by Jessica Gunn
“What now?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? You always have a plan. You’re always five steps ahead of everybody else.”
I rolled over to face her and reached for her hand, intertwining our fingers. “General Allen’s been sixteen steps ahead this entire time. I think my long game is over.”
Silence filled the space between us until Charlie sat up a few moments later. “Let’s call Trevor and tell him to speed things up with Chelsea.”
“Gotta be careful with that. If he forces it, the fake memories and real ones will destroy her mind.” Truth was, I was pretty sure we’d already screwed Chelsea up for good. That hadn’t been the intention, but then everything had gone wrong and she’d had to—as she remembered—kill Trevor.
It’d destroy me, too. Even if it was a fake, implanted memory.
I sat up and reached for the hotel phone. “Couldn’t hurt to tell him to pick it up, though.” And to make sure he was okay. It wasn’t that I didn’t think he couldn’t defend himself, but I’d spent years worrying after Trevor in this war. And he was my best friend.
But before my fingers even danced across the dial pad, the room started glowing blue with an Atlantean teleport. My gaze jumped to Charlie. She was still there, so it wasn’t her.
“Oh, crap,” she stated, gathering water in her palm. I readied myself, too. Depending on who this was—unannounced as they were either way—we might have to fight our way out of this room.
When the lights died down and the teleport finished, a man stood at its center.
Lieutenant Weyland. He grinned. “Found you.”
Chapter Thirty
TREVOR
I’d never gone kayaking before, but I soon learned it was exhilarating. Or at least as exhilarating as going minimal speeds on water could be. It was no jet ski, sure, but the slow ride didn’t bother me. Despite my instinctual need to stay by Chelsea while she had no idea it wasn’t safe here for her right now, I let myself go off alone. With everything going on, I’d forgotten what having fun felt like. What being relaxed did for the mind. The only danger for her on this lake would come from the kids, if my suspicion about White City soldiers being planted here as children was true. But that theory was utterly ludicrous, right?
I paddled along slowly, enjoying the breeze in the air despite the sunburn warming my skin. I’d lived underground or underwater for a majority of the last four months. I’d almost forgotten what sunlight felt like.
A whistle sounded the end of rec time. I paddled to the dock and dismounted the kayak before helping students out. Chelsea came up beside me, along with Cody, and also pulled out some kayaks. Chelsea started stacking the kayaks, much to Cody’s sheer freak out when she had no issue piling on the water-filled ones. I chuckled. I never thought I’d get to the point where seeing Chelsea’s strength would be a normal thing. Maybe it was because I’d had her powers for a few weeks. Maybe they felt like a part of me, too, now.
Wait a second. Chelsea has her powers back?
When did that happen? How did that happen? Valerie said that she’d only get them back when she received her memories, not before. That, combined with the sample of Chelsea’s blood, was how I’d borrowed her powers before now. Did they return to her when I “died”? I’d known I couldn’t use her powers since that day three months ago. Me not having them wasn’t new. But that Chelsea did… it almost made me feel better about leaving her alone for three months.
That hadn’t been the plan, not initially. But General Allen was also supposed to have been out of the picture for a lot longer than a few weeks. Instead, he’d resurfaced within a month. I should have come to the archaeology camp then, but this new Trevor, this Ethan, needed an actual identity first.
And Chelsea needed time alone, to process.
“Thanks, Cody,” Chelsea said despite handling the stacking by herself. “Let’s get them up to the mess hall for dinner. They’re showing a movie on the projector screen tonight.”
“Yeah? Which one?” he asked.
“Some PG-13 rated horror, I think,” she said. “They always aim for kid-friendly movies, but these teens are in high school. Someone usually overrides the choice and brings something from home.”
“Sounds like—” Something Logan would do. That was what I wanted to say. Because that was something her best friend would do. The same best friend who didn’t like me before and would absolutely kill me once he found out I’d faked my own death. That’d I’d contributed to Chelsea’s heartbreak in the worst possible way. “Sounds like a good time,” I amended.
