by Jessica Gunn
“Yeah, and dodge soldiers and powerful priests, not to mention some brain-twisted child,” I argued. “Back the hell off. I didn’t see you going there, or even volunteering to come with us.”
“Glowing amber?” Valerie asked, backtracking. She looked up at JoAnne with a clouded gaze, as if she were concentrating on something no one else could see. “You think it glows?”
“I know it glows,” JoAnne said. “I’ve seen it myself once, a long time ago.”
Ezra nodded. “It’s like there’s a fire lit inside. An eternally burning one.”
Valerie’s jaw dropped open. “No,” she said slowly, starting to shake her head. “No way.”
“What?” I asked her.
“I thought it was some trinket she’d gotten somewhere. A toy or something, or just—I don’t know, something they gave the patients as a distraction. Something to soothe or entertain them.” Valerie stood and made for the door on quick feet. “I can’t believe it.”
“Valerie,” I called as her feet passed the threshold between the meeting room and the hallway.
She glanced over her shoulder and held up a finger. “I know where the Lifestone is. I’ll be right back.” Then she was gone.
I glanced at Major Pike. “Want me to go with her?”
“Is she serious?” Weyland asked. “This entire time—she knows where it is?”
Josh glared up at JoAnne. “She didn’t exactly give much to go on besides ‘you’ll know it when you see it.’”
“And you didn’t,” JoAnne said, “or Valerie might have figured it out then. My generation was the last to have access to the stone. With the prospect of the Atlantean-Lemurian war growing greater, our leaders decided to hide it away for our own safety. Atlantis never knew about the Lifestone and we didn’t want them to ever hear about it.”
“This is ridiculous.” I pushed away from the table and left without saying a word. Pike called after me, probably mad I’d disregarded all required pleasantries, but I ignored him. I found Valerie outside the elevator, waiting. “Hey, wait up.”
“You’re not going to believe me,” she said as a bell dinged and the elevator doors opened. “I can’t believe I thought it was a toy.”
“Where we are going?” Translation: Why was she walking there instead of teleporting, a much quicker mode of transportation for her? One Valerie usually preferred. Did she ever stop? Did her mind ever get a chance to rest from all the plans she’d made over the years, the things she knew?
“To Abby’s room.” Valerie stabbed the button for the second floor. “She’s had the damn Lifestone this whole time and no one ever knew.”
My brow furrowed. “Excuse me?”
The elevator lifted and opened on the second floor. Valerie stepped out into the hallway before she replied, “I don’t know how, but it’s the only explanation.”
We made our way to Abby’s quarters and Valerie knocked on the door. When she answered, Abby’s expression was worried.
“Thank goodness you’re back,” she said as she threw her arms around Valerie. “I’ve been so worried. So, so worried.”
Valerie rubbed Abby’s back for a few moments and then pulled away. “I know. It wasn’t fun.”
Abby bit her lip. “Any news on Trevor?” Her gaze found mine. “Did you find him yet?”
I hesitated. Abby was a lot more coherent and alert than when I’d first met her, but Trevor’s twenty-eight-year-old cousin had lost her mind when the Atlanteans had captured and tortured her years ago. I wasn’t entirely sure all the marbles had been put back into place afterwards. She also hadn’t been handling all this stuff with Trevor and the attacks well.
“He’s alive,” I said. Not a lie, but not the full truth. Valerie gave me a small nod. I’d said the right thing.
“Good,” Abby said.
“Abby, I need to look through your stuff from the home,” said Valerie. “I think you have something we’ve been looking for.”
Her expression screwed up with confusion, but she let Valerie inside. “Okay… What are hoping to find?”
“That fire stone you showed me,” Valerie said. “The one in that awesome box.”
Nodding excitedly, Abby said, “You used to paint it all the time. It’s over here.”
Abby rushed to her closet and pulled down a weathered, dark wooden box with a weird seal engraved on the lid. She brought it over to Valerie and me, holding it so Valerie could lift the lid of the box, slowly, as if whatever was inside might strike back. Inside the box lay a perfectly-rounded stone the size of a golf ball that appeared to be lit from the inside with a flickering light. The orb looked like it’d been made of amber to house a fossilized flame.
