by Jessica Gunn
They didn’t want to destroy the city for the sake of stopping the war. Neither did I.
But taking away Atlantis’s ability to time travel via Link Pieces would cut them off from everything. To them, it’d be like killing them. Would it do sufficient damage to keep Atlantis crippled for good? That was the real question.
“Probably not,” my father said, answering my unspoken question. “But if you want to end this war, if you want to stop Atlantis without destroying the city or losing innocent lives, this is the way to do it. By collecting the Link Pieces as they are, by holding them in one place together, they’re risking catastrophic, irreversible damage to not only the time-stream, but to the universe as we know it. Reality itself could be torn apart.”
My mind whirred. “I don’t follow.” Science wasn’t really my thing. Chemistry? Sure. Archaeological principles like carbon dating? Absolutely. Time travel and physics and the very fabric of the universe? “I should go get Trevor. He gets this stuff.”
My father reached out for me. “It’s okay. Don’t try to wrap your head around it all at once.”
“What’s the problem with storing all the Link Pieces together?”
“Every time you travel into the past, you essentially create a new reality, a split point between the history you knew and the history you create by being there. That change adds an alternate reality,” my mother explained. “Every time you use a Link Piece, this happens. Having a few Link Pieces together is fine; the effect isn’t that detrimental to reality. But an entire collection the size of what the Atlas Cache has turned into from thousands of years of Link Piece collecting and storage—that’s potentially catastrophic.”
My father shifted uncomfortably in his chair, as if the very topic made him nervous. It should. Anxiety washed over me and I barely understood it all. I was counting on years of sci-fi movies with Lexi and Logan to get me through this conversation.
“Basically,” my father said, “Atlantis’s greed regarding the Link Pieces, their desire to be the only ones to time travel, and so therefore stockpiling Link Pieces so as to curb the amount available and being created, is going to tear reality—Earth—apart. They know it, we know it, and still they take no precautions to prevent it. And if the Crown Prince leaves his post, the Waterstar map they’ve created will fall.”
“That might be worse than letting the weight of time-places hit critical mass and crumble,” my mother added.
“So, you see, it comes down to not only a matter of ending the war,” my father said, leveling me with a serious, terrified look. “It’s also a matter of stopping that collapse. It happens to also be the best way to forgo collateral damage and the loss of innocent lives. There are still Atlanteans in the city, people who agree and disagree with what the Council is doing. Our people won’t have a say in this when the collapse approaches.”
“This is the only way to stop them,” my mother said then paused. “Assuming the rumors of the Atlas Cache are true.”
“There’s good evidence suggesting they are,” my father said. “The Crown Prince hasn’t been seen in generations, time travel being able to help preserve his body and mind, and Link Pieces were disappearing in droves from the museum and the Archives. Hidden. Lost.”
I swallowed hard. “It sounds like we don’t have a choice. Why are you suddenly willing to help by giving up this information?”
My father’s gaze slipped to the ground for a moment. “Our own selfishness has held us back. We wanted to wait until you were old enough to understand, until you had come into your powers or possibly even found others like yourself. But we were also enjoying the break from it all—the pressure of having children, the weight of knowing what would happen to you when you turned two and the experiments and testing began.” His lip quivered, emotion shining in his eyes. “We wanted to hide you and give you the best chance of a normal life outside of all of this.”
“But it turns out that super soldiers call to super soldiers, and that all Atlanteans eventually find each other,” my mother said. “Dr. Gordon and yourself. Sophia. The other soldiers in your midst.”
My eyes jumped to hers. “You know Sophia? Were you friends with her parents?”
“Sophia’s parents were close friends of ours, yes,” my mother said, a frown sliding over her features.
My stomach dropped. “Were?”
“The night we stole you away, many others also escaped with their children through Link Pieces. We scattered throughout time to hide you all, to keep Atlantis from using you as weapons. Julian was in the lab that night and couldn’t get out.”
“And Sophia’s mother?” I almost didn’t want to ask, but Sophia should know. Should I have called her in here and had this conversation with her present? Dammit.
My parents exchanged a look once more. “Clara must have made it far enough to send her daughter through. She was to leave with another family and their little girl the same age as you, but I didn’t hear anything more than that.”
Think, Danning, think. All of the other super soldiers we knew about were all from different times. I was born—or dropped off, I guessed—in the early 90s. Sophia the late 80s. Charlie a few years after me. Weyland was in his mid-thirties. There was no other super soldier I knew of that was my age.
General Allen probably got to them already. And if he hadn’t, Atlantis likely had.
I hated this. I hated that they had this control over us, that they were hunting us down and forcing us to be weapons.
Flashes of me killing that Atlantean soldier on SeaSatellite5’s hull zipped through my mind. My heart plummeted. I’d already become a weapon all on my own.
I stood up and backtracked to the door. “I should tell the Captain all of this. They want to move soon. If the Atlas Cache really is that important, then we need to do this while we can.”
But that did leave one question: if caches of Link Pieces were dangerous, why in the hell was the outpost even in existence?
