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

  “No permanent injuries,” Michael growled, reaching back to pull the bullet from his back. It had broken the skin just enough to lodge there, but it hadn’t penetrated far. The shockwave of its impact however…

  “Relax. He’ll be fine.”

  Shouts from the courtyard pulled Michael’s attention to a squad of cops decked out in full riot gear, shields and tear gas guns included, advancing down one of the escalators. Nikki smiled like they were bringing her presents. This is not going to go well.

  “Duty calls,” Nikki said. “You finish up here. I’ll keep these clowns busy.”

  “No perm―”

  “And before you say it, broken bones aren’t permanent,” she said. Then she was gone, running toward what was sure to become an ugly fray.

  Michael stood to push the container, but a twinge of pain from his back reminded him of why he was on his knee. “Bullet wound, Nikki,” he shouted after her. “Remember?”

  “On it,” she shouted back. He couldn’t see her around a support column, but he heard her bellow at the cops like she was insane. There was a hollow thump, like something fired from a tube, and then Nikki’s whoop and laughter to go along with the shimmer of power healing Michael. Whatever had impacted her stomach hadn’t caused much more than a bruise, which meant she was probably charged enough to withstand their close range gunshots. He hoped.

  “Job first,” he growled at himself. He heaved his container out of the bay, then went to another.

  He sent two more tumbling toward the desert floor below before the dock workers roused themselves from their shock to take action. One of them slapped a button on a wall panel and grabbed a mic from it.

  “Whiskey 352, get that thing off the deck before this maniac trashes it!” he shouted into the mic, no doubt to the pilot of the cargo hauler. Its engines engaged almost immediately, and it started to lift off the smooth pad as the heavy bay doors started grinding closed from either side.

  As the hauler cleared the ground and floated out of the narrowing opening between the closing bay doors, Michael caught a glimpse of an unconscious form crammed into a narrow alcove on the other side of the bay. Whoever it was, he and Nikki hadn’t put him there, which meant he was most likely the real hauler pilot.

  Michael hadn’t given much thought to how the man he’d hired was going to replace the pilot. Lane Corso had been confident to the point of arrogance when he’d said he had his part of the plan under control. Now Michael regretted not sharing the no-permanent-injuries order with anyone other than Nikki.

  The hauler rotated easily out in the desert air as it cleared the bay, turning enough for Michael to get a clear view of the cockpit. The pilot slid his aviator glasses down enough to wink one cocky brown eye over them, then he slid the glasses back into place and gave Michael a thumbs-up and a crooked smile before the doors closed between them.

  I should have vetted him better, Michael berated himself. Corso had seemed a little weasely and way too cocky for Michael’s liking, but he’d shaken the man’s hand and looked him in the eye, and something had told him Corso was trustworthy when it counted. Nikki said Michael trusted everybody too much, but deep down he knew she had faith his judgment was usually dead on. He just hoped it hadn’t failed him this time.

  Corso was making out like a bandit anyway, if he stuck to the plan. The medical supplies were to get dropped in the free zone. The hauler was his to keep, assuming he could get anywhere with it once the authorities figured out what had happened. He’d laughed at Michael’s doubts and given that crooked smile, claiming he’d get away with it just fine. Michael just hoped he’d drop the meds as planned. Getting those meds to the clinics in the free zone was the whole point of this job, a job Michael had been cooking up for weeks.

  Mission accomplished, Michael thought. His plan had gone off almost exactly as he’d imagined. Not a single hitch. He knew this was no time to pat himself on the back, but making Nikki nothing more than a distraction had been a stroke of genius. He’d tried all his life to rein Nikki in, and he could count the number of times he’d succeeded on one finger. So rather than control her crazy, he’d counted on it and built his plan around it.

  Now that the distraction had done its job and the hijacked transport had gotten away, it was time to make their escape.

