Countercurrent

by Jessica Gunn

  Immediately, someone almost ran into us as they crossed the back half of the Bridge. Everyone rushed from one station to another and Commander Devins barked orders at various senior staff. Captain Marks stood in the command center, bracing himself on the railing that almost entirely encircled the center. His eyes focused on the three main screens ahead of him, filled with data and empty views of the ocean. None showed what the hell was attacking us.

  “Captain?” I shouted over the din.

  He glanced over his shoulder, his eyes widening as if he’d gotten an idea, then he frowned and shifted his view to beside me. To Valerie. He frowned deeper.

  I’d bet my life he was hoping I’d somehow be able to fight whatever was out there given my water abilities. He wasn’t the only one.

  “Weyland,” I said as I approached the command center. “Send him.”

  He shook his head. “No good when we’re submerged.”

  Well, duh. Even still, his words confirmed my suspicions. Not only did I no longer live up to his expectations of me, but even he’d gotten so used to me having powers that his first instinct was for me to use them.

  I stepped back from the command center and let my gaze fall to the far side of the room, where Freddy sat at his Navigations and Analytics station. His gaze met mine, his eyes rounding as if trying to impart some measure of empathy, but it was sidelined by the side of the hull being torn open, ripping like a seam.

  A million alarms wailed as we lost pressure. Water poured in behind the giant claw that appeared in the tear’s wake. A giant, bright turquoise, curled claw—like one belonging to a crab or a lobster—crept through the gap, grabbing, plunging, tearing the station in two.

  No one on the Bridge spoke a single word, except the Captain. “Evac. Everyone. Now!”

  I never wanted to hear that command from a Captain ever again.

  The creature pulled its talon out of SeaSat5’s hull. Valerie jumped into action before anyone else reacted. She slid into the closest Bridge station and, I had to assume, logged into engineering’s systems. To the shield and Hummingbird.

  Everything blurred together—the alarms, the shouting, the terrifying urgency of our situation. If the station took on too much water, we’d sink. If we kept losing pressure, we’d die. We weren’t deep enough to implode, thank god, but that didn’t give me much hope. And there was nothing I could do. No way to teleport, no way to fight the creature, no ability to help at all.

  So I stood there as the chaos swam around me.

  “Shield up!” Valerie shouted, though why it hadn’t been up five minutes ago, I didn’t understand.

  “Surface the station! Now!” Captain Marks added even as officers and other crew members began their evacuations.

  The station began rising, rumbling beneath my feet. The creature pulled its talon back and then heaved it into SeaSat5’s hull another time.

  We’re gonna die here!

  I held on tight and squeezed my eyes shut. Maybe if I dug deep enough, looked far, far into myself, I’d find my powers. Stilling my thoughts, I imagined that giant rift that often stood between the super soldier inside of me and myself. The bridge between us had been cut, the length of it swinging underneath me. I gulped. She stood so far away, the super soldier within me. A mile away, maybe more.

  The air warmed around me, flames licking too close to my skin. I opened my eyes to see the last remnants of Lemurian teleports. They flashed in like mutant fireflies blinking onto the ship. Almost everyone, myself included, turned our backs to the creature to inspect this development. Out popped half a dozen Lemurians, fires blazing in their palms. They threw them at the creature and Valerie joined in. I pulled back against a Bridge station. What cover it provided would have to do.

  Within minutes they’d fought the creature off SeaSat5’s hull. They pushed it back so far they could freely stand on the edge of the hull breach before working together to set off a wave of fire that grew larger than the one Abby and Valerie had formed on Atlantis.

  It swallowed the creature, leaving behind only the scent of cooked seafood.

  I gulped as the creature died. Water lapped at my heels in small waves, though the torrents of water had stopped pouring in after the shield had gone up.

  I looked to Valerie. Were we safe now?

  She surveyed the damage to the station, along with everyone else, before running down from the engineering platform to me. “You okay?”

  “I think so.” Hell if I knew. I hadn’t been injured. But that monster…

  “Looks like we decided to come just in time,” came a female voice from the Lemurian contingent.

