by Jessica Gunn
I walked to the sink and washed off my plate. The last thing I wanted to do was to be a bad guest to Weyland, or to make a bad impression on Josh. He was the kind of guy I wanted to get to know. In more ways than one.
Once more, I felt him before I saw him, like some kind of extrasensory awareness I only had with him. Almost like what Sophia and me shared as Atlanteans, but not. After everything at Firebolt, after being interrogated by this paramilitary group and then asked to join, he still wanted this? Had there actually been a shred of genuine emotion in our encounter at Firebolt? My skin prickled as he stood behind me, an answer to my question. Yes. My palms grew sweaty as heat lapped at my neck, need lacing my thoughts.
I spun to him. His face hovered inches from mine, unsure. I leaned into him to close the gap, to wash away any uncertainty. His lips found mine and the warmth of them was everything I didn’t know I’d been missing. Our tongues danced and breaths mingled. An ache below my belly echoed everything my heart thought but my brain wouldn’t let me say. It’d been a good long time for me. Me and Trevor’s rocky relationship had led to a long dry spell.
Josh lifted me onto the kitchen counter and stepped closer, placing himself between my legs. He leaned into me and kissed down my jaw and neck. He tugged the collar of my shirt and his lips found the edge of my shoulder. He left goose bumps in the wake of every single touch. My head slid back against the cabinets as his stubble tickled the sensitive skin. I drew his lips back to mine and tugged at his shirt, fingers brushing against all the muscles of his hard stomach. Was the rest of him this muscular? I had to know.
Before I could get his shirt past his lower ribs, his phone rang. Ignoring it, Josh ripped his shirt over his head, exposing all the glory that was his chest and abs. His skin rippled over muscles I didn’t know existed on the human body. I ran my fingertips over them. He leaned in to kiss me again. The second his lips brushed mine his phone went off again.
Josh pulled back, a grimace souring his features. “I’m sorry. It’s work. I have to—”
Our breaths ran ragged. “It’s okay,” I said.
Josh took a step back and tugged his phone out of his pocket. He paced as he took the call. Part of me was disappointed we were interrupted, but the other, more rational half of my brain knew it was for the best.
A flame burning that bright in the first few minutes of life was doomed to suffocate itself.
gripped the fake leather armrest with all I had. The lights above my head drove pikes into my skull, a migraine looming. Chelsea was rarely late. There was no stuck in traffic for her. No elevator jam. Not with the ability to teleport.
Where was she? I knew she went back to Boston for leave, but come on. Nothing she couldn’t handle ever happened there.
Major Pike sat across from me, skimming his notes on the Altern Device from four days ago. I never knew what he did with his leave time. I actually didn’t know much about him, period. He wasn’t a personal-talk kind of guy, which served me fine because neither was I. He knew about Chelsea, and that I didn’t talk to or about my parents.
Every now and then, Pike glanced between me and the clock hanging off the wall.
What do you want me to do about it? I thought in his direction. I’m not her keeper.
These days, I sure felt like it, though. But Pike couldn’t read my thoughts. Only Chelsea could, and she wasn’t here.
Sophia and Dr. Hill walked in with General Holt at their side, chitchatting about something not related to the mission. They’d left to go get something when it seemed like Chelsea wasn’t going to show up anytime soon, and had returned with the African idol. Dr. Hill placed it on the briefing table. I averted my eyes. The damn thing downright gave me the creeps. All wide-eyed and painted in intense, bright colors. Freaking creepy.
Shuffling sounds pervaded the room from the hallway, and in jogged Chelsea. She took a seat across from me without so much as an acknowledgement of her tardiness. I shot her a look, asking where she’d been.
She turned away from me. Didn’t know I had to report my whereabouts to you.
Dammit. We were still linked when close together.
She glared. “Seriously?”
I sighed and leaned back against my seat, rubbing my eyes with my palms. Great.
“What?” Pike asked, watching the exchange.
I gestured between us. “We’re still telepathically linked.”
“Still?” Dr. Hill asked, alarm in his eyes.
Chelsea put her face in her hands. “Still.”