“Outpost?” my father said, his body perking up. Eyes wide, he looked at me as if he were scouring my mind for the answer because he couldn’t wait for the words to come out of my mouth. “What do you mean?”
“What outpost?” my mother asked, also standing. “Chelsea?”
“Two and a half years ago SeaSatellite5 discovered a cache of Link Pieces,” I explained. “They weren’t arranged like the Waterstar map, though. It was more like a museum.”
Now my father also stood, closing the distance between us. His hands found my shoulders and gripped tight. “You found the Archives?”
My face twisted in confusion. “Archives? Is that what it’s called? this random building in the middle of the ocean.”
My mother grabbed his arm. “Markus.”
“I know,” he said over his shoulder to her, then looked back to me. “You must take us there.”
A cold chill ran through me. “Why?”
“Because that’s how we left,” my father said. “There might yet be tools you can use when you go to Atlantis. There might be clues as to what happened to the others.”
“Please, daughter,” my mother said. “Take us there.”
“You’ve been there before, teleport yourself,” I said.
They both frowned. “It’s not that simple. The Archives is protected from abilities, aside from using Link Pieces to time travel.”
I paused. Should I tell them? “No, it’s not. Lemurians have teleported on and off of it a dozen times, and I can too.”
My father’s face paled. “Then it is unprotected. Atlantis must not know it survived.”
“But how?” my mother asked him. “We barely escaped with our lives that night.”
“I know,” my father said, bowing his head.
“I don’t know how much time we’ll have before everything starts to happen,” I said. “But I’ll ask the Captain if the Admiral can give me permission to take you.”
“Why not take us now?” my mother asked. “It is an Atlantean building. It’s you
r birthright.”
I shook my head, my lips pressing together. I may be Atlantean by blood, but I’d been raised by a normal family and employed by the military. “I have to follow protocol and I will.”
There was the line again, dancing in front of me. Beckoning me to cross it.
“I’ll ask the Captain now,” I said, turning for the door. “Right after I explain to him everything you told me. If what you said about the Atlas Cache turns out to be true, then we can end this war. And we will.”
My parents nodded and my father said, “Thank you.”
“Yeah,” I said. “No problem.”
I retreated into the hallway and sprinted to the Lift. Alone for the first time in too long, I laid my head against the wall as the Lift ascended.
Powers and time travel. Alternate realities and the torn fabric of the universe.
I pulled in a deep breath. Held it. Kept it to myself for long moments. I exhaled.
Three years ago this might have terrified me. Three years ago I probably couldn’t have even wrapped my head around all of this. Atlantis. Lemuria. The White City. All of them so very real.
Now? Now I wasn’t that girl anymore. I couldn’t blame all of these things on sci-fi movies and pseudo-history. I had to accept it because this battle was coming, and there weren’t any more fantasies left to run to, to hide in and escape.
I allowed myself one more deep, steadying breath.
It’s done. Here I am, Atlantis.
Come and get me.
30
Trevor
“That’s a lot,” I choked out after Chelsea had finished her explanation of what her parents had told her. Sure, they’d given her some good ideas on what to hit once we got to Atlantis, but dammit. “Don’t you realize that means there’s a good chance the outpost cache isn’t that far behind?”
She shrugged. “They said the Atlas Cache is bigger.”
“So what? Instead of a sun imploding into a black hole we’ll gravitate around the space-time tear?” I scrubbed my face.
We’d been in the briefing room at TAO, sat under bright fluorescents, for the past thirty minutes. What Chelsea’s parents had told her was a hard pill to swallow, and still I sensed the worst was yet to come.
“Then this is a bad thing?” Chelsea asked.
I looked from her to the others in the room. “Very bad. If we’d known this before…”
“What?” Sophia asked. “What could we have possibly done? We didn’t know SeaSat5 was a Link Piece until six months ago, and only now discovered where it goes. There’s nothing we could have done.”
“But now we can,” said Captain Marks. “And we will.”
“We’re rebuilding what we can of TAO and have received the go-ahead for obtaining reinforcements from other branches,” General Holt said. “They’ll be briefed and readied over the next few days.”
“How many are coming with us?” Weyland asked. His face twisted in concern. “A full army isn’t going to do much besides provide a massive bulls-eye on a target. Especially with the number of our ability-powered people versus theirs.”
“I’ve been working on that.” Well, I’d tried to anyway. “It’s complicated, but I’m trying to develop something like the device we used on Dave.” I looked to the Captain. “We’ve done as much to protect this station as we can. This was my last-ditch effort. But it’s going to be hard to block the right people. I hoped I could borrow one of our super soldiers, Valerie, and Dr. Gordon and run some tests.”
If the super soldiers and regular Atlanteans had different vibration frequencies for their powers, then this would work. If not… it’d be useless.
Captain Marks nodded. “Do what you need to. Everyone else has their assignments. Is there anything more to discuss at this time?”
Silence beat its wings for a few moments before Chelsea spoke up. “My parents want to see the Sargasso Sea outpost and the cache still inside.”
“You mean what’s left of the cache,” Dr. Hill pointed out. “Most of the artifacts were moved to TAO or remain on SeaSatellite5.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I might have left that part out.”
