Riptide

by Jessica Gunn

  In my experience, most of the men in my life had let me down at some point. Trevor. Josh. Weyland. Even Michael. “What guy?”

  “You know… the guy I… well, you know. The scrawny one.” She pinched two fingers in front of her.

  “Trevor?”

  “Yeah, him,” Lexi said, jabbing at the air. “Trevor.”

  “No. Him I could handle.” In fact, Trevor was the only person I really trusted right now, and not because I could read his mind and know if he’d been lying to me. No, it was because only he knew as much as I did about this whole war.

  “You didn’t handle it well last time. Sorry about that by the way,” she said quickly. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  I chose that moment to forgive her for it. If not for any other reason than to end this conversation now and move along. “You know what? After the day I had, let’s just say bygones about it, all right? He’s mine again, and stealing my guy is your thing. At least you’re consistent.” Unlike everyone else in my life.

  Lexi lifted the glass to her lips, drinking more this time. “Hey, it got you a number one single and jump-started your career, didn’t it?”

  I laughed, although it rang hollow even to me. “Yeah, thank you for that. Hope there’re no hard feelings.” Honestly, I didn’t care either way. Right now, it seemed that somehow Lexi and I were friendly. Tomorrow would be different.

  She shrugged. “Nope. Besides, it’s not like he wasn’t saying your name the whole time, anyway. He still loved you, even then. It was clear as day.”

  That zapped enough energy into my body to make me turn toward her for the first time. She had full, painted lips and wore light eyeshadow that matched her loose pink top and skinny jeans. I’d forgotten how pretty Lexi was, even if she’d used those looks to seduce two of my past boyfriends. “Are you serious?”

  Lexi nodded. “Almost made me feel terrible about it. Almost.”

  I laughed again. Actually laughed. Everything around me was going to shit, and I laughed because Lexi screwing me over was the only thing that made sense. And I was happy about it. Happy not because Trevor had foiled her plan, but because she’d tried it in the first place and was now coming clean.

  “Thanks,” I said when I’d stopped laughing.

  “Your life really must be shitty if you’re thanking me for sleeping with your boyfriend,” she said dryly, a hint of worry creased around the corners of her eyes. “Again, I mean.”

  “We weren’t dating when that happened,” I pointed out.

  “Still.”

  My energy left again. None of that mattered anymore. “Bygones.”

  “If you insist,” she said, straightening her barstool so she now sat facing the bar and not me.

  I lifted my glass and we drank on it. It felt weird to be civil with Lexi after so many years. Normal. Despite all she’d done, we’d been best friends once. For a long time.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she asked after silence had sat between us for too long.

  “Sure,” I answered.

  “Why are you here?”

  I looked at her from the corner of my eye. “What do you mean?”

  She sucked in a deep breath and shrugged. “I mean, of all the places you could have gone, of all the places you’ve probably been to, why here? Why Boston? Usually, when your life goes to shit, you run from the city.”

  And given the fact that all this had started the night I’d met Trevor three blocks from here, Lexi totally made more sense than I’d ever given her credit for.

  “It’s complicated,” was my answer.

  She scoffed. “Oh, come on. You forget how well I know you.”

  On the contrary, I’d never forgotten. Not on the night she’d slept with Ray, or the sleepovers before that during which we’d spent talking about him. Not even when a guy broke her heart for the first time and we’d rented corny sci-fi flicks, Lexi’s guilty pleasure, and watched them to the tune of two gallons of ice cream.

  No, I’d never forgotten how close we used to be or what Lexi’s friendship used to mean. But all of that had gotten lost in between parties and guys and college. For whatever reason, our friendship wasn’t strong enough. And maybe that was okay. Maybe people were in your life at certain times for a reason. Maybe there’s a reason Lexi was here now.

  Or maybe she’d been out with friends, had seen me at the bar, and had simply taken pity on me.

  Emotion threatened to choke me, its hands closing around my neck like that damned pipe from earlier. I tried to swallow the tears but only ended up coughing in an attempt to hide it all.

  It struck me then why here. Why now. Why I hadn’t punched Lexi in the face and walked away.

