Riptide

by Jessica Gunn

  A few turns later found us outside the Briefing Room, a dimly lit square area big enough for a huge table and chairs. General Holt sat at the far end of the oval table, waiting for us. He stood as we entered.

  Commander Devins saluted. “General, sir.”

  “At ease Commander,” General Holt said. He nodded at Chelsea and me. “Welcome back.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Chelsea said.

  We all took seats around the table, me next to Chelsea. She seemed to be better since yesterday, like the hours we’d spent talking had helped. Good.

  General Holt leaned over the table. “I understand the situation has developed on SeaSatellite5’s end?”

  Commander Devins nodded, saying, “After the attack, we interrogated the TruGates team only to discover their memories had been altered.”

  “General Allen had a Lemurian working for him that performed the magic,” I added.

  “Since when can Lemurians alter memories?” General Holt asked.

  “It would appear that they can,” Chelsea said. “Not sure if I can do it, though. Valerie and my parents made it seem like that’s a no.”

  “Parents?” asked General Holt.

  Chelsea dove into an explanation of the last twenty-four hours, from Valerie’s activities to her parents. It was the same story she’d told Captain Marks and the rest of us, and she looked about as happy telling it now as she had last night.

  “I believe their story,” she said. “It explains my attachment to the Amarna Link Piece and why I’ve never been able to see where it goes inside the Waterstar map. Same with SeaSatellite5. Sophia can’t see the station either. Weyland has yet to say whether or not he’s seen the map for himself, though suppose I should start training him where I can.”

  General Holt thought it over. “That’s probably a good idea. Where are your parents now?”

  “On SeaSatellite5,” Commander Devins said. “The Captain believes they could be of use to us, but wouldn’t risk Chelsea or the station, so even if they’re lying, we’re relatively safe.”

  “As safe as we’re likely to be while Atlantis is ready to strike,” I said.

  “They’re really pissed about us taking SeaSat5 back,” said Chelsea, leaning back in her chair. She lifted an eyebrow. “I can’t say I blame them, now knowing all we do.”

  “The White City’s presence isn’t helping,” Commander Devins said. “They’re taking out as many Lemurians and super soldiers as they can get their hands on, and disrupting Atlantis’s plans to take back the station. As bad as the Atlanteans are for wanting to have access to every Link Piece so they can control time travel, this other civilization seems worse.”

  He wasn’t wrong.

  “It does seem like they’d much rather we not fight over time travel at all, like they know something else is going on,” I said. “They don’t trust either Lemuria or Atlantis with the Link Pieces.”

  “They also hate super soldiers because we have the entire map in our heads,” Chelsea added. “I see where you’re going with this.”

  Panic coursed through me, sweeping breath from my lungs. If they hated super soldiers so much for their access to the Waterstar map, what would General Allen do me?

  Chelsea whipped her head my way. “What’s any of that got to do with you?”

  She’d heard. I’d almost forgotten she didn’t know. At the time, there’d been a hundred and one reasons why TAO had chosen not to tell her. But now all those reasons seemed stupid, and all I could think about was how pissed she’d be when she did find out.

  That time couldn’t be now. Not while we were here to brief General Holt and get back to SeaSat5 as fast as possible.

  “Nothing,” I lied, clamping down on my thoughts. “When he’s done with the others, what will he do to get to you?”

  Chelsea’s eyes narrowed. I was eighty-five percent sure she hadn’t heard everything I’d thought, but reading her in this moment, like she’d checkmated me, was impossible.

  General Holt saved me, swooping in with, “And what’s the story with the TruGates team?”

  “Apparently,” Chelsea said, her golden hazel irises still pinning me to my chair with a worried look. “General Allen was able to convince them to do horrible things by altering their memories. They didn’t remember the atrocities Josh said they’d committed and Valerie confirmed it all. Looks like she was able to see their memories while she fixed them, though none of them, Valerie included, seem too keen on letting us in on the exact details.”