General Holt grimaced and turned to Dr. Hill. “Do you know what happened to them yet?”
Dr. Hill shook his head. He was about to say something when Chelsea spoke up.
“They had to connect our minds so that we could connect the dots in their puzzle game,” she said. “They were building a Waterstar map using us. Maybe one brain isn’t enough. Then we both ripped the electrodes off before the mind-link was properly shut down. That’s probably the root of the telepathy.”
That much I’d surmised. “But why build a map?” I asked. “They had one hanging on their ceiling.” I wanted to ask Valerie if she had an answer for that, if I ever found her. I hadn’t.
Chelsea’s eyes narrowed. What about Valerie?
I clamped down my thoughts and focused on Dr. Hill’s next words.
“I’m more curious as to why they were so focused on connecting you two in the first place,” he said. “Rather than the rest of us, I mean.”
Chelsea lifted her eyes from me. “Our… whatever we have, it was strong enough to draw me to Trevor halfway across the world two years ago. That’s probably why. Sophia and I don’t have that kind of connection, regardless of us both being super soldiers. The rest of you don’t have that kind of connection, either.”
And I didn’t know how we had ours in the first place. Except I did—my dreambox. I wasn’t ready to tell her about that yet, though. Part of the coming-of-age Lemurian indoctrination process was receiving this magical dreambox thing. You wrote down a wish at ten years old, thought about it enough, protected the box, and it came true. I’d wished for someone to come and end this war—Lemurian or Atlantean, I didn’t care. I met Chelsea nine years later… and everything with the war changed forever.
“So they used your connection to get into Chelsea’s head to make the map?” Major Pike asked. “Seems like a lot of work.”
Chelsea shifted in her seat. “Well, they obviously need it for something.”
But what? If they had the map, they shouldn’t have needed Chelsea and me. That’s what bugged me. And the only other person I could think of to ask, the only person outside of TAO who knew things about the war, was Valerie. And that… wasn’t happening.
Valerie again? Chelsea asked in her thoughts.
I glanced her way. I stay out of your head, you stay out of mine.
Doesn’t matter. Tell them, came Chelsea’s reply, but it sounded more like random thoughts, not connected or aimed at me.
You want me to tell them about Valerie?
We didn’t tell TAO about Valerie because she’d disappeared and Dr. Hill thought she’d died during the hijacking. We let him believe it because Chelsea and I couldn’t decide if she was actually a threat.
Chelsea shook her head. No.
But the Tell them thought rang between us throughout the rest of the briefing, tied to something about chicken parmesan. Right before we finished for the morning, Chelsea looked pointedly at General Holt. “Can I tell them now?”
He nodded deeply. “Of course.”
“Tell us what?” Major Pike asked.
Yes, tell us what? And if it bugged her that much, how was she able to keep it from me?
Chelsea hesitated for only a moment. “I’m leaving for a few months.”
Excuse me? My stomach dropped. “Since when?” I asked.
She avoided my stare. “Since the other night.”
The rest of us looked at each other. I couldn’t decide if what she said was legi
timate or not, given her track record. I knew something happened while she was in Boston. “Where are you going?”
She blinked a few times then swallowed hard, like she’d heard my thought about Boston. “I can’t say flat out because they’re… well, I don’t really know what they are. They say they’re paramilitary, but it’s made up of ex-soldiers who still acknowledge ranks.”
Pike shifted, an uncomfortable look on his face. “That never spells anything good.”
Chelsea nodded. “I actually agree with you, but here’s the thing: they hunt Lemurians.”
“What?” Sophia asked. “How has this gone unnoticed by TAO?”
“Because we don’t hunt them down,” General Holt supplied. “Our directive is to understand the Link Pieces and, now, to find SeaSatellite5. The Atlantean-Lemurian war is very real. So too is the threat to Earth because of Lemuria’s time-traveling. Unfortunately, our numbers aren’t large enough for hunting the Lemurian soldiers stuck in our time. We’ll intervene when we have to, as we did on SeaSat5, and we’ve got the five of you to explore. Everyone else spends their time putting the pieces together.”
