by Jessica Gunn
“What’s he talking about?” But as I said the words, the whites in Josh’s eyes grew. He knew. “Josh?”
He swallowed hard, gaze skittering between Atlas and me, a look of utter guilt twisting his face. Remorse. “The White City. General Allen.”
“Those monsters feed on rift energy,” Atlas said. “Worse than anything we’re doing to the timeline by far. And what you did to my people,” he spat at Josh, “those who died for that, it fueled your leader for a long time.” Atlas moved to throw Josh through the air again—I recognized it from my own telekinesis use—but I jumped in the way, knocking Atlas’s arm off target. A Link Piece soared across the room instead.
Sophia unclipped her sidearm and took shots around my punches and kicks while Josh scrambled to find his weapon in the blue fog. Atlas roared, throwing me off of him, then continued roaring, louder now—except his lips didn’t move. Didn’t open. It wasn’t him.
The floor of the Atlas Cache room shook and cracked, water dripped from the ceiling above us.
Atlas laughed. “No one can stop us, not even Atlantis’s prized soldiers.”
Sophia and I exchanged a confused look even as another beastly roar swam through the air around us, distorted in the Waterstar map. The animal cry echoed in the room, bouncing back and forth so I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I spun around and around, trying to identify what the hell was headed our way but—
The wall behind me exploded open to the sound of a dinosaur cry. A rainbow of luminescence tangled with the blue fog, creating a kaleidoscope effect right before the mouth of the Nessie creature from the lake came screeching through the opening.
We hadn’t killed it after all.
“The guardian returns!” Atlas bellowed, laughing as Nessie’s razor-sharp teeth flew toward my head.
Pure, blind panic swept through my body and I teleported out of Nessie’s way and to Sophia’s side. We both fell into a defensive stance at the same time.
“What are you thinking?” I asked her as I wove my hands through the air, collecting water to use as a weapon. Right. Water against a water creature. I’d learned long ago that was utterly and completely useless. Thank you, nineties cartoons.
Sophia dropped her own water tentacles and dug around inside her vest pockets. My eyes narrowed, watching her and trying to figure out what she was looking for. Eventually she tugged out two small, round objects. “This is all I’ve got.”
My eyes widened. “Grenades? Really?”
She nodded quickly.
I turned back to the burned, bleeding leviathan, who was bearing down on our position with loud, unforgiving roars that shook the ground, the walls, and my bones. It seemed a lot smaller back in the lake.
Josh joined us and offered the one grenade he still had. “You know this only works in the movies, right?”
“Not like we have a protocol for fighting prehistoric giants,” I muttered. Were we really going to do this?
We were really going to do this.
Sophia collected them in one hand and stood to face the creature. “Distract it. I’ll deliver.”
Oh god, oh god, oh god.
A giant flipper breeched our airspace and I shoved Josh aside before it could scoop us all up. Sophia ducked out of the attack and propelled herself on a water platform up to the creature’s face. I did the same as Josh took aim with his weapon.
Atlas’s laughter filled the room, barely audible over the chaos inside. The monster flailed, unable to keep track of all three of us at once. I shot endless waves of self-made ice shards its way, getting in close enough to punch its head—which didn’t appear to do any use—before water-platforming away from it. As it chased me around the room, Sophia managed to climb on to its head and dangle from a tiny ear.
“Hurry!” I said as its teeth clipped the edge of my water platform. It was enough to set the whole balance off and I teetered sideways.
“Chelsea!” Josh shouted.
Water slipped out of my hold and I tumbled toward the ground, teleporting at the last second to Josh’s side. He gripped my arm, asking without words if I was okay.
I nodded right as—
Sophia appeared beside me, throwing her arms over me and Josh both, as the creature cried out in pain.
And then exploded. Flesh and other bits rained down on us.
Atlas cried out. “The Guardian! How dare you!”
Before Atlas could attack again, lights flashed across the room. Flashlights like those on the end of guns.
