Riptide

by Jessica Gunn

  “One minute,” called the soldier from the Brig’s door.

  I looked back to Josh. “When did it start?”

  Josh tried his best to peer down the hallway at the guard. “You didn’t get permission to be here, did you?”

  “No, but I had to talk to you.”

  “But—”

  “When did it start?” I asked, interrupting him. “I need to know.”

  Josh shrugged, still trying to look down the main hallway filled with metal-grated floors and walls. “Sometime before the SeaSat5 rescue mission. That’s all I know for sure.”

  “And what did Valerie see that horrified her, all of you, so much?” I wasn’t sure he’d answer that last question.

  Josh’s gaze found mine, wide and scared. “You don’t want to know.”

  “I asked, didn’t I?”

  “It was horrible,” he said. “I’m not subjecting you to it and don’t ask again.” The bite in his voice startled me.

  We stared each other down for long moments, neither of us giving in.

  “Time’s up,” the guard said.

  I looked away, giving in. “Fine. You don’t have to tell me. But if you do, if you trust me with it, I might be able to help your defense when the Admiral asks.”

  It was a last-ditch effort to get him to tell me. I knew it, and so did Josh. But it didn’t work. He shook his head as the guard’s boots clanked closer.

  28

  Trevor

  SeaSatellite5 linked to Atlantis.

  I’d spent too long that afternoon wondering how much Thompson knew. And how much my mother knew now. Should I have reached out to her? Could she have told us a good way to act on this knowledge?

  It didn’t matter. She was the last person I should be telling any of this stuff to. Even if Lemuria and the TAO-SeaSatellite5 alliance sat in uneasy peace, they still wanted to see Atlantis destroyed at all costs. And you know what? Good for them. I did too, given their impact on not only SeaSatellite5 but also the world.

  But I didn’t want Atlantis destroyed at the cost of SeaSat5, because that’s exactly what would happen. We’d use it to get to whatever time-place Atlantis was hanging out in and then we would never be able to get it home—either because of whatever our Return Piece would turn out to be, or because the station would be destroyed on arrival.

  I forced out a heavy breath as I walked circles around TAO’s building. I’d already seen Abby. She was tired so I didn’t stay long, but she seemed to be doing a whole lot better now. That was all I could really hope for in all of this mess: that she’d come out of this unscathed, or at least less damaged than she was before.

  After that, I’d started walking. And I’d kept walking until my head grew woozy with every step. I stopped outside a set of double doors and leaned against it. My feet and hands tingled, my breath came short. What the hell?

  I pushed open the doors. I needed a quiet place alone to sit until whatever this was had passed. The doors gave away, and as I stepped inside the room, hoping for reprieve, I was slammed with the weight of a thousand time-places, of time-travel connections searing my vision in a wild azure, brighter and more ferocious than ever before.

  The Waterstar map took hold of my mind, seized every synapse and node, frying them all. I cried out and stumbled to the floor, barely getting a hand out in front of me to break my fall. My fingers crunched under my weight. I collapsed on the cement and forced myself to turn sideways.

  It’d never been this bad before. It’d never been so blinding, so all-encompassing.

  All I could do was lay there, eyes open, looking at the ceiling of the Map Room, seeing nothing but artifacts and art pieces connected to time-places, lines splitting between the two and running in unfathomable directions, receding into and out of a 4D space that didn’t make sense to my brain.

  My muscles tensed and coiled with every Link Piece that slid by my body. I was there, wading through the blue fog and haze, reaching my fingertips toward Link Pieces, though I was unable to claim any of them.

  My chest and neck slicked with sweat. My face grew hot with fever. Shit. I was regressing fully, right back to moments after I’d touched that Link Piece in the jungle.

  I’d die here, right on the Map Room floor. I was sure of it.

  But not without a fight. I tried as best I could to reach for my radio, a slim, black rectangular object in my pocket, as pain sliced down my neck and into my shoulders. The throbbing radiated outward across my back, spilling over into my hips. My back arched off the ground as my leg muscles cramped. Dark dots danced along the edges of my vision as my fingers reached the radio in my pocket. Finally.

