Funny, so was I. She’d destroyed the competition in the first version of the game.
Chelsea stood. “I’m starving. Did you already eat?”
Relief flushed my system. She’d waited. “No. Want to go?”
“Absolutely.”
She turned to Valerie, who rolled her eyes. “Oh, just go.”
Chelsea spun to the door and linked her arm through mine. “To dinner, then!”
The dinner line, even this late, slowed to a dead stop with people getting off mid-shifts. We stepped in behind other science staff and grabbed trays, an apology gnawing its way out of me. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
Her eyes echoed a hint of disappointment. “It’s cool. Valerie picked me up from Helen’s lab. We’ve been watching the game ever since.”
The line hit the salad bar first. I passed, but Chelsea fixed herself a mish-mash of items.
“Interns,” I mumbled. “There was a major hiccup in Engineering.” In fact, these hiccups had kept happening ever since Chelsea had arrived.
“And you’ve been there ever since I teleported earlier?”
I nodded. “Unfortunately.”
She smiled at me over her shoulder. The light caught her hazel eyes and washed them with green. They stunned me, hitching my breath and making eye contact hard to keep.
“Well, you’re here now,” she said.
“That I am.”
Her face flushed, and she abruptly turned forward. We approached the main course. Unfortunately, the meat looked like charred zombie flesh.
We both grabbed portions and scouted a two-seater booth off to the side. The second we sat, all the weight and stress of today scurried outside the Dining Decks in a flash. I was here, with her. Like I’d promised. I didn’t enjoy breaking promises.
“So, how was your day?” I asked then pressed my lips together. Really, Boncore?
“Good. I mean, I basically got babysat the whole time, so nothing went wrong. Valerie showed me around some more. Hopefully I won’t get lost when I come back.”
“I doubt you’ll get lost.” Though I’d heard about her run-in with Lieutenant Weyland.
“I’m glad you have faith in me,” she said.
“If I survived Boston, you’ll survive SeaSat5. Much smaller. No crazies. No drunks.”
She made a tsk sound. “Shame.”
“Ha, ha.”
She grinned, eyes flitting up from her plate. When they met mine, she froze. Moments passed while a smile sprouted across my face. Everything about her still held wild beauty despite her monotone uniform. Her nails were painted a bright color, her ears pierced by three small studs on each side. Valerie must not have told her the whole dress code. But it didn’t matter. Chelsea wasn’t like anyone else on board.
The edges of her mouth twitched, sliding down the smallest bit. She glanced at her plate and took another bite of dinner, breaking the spell.
I frowned. “What’s wrong?”
She shook her head a little. “Nothing. Really. We, uh—”
“Got stuck there for a second?”
Her face flushed, and she lifted her glass to her lips. “Yeah.”
I shifted in my seat and grabbed my drink. I hadn’t meant to make her uncomfortable. “Do you start work with Helen when you come back?”
“Yeah,” she said, pushing food around her plate with a fork. “Not sure how that’s going to go, after today. Especially the lab stuff.”
“Chelsea, you’re going to be fine.” Where was the confident singer from the rock band?
“I know.” But her voice was quiet. Eventually she looked up to me and sighed. “It’s different for you. Engineering is legit. People take you seriously. I went to school to dig up old civilizations, dead people, and their stuff. Despite what I told my parents all four of those years, and despite what my professors always told me, I never once thought I’d get a legitimate job doing this. Ever. If anything, I figured I’d end up teaching intro courses amidst band practices and shows at regional venues. Now I’m here.”
If only she knew how similar our situations were. We both had plans, ideals demolished by this stupid Atlantean-Lemurian war. In that moment, I wanted to tell her about it. I should tell her about it. But the more she stressed about powers and being here, the less appealing telling her got.
“I get it, Chelsea. You’re scared of screwing it up.”
“More than anyone can understand.” She shifted in her seat. “It’s like, I know I’m here ninety-percent because of my accompanying powers. The archaeology intern bit is as much a cover story as an excuse. And you know what? Fine. Whatever. Fair game on the Navy’s part. But it’s still a job I shouldn’t have landed. If this ends poorly, it’s the end of the line for me. And, given my abilities, I’m thinking there’s a whole score of ways this can go south.”