“Incoming!” Josh yelled from the other side of the haze as a dozen soldiers ran through the wild azure. As soon as they passed us, they opened fire on Prince Atlas.
“Attack full!” Josh shouted. “Every single one of you!” He reloaded his own weapon and let go.
Why was he the one shouting orders? Where was Major Pike?
I spun to watch the bullets shred Prince Atlas to bits, allowing us the window we needed to destroy the Atlas Cache, but the bullets, every one of them, hung in the air in front of Prince Atlas. They all fell to the floor at the same time.
He jerked his hand forward and flung the front line of TAO soldiers, who weren’t as lucky as Sophia or I to have our own telekinetic buffer. Josh emptied another clip into Prince Atlas and reloaded automatically. Prince Atlas launched an ice dagger through the air right at Josh’s head. I dove, tackling Josh to the ground and out of harm’s way. Josh’s weight crushed me as we rolled and I knocked my head on the ground. Pain exploded like stars behind my eyes.
“Shit! Chelsea?” Josh called as his fingers roamed over my head, checking for damage.
I ignored him as my mind swam further and further away.
“Get away from my daughter!” my father yelled.
I looked up with enough time to see a humongous wave of water flying overhead, pushing Prince Atlas back. More yelling sounded from the hallway. An angry-as-hell Valerie, literally on fire as strands of it circled her body, ran through the doorway at full sprint. She didn’t pause to consider her attack or what Prince Atlas might be capable of; she just went straight for him, guns blazing.
One blast, five in a row all aimed at—
The Link Pieces. Not Prince Atlas, but what we came here to destroy. Excalibur, pottery, a marble statue of Venus, a David, a Monet, a Picasso. Every shot landed on a Link Piece while everyone else who’d filed in the door attacked Prince Atlas.
Josh ran his fingers over my head. “There’s no blood. You’re fine.”
“No,” I said. It was too much like a whine. “It fucking burns.”
I’d hit my head. I’d hit my head before plenty of times. But—
The Waterstar map starburst across my vision, double-layering with the one Prince Atlas was charged with looking after, causing this super weird effect my eyes couldn’t handle. I slammed them shut and was met with Trevor’s thoughts.
Dying.
Dead.
Oh god.
Chelsea!
He was calling out for me. From where? I tried to sit up, but fell back with an intense wave of nausea.
Gunfire rang out, echoing in the spacious chamber. People stood close, blocking me. Josh called my name, but all sounds grew farther and farther apart. Fire and water mixed and mixed until, suddenly—quiet and silence and nothing.
“This is for Trevor, you asshole!” Valerie shouted. Fire scorched the air around us, drying it out, making it hard to breathe, making it hot as Hell in here. White-hot, blue-hot, other colors I’d never before seen in fire. They all danced together in a flame blast shaped like a lance. I looked up in time to see Prince Atlas pierced in the chest by the weapon.
“Sophia!” I shouted, hoping she’d understand what I meant for her to do.
She reacted, rushing beside Valerie and pulling water from everyone’s canteens, more and more until it all formed a giant puddle in the air in front of her.
“Cold,” she shouted. “Get cold.” Her voice snarled at the end of the word, becoming something feral and
not her. Her super soldier half.
The water froze. She threw it at the fire-pierced Prince Atlas before it finished turning to ice. It sizzled over his body cooling the rapidly heated skin and muscle and bone. Sophia clenched her fists and the water fully froze into ice.
Valerie charged the frozen Prince Atlas and kicked his head clean off. Vomit roiled around my stomach at the sight. A few people cursed, turning away.
Wait.
Valerie turned to me, tears in her eyes. This is for Trevor! she’d shouted.
Trevor.
My head felt lighter. Better. No more pain, no more feeling dizzy. What in the hell?
“Trevor,” I said as I sat up, then pushed myself off the ground. “Where is he? What’s going on? What—”
She came to my side and lifted up my hands, shaking her head. “I wanted him to tell you. I begged him to tell you.”