She grinned at me. “Always. I think it’s Gina’s turn to scare them later.”
“I thought this was an archaeology summer camp,” I said. “You know, educational?”
“I’d saying learning not to prank camp counselors lest they prank you back is an educational lesson to learn.” Chelsea crossed her arms, but she was laughing. “Besides, archaeologists know how to have fun. The most entertaining classes and field trips I ever had in school were with the kids in my undergrad program.” She nodded to the mess hall. “Come on. We have to catch up before the students eat all the good pie.”
And just like that, Chelsea was off running behind the students. I followed, then paused, watching her. It was funny how, in the middle of all of this chaos, how carefree Chelsea finally was. An undercurrent coursed beneath every word she spoke, sure. It was like she had more than shoved it down, more than buried it like she normally would have. She’d accepted the exile from TAO and the Navy, and she had moved on.
Who was I to ruin that?
Cody smacked my chest with the back of his hand. “Come on, dude. Chow’s on. Look at the sunset like a weirdo later.”
This kid. Though he had to actually be older than me if he’d graduated from grad school. What a difference a war makes.
The mess hall was the exact kind of chaos you’d expect from one hundred high schoolers in one place with food involved. The threat of a friendly food fight hung in the air throughout all of dinner, but none came. I kept what distance I could from Chelsea, though she demanded Cody and I sit next to her so we could get to know each other. I let Cody steer the conversation. I already knew Chelsea better than I knew myself. And anything I had to say about “Ethan” was made up on the spot. Three brothers? Sure. An undergrad in history? Sounded good. Whatever diverted the attention away from me and back to Cody and his UCLA grad experience was fine by me.
After dinner and clean-up, the students and counselors crowded out on the field, where a screen had been projected on the side of the biggest building at camp. They played The Blair Witch Project. I’d never seen it before, so I hunkered down in the back row of logs and tried to pay attention. All focus was lost, though, when Chelsea plopped down beside me, popcorn in hand. All of a sudden it was like we were back on SeaSat5, sitting on a couch in the lounge watching our friends’ progress through Mega Rush 2.
“Finally,” she breathed. “Feels so good to just relax.”
“Looked like you were having fun,” I said.
“Yeah, well. It is fun. But babysitting a dozen teens all day is exhausting.” She drank water from her bottle, and then frowned as if she’d been expecting something else instead. “I kind of want to call home and apologize to my parents for everything I put them through.”
She laughed and I found it hard not to laugh, too. I knew exactly what she’d put them through and exactly how much she had Logan and Sarah to thank for covering the rest of it up.
“You’re doing a great job, for what it’s worth,” I said. “It’s only been a day and I already want to run for the hills.”
“Half a day, actually.” She offered me her popcorn. I took some, and as I did so, our fingers brushed. The touch lit my body up like I’d been struck by lightning and I had to clamp down the sudden overwhelming urge to pull her into my arms.
I pulled back with only a few kernels and ate them. “Exactly. Only a half day.”
“It gets easier,” she said, apparently not noticing my internal freak out. Her gaze was set on the crowd of kids. “It’ll get even easier once Cody stops fanboying around me.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes,” she said. “Everyone else is cool with my relative stardom. Why can’t he be?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. If I hadn’t known the woman behind the mask so well, I might have also been inclined to fanboy. Chelsea was good at what she did, music included. Every word caught my ear and hit home, even the songs she’d written about me breaking her heart.
“Why’d you leave?” My words left my mouth and sifted through the silence between us before I could rein them in. She stiffened but didn’t answer. “I mean, if you want to answer that. You don’t have to. That was kind of out of line.”
She shook her head slowly. “No. It’s a fair question, one I’ve been dodging left and right for months now from reporters.”
“I’m not a reporter,” I said. “But I understand. No worries.”