I reached my hand out to hers. Her skin was warm and soft, except around her fingertips, which were calloused from guitar strings.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said. “Tell Helen about all of this before you leave, or when you come back. She can make sure you do as much intern work as research on your abilities, so you’re contributing more than you think you’re going to.”
She nodded. “That’d be great. And my weird heart-to-heart with Valerie helped, too.”
Uh, what? “I’m sorry. Did you say heart-to-heart and Valerie in the same sentence?” Valerie didn’t have caring feelings, none that weren’t anger-based.
“Yeah. She basically grabbed me from Helen’s office and convinced me to stay because she felt bad for not doing it for a friend years ago, or something.”
My breath caught in my throat. Chelsea thought of leaving? My mind skipped over the thought as soon as it came. The last half of her sentence was more important. “Abby.”
Her lips fell, eyes dropping. Silence. “Bad topic?”
I wanted to say yes and leave it be, but I couldn’t keep Abby’s story from Chelsea forever. It struck me then how much I didn’t want to. I’d kept it to myself for too long, and, now, the sadness of it bubbled in my throat. Telling Chelsea felt like the only course of action I could take to release the pressure of it, even for a little while. There was no saving Abby. Not now.
“Kind of,” I replied, finally.
Chelsea’s fingers tightened around mine. “It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it.”
“It’s fine. Just still raw.” It’d always feel that way; I was sure of it.
“Who was she?” Chelsea asked, her voice low, giving me an option to back out if I wanted.
“Abby’s my cousin. She, uh…” Had issues with the same reality I’ve been dealing with. Only she hadn’t had the truth. “She had a mental breakdown. It’s bad. She’s in a facility now. Happy, so I’m told. Blissfully unaware.”
Or, we hoped she was. I hadn’t known it then—and hadn’t accepted it until I witnessed Chelsea fight off her attacker in Boston—but Abby had found out about the Lemurian-Atlantean war in the worst way possible.
Where Valerie and I had grown up knowing about the conflict, the truth, Abby hadn’t. Her parents had kept it from her because she’d suffered several bouts of childhood illness. They’d decided she couldn’t handle it on top of everything, so they’d lied to her. Asked me to lie to her. And I did. To protect her. By the time I was old enough to understand my mistake, it was too late.
Throughout her freshmen year of college, Abby had written home about strange experiences, all of the impossible things she couldn’t explain. Then, one day, my mother had gotten a call from my aunt. Abby had been admitted to the hospital with a broken leg and arm from a car accident. She’d been driving to campus from work when someone had run straight out in front of her car. She’d tried to stop but, in doing so, Abby’s car had scrambled with the car behind her. Abby had said she’d watched the jogger waltz away from the scene, unharmed, before help got there. My aunt had pleaded with my parents to let them tell Abby the truth, but my mother had said they’d waited too lon
g.
Abby’s accident had been the first of many major episodes. Our parents had kept quiet after each one, and every time I’d tried to talk to her, they’d stopped me. They’d thought of her as a liability, so, instead, they’d let her spiral into insanity, with nothing but memories of impossible things no one had been there to protect her from. If I’d graduated faster, been smarter, I might have been in school with her. I might have saved her. If I’d had the capacity to understand the war and everything involved with it at a younger age, if I’d had the courage to defy my parents, I could have decided not to lie.
Valerie’s hypothesis as to what had really happened, what had fueled her initial dislike of Chelsea, didn’t make the situation any easier to think about. Valerie thought Atlanteans had stolen Abby away and interrogated her about things she couldn’t possibly have known. I still didn’t know what I believed.
“I’m so sorry, Trevor.” Chelsea squeezed my hand, snapping me back to reality.
I nodded, dread pulling me down into a guilty ocean I knew so well. “It happened a while ago.”
“Doesn’t make it hurt any less.”
“No.”