My stomach dropped. Nothing existed outside of Valerie and me. Nothing else mattered at all, except her words that would tell me she was lying. That Trevor was fine.
I turned for the door, only to find Major Pike coming through with Trevor hauled over his shoulders in a fireman carry. Blood seeped down from Trevor’s chest and shoulder, coating Major Pike’s side.
Oh god.
My feet gave out under me, my knees slamming on the stone floor. I couldn’t breathe. Nothing, not air or words, made it past my throat at the sight of Major Pike laying Trevor on the ground. My parents came to me. Valerie caught me. My vision narrowed in on Trevor’s limp, bleeding body.
Valerie’s words slid through the void growing in my heart. “He was shot, but that’s not the life-threatening issue.”
I couldn’t get the words out to ask what’d happened. What could be worse than being shot?
Being dead.
A hurt, mutilated sound escaped my throat.
Valerie’s hands on me tightened. “Chelsea, listen to me. I think we can still save him. Almost a year ago, while you were gone at TruGates, he was hurt. He lied to you, kept this hidden.”
My eyes found her brown ones, searching for truth while wading through lies. “I don’t understand.”
“The team found a manufactured Link Piece, one that glowed red,” she said. Red. Like the crystal skull in the warehouse where Truman had died. “It was infected with a disease meant to kill you and Sophia. He survived it, at a cost. He could see the Waterstar map. That’s how we knew it was meant for you or Sophia. It was planted there to kill you.”
“I-I-I.” I hiccupped past tears that still refused to come. “God, why?”
Valerie shook me. “Listen to me. He’s had medicine this whole time, but the source has run dry. But these Atlanteans, they have those stasis chambers. If we can find one maybe we can save him or at least hold him over until we can find out how to save him.”
Sure enough, the more I watched Trevor’s body, the more easily I saw his chest rising and falling. I crawled toward him, Valerie and Josh at my heels, until I was by his side. I rested my ear against his chest. His heart beat that familiar rhythm that’d become a safety net, a lullaby when I fell asleep on him at night, a reassurance that I wasn’t alone in this crazy life. Except his heartbeat grew slow, ever-weakening.
“Trevor,” I cried. “No.”
Trevor, the man who’d rescued me at the Franklin. The guy who’d been there for me through everything, who’d taken my side when no one else would. Trevor, the love of my life. He was still alive. For now.
If there was something—anything—I could do to save him, I had to do it.
36
Chelsea
I turned on my parents. “We need a stasis chamber. Now.” My eyes cut to Sophia. “Take the rest back. Take everyone except me, Valerie, and Major Pike.”
“No!” Abby shouted. “I’m not leaving him.”
I glared at her. “If you die here too, he’ll never forgive me. He’ll haunt me from the fucking grave.” Back to Sophia. “Take her. Take them all.”
Sophia nodded, tears welling in her eyes as she corralled everyone but Valerie and Major Pike. “I’ll initiate the Return plan.”
“If they’ve found a crane,” I said. “If not, tell the Captain to fear the worst and self-destruct.” It was the only way to ensure the Link Pieces on board would be destroyed and our memories couldn’t be used against us. That nothing more would happen to anyone else on board that was out of our control.
I looked to my father. “Take us to the closest healing chamber right now.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be enough—” my mother cut in.
“I don’t care!” I shrieked. “Do it now before that super soldier half of me makes an appearance because I swear to all that is holy that I cannot control what she does and I will not bother to try! This is Trevor we’re talking about! Trevor!”
“Can you heal him like you did before?” Valerie spat. “Back there, in the tunnel. You healed him some.”
My father’s gaze fell. “He’s too far gone. I cannot—I’m not powerful enough to…”
“Bullshit!” Valerie shouted.
“How is it possible there is nothing we can do?” Sobs wracked my body and I spun, sending my fists into a stone pillar. First one, then the other, alternating. Valerie cried out, wanting me to stop, but it was Josh’s familiar arms that wrapped around me, dragged me back and away.
“Chelsea, stop,” he said. “It won’t help.”
“Get off of me!” I shouted.
