Children of Genesis (The Gateway Series Book 1) Read online

  “Are you here for the girl, Jon?”

  —he clenched his right side, imagined the energy reversing in that one spot, imagined the friction increasing there, and he changed direction. But not enough. He hit the wall at a shallow angle, breaking loose a wedge of concrete, and shoved off to complete his turn, losing half of his charge in the process.

  “She has a name,” he shouted as he accelerated along the back wall toward the elevator. “It's not girl. It's Nikki. And mine's Impact, not Jon. Not anymore.” He struggled to regain his focus as he neared the elevator and the next corner. The other soldier had to know he was coming for him now. He had to know where the attack would come from. He would be expecting it. If Impact could just get the maneuver right—if he could change direction early and cut the corner…

  “Of course. Impact.”

  He couldn't do it. Couldn't hold the concentration. He couldn't block out the distraction in the center of the room. So he improvised. He swerved into the next column, heard it crack as he glanced off it and angled out across the corner of the room. He saw the soldier's eyes widen as the man tried to swing his aim toward him from the corner. Impact heard the snap of what he hoped was the gun breaking as he ran through and sent the soldier hurtling into the wall.

  “You're a man now,” Savior continued, his voice unruffled. “Able to make your own identity, make your own decisions, and your own vows. Tell me, Impact, did you vow to protect Nikki, or was it perhaps to save her?”

  Impact felt a tingle that wasn't coming from his own charge, and the column he was racing past exploded into him and the wall. The envelope protected him, but it crumbled as he slammed into the wall then the floor and slid in a slow spin, his momentum wasted.

  His ears were ringing as he stood up, but his vision was unaffected. He watched Savior walking slowly toward him, and he didn't need the slight tingle he could feel in the air to tell him Savior's shield was up. Powdery concrete dust from the shattered column blew softly across the room, but it collided with an invisible barrier a pace from Savior, and as he strode forward a circle of smooth, clear floor moved with him.

  Savior stopped and held his hands out to the side, like he wasn't going to attack again, but Impact tensed anyway. “For a time I thought I'd failed with you.” Savior's cool, strong voice had a soothing effect Impact had almost forgotten. “All of you. And I was too hard on myself, and perhaps on you, because of my disappointment.”

  Impact wanted to run again, to build a charge so he could attack the man in front of him like he'd daydreamed, but instead he just stood there, his limbs trembling with adrenaline and the desire to move as the ringing in his ears slowly faded. Savior's words and tone, bordering on apologetic, wouldn't let him budge.

  “Much has changed since you left…”

  The pause where Savior might have said his name caused a surge of longing in Impact, and he hated himself for it. He hated himself because he knew “Impact” wasn't what the child in him wanted to hear his father call him, nor was “Jon.” He wanted to hear something the man in front of him had never said, and probably never would.

  “For too long I tried to bend genesis to my will instead of letting it do what its nature demanded. Much like I did with you. When my results didn't match my design, I deemed those results a failure.” Savior paused, and Impact swallowed against the fury and pain that word sparked. “I was so preoccupied with what I'd intended, I failed to see the potential in front of me.

  “Take the twins, for instance. I engineered a perfect soldier, a weapon that would grow stronger with every attack leveled against it. But genesis, true to its chaotic nature, refused to conform. It made the slightest change and split my design in two. I saw failure, where I should have seen opportunity. Together, the twins are a perfect fighting team. And apart,” he said with a slight lift of his eyebrows, “well, they're something else entirely, something even more valuable. But I was too blind to see it. As I was with you.”

  Impact swallowed again. Don't listen to him! Run, he screamed in his head. He's manipulating you, just like he does everybody else. But his feet wouldn't move.

  “When I designed you, I knew even less about working with genesis. I engineered a soldier with limitless stamina and speed, and, of course, a genetic imperative to follow orders.” Savior took another step closer and lowered his hands, an almost fond smile touching his mouth. “You exceeded my expectations in every area except the last, as I'm sure you remember. When you refused orders, I cried failure. It wasn't until after you left that I realized the subtle change genesis had wrought on my design. But by then it was too late. Elias had already taken you away.”