Chelsea nodded again. “That, and this group thinks the Lemurians here are mercenaries—black market sellers and assassins for hire. Not exactly terrorists but not normal, either. Honestly, I’m pretty sure their General’s got some personal vendetta of some sort. They don’t even know what they’re up against—that the people they hunt are Lemurians. Which still weirds me out because,” she said, finally looking at me again, “Weyland’s a part of it.”
“Lieutenant Weyland?” I hadn’t heard from him since before he disembarked SeaSat5.
“Yeah. He knows they’re strong like me, but is either keeping the similarities to himself or denying it altogether.”
“How’d he end up there?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Supposedly these guys rehab vets and people who’ve worked on super classified stuff. The people who can’t go back into civilian life.”
Pike snorted. “I smell bullshit.”
“Again,” Chelsea said, “I agree. But the fact they’re hunting Lemurians presents us with an interesting opportunity.”
“We can figure out what they’re up to,” Sophia guessed. “Maybe even discover what happened to SeaSat5.”
“My thoughts exactly,” said Chelsea.
“As long as you don’t run into one who knows what you look like,” Sophia countered.
Chelsea let out a defeated breath. “Yes. That’s the one hole in the plan.”
Even still, it was a damn good proposal. But why did she have to go? If this mystery group was made up of ex-vets, couldn’t we send Pike instead?
Chelsea shook her head. “Trevor wondered about sending you instead, Major Pike. But we can’t.”
“Wouldn’t want to, anyway,” Pike said, but I knew he’d go in Chelsea’s place if given the option. Hard-ass? Yes. Good commander? Absolutely.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because the whole reason Weyland let them recruit me instead of shipping me back to TAO with trespassing charges is because I’m strong enough to fight them. I even the score for them.”
My turn to call bullshit. “You can’t even it that much, Chelsea. The Lemurians like guns as much as their powers.”
“I think I’ve done just fine holding my own these last two years.”
“But what about the stuff we talked about the other day?” The band. Finding SeaSat5.
“It’s worth it,” she said. “I’ll hopefully find information regarding their location in place-time.” And I can still make it for band practices. And Juxe.
I sighed. “Okay.”
Not like I could change her mind anyway. Changing Chelsea’s mind after it’s been made… I’d rather watch Dave destroy Hummingbird again.
I caught up with Chelsea after the briefing ended. Well, more accurately I yelled her name down the hallway, and she walked faster. “Hey!”
She froze, causing me to ram into her and almost knock us both to the ground. I straightened and apologized. “What do you want?”
“What happened?” I asked. “Leaving so soon seems kinda hasty. You even called it a shady situation.”
“It’s only hasty because I have to act now if I’m going to at all. The offer was only on the table for forty-eight hours.”
“And they don’t know about TAO?” I was surprised Pike hadn’t asked.
She shook her head. “Like I said, they don’t know what they’re up against. Even Weyland’s lying to himself. I don’t think they know TAO exists.”
So she’d work for both? “That doesn’t seem like a great idea.” And Weyland. The last time he found out someone he worked with knew more than they let on—me, lying about Thompson’s danger to SeaSat5—he kind of lost it.
She waved me off. “If they’re this far into hunting what they call ‘super strong, commando mercenaries,’ but are actually going after Lemurian targets without realizing it, not only is it a good idea to bridge this gap between our organizations, it’s also a convenient way to learn more about Lemuria itself, and what they’re up to. That I can’t pass up. We need to find SeaSat5. Do you understand?”
Well, yeah. That made a whole lot of sense.
I had to face the fact that I could lose her to this. That’s what I feared, and hated. What I hated more was that it didn’t make a difference what I thought.
“Stop,” she uttered under her breath, as if it was only meant for her to hear.
“All I meant was that I know better than to force you into anything.” Because I lo—
“Finish that thought, Trevor, and I’ll walk away right now.”
I swallowed any feelings threatening to rise into my thoughts. “I was going to say that this might be a good idea because then we can use the space to dissolve our telepathy. I mean, it could give us an advantage against the Lemurians, too, but clearly this telepathic bond is not working for us.”