  “My guess is the details aren’t important,” Commander Devins said. “If they were significant to the issue at-hand, Ms. McAllister would have said something. The good thing that’s come out of this is that we can rest assured that they’re not traitors. They’re victims.”

  “Not sure how that’s a good thing,” I mumbled. “But we do know they’re not the bad guys. They can join our side of the fight now that they’re out of General Allen’s clutches. At least until this war comes to a head and all hell breaks loose.”

  “Which all signs seem to indicate will happen soon,” Commander Devins said.

  “Not necessarily,” Chelsea said. “Making a move for SeaSat5 has been done before. That’s not exactly something new.”

  “Using super soldiers to attack it is,” said General Holt. “You have to remember, the first hijacking was carried out for the station as much as it was for the artifacts you found at the outpost. And for you. At the time, you were probably the only super soldier Lemuria could get their hands on.”

  “And they can’t see the map,” I said. “They see flashes, small glimpses only when they’re using a Link Piece. Thompson wanted to use what he found, to use you, to make a bridge to Atlantis and take out the Atlanteans directly. He was an extremist, yeah, but all of Lemuria has that same goal.”

  “So why not go and end this war already regardless of who comes out on the other side?” Commander Devins asked. “All they’re doing is dancing around each other, putting us in the middle of something we barely understand.”

  All we knew for sure was that Lemuria wanted Atlantis gone, and that Atlantis had done its very best to keep that from happening, to remain in control of the ability to time travel as freely as they could thanks to their genetic mutations. So in return, Lemuria had sought out the super soldiers. Hence Thompson, at least partially. He also wanted the station so he could use it to find other Link Pieces on the ocean floor. He never knew it was a Link Piece.

  “They’re probably fighting most of their war in other time-places,” I said. “It feels like a decisive strike is definitely coming. With all the second generation super soldiers coming out of the woodwork and us taking back SeaSatellite5, Atlantis was probably getting ready to end the war when they had the station.”

  “Why would the White City get involved, then?” Commander Devins asked. “Other than rounding up super soldiers.”

  I fit my closed fist in front of my mouth, wracking my brain. Wasn’t that the question of the hour?

  It came to me like it never had before, why the war was so bad. Dr. Hill had explained it to me and then to Chelsea when she’d recovered from her surgery two and a half years ago.

  “Their war is tearing apart the space-time continuum,” I said. “Every time they go back or travel forward. If they change something, it causes a new ripple in space-time that wasn’t there before. I mean, it’s possible they’re creating alternate realities every time they do it, an altered version of history or the present.”

  I paused, letting it sink in. My expertise was engineering, but I’d taken enough physics and watched enough shitty sci-fi movies with Dave to put the pieces together. “They’re tearing Earth apart at its core, at the very center of what it is in all of existence. The Lemurians are doing most of it, trying to find a way to Atlantis. We didn’t notice it at first, but after all the weird things that have happened on SeaSat5—”

  “Find a way to Atlantis,” Chelsea echoed, then, “a path to the city.”

/>   I turned to her. “Yeah, that’s what I said.”

  “That’s also what Thompson… he said that to me all those years ago,” she said slowly. “He said they needed the station and the Link Pieces we found in order to build a bridge through time to Atlantis.”

  Chelsea’s eyes found mine, and she stared, open-mouthed, for long moments. No one spoke in the silence that grew and grew, right along with Chelsea’s eyes until they were as wide as saucers.

  “What?” I asked her. “What is it?”

  She blinked over and over again. “I think Thompson knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  “About the station being a Link Piece,” she said. “I think Valerie was wrong about that. I don’t think he intentionally let it deteriorate as far as it did. He was a hot-tempered idiot, and he couldn’t handle the stress of the mission on top of all the resistance he was getting. Trevor, he wanted the station because it’s a Link Piece. The outpost cache was nothing more than a bonus.”