  “He didn't take me,” Impact choked out. He took a halting breath and pressed on, rebuilding his angry confidence with each word, feeling Savior's spell unravel with his silence. “I left. I had a choice, and I chose to leave.”

  “So you d—”

  “No! I don't want to hear another word.” Impact pulled his voice back from a shout, just barely. “I'm not one of your adoring fans, so stop trying to manipulate me. You can't. You can't hurt me either. Not anymore.” He was afraid he was about to start rambling, but he was more afraid of letting Savior regain control of the conversation. Despite his angry boast, he knew his father could manipulate him all too easily, as he'd proven already. “I'm stronger now. Stronger than you know.”

  “So it seems,” Savior said with a nod toward the east wing.

  “I'm not here just for Nikki,” Impact said before Savior could go on. Cutting his father off again, asserting dominance even in such a small way gave his confidence a charge of its own. “I'm here for you. You're done, Savior.” He punched all the scorn and sarcasm he could into the name. “It's time you learned you're not untouchable. It's time you saw just how powerful this soldier has become.”

  Savior's cool mask hardened, his smile flattening out as his apparent amusement dissolved. He looked at Impact like he was seeing him for the first time, almost like he was confused by what he saw before him. Either way, the fact that Savior was finally taking him seriously gave Impact's confidence the last little nudge it needed.

  “Is this ignorance? Have you truly not discovered your own limitations? Or were you simply too young to remember a boy's heartfelt pledge?”

  “I remember everything!” he shouted, his heart already racing in anticipation.

  Savior studied him in cold silence, his stare flat and hard the way Impact remembered. Impact stared back, refusing to back down, his breath coming faster and faster as his heart pounded.

  “So you say,” Savior said. “Let's find out together.”

  That was all the warning Impact had. With a casual flick of his hand, Savior released a pulse of energy, but Impact was already moving. He heard the wall buckle behind him as the pulse slammed into it. He felt the buzz and tingle of the charged air as he raced away from it in a wide arc.

  He pushed himself as hard as he could, as hard as he had on his approach to the base. Harder. A pulse obliterated a column beside him, but he shot past before the debris could touch him. He felt the next pulse, but it struck just behind him as he continued his curve around the room. As his speed increased, the pulses fell farther behind him. His father couldn't track fast enough. If Savior wanted to see his limits, Impact was more than ready to show him. He pushed himself as hard as he'd ever pushed, tightening his curve with each increasingly fast lap around the room.

  The charge burning inside him built quickly, and Impact used the familiar burn to block out everything but his breathing and the path he was tracing. His focus came easier than he would have thought possible. With perfect clarity he felt the envelope building around him, targeted the section he wanted on his right flank, and—

  He cut sharply toward the center of the room without losing a step of speed.

  He had time for one quick look at Savior as he rocketed toward him. In arrogance, or acceptance of the inevitable, Savior was standing still, his arms falling to his sides, the dus
t whipped up by Impact's passage blowing against his uniform.

  In the fraction of a second before he hit, Impact's mind registered that Savior's shield was down, that he was going to suffer the full force of the impact. Then his feet betrayed him, and once again he failed in front of his father. Just as it had on that training track all those years ago, Impact's body refused to obey him. At the last instant, his feet turned aside. He missed Savior and slammed through one column then another before he left his feet.

  When his vision returned, he was lying on his back on the shattered ruin of a third column, and Savior was standing over him.

  “Some part of you remembers after all,” Savior said, his eyes blazing with a white glow. “The girl wasn't the first person you vowed to protect…Jon.” Then he raised his palm, and the last thing Impact saw was the dust and debris leaping up around him as the pulse drove him into the floor.