  “I wanted normal.” It seemed stupid. Childish. Like I was running from everything, and I’d already pretty much established to myself that I was, but dammit I didn’t care.

  Lexi didn’t call me out on it. Instead, she asked, “Normal?”

  “Yeah, like you and me sitting here talking like nothing happened. Or Boston. My city, my home. It’s where Sarah and I found the first real gig for our band at the Franklin. Where you kissed Ray. Where I almost got mugged the night I—” I bit the inside of my cheek rather than speak it aloud. Meeting Trevor that night hadn’t been normal. And Caden sitting in a hospital bed with Logan watching over him wasn’t normal either. What was normal anyway?

  “You wanted to come home,” Lexi said in the silence.

  My eyes drifted to Lexi’s. I expected to see some sort of doubt or pity or anger there. Instead, I was met with something beautiful, something I hadn’t seen in a long damn time.

  Understanding.

  Tears stung my eyes, but I’d be damned if I’d cry in front of Lexi. In front of the entire bar.

  Lexi reached out her hand to mine like nothing had changed in ten years. “It’s okay.”

  Cheek still sucked between my molars, I looked away, shaking my head. “No, it’s not. None of it is.” Not Caden’s diagnosis. Not TruGates’s betrayal. Not the fact that Trevor and I have somehow managed to find our way back to one another.

  “It will be,” Lexi said.

  “How could you possibly know that?” I asked her. “You have no idea what’s going on.”

  “No, I don’t. But I do know one thing.”

  “Yeah, and what’s that?”

  She looked me straight in the eyes and said, “The Chelsea I knew wouldn’t turn away. She wouldn’t back down. She’d cry, pick herself up, and get sweet, joyous revenge on whoever screwed her over. Life sucks, yeah, but you’re the firecracker that lights it up. You do your own thing, with your own special brand of take-no-prisoners determination, and that’s something I’ve always admired.” She leveled her eyes with mine. “Don’t let me down.”

  She had me at firecracker. Trevor had once said the same thing about me.

  My fists bunched in my lap and Lexi let me go. She was right, and it killed me inside that she’d seen it all along when I hadn’t. TruGates wasn’t worth crap anymore, and the fiery end of the war was looming ever closer, but there were still battles to be fought and won. Running from the fight now would be against everything I’d stood for since SeaSat5 had disappeared. I’d made a choice that day to find SeaSat5. To make it safe for the station and her crew to come home. That I wouldn’t rest until that day had come.

  SeaSat5 had returned home, but the world they’d come back to wasn’t safe. I wouldn’t rest until it was.

  “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” I started, “but thank you, Lexi. You have no idea how much I needed to hear that.”

  She smiled. “See, I do know you better than most.”

  I rolled my eyes for effect. “Unfortunately.”

  She shrugged and, to my complete astonishment, threw back the rest of her drink.

  My pocket buzzed again, and this time I took my phone out to glance at the caller ID. Trevor. Again. I sighed. “I really should answer this.”

  Lexi grabbed the phone right
out of my hands with lightning speed. “This guy?” she asked, pointing with her free hand to the screen. “Hell no.” She held down the power button and handed the phone back to me. “Girls night. Let’s get out of here.”

  I laughed again. I couldn’t help it. Lexi and I had barely been friends when we were old enough to legally drink. Not that that’d stopped us before we were legal. But we’d never gone out together.

  “Where to?” I asked.

  She hopped off the bar stool and leaned out an elbow like she wanted me to thread my arm through hers. “Anywhere. For old time’s sake.”

  I grinned before I knew it’d happened and echoed, “For old time’s sake.”

  Arms linked, we left the bar, me still unsure if any of this was real. We’d made it precisely two blocks down the street when someone stumbled out from an alleyway and into Lexi.

  “Ow! What the hell!” Lexi grunted, pushing the person off of her.

  I glanced over to make sure it wasn’t some belligerent drunk… and found the last person I’d ever expected to see.

  “Hey girlie,” Valerie said, grinning up through a split, bloody lip and messed up, fire-red hair. “Long time.”