  My memories of that twenty-four-hour period blurred together in flashes of adrenaline and survival and pain. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

  “Trevor, it’s our fault,” she said. “All of this.”

  “Why?”

  Her eyes rounded and she bit her lip. “My parents told me I created the SeaSat5 Link Piece. That because I’d teleported there with so much emotional stress, a Link Piece was formed. That terrified, desperate state I was in, where I wished for you to swoop in like you did before and the fact that I’m Atlantean…” She shook her head. “I don’t think I teleported to you, Trevor. I think my instincts brought me here because, eventually, SeaSat5 was set to find the outpost cache. Me teleporting here made SeaSat5 a Link Piece that connects to Atlantis. That’s why I can’t see where SeaSat5 goes on the Waterstar map, and why Sophia can’t either. We’re too close to the city.”

  “Holy shit,” I let out, covering my hand with my mouth at the same time.

  Chelsea nodded slowly. “SeaSat5 goes to Atlantis, wherever they are right now.”

  Did Valerie know that when she helped stop Thompson?

  No. No way. That wasn’t something she would have kept quiet on. She’d known it was a Link Piece and nothing more. But everyone else… General Allen, Chelsea’s parents…

  General Holt stood abruptly and leaned over the table, palms on the cool wooden surface. “This doesn’t leave the room. I don’t plan on even telling the Admiral.” He looked to Commander Devins. “You may tell Captain Marks and Sophia, but that’s it. If this gets out, there’s no telling what will happen.”

  “There’s a good chance everyone already knows,” said Chelsea. “If General Allen knew…”

  “Then they would have already taken the station,” I said, and I felt that to be true with every fiber of my being. “All sides would have made a much stronger effort to seize the station if they knew. There’s no way Atlantis knows, either, or they wouldn’t have let us retrieve SeaSat5.”

  Chelsea paled. “Or maybe they let us because they had a backup plan in place. The second hijacking. They must have never assumed the White City would come into play.”

  “This information stays inside this circle of people,” General Holt repeated. “I’ll call for Sophia.”

  “I need to talk to her anyway,” Chelsea said. “I can tell her.”

  General Holt nodded and retook his seat. “Good idea. I’ll talk to the Commander in my office, then you all can return to SeaSatellite5.”

  “And do what?” I asked. “Twiddle our thumbs until one side or the other decides to finally take the station?”

  A grim shadow fell over the General’s face. He wasn’t that old of a man but the past few years had worn him down. “No. I’m thinking it’s time to call in any and all connections you and Valerie have to the larger body of Lemurians.”

  I gulped. “You can’t be serious. I haven’t spoken to any of them in forever aside from my mother. And that door was pretty firmly shut six months ago.”

  He leveled me with a look that said it was about time we all start doing anything and everything that we could. “Then it’s time to reopen the door, Trevor. We need to end this before they do, but we can’t take on Atlantis without the Lemurians no matter how many super soldiers we have on our side of the ring. We need to find a way to stop the Atlanteans’ power grab, to curb their ability to time travel by any means necessary.”

  “You want to take the fight to them,” Chelsea clarified. “My parents might know where to hit them the hardest.”

  General Holt nodded. “Good. And we’re going to use SeaSatellite5 to do it.”

  27

  Chelsea

  Visiting hours had long passed when I entered SeaSatellite5’s brig. Captain Marks still hadn’t let Josh, Mara, or Eric leave here since they’d been arrested and Valerie had worked her magic to restore their memories. So, despite the late hour, I was here. It’d taken me this long to build up enough courage to come.

  The halls around the Brig were empty, save for the entrance where one soldier stood at attention. He glanced my way as I approached, slipping a hand onto his holstered side-arm.

  I offered him an easy smile. “Good evening.”

  He nodded. “Ma’am. Can I help you?”

  I stopped and pulled out my keycard, flashing it at him as though he were a bouncer at a bar. “I need to speak with Josh Turner. I know he’s being held like a prisoner and all—”

  “He is a prisoner, ma’am,” the soldier said.