She nodded, lips pressing into a thin line. Only a twitch in the corner of her eye gave her away, that other emotions were in play behind her mask, her high-built walls. “That was my second reason for joining up. It’s not that I want to keep things from you, Trevor…”
The way she looked at me, the way her eyes saw into me and past all the crap of the last two and a half years, I believed her.
Which might have been a mistake, because I wasn’t stupid. I knew what she meant.
“It’s time to go our separate ways for a while,” I finished for her. Hearing her say it would rip me apart. “Cover our bases.”
She smiled, small and sad. I knew it without hearing her thoughts. “Yeah.”
“Answer one thing for me before you walk away, though?” I asked despite my stomach and heart and everything else feeling as though it all fell through to the floor.
“Anything.”
Why were you thinking about chicken parmesan so much? That’s what I wanted to ask. I tried to meet her eyes, to hold her gaze, but I couldn’t.
Her face grew redder than I’d seen it in years, and she spun on her heels to walk away. Dammit. She must have heard the thought anyway.
I grabbed her arm to stop her as my mind connected the unfortunate dots, tossed them around to mix with my guilt for even thinking the question to begin with.
“Space, yeah?” I asked. “For all the times you’ve outed me for lying, you couldn’t just tell me the truth?”
“Trevor, I—” She paused, sucking her bottom lip into her mouth. “It’s not a lie. I have a chance to make a difference.”
You have a chance to make another man happy. That’s what she’d meant. That’s what she wouldn’t say.
I swallowed down my heart. It’d never done me any good. And after two years, maybe this back and forth was finally over. I had to let her go. If our communication issues were going to resolve themselves, they would have already. Maybe time apart was exactly the remedy we needed.
She didn’t say anything, although I knew sh
e’d heard my thoughts. I forced back all emotion. This was for the best. It had to be. It would bring us closer to SeaSat5, and that’s what mattered. That’s what made everything worth it in the end.
“Just go,” I told her.
She took a deep breath like she was preparing to lay down a full speech. “Trevor…”
“I said go.” I gestured toward the elevators. “You need this. I need this. I’ll see you in a few months, okay?”
But the hand constricting my lungs made it hard to breathe, made it obvious I needed fresh air, not space between us. Or maybe I needed the fresh air from that space.
Keep it together, Boncore.
I let the hand hold fast on my lungs. Every breath I didn’t take squashed the oxygen needed to cuss or break down in front of her—things I didn’t want to do. I didn’t even care if she heard these thoughts. I wanted her to leave, to go, to do whatever it was she wanted to do, with whomever she wanted to do it. With whoever had convinced her this was a good idea, whoever she thought was better than me, though I knew there must be thousands. To her, I was nothing but a liar. And I knew I’d never be anything else.
Chelsea took a cautious step forward and kissed me on the cheek. She may as well have kicked me in the balls. “Goodbye, Trevor. I’ll see you soon.”
“Bye.” It was barely a mumble from my lips.
I walked in the other direction, digging through my mind. I needed a distraction, a way to find SeaSat5 that I hadn’t thought of before, a new project to dive into.
It was time to find Valerie.
ara and Truman sparred to my left on another set of mats, while Weyland, Josh, and Eric watched me carefully. Talk about awkward. The fluorescents overhead needled light into my brain. Despite this room being a gym, the space didn’t smell so bad. In fact, it was overwhelmingly floral scented. Probably one of those diffuser things. I tried to keep from squinting as I landed swing after swing on the punching bag. Every time a hit connected I risked knocking it straight off the chain.
I kept my abilities semi-hidden while I assessed TruGates, this paramilitary group, and their reaction to them. Obviously Weyland was okay with it, or appeared to be, but I hadn’t had a chance to really speak with the others yet after General Allen let them in on my not-so-secret secret. I had been present when Weyland filled them in, though. We’d explained it as an anomaly and nothing more, but Weyland had put a weird military spin on it. Enough to suggest that maybe there was more orchestration behind my abilities than simple advanced human evolution.