial skylight over the platform gave the room a strange mood somewhere between peaceful and ominous.

  Michael picked a seat near the front, noticing Impact leaning against the back wall as he turned into the row. He looked less than enthused to be there, even after Nikki winked at him. Maybe especially after Nikki winked at him.

  As soon as Michael and Nikki sat, Gideon and Elias came in together, apparently in the middle of a conversation, or maybe an argument by the look on Elias’s face. Gideon strode to the front of the room and stepped up onto the platform. Elias stopped at the bottom of the steps to the platform and leaned back against the rail, arms crossed. He nodded and forced a smile for Michael and Nikki, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

  Gideon stepped under the brighter light from the skylight and turned to face them, noticing Impact in the back and giving him an expressionless stare. The light from the skylight clearly illuminated the dull black skin across Gideon’s forehead and cheek, and the torchlight reflected off his larger, slanted eye with an unmistakable red glow.

  Michael risked a glance at Nikki. She was literally biting both lips and had her forehead scrunched with the effort of not saying something. She had to be bursting, but she’d apparently set her mind to staying supportive for Michael. He was going to owe her big time for this.

  Gideon finally dropped his gaze to Michael and Nikki.

  “You know Savior is hunting you,” he said without preamble. “But not because of your actions in Sky City. That did nothing more than tell him you were indeed still alive and where you were.”

  Michael wanted to stop Gideon, to tell him they hadn’t come here to talk about Savior—they were here to find out where they’d come from. But he had a heavy feeling that’s exactly what Gideon was telling him.

  “I can’t tell you what Savior wants with you,” Gideon went on, his low voice almost hypnotic, his softly glowing eye more so. “But the reason you were created holds our best clue.”

  “Created?” Michael said.

  “Marcus, this isn’t the way—” Elias broke in, but Gideon held up his normal hand to stop him, his eyes never leaving Nikki and Michael.

  “These two are stronger than you credit them, Elias,” Gideon said. “Nothing we tell them today will break them.”

  Michael wasn’t so sure.

  Chapter 14

  Impact

  Impact knew what was coming. He’d more than heard this story before; he’d lived part of it.

  “After Savior went public with his abilities in the conflicts following the Event, the army saw a chance to once again make the U.S. military the dominant fighting force on the planet,” Gideon began after a pause. “They tasked Savior with making their soldiers powerful like him. They wanted not just one man who could stop a battalion. They wanted an entire army.”

  Impact saw the girl stretch and stifle a yawn behind her brother’s back. The brother was leaning forward in his seat, completely lost in the past, oblivious to everything around him. Impact could see the toddlers he remembered in the young adults in front of him. In some ways, so little had changed. In others…

  “Savior was given all the funding and resources the army had to spare,” Gideon went on. “The army bet everything on him. And they lost. But not due to lack of skill on Savior’s part. He was the most gifted geneticist I’d ever seen. He still is. But the element we discovered through the Gateway, the one that made him so powerful, is unlike anything we know. Genesis, as we dubbed the element, is atypical in its instability. Instead of stripping electrons in predictable ways, genesis bonds or alters any other elements it contacts in a different manner every time. Genesis is predictable only in its propensity for chaos. Faced with such unpredictability, even Savior’s genius fell short.”

  Fell short. Say what you mean, Impact thought. It’s just a word. His experiments were failures.

  “His first attempts to enhance existing soldiers produced devastating results,” Gideon said, his lip curling. “The few subjects who survived were disfigured, painfully so, and were inevitably driven quite insane.

  “Savior then switched to subjects who had been closer to the blast on E-Day, those who had already survived limited exposure to the energy genesis generates. There he tasted his first success. Most of his subjects survived the gene therapy, but again the results were unpredictable. The traits he intended to enhance were not always affected. And even more damning for his needs, the subjects proved uncontrollable.

  “For years, Savior tried to fine tune his results, but creating a suitable soldier from a fully developed subject continued to elude him. When he began to experiment with…other sources of DNA, I tried to intervene. I knew better than anyone—” Gideon paused, visibly restraining some emotion that nearly won the struggle as he stared at his black, clawed hand on the rail. “I couldn’t stop him. I was but one man. Savior had the full might of the army behind him. Thankfully, he abandoned that line of experiments when the results proved even more uncontrollable than those before.

  “Savior finally decided that to make a soldier with the desired traits, one he could control, he needed to start at the beginning. He began testing his genetic therapy at the fetus and gamete level. Instead of enhancing a soldier, he sought to create one.

  “At first the army turned him do
wn. With the newly minted agreement with China, the army saw its days were numbered. They wanted results immediately, not in twenty years.

  “But Savior pressed on. And for the first time he was able to realize almost exactly the abilities he was seeking, but once again the element proved unpredictable.” Gideon looked back and forth between the twins. “In your case, he wanted a soldier who grew more powerful the more damage it took. In that regard, he was successful. What he didn’t intend was for the energy to split the egg after fertilization. Instead of one unstoppable soldier, he ended up with twins.”

  “So he just chucked us in the garbage?” Nikki said. It was the first time she’d spoken. She looked almost surprised she’d done so.

  “No,” Gideon answered. “He was too close to his goal to waste any chance to test you, to gather all the data he could—”

  Of course not, Impact thought, his own anger starting to swell. He loved his “tests” way too much to give them up.

  “He no doubt intended to push you to the limits of what you could do,” Gideon went on. “To learn all he could from you before his next attempt.”

  Impact could feel the heat rising in his face. Not the limits of what you could do. The limits of what he thought you should do.

  “Wait,” Michael said. “Who provided the…raw materials? Are you telling us that we’re Savior’s…”

  Impact could hear the hope in the brother’s voice. He didn’t know whether it was hope that Savior was his father or hope that he wasn’t. For Impact, there was only one reaction. But he could understand the appeal of having the most powerful man the world had ever known as your father, if you didn’t know the full scope of the horrors he’d created, and those he’d inflicted. The illusion of Savior was nowhere close to the ugly reality.

  “No,” Gideon said, and Impact saw the tension ease in both the twins. His own only increased.