Valerie shot me a look over her shoulder, her eyes widened. “I knew it. Abby, where did you get this?”
Abby’s face went dark, her fists clenching and shaking. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Valerie put a hand on her shoulder. “We need to know. This isn’t some souvenir, Abby. It’s made of powerful magic, the immortality-giving kind.”
“They sent me after it,” she blurted out. “The Atlanteans. I’ve had it since I got back. I thought it was nothing, Val, or I would have given it to you.” She sobbed and tears spilled from her eyes. “They stole me, tortured me, tried convincing me I’d been born on the enemy’s side. I didn’t know. No one had told me anything. And then the super soldiers who kidnapped me, they sent me to Lemuria and told me to steal this from a temple, and I did. I was so mad at my parents, at all of them, for never telling me the truth. But when I got back, even though I’d stolen this for them, they hurt me again and again and again. So I took it with me when I escaped.”
I… had not seen that one coming. Valerie hadn’t known, so we were probably safe, but… “Abby, is there any chance, any small, tiny chance at all, that Trevor knows about this? Or about your story?”
She shook her head. “I’ve kept this a secret for years. What they did to me—I can’t.” She cried. Valerie wrapped her in a hug that spanned minutes.
“It’s okay,” Valerie said into her shoulder. “You’re safe now. It’s over. It’s all over.”
Valerie lay the box in the middle of the table for all to see, the lid open. “She’s had it since she escaped from the Atlantean super soldiers who kidnapped her. Turns out Atlantis did know about the Lifestone; they just didn’t know how to get to it.”
Abby frowned. She sat next to Valerie, trying not to make eye contact with JoAnne.
“Good thing Atlas never did,” I said. “Can you imagine?” The thought of him wielding the Lifestone at the center of the Atlas Cache sent a shudder down my spine.
JoAnne had been quiet since Valerie had retrieved the Lifestone from Abby’s quarters. Probably had to do with the whole lying to her niece her entire life, then putting her in a care home and forgetting about her, thereby completely underestimating her thing.
“Now what?” I asked JoAnne.
Valerie cut in. “We destroy it, obviously. No side can have this. Atlantis and the White City too will use it for power, and Lemuria can’t seem to keep track of the damn thing.”
JoAnne’s eyes widened in shock. “That’s a priceless artifact. We cannot—”
Her words were disrupted by the ceiling cracking above us. A huge bass sound like a laser being shot in an alien movie resounded, its origin unclear. We all stood from the table, Valerie reaching out to clutch the box and close the lid.
That was when a green laser broke through the side wall and ceiling, cutting TAO’s meeting room cleanly in half.
Chapter Twenty-Five
CHELSEA
I yanked Valerie out of the way, my fingers digging into her shoulders, as shouts and screams erupted across the room. The laser continued into the hallway all the way through to the other side of the building, blinding everyone with neon green light. That was twice now that TAO had been torn apart, but I didn’t think they’d recover from this one.
The clean cut kept the floor
from caving in, the basement having been filled with cement following the last attack. I looked up through the cloud of smoke. Everyone seemed to have gotten out of the way—except Ezra. He stared down at his left wrist, his hand now missing. The laser appeared to have cauterized it, but shock remained.
“Weyland!” I shouted.
He brushed himself off and rushed to Ezra’s side.
What else was gone along the middle of the building? Hopefully no one else had gotten hurt. But this attack had come out of nowhere.
Loud footfalls echoed down the destroyed hallway, punctuated at each step with the sound of weapons cocking and being readied to fire. Back up!
“In here!” Major Pike screamed.
Valerie saw it first, tugged me away and closed her eyes and—nothing. She opened her eyes and stared at me. “Oh, no.”
Oh, no? Oh, no what?
When the soldiers rushed the threshold to the meeting room, they weren’t ours. Greens and browns and oranges colored these men and women. The weapons they held weren’t automatic; they wielded more of those dreaded lasers. Sophia and Major Pike sprang into action as Weyland fell in front of General Holt to protect him, leaving Ezra’s still shocked form behind. He hadn’t even started healing Ezra. Why?