Chelsea pulled a necklace out from under her shirt. She thumbed the object there, but it was too dark for me to see what it was. “I couldn’t do it anymore. Not with… I just didn’t have it in me.”
The movie scene changed, splashing light across the field. In it I caught sight of her necklace. A ring. The ring I’d proposed to her with. She still kept it.
“That I definitely understand,” I said to her. “Sometimes there’s not enough rope to tie a knot with when you get to the end.”
She turned to me, her eyes glistening in the light of the movie. “Yeah. Exactly.” She glanced down at the ring. “He was special, you know? That kind of person you know there’s not another of in this world. So special and good that sometimes you don’t notice what you have until it’s gone. But then sometimes you get a second chance and even then, still, you mess it up. And then it’s all gone. All of it.”
I bit my tongue to keep from spilling every last word I had to say to her. Instead, I settled for, “Is he why you left the band?” A loaded question, to be sure, and packed full of everything I couldn’t say to her right now. Every question I wanted to ask but didn’t. Would she read them there? Would this be the moment in which she recognized me past the glamour?
“It wasn’t any one thing,” Chelsea said. “But yeah. His death played a big part in it. Singing about him hurt. So did singing about the memories of us together throughout the years. And the fact that I may not be here if it weren’t for him. Some stuff happened outside the band, too.”
“It all came together and too much was too much?” I guessed.
She nodded, and then stuffed the ring necklace underneath her shirt. “Exactly. Win some, lose some. That’s all life is. So while I’m here to teach kids to love archaeology, I’m also trying to balance my own personal scales.”
The kids screamed as something undoubtedly terrifying happened on the movie screen.
Chelsea chuckled and leaned back. “Although maybe showing them The Blair Witch Project isn’t tipping my scales in the desired direction.”
“Kowabunga!” someone shouted from behind Chelsea.
We both spun fast, but I was faster, standing to meet whatever threat was coming before my mind could even begin to temper my body’s reaction. Adrenaline spiked in my system, my fists clenching.
Zach and his two friends appeared out of nowhere, pie in hand, and rushed it at Chelsea’s face. “Gotcha, Ms. Danning!” Zach laughed, doubling over and cackling.
Uh-oh. The old Chelsea would have probably lost her head about this. I waited to see what this Chelsea would do instead.
She picked the pie pan off her face as the other counselors and teachers turned and laughed right along with the students. Swiping whipped cream offer her face, she grinned. “Well then.”
They all continued to laugh it off.
I had to force myself to sit down. To breathe. To recognize that this was a summer camp, not a battlefield, and resign myself to the notion that there was no way General Allen would be such an evil dick enough to use children, even teenagers, to do his bidding. To come after Chelsea.
But then I remembered my orders while in the White City, the ones that had told me to use Charon’s son to pick memories from Josh’s brain.
I swept my gaze across the crowd. Any person here, teen or adult, could have been a White City soldier. Even in the middle of nowhere, Chelsea wasn’t safe.
They needed her. Not the map, not the fact that she was a super soldier. But her.
And there was nothing I could do to keep them away.
Chapter Thirty-One
TREVOR
The next morning, Cody was late to wake up. I practically shook him out of bed, dragged him down to the mess hall, and then made it up to the student’s dig site at eight in the morning. Chelsea was already there ahead of everyone else, setting up sifters and dirt buckets. Did she ever sleep? The movie hadn’t ended until almost midnight, and the counselors and teachers had partied afterward. Cody and I hadn’t gotten back to our cabin until nearly 4 a.m.
“Morning!” Cody called.
Chelsea looked up and gave us a small wave. “Morning. Good, you made it before the kids.” She checked her watch. “Got about twenty minutes before they show up.”
“Need help with anything?” I asked her as we stopped in front of the pits.
She shook her head. “No, I think I got everything. Never really went to sleep.” She wiped her brow, already slick with sweat. “It’s so hot up here.”
“It’s not too bad,” Cody said.
“Right, Mr. California. In New England, we don’t do hot. We have humid and gross,” she said.