  I swallowed hard and tried again, “Okay, yeah. He is. But I need to speak with him. Please, I’ll be five minutes and that’s it. Not any longer.”

  The soldier’s unamused face didn’t change at all. “No.”

  I sighed and backed off a step. Would being truthful help me here? It wasn’t like I wanted to talk to Josh because I was about eighty-percent sure I didn’t. Not after Castle Island and the attack on SeaSat5.

  But those things hadn’t been his fault. They’d been General Allen’s.

  Looking back up at the soldier, I said, “Here’s the thing. I’m not sure if the Admiral and Captain Marks are ever going to let me talk to him or to the others. I need to talk to Josh in case I don’t get a chance after tonight. Especially with the end of the war looming.”

  The soldier’s expression softened, although I couldn’t tell if it was due to empathy or pity. “I can’t let you do that, ma’am.”

  “Even for five itty-bitty minutes?” I asked, peering up at him. “Four minutes, if you want. I’m cool with rounding down.”

  He breathed a sigh. “You need to talk to this guy that badly?”

  I nodded. “I’m hoping to find out when he thinks the brainwashing began, in case that helps Captain Marks determine anything for their defense. The Captain might be irritated I went to see Josh, but I’m pretty sure he’d understand. And that he won’t get mad at you, for what it’s worth.” I smirked. “At least not when he finds out I’m the one that convinced you.”

  He glanced sideways. Definitely pity, not empathy. But if it got me in the door, I didn’t care what this soldier thought. “Fine. Three minutes.”

  I smiled at him. “Thank you. Seriously.”

  He grunted and turned, sliding his keycard through the door. The soldier led me to Josh’s cell without saying a word. The others were down the hall, too far to hear us if we whispered. The guard tapped my shoulder and held up three fingers.

  I nodded to him. “I know.”

  “Good,” he said before trailing back out to the entrance to the Brig. He stood there, door ajar.

  I turned to the cell and peered inside. Josh sat on a metal bench beneath a single bright light hanging from above. He’d been given a dark gray jumper uniform to wear.

  When his gaze met mine, he sprung up from the bench and met me at the bars to his cell, wrapping his strong fingers around them. “Chelsea. You’re okay?”

  “Yeah, no thanks to Eric,” I mumbled.

  J
osh’s eyes seemed to shrink, lost to the bags hanging beneath them and an emotion I could only identify as something akin to despair. “Chelsea, I’m so sorry. Beyond sorry. You can’t—I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I need you to know that I tried so hard to fight him. To fight this. But we didn’t know it was happening until too late.” Wetness gathered in his eyes, but he didn’t move to wipe it away.

  I looked away. “I know he had your memories altered. You didn’t know anything except what he fed to you.”

  Josh’s fingers tightened around the bars. “But I should have been strong enough to fight him. To stop him from attacking SeaSat5. To keep me from having to leave you on Castle Island like an unwanted gift on someone’s doorstep.”

  I swallowed hard. “It’s okay, Josh. It wasn’t you.”

  “It’s not okay!” he shouted.

  The soldier at the door turned our way, but I waved him off. Josh wouldn’t hurt me ever again if I had anything to say about it. If the others heard Josh’s outburst, neither Eric nor Mara said anything.

  “What’s done is done, Josh.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I wanted to make sure you were doing okay. When Weyland had said you’d died… I didn’t…” My chest heaved with a too long held breath. “When I saw you on SeaSat5, working with those terrorists like nothing between us had ever happened, I lost it. And I’m sorry for that.”

  He smirked, but it held a sadness to it that turned the expression sour. “I deserved every part of it.”

  Silence fell into the space between the cell bars. I wasn’t sure we’d move past this, or even if we should. But talking to him ignited a rightness I couldn’t deny. I wanted to be friends with Josh. He was a kind person. But he’d gotten caught up in quite the mess and I’d become his boss’s key target because of it.