Valerie reached out for—Abby! I searched the room as Valerie’s grip tightened.
“Abby!” Valerie screeched. “No—was she—?”
I shook my head. “No.” Abby had been on our side of the room, far from the middle. Far from the laser. “Something must have happened when the light—”
Valerie’s face fell. “It was so bright. She was right next to me.” She pounded the floor, panic coursing through every word she spoke. “No. I can’t. Both of them, Chelsea—”
The only thing that stuck out more than Abby’s suddenly horrific disappearance was the zero percent of power-abled bodies in this room actually using them. No one teleported out. No one fired back at the soldiers. Weyland hadn’t healed Ezra.
Oh, god.
Someone split the group of soldiers down the middle, and they fell away to let that person through. He came to a stop in front of our scattered party, garbed in dark clothes and with a backpack on his back. No—a water-pack?
Trevor’s gaze swept the room, looking for something before landing on Valerie and me. She moved herself in front of me the smallest bit. It made me want to scream. I didn’t need her protection, and, besides, they’d done who-knew-what to the area to block her powers right along with everyone else’s. Except their own. And Abby was gone.
Wait a second. If Trevor had my powers and mine were Atlantean… did that mean he didn’t have access to his magic either?
Before I could move to test that theory, Valerie pushed something back to me. No one else could see it because it’d been in the hand behind her back. The Lifestone. What the hell did she expect me to do with it?
I tucked it under my leg, then slid it along my body until it slipped into one of my pockets.
“Well,” Trevor spoke. “Where is it? He felt the stone’s power here. Hand it over and no one has to get hurt.”
The box Abby had kept the stone in must have had some sort of protective power. And now that the stone was outside the box…
Valerie’s entire body tensed at his threat. I knew how she felt: the Trevor we know wouldn’t hurt anyone, and now here this Trevor was, as quick to inflict pain as he was to talk like a super villain.
“We don’t have the Lifestone,” Major Pike hissed. “It wasn’t in the temple, remember? The same one you flooded and left your girlfriend to die in?”
Trevor’s lip twitched. “Hand it over.” His gaze fell over every single person, every inch of space in the room, until it landed on the toppled-over box from Abby’s quarters. “What’s this?”
As his attention on the box took his focus, Valerie’s body tightened to an impossible intensity that reminded me of a cobra getting ready to strike. Then, as Trevor asked, “Is this Abby’s?” she sprung, arms reaching around his throat.
“Valerie!” I shouted. Dammit, why?
“You got her killed!” she screamed at him. “She’s missing!”
Weyland and Ezra pounced, too, but Trevor threw his free hand their way and flung them into the air. Then he bent at the waist and tossed Valerie over his shoulder.
“Your powers,” I mumbled. “My powers. Why aren’t they blocked?”
He grinned something evil and he shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Lifestone. Now.”
“I don’t have it, you moron,” I said. “Snap the heck out of this!”
A red glow took over the room, spiraling like a Lemurian teleport. A slow-moving one. A fireball formed in midair, blooming into waves of flames—more powers that shouldn’t work here right now. Abby stepped out from inside of the fiery ocean.
Abby! She must have teleported out on instinct when the laser had hit.
“Stop this,” Abby told Trevor.
He flung her back, too, with the weakest of finger flicks. She soared across the room into a wall, a sickly thwack echoing when her head hit. In that moment it was so heartbreakingly obvious that our Trevor, my Mr. Bond, was no longer here. He hadn’t been for weeks. The real Trevor, not this monster, wouldn’t have hurt Abby for any reason whatsoever.
Valerie screamed and dove for Trevor again, her hands clenched like claws as she dragged them down the side of his face. I hopped into the fray alongside Josh and between the three of us we did manage to hold him down. But then I felt something fall out of my pocket, the sudden empty feeling growing harrowing with every second that passed as we wrestled Trevor’s hands into an unmovable position. Unable to use his active powers, all he’d have was his strength, something we could match if we fought together.