  I’d barely spoke the words, “Sophia… map,” before reality swam out of focus and all I could see was the Waterstar map.

  I’d blacked out. When I came to a few minutes later, Sophia was above me, two of the medical team standing by. “Thank… you…” I croaked, my throat dry.

  She smiled at me, but didn’t say a word.

  Then a flash of red appeared above me—hair that could only belong to Valerie—and she pressed something cool and smooth to my mouth. “Drink,” she said.

  She tilted up the cup and liquid slid toward my mouth. I opened my lips and let it past.

  And nearly gagged. I groaned, swallowing what I hoped was more medicine to stop—or lessen—the Waterstar map in my head, and laid my head back onto the floor.

  “It should help,” Valerie said, her warm hand wrapped around my forearm. My vision was already clearing. Valerie turned to Sophia and said, “He’s going to be fine for now, but I’m worried about leaving him here.”

  “If we move him, Chelsea will wonder why,” Sophia said.

  Valerie scoffed. “She still doesn’t know?” Valerie’s eyes cut to mine. “She’s either completely blind or you’re a helluva lot better at lying than I’ve previously given you credit for, Trevor.”

  I swallowed and tried to say, “It’s the one thing in my head she can’t read. Don’t know why.”

  Valerie tapped my arm once and stood. “I’ll have to get more medicine from Charlie. This was an emergency supply.”

  “How does that work?” Sophia asked. “How would she know how to make something to dampen the effects of the Waterstar map if super soldiers like her are meant to see it all the time?”

  Valerie’s eyes flitted to mine and rounded with concern. “We all have special talents. That’s all you need to know.”

  It felt like there was something more she wanted to say, some deeper meaning I was supposed to uncover, but I wasn’t sure I could uncover my own thoughts in that moment. Everything hurt, despite the medicine starting to take effect. My fingers twitched and a hot cloud seemed to lift from my head.

  I forced my eyes to meet Valerie’s and I held her hand. “Thank you.”

  She nodded, a sad smile forming on her full lips. “Anytime, anywhere, Trevor. That’s what friends are for.”

  Sophia stiffened as if she didn’t think Valerie was capable of friendship, never mind with me after everything. What Sophia had failed to take into account was that before SeaSatellite5 was in the picture, all of us were decent people.

  Valerie stood and offered me a hand. I took it and rose on shaky feet.

  “We should get you to the Infirmary,” Sophia said. “I can run interference on Chelsea for you, but Major Pike would want to know what’s going on.” She leveled me with a look that chilled me to the core. She’d been a good friend since joining TAO, especially after Chelsea left to work with TruGates earlier this year. “You need to tell her.”

  “Agreed,” Valerie said. “She’ll lose it when she finds out you kept it from her for this long.”

  “Same reasoning applies now,” I said. “She’s got enough going on with Logan’s brother and Josh. She doesn’t need to worry about me, too.”

  If I could spare her even a little bit of stress, I would. I’d lay down my life for her. Keeping this secret was nothing.

  Valerie shrugged. “Wh
atever, then. The medicine supply is running dry. I don’t have anything for you to take regularly, and I can only stop your episodes maybe a few more times.”

  Fantastic.

  “And still no cure?” I asked.

  Valerie shook her head, a frown tugging on her lips.

  Sophia nodded toward the door. “We should—”

  The building shook violently, the walls buckling with the shock, and dust and bits of the ceiling fell over our heads to the floor. I reached out for Valerie, both to stabilize myself and to protect her from falling debris, when her hand clamped around mine. Sophia followed suit and together they were both able to get me, and themselves, out the door into the more secure hallway.

  An explosion rocked TAO’s interior. The tiles beneath our feet shattered and flew upward before the entire hallway began bottoming out. Sophia acted first, pulling on my arm and slapping her hand onto Valerie’s as well. The next thing I knew, we’d been swallowed in a sea of blue lights and deposited out by the second warehouse, the one that I didn’t know what it housed, outside the main TAO building.