  Michael turned back to the courtyard just in time to see Nikki fending off the last two riot cops still standing, using a round tabletop as a shield of her own. She’d batted aside their previous tear gas attempts, judging by the handful of smoking canisters spread around the courtyard forcing any remaining bystanders indoors. The two cops had fallen back on clubs and stun sticks, all their other weapons reduced to scattered pieces. They knew they were beaten, and Nikki was just toying with them, herding them toward one of the smoking canisters.

  Once she’d backed them into the drifting cone of gas, Nikki swatted them down and flung the table aside. Then she pounced on them. Michael couldn’t make out much in the swirling gas aside from flailing arms and legs, until Nikki lurched out of the cloud, coughing into her sleeve, with a crushed gas mask in either hand.

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?” she yelled back in once she caught her breath, not laughingly with her usual battle joy but with long-simmered anger. Her only answer was coughing and retching as the cops tried to stagger and crawl clear.

  The Memorial Day Massacre—Michael knew she was replaying it in her head, as they’d seen it on the videos. They’d been in California when the riots had broken out in the Vegas free zone. Nikki hadn’t forgiven herself for not being there when the little people had tried to rise up and been smacked down even further for their trouble. She surely hadn’t forgiven the cops.

  The tromp of booted feet on metal announced the arrival of two more full squads of riot cops streaming down opposite escalators, reinforcements from the other levels of the city. Some of them had shotguns at the ready, and Michael doubted they were loaded with rubber rounds and gas canisters this time.

  “Nikki, time to go,” he shouted. But she was staring at the sky through the gap over the apartments with a look of cold determination. Not at the cops advancing on her. Not at Michael. At the sky. “Nikki, let’s go. What are you—”

  Then he heard it, the high-pitched whine of a suppressor, the small assault aircraft the cops had used to devastating effect on the rioters at the Massacre, killing dozens. The sleek two-seater with its undercarriage-mounted machine guns rose over the top housing units of the level and hovered on the verge of entering the tower.

  “Stand down,” a measured voice boomed from the suppressor’s PA. “Get on your knees and place your hands on your head.”

  Michael recognized the look on Nikki’s face. She stood there, the red and blue alternating lights of the suppressor reflecting off the swirling gas around her, riot cops slowly advancing from either side. The look in her eyes said she’d just heard the bell for round two.

  And hitch. Now the plan looked less like he’d hoped, but exactly like he’d feared. Damn.

  Chapter 4

  Michael

  No, no, no. “Nikki, don’t―” Michael yelled, but she was beyond hearing—in more ways than one.

  Nikki darted forward toward the low point in the center of the courtyard where a heavy round grate covered a drainage pipe, their escape path, incidentally. In response, the assault craft tilted forward and started into the tower, its heavy guns spinning up. Nikki ripped the grate free, and for a deluded second Michael thought she was going to jump into the drainage pipe as planned. Then she spun and flung the grate like a disc. Michael watched, frozen in place, as the grate streaked up and out, tilted, and ripped across the bottom of the suppressor, cutting a smoking and sparking trench into the small craft.

  The pilot struggled to maintain control, but it looked hopeless. The police craft was mortally wounded and swaying like a junkie. He tried to lower the landing gear, maybe to set down on the narrow band of concrete atop the apartments, but only the front gear lowered. Whet
her the pilot realized this, Michael didn’t know, nor did he know if the pilot could pull off such a landing even if he had working landing gear, the way the craft was bucking and lurching. And he couldn’t wait around to find out.

  Michael sprinted across the courtyard, ignoring the riot police advancing across his path. Someone fired on him, more than one someone, but he didn’t alter course. When two of the cops planted their shields in his path and ordered him to stop, he leapt, clearing them by a good meter plus. He landed on the moving handrail of the up escalator, never breaking stride.

  A crunch of metal from above said the suppressor had touched down. The grinding squeal that followed said it was sliding off, just as Michael had feared. If Nikki killed those two cops…

  He pushed himself for more speed, and when he reached the top of the rail, he leapt, clearing the promenade and the façade of the clothing boutique across from him, just barely catching the rail on the private balcony above it. With one powerful heave of his arms, he flung himself to the next balcony up, then again to catch the roof of the fifth floor and started to pull himself up. But the last jump had been harder. His power was starting to wane.