The other soldiers, who didn’t appear to have powers beyond their ridiculous laser guns, joined in and soon it’d become a flat-out brawl. A fist connected with my face. I tasted blood but kept moving, kept holding on to Trevor’s hands, lest he get any ideas. The brawl continued for what felt like minutes before someone had let go of Trevor for too long and we were all pushed away.
One of the White City guards held Abby up in front of him as a human shield. She wriggled and kicked but couldn’t get free, her eyes widening with fear.
I knelt on the floor, one hand pressed against the cool cement, and looked up at Trevor. He was not getting the Lifestone. My hand fell instinctively to the pocket I’d slipped it into and—I didn’t find anything. I looked down. There wasn’t even a bulge from the sphere.
It’s gone! Where’d it go?
“Here,” someone said. Another White City soldier. He’d grabbed the Lifestone with a piece of cloth and handed it to Trevor, careful not to touch the sphere itself.
Trevor pulled a pair of gloves from his pocket and took hold of the Lifestone. Held it up to the light. Grinned with triumph.
“Don’t,” I pleaded. “Please. Don’t give it to them.”
“You of all people know what will happen if the White City uses that,” Major Pike said. In fact, Trevor had been the most qualified to understand the physics of the situation. And now he stood there, Lifestone in hand, ready to deliver it to the very sect that wanted to claim immortality and possibly rip time apart in the process.
“This will save an entire civilization from death,” Trevor said. “Handing it over keeps the Lifestone from falling into the hands of zealots in the city, the priests who want to use it for their own power. Once he has the Lifestone, he’ll restore balance to all.”
Valerie pushed herself off the ground. “He?”
I swallowed hard, a sinking, sodding black pit of realization and fear slamming into the bottom of my stomach. I had the absolutely worst feeling I knew what Trevor’s answer would be.
Trevor ignored Valerie’s questioning and pulled a radio out of his pocket. “It’s here. I’ve retrieved it and you’re clear to descend. The laser took their powers away.” And because he wasn’t in the room—and neither was Abby�
�they still had their powers. A light had disrupted their powers. A freaking light.
The radio cackled to life and a man’s voice said, “Excellent.”
A chill as cold as the Arctic itself slithered down my spine. That voice had haunted my dreams for over a year, shouting orders that’d caused my friend’s death. That had nearly caused my own.
In a shower of turquoise, the same shade as the lights that’d stolen Dave from SeaSat5, General Allen teleported into the room. He held out his hand to Trevor.
Trevor handed over the Lifestone without even an iota of hesitation.
“Good work,” General Allen told him. “I always knew you’d be the better soldier out of you two.” He turned to me, a ball of energy lightning growing in his palm, and he tossed it my way. At the same time, the soldier holding Abby teleported away from TAO. With her.
My last thought as I died would be that Trevor had not only betrayed me, but that he’d sided with General Allen, my most hated enemy, to do it.
And now Abby might pay for it with her life.
Chapter Twenty-Six
CHELSEA
My body convulsed as the energy coursed through me. Just like when I’d been attacked in engineering on Atlas, my body felt immediately weak. My legs crumpled out from under me. It was as if he were stealing the very life from my body.
No—my ability to time-travel. My super soldier essence.
My eyes widened despite wanting desperately to close for good. That was what he’d been doing in his labs on TruGates grounds. Feeding off of super soldiers and Lemurians, trying to sustain himself and other people from the White City.
He was not only trapped on this world without an ability to rip through another tear in reality to go home, he was dying. I felt his impossibly weak body through this connection between us caused by the energy. He paraded about as a middle-aged military officer, but inside he was decrepit. His decaying body couldn’t sustain itself anymore.
I growled and tried to fight back, but you couldn’t fight lightning. My lungs seized, still bruised and battered from nearly drowning, and black dots danced along the edges of my vision. Trevor stood by and watched as Valerie had when Thompson had killed Michael—without emotion, without movement. He might as well have been a Michelangelo sculpture. Beautiful. Timeless. The love of my life. The one letting me be attacked by a monster who’d threatened everything we held dear. And this nagging in my head wondered: had it all been a lie? For all those times Trevor had lied to protect me, to hide me from the war, all the little lies he’d told and I’d forgiven him for—was this the biggest one of all, so big he’d duped even Valerie and Abby?