  “What the hell was that?” I exclaimed.

  The building shook, part of it sinking into the ground with a second explosion.

  Shit! Chelsea’s in there!

  “Good reflexes,” Valerie said to Sophia. “You were one step ahead of me.”

  “I’m glad we didn’t teleport at the same time and tear Trevor apart,” Sophia said dryly, but the humor was lost in her empty eyes. “We need to go back in when it settles.”

  “I say we go now,” Valerie said. “There’re people in there, especially on the Map Room floor. You and I can handle it.”

  Sophia side-eyed Valerie and for a moment I thought she’d call Valerie crazy for wanting to work together. Atlantean and Lemurian. It didn’t matter anymore. We were all caught up in this war.

  “I think we can,” Sophia said. “Come on. We’ll start there and work our way down.”

  An explosion wracked the building for a third time, smoke and flames billowing from the second floor.

  Chelsea was still in there. I ran a hand through my hair, gaze darting all over the building. Was she safe? Had she gotten out?

  “How many freaking bombs do they have?” Valerie shouted above the noise.

  I froze as flames reached across the space between the main TAO building and the warehouse next to it. Not bombs. “Shit.”

  “What?” Sophia and Valerie asked at the same time.

  “They’re not bombs,” I told her. “Sophia, what’s stored in that warehouse? There might have been one initial explosion, but I think it chain reacted with something.”

  Sophia’s lips slid into a hard line, her jaw tightening.

  She knew. She’d known all along.

  My thoughts jumped ahead of my brain, assuming the worse-case scenario. “Look, I know there’s a reason Chelsea and I have never been told what’s stored in there or in the basement. It’s all the same material whatever it is. I also know this used to be an energy manufacturing facility. So tell me, Sophia, what’s stored in there that’d make this place a target to the Atlanteans?”

  “You’re assuming they’re Atlanteans,” she said, quick and hard, like we shouldn’t be talking about this. “And that the Atlanteans are after what’s in the warehouse.”

  “They want the Link Pieces TAO has stored,” Valerie said. “That’s why they attacked that floor, Trevor. What are you getting at?”

  “Even if they hit that one room, it wouldn’t be doing this,” I yelled over the roar of fire. “What is in that warehouse?”

  The longer Sophia watched the raging fire, the more panicked her face grew. Finally, she ran toward it, shouting over her shoulder, “Valerie, come on! We need to stop this before the material catches fire. It’ll explode and contaminate the area!”

  Valerie ran after her. I jogged behind them, wary of getting too close. TAO could already be contaminated by radioactive material. The fire had reacted with something, causing it to grow. If it reached the warehouse and set off the remaining material, we would all be in a bad, bad place. Anywhere near the basement might be contaminated and in need of quarantine. But they wouldn’t store anything ridiculously dangerous that close to us, would they?

  Let’s hope not.

  We raced to the second warehouse. Sophia summoned—seemingly from nowhere—a monster wave of water and threw it onto the fire. Valerie joined in and waved her hands. The flames responded, bending to her will and taming the fire to embers. Between the two of them they managed to kill the flames, drawing our attention back to the main TAO building.

  “Time to search for survivors,” I said. “And see what the damage is.” And find Chelsea. Please let her be okay. I hoped, prayed, that the only damaged rooms were the artifact storage room and those surrounding it. But the way the floor above it had collapsed didn’t bode well for anyone.

  The three of us dashed inside the first floor, making our way to the damaged area, dodging people that were evacuating as we went.

  “They probably used a Link Piece to get here,” Valerie said. “Then one from the Artifact Room to Return without being seen.”

  “Any security camera footage would have been destroyed in the explosion,” I said. “We might not ever know for sure.”

  “Doesn’t matter right now,” said Sophia, leading the way up to the artifact storage room. “Damage control and helping the wounded first.”