“Why do they want to go there?” Sophia asked.
“They think there’s something that can help us take down Atlantis,” Chelsea said. “I don’t know what that might be, but I think—reluctantly, for the record—that it might be worth it.”
“Fine,” Captain Marks said. “Take Weyland and Sophia with you. I want to know you’re safe while you’re there with them.”
Chelsea nodded and stood. “I’ll leave now.” Weyland and Sophia matched her.
So did I. “I want to come too. I have some questions about some of the stuff there, like that weird wardrobe.”
I almost forgot about that, Chelsea thought.
“Sure, but then I want you right back on that device, Mr. Boncore,” the Captain said to me.
I nodded. “Absolutely.”
We moved to leave the room, but Chelsea froze in the doorway. “Hold on,” she said. “I want to grab something first.” Then she ran off in the direction of her quarters.
“You were being truthful about being able to teleport here,” her father said upon landing inside the outpost.
“Yeah,” Chelsea said.
“Markus,” her mother said slowly, looking around.
Markus nodded. “I know, Alacia. It’s perfectly preserved.”
“This floor is,” Chelsea said off-handedly. “The rest has been flooded, but as far as we can tell it’s otherwise sealed. It looks like it was flooded before being sealed somehow.”
“The Council must have done it as a last-ditch effort,” Markus said. “That is the only explanation.”
Then why did they think the outpost had been destroyed? Why would the Atlanteans leave all of these artifacts and Link Pieces laying around for just anyone to find?
Markus and Alacia ventured to each shelf, letting their fingers and gazes roam over all the paintings and texts, statues and amphorae, like Chelsea had the day we’d first found this place. I really saw it right then, their resemblance. What I wouldn’t give to have parents who, for all intents and purposes, still appeared to care? To have parents who shared our history with me as freely as these two did with Chelsea despite having twenty-two years of distance between them.
You’re my family, Chelsea said, her eyes cutting to mine. And I’m yours. So is SeaSatellite5. I love you.
I love you too, I thought back. You know that. That’s not what I meant.
She smiled up at me and slipped her arm around mine. I liked her close, where her wildfire spirit could warm up my cold, doubt-filled one.
Weyland paced between shelves, his eyes darting from object to object.
“Weyland, what’s wrong?” I asked him.
“I’ve never noticed them before,” he said, pointing first to an object on the top of the shelf in front of him, then to another one on the floor across the room. “How did I miss this if I’ve felt Chelsea’s presence since the first day she came here? How could I possibly have not seen these Link Pieces?”
Alacia was the first to offer an answer. “I know that some of us who gave birth to the second generation of super soldiers sometimes enclosed our children’s abilities inside themselves. We found a way to suffocate their powers. Obviously, we didn’t do it to Chelsea, but your parents might have done so with you.”
“Is there a way to know for sure?” Weyland asked.
“Oh god,” Chelsea whispered. “Some of the super soldiers General Allen has been killing, the ones Atlantis has been forcefully recruiting, they might not have had any clue as to what’s going on.” Her eyes met mine. “It’s like Abby. She had no idea.”
My stomach dropped. Thing was, Abby had had some idea, even if she thought everything she’d seen was a hallucination. She’d always known something was happening. Those other super soldiers, though… and if they’d been greeted the same as Abby had…
“Don’t go ther
e,” Chelsea said. “Not now. We can’t afford it, and I’m not allowing myself to do that either.”
I swallowed the fear and guilt. What happened to Abby wasn’t my fault, and neither was what had happened to those Atlantean super soldiers.
“What did you come here to look for?” Sophia cut in. “Not that I’m not having a good time, but we must be prudent. It’s not as if this place is laden with Link Pieces. I count ten and none seem to lead anywhere helpful.”
Whoa. She can check that fast? I asked Chelsea in my thoughts.
She didn’t turn to me, but said, She’s good.
“Agreed,” Alacia said.
“Really quick, first,” I said, stepping out from Chelsea’s hold on my arm and up toward the second level. “I’ve got a question that’s been nagging me for a few years now.” I climbed up to the wardrobe so I was eye-level with it, but I didn’t get too close. The previous mummified tenant had been vacated, sure, but call me crazy. I was as terrified of the thing as I was curious about it. “What is this?”
Everyone joined me in front of the wardrobe. Chelsea chuckled. I didn’t need to read her thoughts to know what events played through her mind.
“Still not funny,” I whispered to her.
“Oh no,” she said, voice louder than mine. “It’ll always be funny.”
“Hey, you have a mummy fall all over you sometime and let’s see how you react.”
“Not the mummy thing again,” Weyland mumbled. He’d been less than entertained when word had spread to the rest of the station of what we’d found.
“Mummy?” Alacia asked slowly, hand rising from her sides to her mouth. “You mean someone was in there?”
Chelsea nodded. “Yeah. Didn’t buckle herself in, though, and whatever this thing is”—she slapped the side of the wardrobe—“it’s busted. There’s a hole at the bottom. When we opened the door, the remains of an adult female tumbled out. The atmosphere in here had made her a mummy.”
I shuddered, nausea roiling across my stomach. Talk about flashbacks.