  Lexi gasped and pushed Valerie against a wall. Valerie gave Lexi only a moment’s worth of a hard stare before finding my eyes again.

  “Yeah, it’s been a while,” I said. “What the hell—?”

  “I found your parents,” Valerie interrupted me as she rested her head back against the cold brick. Her torn, blood-splattered clothes said she’d been in a fight. A bad one. But she tried carrying herself in a manner that said she didn’t want me to worry about her. “I found them and I can take you there. But we need to move now.”

  “My parents?” I echoed. What was she talking about? My parents were with Sarah at our house, waiting for news about Caden.

  Valerie wiped blood from her mouth with the back of her hand. “Your real ones, Chelsea. Your biological parents. General Asshole wasn’t lying.”

  22

  Trevor

  Interrogating the TruGates team wasn’t going well. In fact, we’d barely started before Captain Marks requested Sophia’s presence and General Holt gave her the go-ahead. Now, we sat with Weyland on one side of a two-way mirror waiting for the go-ahead to interrogate Eric, Josh, and Mara.

  “He’s the reason all of this is happening,” Sophia growled at Weyland. “Suddenly you’re a soldier like us, suddenly you’re here after disappearing with the very people you said you left. Then TruGates shows up here with White City as back up?” Her fingers dug into the top of the chair in front of her, leaving indents in the metal underneath. “I don’t believe you for a second.”

  “Thing is,” Weyland said, “this would have happened either way.”

  Sophia lunged for Weyland, but Major Pike yanked her back. “Stand down.”

  She reluctantly obeyed, standing back and straightening her uniform jacket. Weyland stared back at her, ready to defend himself if she changed her mind. Which she might. Sophia had always been better tempered than Chelsea, but they’d both been cut from the same super soldier cloth. As had Weyland.

  Sophia’s display of uncharacteristic hot-headedness only served to support my hypotheses about Chelsea: her increasingly violent reactions to being attacked or insulted weren’t her fault. I’d only noticed the change in Chelsea because I’d known her as her powers had emerged. Sophia had always been a calm, collected person, loyal and powerful and protective. Never aggressive like this.

  “It started with TruGates, with Chelsea joining you,” Sophia argued.

  I clamped my mouth shut. Chelsea had only joined them to figure out what the Lemurians were doing. If she’d known the repercussions of doing so, if she’d known what this would turn into, I doubted she’d make the same decision twice.

  “General Allen hunted Atlantean super soldiers long before Chelsea joined,” Weyland argued. “That’s how he found me. It’s not like I’d heard of them from a friend of a friend. They sought me out and asked me to sign up.” He paused, eyes tightening. “It makes sense now, actually.”

  “You think this was the plan all along?” Captain Marks asked from where he stood in the corner.

  Weyland shook his head. “There’s no way to know for sure, sir. I think General Allen, as an agent for the White City, had planned to find a super soldier to use against the Atlanteans all along, one he thought he could control. I figured out I had abilities sometime before joining SeaSat5, but I didn’t think anything of it, really, until Chelsea boarded. If Dave figured it out and passed that info on to the White City, it’s possible that General Allen has known what I am this whole time. If that’s true, then yes, I think his plan was to use me to get to SeaSat5.”

  “He knows it’s a Link Piece,” I said, although it was obvious. Everyone but us seemed to have figured it out a long time ago.

  Nodding, Weyland said, “Yes. That’s why when Chelsea showed up, he let me believe it was me who’d persuaded her to join TruGates. He’d known she was also a super soldier, and with two of us under his control, he probably thought he’d increased his chances to score the station.”

  “Under the guise of a terrorist attack,” Captain Marks said. He leaned back in his chair and scrubbed his face. When he’d signed up to captain this station, I’d bet fighting a fantasy-sized war between Atlantis and Lemuria hadn’t been in the job description.

  “Agreed,” said Weyland.

  Captain Marks pointed to the thick glass to the interrogation room. “What do you think about them?”

  “They’re traitors,” Sophia cut in. “Obviously. Lieutenant Weyland at least has an alibi. The others don’t have that luxury.”