That, and I knew Chelsea was used to be being cold. The climate controls on SeaSat5, Atlas, and at TAO had always run cooler rather than hotter. So, aside from our hikes through various jungles or through trails in Hawaii, we’d both spent a majority of the last few years in air-conditioning.
Chelsea spun back to the site and began setting out tools for the kids. I followed suit while Cody just watched. For someone who was such a huge fan of Chelsea’s, he sure didn’t move to help her out too much. Or maybe I’d just gotten used to being her partner—in friendship, in love, or in crime.
It was on that last thought that a flash of orange charged past me to Chelsea. Cody’s bright neon shirt. He growled, screamed, “Abomination!” and launched himself at Chelsea. He landed the tackle, sending them both to the ground. She made a sound of surprise and couldn’t get herself unpinned from beneath Cody’s knees. He raised his hand, lightning the color of jade sparking between his fingers.
I grabbed one of the trowels and made for Cody. Here I thought one of the kids was a White City plant and it’d been Mr. Fanboy all along.
“Get off her!” I shouted at him, taking a swipe with the trowel. He bled but didn’t let go, didn’t change the trajectory of his lightning hand. If it touched Chelsea, it’d start sucking away at her life force, at the parts of her that generated time-travel energy.
I wrapped my arms around Cody’s neck and pulled, trying to yank him off of Chelsea, but his grip was super strong. Chelsea kicked and pounded her fists against his chest, unable to budge him in any direction.
“Fight, Chelsea!”
I didn’t have her powers anymore. She did, somehow. Against Cody, I had virtually no chance. She had to snap out of it, out of the idea of safety she’d grown used to. The war was far from over.
Chelsea planted her open palms on Cody’s chest, glanced quickly up at me, and pushed. Cody and I sailed through the air. We landed in a heap, Cody on top of me. She tore him off me and landed a quick series of blows to his chest and face.
Cody stumbled backward, wiping blood from his chin and nose, and cursed to the sky. “You’re not supposed to have your powers,” he sang, waving his index finger in the air before him. “Somebody lied.”
Oh, somebody had lied all right. Somebody had promised more than could be delivered u
pon if everything went wrong. And gone wrong it had.
“Back off of her,” I shouted, stepping in front of Chelsea. Like hell I’d let him hurt her now.
“Ethan, stop,” she said. “I got this. Go run to the trails and make sure the kids aren’t coming. It’s not safe.”
Her eyes were focused on Cody, but I looked at her anyway. Couldn’t she see who I was now? “Chelsea.”
There must have been something to the way I said her name because she turned her gaze from Cody to me, as if she were really seeing me for the first time. Her brow furrowed.
Cody pounced. As he leapt through the air, Chelsea flicked her fingers, grabbing the trowel from my hand with telekinesis, and shoved it into Cody’s chest. Twisted it. Cody collapsed, dead, to the ground.
“Fantastic,” Chelsea breathed, staring at his still form. “Now I have to figure out how to clean this up before the students come.”
“Teleport him out,” I said. “I’ll stay here and grab a bucket to wash the blood away.”
Chelsea stuttered and backed away from me, bloody trowel held up in front of her. “Who the hell are you?”
I lifted my hands. She wouldn’t skewer me too, would she? “Please, Chelsea.”
She closed the distance between us, grabbed on to the front of my shirt, and pushed the trowel’s metal tip against my throat. Suddenly, I regretted all those thoughts about being closer to her again, at least while I looked like this. “Are you one of his, too? Did General Allen send you?”
“No—”
The metal tip pushed against my skin and I resisted all urges to swallow—which is of course when my mouth ran dry and I wanted to gulp at the sight of fresh fire in Chelsea’s eyes.
“Speak!”
My gaze met hers and I tried to look past the fire, past the fear that she could very well actually kill me now because I didn’t look like me, and she’d never know the difference. “Chelsea, it’s me.”