  Chapter 40

  Nikki

  Nikki's elated high didn't last long. Once she realized she was getting all the power of a good fight without any of the fun, she started getting antsy.

  Somewhere nearby Michael took another blow, this one to the shoulder, and Nikki's body answered with yet another tingling rush of strength. Only the tingling didn't fade after the strength took hold like it usually did. Instead, it joined the rest of the angry tingles bouncing around in her stationary muscles and added its shrill voice to the thousands already shrieking to tear their way out of her skin. She was about to go insane.

  As maddening as the tingling was, it wasn't the only source of her compounding frustration. What was really bothering her was the echo of sensation and emotion the tingling was trying to mask. What was really winding her up like a fifty-five-kilo rubber band was what she could feel from her brother.

  Michael was hurt. Not just a bruise here and a cut there, either. That last blow alone had cracked something in his shoulder, and it wasn't the worst hit he'd taken since he showed up, not even close. She could fix him up if somebody would just pound on her, but here she was trussed up like she was in an S&M parlor, and there was no dom in sight.

  She felt helpless. Useless. Nikki would be the first to admit—well, maybe not the first—that she tended to get carried away in a fight and didn't always pull her weight as far as power building went. She sometimes forgot to take her fair share of hits in a timely manner. But in a way she blamed Michael for that. With all that training and practicing he did, she felt like he was too good of a fighter to need constant juicing like she did. Her style required a lot more maintenance, a lot more dedicated attention from Michael. She was all charge and smash to his bob and weave. But even so, she'd never let him fall. She always took the big hits when he really needed her.

  Except he was out there somewhere right now, really needing her, and despite all the strength pulsing through her half-naked frame, she was powerless to help him.

  As much as she hated giving Savior's people anything even halfway resembling praise, this second tank they'd set up just might be her match. Thanks to Michael, she was steadily approaching the threshold of being as charged up as she'd ever been, but the restraints weren't budging. They were designed too well. The way she was stretched out all spread-eagle, she couldn't bring her full power to bear on any of the thick metal cylinders completely enclosing her hands and feet.

  The BioGel wasn't helping either. Instead of being immersed in the warm, dreamy fluid she was used to feeling flowing around and through her body, she was encased in a cold, rubbery jelly that slowed her movements and was trying to leech all the heat right out of her.

  She wanted to scream, but nobody would care if she did. The intercom was off and everybody in the lab was focused on dismantling gear, packing up storage cores, all under the agitated gaze of the two guards Price had left to supervise. Not even Radij, who was digging through files on his computer not two meters away, was paying her any mind.

  Michael took a hit to the head, a hit strong enough to daze him and send a current of fear through the link, and Nikki lost it. She thrashed against her bonds wildly trying to grind her wrists against the edge of her restraints. She strained forward trying to reach the glass with her head, anything to cause herself injury. But it was no use. She was too strong for anything in the tank to hurt her.

  She screamed at the top of her lungs, knowing the sound couldn't reach any ears but her own, and added that frustration to the fire building inside her. She took a deep, angry breath and pulled her hands and feet inward as hard as she could. Eyes squeezed tight, she strained and strained until the metal groaned.

  She relaxed, breathed again, and looked up hoping to see the restraints starting to give. They looked the same. If the metal was weakening, she couldn't see it. She wasn't strong enough to break out, not yet. But Michael needed power, and he needed it now.

  Nikki ground her teeth and thrashed again in fury, impotent as it was. Then she caught Radij looking at her.

  “Hey!” she yelled even though she knew he couldn't hear a word. “Send the pain. You read me? Light up the fire water and whatnot!”

  Behind the thick frame of his glasses, his brow scrunched.

  Seriously? “Cut the juice on, dammit! Now!”

  He cut his eyes toward the guards, and Nikki's increasingly frustrated gaze followed. One of them was checking the timepiece on the inside of his wrist and holding his earpiece as he struggled to hear something. His partner had given in and was helping one of the techs wrestle an overloaded cart through the door.