  Like adrenaline, their power started to fade after a few minutes if he and Nikki weren’t keeping the charge going, and the more strength they used once the power started to fade, the faster it went. He hadn’t taken a blow since the gunshot, and more surprisingly, Nikki hadn’t taken anything strong enough to damage her charged skin since the tear gas to the gut, even though he could hear and feel her engaging the two squads of riot cops below.

  When he crested the edge and the desert wind slammed into him, threatening to throw him plummeting back into the courtyard, Michael spotted the suppressor. It was just twenty meters away, its nose and front landing gear balanced on the concrete, its tail hanging out over the desert and held aloft only by the straining engines that were pouring black smoke. The engines gave out with a blast that sent curved metal raining down the outside of the tower, and the back end dropped.

  Michael lunged toward it. He caught the craft by the front gear, planted his feet, and braced himself. The back end of the ship slammed into the outside of the tower, bounced out, and hit again. But Michael held.

  Several simultaneous small blasts sounded from the top of the craft, blasts Michael felt through the metal but couldn’t see. Then he saw the windshield dropping toward the desert. Holding the gear in his left hand, he slapped his right on top of the nose and heaved back. The undercarriage ground on the concrete, and slowly the craft tipped forward enough for Michael to see the crew, but that’s where his strength failed him. He couldn’t drag the thing up. He couldn’t swing it around. It was just too much. His strength was trickling away.

  “Nikki!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Nikki, I need help. I’m not—" Michael cut off with a grunt as the ship slipped several centimeters.

  He looked back into the courtyard, but Nikki couldn’t hear him. Or wouldn’t. She was carving a path through the Sky City cops below, caught up in the battle. Lost in her own world as she was, she wasn’t letting them hit her now and again. Caught in the grip of her battle lust, she was untouchable. He was on his own.

  The ship slid down another ten centimeters, Michael’s feet sliding forward with it, and the muscles in his legs and back screamed. If he didn’t let go, he and the ship would go over the edge and fall more than 190 stories. He couldn’t survive that, not even if he were fully charged. More importantly, the two pilots couldn’t survive that, and Michael wouldn’t let his sister become a killer.

  He looked up, right into the eyes of one of the pilots. The cop was just staring, mouth agape, while his partner struggled with his harness. They locked eyes for a few seconds, then the cop’s hand fumbled for his gun.

  “Your call,” Michael croaked as the ship slid another dozen centimeters. The sharp line of fire under his shoulder blades felt like his back was breaking. Where the hell was Nikki? “Shoot or live. Decide fast—I can’t hold this.”

  The cop wasted another few seconds squaring his reality, then he turned to help his partner.

  Michael’s toes were at the edge of the ledge when the first pilot landed heavily on the concrete behind him. When he heard the second cop jump clear, Michael let go and collapsed onto his back. The suppressor tore a chunk out of the concrete between his feet as it dropped out of sight, and then it was gone, and what felt like long seconds passed before the sound of the distant crash reached him.

  Relief, for his strained and torn muscles and that Nikki wouldn’t be facing a death sentence, washed over Michael as he lay there in the driving wind. Then he felt the cool metal of handcuffs snap around his right wrist.

  “Don’t resist. I’m taking you into cus—”

  “You’re welcome,” Michael breathed, pulling the cuffs from the pilot’s hand as he stood. “And unless you think you can stop her—” Michael nodded toward the courtyard below, where his sister was using an armored riot cop as both shield and bludgeon to fend off a handful of others. “I’ll have to take a rain check.”

  The pilot stepped back on still-shaky legs and sat down hard next to his semi-conscious partner, clearly not up to forcing the issue.