  All eyes turned on JoAnne Boncore, Trevor’s mother.

  “Where is my son?” she asked.

  Chapter Ten

  CHELSEA

  The military towed SeaSat5 to dry dock. Only then, under what little security Pearl Harbor seemed to hold at this point, did we finally sit down with the Lemurian contingent that’d saved us.

  “Thank you for helping,” I said to Trevor’s mother. This was the first time we’d met and we might never have if not for this giant crab thing. We might not have met if Trevor hadn’t decided to ditch everything we knew and side with the White City.

  His mother nodded solemnly. “I wish that’s what we came here for.” She glanced over her shoulder at the other Lemurians. I watched Valerie’s reaction to them rather than make judgements for myself. She looked at each of them in turn, her eyes moving over some quicker than others. Were her parents here, too? Siblings? Cousins? I really didn’t know as much about Valerie as I’d thought.

  “We appreciate your assistance regardless,” Captain Marks said. “That creature was beyond anything we’ve seen before.”

  “Even in Atlantis,” I added. That crab-monster beat out Glowing Nessie, hands-down.

  Her mouth thinned and she swept her arm before her group. “I am JoAnne, Trevor’s mother, as I said. These are my associates.”

  “Family,” Valerie snapped and—cowered. She actually cowered back against the station behind her. Charlie protectively tightened her grip on Valerie’s arm. “You mean your family. I know you don’t consider them that way, but that’s the truth. You tend to forget that.”

  I frowned. I’d be inclined to believe she were defending Trevor if it weren’t for knowing Valerie’s own parents had been behind her initial exile following Thompson’s hijacking of SeaSat5. How she knew SeaSat5 was a Link Piece, and therefore helped to save us, while no one else did, I’ll never know. They probably wouldn’t have exiled her if they’d known the truth, but they had. And she’d spent months alone because of it.

  “Yes,” JoAnne said. “We came here to request your help and found the Atlantean creature attacking you instead. Leviathans are vicious creatures. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  Freddy stood from his Bridge station, the broken fluorescents above him shading his face in weird shadows. “You’ve encountered them before?”

  “Unfortunately,” said one of the other Lemurians, a tall man with dark skin and a hard face. “They’re war beasts. The leviathans sometimes make it back from Atlantean times. My guess is it attached itself to this station while you were in Atlantis and hitched a ride back. This station has a shield, right?”

  Valerie nodded. “Yeah, it’s the only reason we didn’t implode when it ripped a hole in the side.”

  “It might have attached itself as a juvenile or an egg and grew inside the shield undetected until today.”

  “I’d say ‘undetected until today’ is the biggest understatement of the year,” I cut in. JoAnne’s gaze met mine. She must have hated me, the Atlantean responsible for putting Trevor into whatever situation had led to where he was now. If we’d never met, if he’d never followed me outside the Franklin that night…

  We’d thought about it that way too many times, Trevor and I. Over and over again, analyzing the night we’d met, like our interactions held the clues to everything that’d happened since. But the truth was, n
one of that mattered. Our meeting had only changed us, not the world. It was me calling to SeaSat5, to the Link Piece connecting to Atlantis, that had changed everything. Trevor and I were an accidental byproduct of fate and destiny.

  And his mother hated me for it. A rage-filled fire stormed in her eyes. I deserved every bit of her ire. If it hadn’t been for me, Trevor wouldn’t have been in this mess.

  JoAnne’s face hardened as if she’d heard every single word. “In either case, that is where the monster came from. If you need help covering up the story from the public, we’ll be of any assistance you need.”

  Captain Marks nodded in my direction. “I think we have it handled.” He’d done the best he could under the circumstances. Giant sea monsters, much like time-travel, were better left untold to the public. Let them see the satellite station making strides in ocean and environmental research and nothing else, that was what the Admiral had always wanted us to focus on. Even when the station had disappeared, prisoners to Atlantis, for two years.