This was depressing. More depressing than today should have turned out. I sucked in a deep breath, lifting myself a sail to lead me out of the ocean. “Anyways, now that I’ve killed the mood.”
Chelsea shook her head and pulled our hands an inch towards her. “No way. You didn’t.”
I smiled. “Okay. I hate to ask, but when do you leave?” Being locked in Engineering all afternoon, I hadn’t heard anything, and, while it wasn’t exactly the best follow-up question, I wanted to know how much longer I had her for.
“Tonight,” she said flatly. Like she hated it. I did, too.
“Are you still worried about finals?” I asked. It was the only thing I could think of that’d upset her about leaving. I’d rather she not go, period. I just started getting to know her, and I didn’t want to think about what two weeks apart would do to that.
“Kind of,” she admitted, her eyes finding mine. “And teleporting while gone. And that going home will make it all real, you know? What if I teleport in front of somebody, or break something a normal person wouldn’t crack? Then they’ll know about all of this, and I… don’t know what I’d do about that yet.”
Was she really that embarrassed by all of this? Did that mean she was embarrassed of me?
“I doubt anything will happen.” I hoped.
She played with her fork, twirling it around. “I know. I just don’t want to deal with it on top of everything else.”
“Then go home,” I said, despite my brain and heart wanting the exact opposite. “Finish school, tie up loose ends and get that stuff over with. Then come here and deal with this, whatever worries you about it. You didn’t teleport or exhibit super strength for the first twenty-one years of your life. What are the odds you’ll do it again in the next two weeks?”
The corner of her mouth quirked up in a smile, and she threaded her fingers between mine. “You’re right. I… I wish you could come with me. Just in case.”
Because she wanted me to go, or because she always teleported to me? I didn’t want to know. If I had a choice, I’d live in the world where she wanted me for me, not as an anchor point.
“It’s only two weeks,” I said.
“That’s a long time,” she replied.
It felt like forever. “I’ll be here. We can message each other in the meantime. And I’ll be there when you board again.”
Her eyes lit up. “You will?”
I nodded. “Yes. I’ll even try to make it to port, but, if not, I’ll wait for you in Shuttle Dock.”
“Awesome. Thanks.”
Truth was, I’d wait for her anywhere, anytime.
Chelsea
o my surprise, two weeks at home was enough. Logan had schooled me for disappearing. My thesis had gone shaky, but I’d passed, so that’s all that mattered. I hadn’t run into Lexi, so yay there. But, dammit, the whole time I was home, I’d just wanted to get back to SeaSat5, to Trevor. Text messaging hadn’t been enough, and damn the time difference and all the all-nighters I’d pulled that had made us unable to call each other. Throughout the first day I’d had this ache, a sense of restlessness in my chest and arms, an anticipation of returning to SeaSatellite5. I hadn’t expected to, but I’d missed it. Or, more accurately, I’d missed Trevor. The guy who’d come out of nowhere and enraptured me from the very first second.
I arrived at port exactly two weeks after I left SeaSat5 by helicopter, not a minute late.
SeaSatellite5 was nowhere at all.
My heart flapped in my chest. Had they forgotten about me? Had I missed the shuttle back?
Something in the distance caught my attention, a figure walking up the boardwalk. Dr. Helen Gordon. The cloak. Duh. Valerie had talked about it. I’d been stupid to forget. They’d cloaked SeaSat5 somewhere out in the distance. They’d had to have in order to keep it hidden.
I exhaled in relief, both at the knowledge I was about to be back onboard and because I was so looking forward to someone who wasn’t a sailor. The guy who drove me here hadn’t talked the entire four-hour trip to port. Awkward. As. Hell.
Helen wore civilian clothes, tan pants, a light blue blouse, and a wide doctor’s smile. “I see you got here all right.”
“Long ride, but I got some music writing in.”
“I’m glad to hear that.” She looked down the length of the boardwalk to a set of docked boats. “We’ll board the shuttle through a drop-door in the hull of that boat there. It’ll take us out far enough to board SeaSat5. We’re looking at least a two-hour ride.”
Great.