  I bit back my words. Chelsea had thought much the same. I wasn’t so sure. All I knew was Josh wouldn’t put Chelsea in direct danger without a damn good reason. At least, six months ago he wouldn’t have.

  I pressed my lips together. The last time I’d spoken to Josh, when he’d cornered me in the hallway after rescuing SeaSat5, he’d told me to make sure I took care of Chelsea. The genuine emotion in his eyes had frozen me.

  He’d known this would happen, all of this.

  “I can’t speak for Mara or Eric,” I said. “But I trust Josh.”

  Sophia leveled me with a look. “You trust your girlfriend’s ex, who also happens to be the same man who drugged her and left her alone in Boston and took shots at Weyland?”

  “I know how it sounds.”

  “Why?” Captain Marks asked.

  I looked from Sophia to him. That was a complicated question. And my answer was as much a conclusion as it was a gut feeling. “Because there are too many variables. The only constant is that he never wanted to hurt Chelsea. And I believe him.”

  “Then why let this happen?” Sophia asked.

  I tossed up my hands. “They probably didn’t have a choice.”

  Captain Marks stood and wandered over to the glass, hands clasped behind his back. No one spoke for long moments while the captain weighed the worth of my words. I didn’t have high hopes. We might be fine now, but following Thompson’s show of power years ago, I hadn’t exactly been in good favor. If I’d given the wrong answer now I’d lose his faith forever.

  “Let’s see if they can explain themselves first and we’ll take it from there,” said the captain as he moved toward the door. “Given our special circumstances, anything is possible. And if we lock them away without a key, the Admiral won’t get anything useful out of them.”

  “Sir, shouldn’t we wait for Chelsea?” Weyland asked.

  Captain Marks shook his head. “No. I’m afraid their connection to her and you might cloud the version of the story they tell. As far as they know, you’re in the Infirmary. You can watch from here.” He looked to me. “Trevor, I want you to accompany me.”

  I wanted to ask why but knew better. The captain had a reason for everything. I just hoped he had a plan.

  Captain Marks slid open the door to the interrogation
room. It was a small, brightly lit space with metal walls and a grated floor. Three years ago, I’d sat where Josh currently was, trying to defend myself against Weyland and Dave. Now I was on the other side of that table, the person trying to make sense of their actions.

  Neither Eric nor Josh or Mara was stupid enough to speak first. Captain Marks gestured to two chairs on the other side of the table from them, and we sat. He wanted it to be informal, I guessed.

  “I hope you’re all doing well,” said Captain Marks.

  I looked over their heads to the wall behind them rather than make eye contact.

  “As well as we can be,” Eric said. They all had on cuffs. His rested on top of the table in the same way Chelsea’s had when we’d sat in this exact spot two and a half years ago.

  Defiance. Or agitation.

  Mara leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table in front of her. “I think what Eric means to say is thank you for not handing us directly over to the Navy brass for court-martial or worse.”

  “Can you even be court-martialed?” I asked. That got me a look from the captain, but he didn’t say anything. “Last I checked, you were all discharged at some point.” Weyland might be the only exception to that rule. I still wasn’t sure what’d happened on his end. I was always under the impression that he’d been reassigned, not let go. Maybe I’d been wrong.

  “Fair enough,” Josh said. He’d been quiet until now, his eyes dark and drawn. The exhaustion obviously ran much deeper than a few sleepless nights. He was done. Done like Chelsea had said she’d been.

  I swallowed hard. I’m right. Seeing him like that, I had to be right about all the guesses I’d made about their role in all of this.

  The captain leaned forward and broke the silence. “All right. Let’s hear it. What, according to you three, actually happened?”

  Again, none of them spoke. Mara looked like she wanted to, chewing on her lip and tapping her fingers on the tabletop. Finally, she broke down and asked, “Is Weyland okay?” It came out in a concerned rush, the words so closely spoken together that it almost sounded like they’d become one long one. “We attacked him. I know we did. I had bruises on my knuckles for days because of it. Then he’s here and alive, and I don’t understand.”