  But all three of us froze at the sight of the corner of the building that had been attacked. Smoke clung to the hallways, the product of small fires that continued to burn. Sophia splashed them out, and Valerie pushed back any remaining flames, parting the way for us as we moved. Sizzles hissed from where Sophia’s waves doused fire.

  Then there was the artifact storage room itself. Rubble and rebar marked where everything used to be. The vague outline of the room and surrounding hallway was there. But the door had been blown open, the walls torn to bits and pieces.

  Every single Link Piece was gone. Missing. The only indication there’d been anything in here at all were the burn marks from whatever had destroyed the room.

  “They took everything before blowing it up,” I stuttered. “They were trying to cover it up as sabotage.”

  Valerie coughed, covering her mouth from the smoke. “Like we wouldn’t notice.”

  “Doubt they cared about that.”

  “Trevor!” Sophia cried. She’d ventured farther inside the damaged area to where a hole had been blown in the floor from the force of the explosion. The cement shook as she approached the edge. I pushed Valerie back toward the hallway with an arm across her chest.

  “Stay back,” I told her.

  “I can tele—”

  “Don’t care,” I interrupted her. “Please.”

  She nodded and retreated into the hallway. “I’ll run through the other halls, see if I can find Chelsea.”

  Then she was gone.

  I inched toward Sophia. “What is it?”

  That’s when I first noticed it, the bloodstains. Both on the floor around the hole as well as against one wall.

  People had died here.

  Our people had died here. Everyone who’d been in the room working at the time, taken by utter surprise. Panic and fear swept through me. I struggled to swallow the rising nausea. I couldn’t. I spun to the side and vomited.

  “Pull yourself together,” Sophia shouted. “I need your help.”

  Grasping my middle with one hand and trying very hard not to look at where our people had incinerated or exploded, I tiptoed on shaky flooring to Sophia. She seemed taller all of a sudden.

  I looked down to her feet and saw she was standing on an inch-thick layer of water that held her aloft, hovering over the floor. “How?”

  She waved me off. “Later. This floor can’t hold the both of us.” She pointed through the hole. “Look.”

  I peeked over the edge. Major Pike lay on the floor below, a piece of metal sticking up th
rough his gut. “Oh god.”

  Sophia’s hand closed over my shoulder. “I need you to trust me and help with this. I’m going to pull him up and you’re going to help me get him over the edge. Then you and I are going to teleport to SeaSat5’s Infirmary as fast as possible.” She tugged a cellphone out of her pocket. “If you can reach them, do it. Tell them to have the Lieutenant ready. Most people don’t survive a wound like this. Lieutenant Weyland might be able to save his life.”

  I fumbled with the phone, dialing straight to the Captain’s personal line.

  “Here we go,” Sophia said. She stooped on her water-platform and held her hands out as though she were actually lifting him. I expected to see strands of water appear, to swoop around Major Pike’s body like a cocoon, but that wasn’t what happened.

  No, Sophia was lifting his body directly.

  “Telekinesis?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “I learned a new trick. I’m using the water inside of his body.”

  “Holy shit,” I hissed, the phone line still ringing in my ear.

  “I’ve played around with it. But this…” She gritted her teeth with the effort. “This isn’t okay.”

  The line picked up. “Captain, it’s Trevor.”

  The Captain sputtered. “Who—how?”

  “There’s been an attack at TAO. I don’t know how many are wounded or dead, but Major Pike is going to be delivered to the Infirmary in a few minutes and Weyland needs to be there.”

  “He’s sustained a significant abdominal wound,” Sophia shouted so the Captain could hear her. “We only have a few minutes to save his life.”

  There was so much blood around him. Was it possible to save him at all?

  “We’ll be ready,” the Captain said.

  “Gotta go,” I returned and slipped the phone into my pocket.

  “He’s coming up,” Sophia said, but I didn’t see the movement. It wasn’t measurable.

  Wait a second. “Are you actually pulling him off the rebar?”

  Sweat beaded her dark brow, her eyes narrowed in concentration. She clenched her teeth and responded only with a nod.