We made our way down the dock. I climbed into the twenty-foot boat with the name Seafarer inscribed on the side. An officer waved at us from across the deck to board and descend into the cabin below, where a door in the floor greeted us. Not a door—a lighted hatch with a ladder down the middle.
Claustrophobia squeezed my lungs. Shit. “You want me to climb through that?”
“It’s how we board shuttles we don’t want the public to see,” Helen said.
If the boat was only twenty-feet long, how small was the shuttle beneath it? It had to be tiny if they hoped to disguise it at all.
I gulped and stared at the hatch.
“Chelsea?” Helen asked.
“Not a fan of tight spaces,” I mumbled. SeaSatellite5 already gave me anxiety, and it was practically an office building compared to this thing. Huge. Open-ish. Safe. A shuttle? Not so much.
Teleporting I could handle, but not this? I punched down my fear, a fire lighting courage in my bones. I could do this. I could get on that shuttle, get to the station, and figure my powers out. Work an internship. Shit, maybe even have some fun doing it. All I had to do was get through that hatch.
I swallowed hard and stuck my foot on the first rung of the ladder. Here goes nothing. I scaled the hatch, watching each rung that passed. When only five rungs separated me from the floor, I let go of the ladder and dropped of my own accord. Anything to get me out of the tube faster.
The shuttle fit only a pilot, co-pilot, Helen, and me. The co-pilot stowed my bags above Helen’s bench. I took a seat in the rear compartment, opposite her, and looked for windows. One was in the wall of the forward compartment, but I couldn’t see out of it.
I leaned my head against a headrest and pulled in as much air as I could. I’d waited for this since leaving two weeks ago. In between stressing over my thesis and graduation, I’d dreamed about coming back here. For Trevor and for a chance to understand what happened to me. But now that I was here, all I wanted was a window to gaze at my home for the next six months or the dock I’d come from. Anything to give me a reference point, a closure to an old chapter and the launching point for a new one.
Minutes dragged into an hour. Helen pulled out her tablet and worked. I stood and collected the smaller of my two duffle bags, retrieving a notebook and pens from inside
. My hands ached to write lyrics, but I instead ended up doodling Pac Man running from ghosts on his way to gobble fruit. Not much time passed before my thoughts drifted to Trevor. When hearts appeared on the page alongside Mr. Pac Man, I quit and put the pen down. This wasn’t the time or the place. But Trevor hadn’t been at port, which meant he’d be waiting for me in Shuttle Dock. My heart skipped at the thought of seeing him. Anticipation flooded my veins, making my feet and hands restless. How much longer until we got to SeaSatellite5?
The shuttle swayed as we docked with the station an hour later and disembarked into Shuttle Dock. The co-pilot emerged with my bags, saying he’d take them to my quarters.
I searched Shuttle Dock for Trevor, my heart in my throat. He’d said he’d be here. My stomach somersaulted over and over itself with every empty corner searched, every crewman that wasn’t him. Trevor wasn’t here. He didn’t show. My lips tugged into a frown. Figures.
Someone called my name from the other side of the room, the voice high and disappointingly feminine. I turned to find Valerie where Trevor had promised he’d be. I sighed. Not sure why I’d thought he’d actually be here. Guys rarely did what they said they would. Trevor wasn’t any different.
I squashed down the part of me wanting to pout, if only to keep Valerie from reading every thought I had.
Valerie smiled and waved me over. “Glad you got here okay. How was the ride?”
“Uneventful. Wrote some lyrics.” A whole five lines. Pac Man had more fun than I did.
She nodded, eyes bright and happy. “This is going to be so fun! I rearranged the room the best I could. I’ll take you there now so you can unpack.”
Since my bags went on ahead of me, I had no choice but to once again follow Valerie through the maze that was SeaSat5. At some point in the labyrinth, we boarded the Lift and tucked ourselves in the back, out of everyone’s way. My shoulder bumped someone’s files, and I fumbled to keep them from falling to the floor. Good going, Danning.
I picked them up and handed them over. “Sorry. I’m a klutz.”
Gyre (Atlas Link Series Book 1) Page 11