  “Good,” JoAnne said, stepping back to take in the whole group. “Now, as to why we’re actually here…” She glanced at her companions and another Lemurian urged her on with a nod. Her gaze moved, landing solidly on me. I gulped. “We need your help, you and the other super soldiers allied with you.” She looked to Valerie. “And you, Valerie.”

  She scoffed. “Now you need me. No way.” Valerie swiped her hand through the air. “Find yourself another soldier.”

  “How about you hear her out first?” another Lemurian said. “Good to know you haven’t changed, Val.”

  Valerie glared at him and I swore it scorched even me. “Shut up, Daniel.”

  Oh, I recognized that tone. “Brother?” I asked her. She shot me a look in return, enough to make me regret asking.

  Captain Marks cleared his throat, attempting to regain control over his crew. “What’s going on? Why come to us?”

  JoAnne met his gaze. “The White City has stolen the Lifestone of Lemuria. Specifically, we believe General Allen has pilfered the stone and brought it to the White City as a temporary measure of security. We think they’ve hidden it within the Temple at the Falls.”

  Had we suddenly jumped into some crazy high fantasy movie? Was a wizard going to drop down at any minute and tell me to climb a mountain with my friends to destroy jewelry?

  No one said anything, apparently having the same reaction as me.

  “Lifestone,” I echoed her. “What’s that?”

  She gave me this look like, “Oh, right. You’re a young Atlantean, you wouldn’t know,” before saying, “Those born in La Ciudad Blanca are immortal. They thrive off the energy created through time-travel. Millennia ago, their people destroyed a time barrier. In traveling, they opened a pocket universe, a side-bubble, one could say, and in doing so, came here. They do not originate in our universe, and because in this one, only Lemuria and Atlantis uncovered the secrets of time-travel, those born within the white walls of their city cannot survive. There simply isn’t enough time energy to go around without Link Piece travel.”

  “And let me guess,” I said. “They know that too much time-travel, or that many Link Pieces in one area, will tear the universe apart.”

  JoAnne nodded. “It is how they created the pocket universe in the first place.”

  “How do you know that?” Charlie asked.

  “Thanks to… I believe you all knew him as Dave,” she said.

  Captain Marks’s face paled despite his usual composure. “He’s from the White City. Or he was. He used to be my Lieutenant.”

  “They took him back,” I filled in for JoAnne.

  She nodded solemnly. “I know. We knew he was a White City defector when he joined us; that’s why we made him part of our Lemurian family. He told us their history, though we assumed they’d never be a threat because they were dying off on their own. We were wrong.”

  “And you want us to retrieve this Lifestone thing?” Valerie asked.

  “Precisely,” JoAnne said. “I don’t have the people to send on our own, and you do. You also have super soldiers, which takes stress about finding Link Pieces virtually out of the equation. The Lifestone holds the power to bend the will of time for whatever purpose the users can think up. Its power is virtually limitless.”

  This was utterly and completely absurd. But with SeaSat5 in dry dock, it wasn’t like we’d be doing much anyway. And anything that screwed with General Allen looked like a pretty fine idea to me right now. But it wasn’t my say. Only the Captain’s. We were his crew, after all. Well. His and TAO’s.

  “What’s in it for us?” Captain Marks asked her.

  She settled her gaze on him. “Despite the fact that we aren’t usually friendly, we are allies. Even if the White City has the Lifestone and not General Allen, they pose a power threat. It’s also sacred to Lemuria, and therefore important to you by extension. Help us retrieve it and we will give you our entire Link Piece cache in good faith. Stopping the White City means more than you can possibly fathom.”

  JoAnne actually put on a good speech. Captain Marks appeared to think it over. Weyland cleared his throat and lifted his fingers off the oak table.

  “Speak,” the Captain told him.

  “We need a way to stop or slow down the White City,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of walking into their territory to retrieve this thing, but the thought of them having it sounds even worse.”

  Captain Marks nodded. “Exactly. I can’t order you to go, though.”