My arms constricted in that sickening, familiar way of someone else controlling my body, harnessing the water in it. My eyes wandered the faces of those of us still in the room after Sophia left with the others. Major Pike and Valerie weren’t super soldiers. They couldn’t control the water in other people’s bodies.
My eyes found my father’s sad, guilty ones. “If I let you go, will you calm down? I will bring you there and we will try to save his life.”
“He’s Lemurian, Markus!” my mother argued.
I couldn’t even—words didn’t come. I had none, not for her and her stance against the very people who’d saved her, who crippled Atlantis and won the damn entire war for her.
“So am I,” Valerie said, standing, fire growing in her palm. She reared back her hand, ready to launch her attack. “Without us, you wouldn’t damn well be here, would you?” Her wrist twitched backward.
“Valerie don’t,” I said. “Please. Stop this. All of this.” I couldn’t watch her kill them even if I’d hated my mother’s ignorant words. “Please, Valerie. We need to save him.”
She swallowed hard, her throat muscles convulsing, and the fire in her palm went out.
“Come,” my father said, kneeling beside us. “I will bring you there.”
My father teleported us out of the destroyed Atlas Cache. If nothing else, at least we had succeeded in that. Atlantis would be bound to this time-place, never to be a threat to the fabric of time and space again. They were landlocked. Stuck. But we weren’t. We still had a way to get home.
My father brought us to a building full of high stone walls with minimal decorations and cobwebs. One room after another was empty except for shadows and the sounds of our footfalls echoing off bare stone walls.
“This is where the society protecting the Atlas Cache secret worked before they were discovered many years ago,” my father informed us. It looked suspiciously like the Archives building did on every blueprint Freddy had created on SeaSat5 two years ago. “Here.”
He led us down a hallway and into a side room where multiple stasis chambers sat.
Major Pike hoisted Trevor inside of one and clipped the harnesses in place. I touched his chest, feeling his heartbeat. It was fading as fast as his mind already had. When I tried to read him, I heard nothing. It was like he’d been turned into a blank slate because of the Waterstar map.
“I should have told you,” Valerie said from behind me. “I’m so sorry, Chelsea. Lemurians aren’t supposed to see the map. It’s a miracle he’s made
it this long.” Tears streamed down her face. She wiped them away with her palms. Her love for Trevor stunned me into silence.
I bit back my emotions and brushed my fingers down his cheek. He was so cold, cold like he’d already died. “Do it,” I told my father. “Fix him. Save him.”
My father nodded and pushed some buttons on a console next to the wall, one that hadn’t been near the wardrobe in the Archives Building. A few beeps and a long pause later, the doors slid shut and became see-through. The screen next to the chamber lit up, showing Trevor’s failing vital signs. The machine beeped erratically like all those machines on ER shows. Like he really was dying.
“No!” I screamed, sliding a hand down the glass. “Dammit, no Trevor! This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen! You lied to me. Why do you lie to protect me when it’s you who needs the protection!”
Valerie’s warm fingers pulled mine back from the glass. “Shh.”
We both watched the machine, crying, holding each other as if we were close friends. We weren’t. Not after everything, not after this secret the two of them had kept.
The machine continued beeping all over the place, finding no steady rhythm. I looked up at my father. “It’s not doing anything. It’s not helping him.”
My father frowned and made eye contact with Major Pike. “That’s what I was trying to warn you about, Chelsea. His mind may be beyond repair. Lemurians weren’t meant to have the map in their heads. That’s why they’ve never been able to see it. Even normal Atlanteans can’t hold it.”
I gulped, an idea rising to the surface. A good idea. A shitty, risky as hell idea.
Major Pike’s radio screamed. “We’ve got the crane ready to go, Link Piece made!” Sophia said over the radio.
“Come back now,” Captain Marks added.
Major Pike schooled his features into neutral, unaffected ones. He knew we didn’t have time for this. That we had to leave now if we might ever have a chance to leave at all. “As soon as we can, Captain.”