  Holding up the ship had eaten up far too much of his power, but Michael was still strong enough to snap the chain. He tossed the open side of the cuffs over the ledge, leaving the closed side on his wrist as a reminder of just how much had gone wrong with this mission. Then he jumped toward the courtyard. In his head the jump was going to be graceful, a movie-quality exit, mercifully sans any cheesy one-liners. Reality had other plans.

  He dropped way too soon, his strength having tapered even more than he’d realized, and careened off the first balcony and spun wildly past the second. He glanced off the third and tore through the awning that was supposed to redirect his fall.

  When his vision cleared, he was facedown on the grass of the courtyard. He started cataloguing his injuries, which were many but luckily all minor. The report of an automatic weapon interrupted his litany, and a rejuvenating wave of power coursed through him.

  His head snapped up, his eyes searching the shifting gas covering the courtyard until he spotted Nikki falling back toward him dragging what looked like a marble tabletop.

  By the time Michael reached her, Nikki was taking shelter behind the tabletop, which she’d turned on its side and buried halfway in the ground. The cops had rallied and finally decided to turn to rifles from range. Michael was as surprised as he was grateful that Nikki had the presence of mind to take cover instead of continuing her one-woman assault against everything Sky City could muster.

  He slid in beside her as a few rounds zipped over his head, and he immediately started searching his sister for bullet wounds, his concern pushing from his mind the fact that he wasn’t sensing anything serious through their link.

  “What took you so long, Michael-san idiot?” she said, her eyes bright and smiling again with the rush of battle. “You been futzing around this whole time?”

  Michael couldn’t bring himself to respond to that, at least not in any constructive way.

  “Time to go,” he said, nodding toward the storm drain about twenty meters behind them. “Fun’s over.”

  “Usually is when you join the party,” she said, punching him solidly on the arm. “Thanks, I needed that. Cut my finger,” she said, holding up a hand so he could watch the tiny scratch disappear.

  Without another word, he grabbed her arm and propelled her toward the open drain. Shots rang out as soon as they broke cover—the cops were done playing by the rules—and Michael took two hits to the back, one of them cracking his shoulder blade by the feel of it. He stumbled but sprinted on, the pain flushed away by a bullet that caught Nikki in the ribs.

  Michael scrambled through the increasing hail of bullets, never letting go of Nikki’s arm, and tumbled into the drainpipe, dragging her with him.

  After they slid and slipped to the drain junction at the tower’s
side, it took them the better part of an hour to make the grueling climb up the drainage pipe from the next level. Then while the Sky City authorities searched the lower levels for them, Michael and Nikki slipped into a shipping crate, complete with a false scan generator to display salvage metal, scheduled to take the mag-train to a reclamation center in the Pacific Northwest, exactly as planned.

  Throughout the climb and the following six hours of waiting before they felt the crate being loaded onto a cargo lift, Nikki maintained a cheerful monologue recounting her more glorious moments from the fight. Every few minutes, she’d come back to the same refrain. “I can’t wait to see the payday for this one!”

  Michael dreaded the tirade he’d have to suffer when he burst her bubble later, but that’s not what kept him quiet. He’d known all along that this job would put them on public display like never before, something he’d taken great pains to avoid since they’d discovered their ability as kids. He’d chosen to sacrifice their anonymity because this job was too important to let slide. Too many lives were depending on those meds. But now that the deed was done and he was trapped in a cramped container fondly watching Nikki ramble on, he couldn’t shake the feeling that his choice might end up costing him more than he could bear to pay.

  Hunter and Hunted

  Chapter 5

  Michael

  “No money?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing? Not a single credit?”

  “No.”

  “What exactly do you mean when you say, ‘no money’?”

  “I mean,” Michael replied, “that we didn’t get paid for this one. And, well—we actually bankrolled some of it with what was left of our money.” He tried to keep his tone calming and play this off like it was no big deal, but he knew his efforts were wasted. His sister was about to pitch a fit the likes of which this train car had never seen, and by the look and smell of it, this thing had hauled its fair share of unruly stowaways, both man and beast.