  Nikki looked back, and Radij gave her a look that even she could read. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes!” she bellowed. She exaggerated her next scream to make sure he got the message. “Hurt me! Hurt me now!”

  After another glance at the guards that nearly drove Nikki over the edge again, Radij stepped to the control console and went to work.

  The BioGel warmed in a flash. Then the pain hit, and Nikki released a shout of sweet victory as the current ripped through her. She'd been afraid not even the fire water could hurt her now, charged up as she was, but her strength didn't seem to matter to the BioGel. However this stuff worked, it hurt just as much when she was bursting with power as it did when she was on death's door.

  She didn't try to fight the current. She just closed her eyes and embraced the pain. Underneath the burn, she felt the surge in Michael, the answering flare of gratitude and confidence, and she smiled. She rode the pain as he put her strength to use. She wanted it to last. He needed it to last, and she could and would suffer through the burn as long as needed.

  She felt the pops more than heard them—four quick thumps deep within the BioGel—then the current flickered and died.

  When she opened her eyes, Price was standing outside the tank with his pistol pointed at her, the tank was spraying BioGel in long arcs through the holes he'd put in it, and Radij was on the floor trying to drag himself away, leaving a trail of blood behind.

  Michael

  Michael half slid, half rolled across the dry ground a dozen meters or more before he exhausted the momentum of the Hunter's backhanded blow. He pushed himself back to his feet with a grunt and turned to keep the Hunter in sight, cradling his right arm against his chest as he did so.

  The pain was enough to take his breath. He'd taken a stupid chance and struck when he'd seen an opening, leaving himself open to attack in the process, and he'd paid for it. He'd heard bone crack when the blow landed. Judging from the pain at the smallest movement, his right arm was essentially useless now.

  At least he had the satisfaction of seeing the Hunter struggling as well, for once. One of its leg joints, the closest thing it had to a knee, was crushed. Michael had locked the joint and used the Hunter's weight and strength against it to make it damage itself. He would have been proud of himself if he hadn't lost the use of one of his own limbs in the process. High price to pay.

  Too high, looks like, he thought as he watched the Hunter adapt. The monster machine tried to put weight on the le
g only once. When it started to buckle, the Hunter dropped down onto its three remaining limbs, curled the useless one up out of the way, and prepared to launch itself toward him again.

  He'd hoped to slow the thing, to give himself a chance to catch his breath, not to mention to make it easier for him to stay out of the thing's reach. No such luck.

  If only he could have crippled an arm. Those were Hunter's main weapons, lightning fast and deadly with those sharpened, claw-like hands. Michael had half a dozen cuts already from where he'd been just a little too slow twisting clear or not strong enough to redirect a strike completely. And that was with two working arms of his own. With one arm out of commission—

  The Hunter launched toward him, and Michael sidestepped to his left. The sun was still low in the eastern sky, so he put his back to it as the Hunter landed and reared up on its one good leg. He didn't know how the thing's vision worked, but if the glare could buy him another fraction of a second to react, he'd take it.

  He tensed as the Hunter ducked its shoulders, its head swaying side to side like a snake's as it focused on him. Then it struck.

  Michael avoided the first blow, a low and fast slash. He pivoted back at an angle and the blow struck the dirt at his feet. The second blow followed hard after the first, and this time Michael wasn't so lucky. The Hunter caught his ankle in its left hand as he tried to jump back, and it held on as he crashed into the ground.

  This was the worst possible position he could be in: caught in the thing's grip, on his back where he couldn't maneuver. But Michael didn't care. It was hard to worry when power was roaring into him from Nikki.

  The pain in his shoulder disappeared as the wave of energy rolled over him and just kept coming. Whatever was happening to Nikki, it was ongoing, but through the link he felt only exhilaration. Only his sister would be excited about what must be excruciating pain. He'd missed her, and her special kind of crazy.