  “You don’t have to.” I couldn’t believe I’d said that. This was the White City we were talking about. Who knew what we’d find there? For once, I wasn’t excited about the opportunity.

  A chorus of agreements followed until Valerie was the only one who hadn’t given her opinion. All gazes fell on her and she rolled her eyes. “Oh, fine. But I don’t trust you. Not one bit.”

  Chapter Eleven

  CHELSEA

  My fingers glided over the handle of the guitar, soundlessly parsing out the fingerings to some of my favorite songs of all time. The songs I’d had memorized for as long as I’d had a CD player. If this show had been based on our own music, it’d be impossible for me to play. I’d forget every single lyric.

  My hands shook, my breath shallow and uneven. No matter how amazing this fan show might possibly be, Trevor’s disappearance and probable traitor status overshadowed all of it. This should have been the best night of my life. Phoenix and Lobster was finally playing the biggest venue in Massachusetts, and I was headlining vocals, and nothing should have beat out the feel of playing on that stage. It wasn’t our music we’d be playing, but I was just as happy to belt out Red Tide’s lyrics any day.

  Especially today.

  Over the years, Phoenix and Lobster had grown. From where we’d been when I’d first joined SeaSat5 to today, our fan base had quadrupled and we’d released an EP half-album. We’d relished the path to success outside of a record label.

  That could change tonight. If we won this slightly ridiculous show battle, we’d not only tour with the band of our choice—our favorite band ever—but no one could turn us down. We’d finally have made it. Achieved our dream, one many of us in the band had thought about since our first Green Day show as teens.

  My finger slipped and the engagement ring on my left hand snagged on a string. I glanced down at it, frowning.

  “One dream exchanged for another,” I whispered.

  It’d been three weeks since the attack on Pearl. Three weeks since Trevor’s mother had enlisted TAO’s help to retrieve the Lifestone. Three weeks since Josh had first shown me the video of Trevor attacking Valerie and then teleporting out, as if he’d always been able to do that.

  My fingers slipped from the neck of my guitar and I slowly pulled the engagement ring off my finger. I held it up in front of my eyes, the fluorescent lights from above catching the stone in the center.

  “I don’t know what really happened,” I said, as if Trevor were in th
e room with me. “Or why you’d hurt Valerie, or why you’d help them steal my powers. But I will find you. I just…” Tears stung my eyes, pooled until they spilled over. I couldn’t do this show while thinking about him. I just couldn’t. “Just for now,” I told the ring, my heart shattering. Tightness squeezed my chest. A broken noise escaped my throat, and I had to bite my lip to keep more from rising. “I don’t want to let you go, Trevor. But I think I need to in order to find you.”

  I stood and placed the ring on a nearby table. I watched it for long moments until Sarah popped her head in.

  “Show time,” she said.

  I wiped my eyes and made for the door. “Sweet. Let’s do this.”

  She frowned and reached out for me, eyes zeroing in on my tear-streaked face. “Chelsea?”

  Shaking my head, I pushed past her into the hallway. “I’m good. It’s time now, and we have a show to play.”

  I walked fast enough to keep her from responding and was on stage before I knew it.

  Red Tide wasn’t just our favorite band; they were a lot of people’s favorite band. So, it was hard to tell if all 30,000 people—a sold-out show—in the venue had attended for us or because we were playing a cover show of Red Tide’s music. Either way, the ground shook when they jumped, and their cheers soared past the stage, up through the lawn and out into the night. Somewhere inside of all of this were my friends, both from back home and from SeaSat5, along with the band’s families.

  We opened with Red Tide’s first single ever, “Parade,” and played on through the entire set list. The chords came easily, the words even more naturally. Not a single thought went into them at all. I’d been singing these lyrics since high school, had attached so many of my own experiences and meanings to them that I choked on the acoustic version of “Until Sunrise” and laughed as I tried to get through the eternally funny “Turn Back Now.” Kris and I turned a few of the slower songs into duets, which sent the crowd into a frenzy of cheers and waving phone flashlights.