by Jessica Gunn
Trevor shook his head. “It’s too early.”
“You’re not having fun.”
“I didn’t know this was supposed to be,” he countered. “I thought you wanted to come here to forget.”
“I do. But right now I’m a little bit more worried about you accidentally starting a fight with these guys than I am about my inability to handle two years of SeaSat5’s absence.” I tugged on his arm. “Let’s go.”
Trevor dismounted his stool and brushed off my hand.
One of the guys Trevor had stared at slid in between us. He was decked out head-to-toe in leather, with a black goatee curling around his mouth. He had to be about thirty-five or forty. Gross.
“Seems to me a guy such as yourself, so lucky to land a looker like that,” the dude said, thumbing at me, “shouldn’t be brushing off the touch of a lady.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Trevor mumbled to him.
I could have smacked Trevor. Truly, I could have. “Leave him alone.”
He turned to me. “Oh come on, pretty lady. Why don’t you go home with a real man?” A slimy grin marred his face.
Double-gross. “Man, back off,” I told him.
The guy advanced, so close that when he leaned into my ear, I could smell the nacho cheese sauce from the bar’s dinner special lingering on his breath. “Kid’s a scrawny mess. I can show you some—”
“Finish that sentence,” I said as I brought my hands up between us and pushed against his chest, “and I’ll hit you so hard you won’t be able to speak for a month.”
Trevor moved around us. “Don’t talk to her like that.”
The dude chuckled and lifted his hands. “Okay, okay, Peter Pan. Take your bitch home with you.”
My jaw set hard, muscles twitching. Trevor must have seen it happening before the guy did, but my fist flew faster than Trevor’s hand could grab. My punch connected with his nose, the force of five men concentrated into a closed fist. The dude cradled his gushing nose with wide, disbelieving eyes. I spun on my heels and gestured for Trevor to follow me out the door. Trevor couldn’t handle bar-life, and I couldn’t handle being treated like an object.
The second we made it into the parking lot Trevor jogged so he was in front of me. “What the hell was that?”
I shrugged. “He annoyed me.”
“I had it.”
A smile broke on my face. “Yeah, okay Trevor.” I rolled my eyes and sidestepped him. The only thing he had was a severe case of bar-phobia.
He stepped in front of me again. “He could have hurt you.”
I leaned in close to him and whispered, “I fight Lemurians with powers on a near daily basis. What do you think some drunk idiot is really going to do to me?”
Trevor’s eyes grew hard and his jaw set. “That’s not the point and you know it. I’m just worried about you. Tonight and all.”
I walked past him, not stopping until I got to our car. “Don’t be mad because I can handle myself.”
Trevor didn’t say anything.
I needed to find a new bar.
onight was the norm for Chelsea. Maybe if she stopped embracing her misguided badass-ness thanks to her powers and stopped over-compensating for her inability to save SeaSat5, we’d actually make some progress on doing just that.
I cringed at my own words. Harsh, yes, but the truth.
She never let me step in for her during any sort of confrontation because of all that had happened during the hijacking two years ago. That’s not to say Chelsea counted on me from day one to swoop in and save her at the first sign of danger, because that’s not true. She’d made more attempts to save us and herself during the hijacking than I had. Chelsea didn’t need protecting; she needed understanding. But half the time, I didn’t understand her at all. Not anymore. Not since Lemuria had stolen SeaSat5. Maybe I never knew her. The possibility was there, given I’d only met her months before everything went to shit. And I’d spent most of that time lying to her by omission.
Still, you’d think that after two years and everything they contained, I’d have won back some of that trust. Then again, how long did she hold a grudge against that Lexi girl? Long enough that when we ran into her and Chelsea’s ex on the one-year anniversary of SeaSat5 being taken, Chelsea had made a scene. That had been a bad night all around. The “Grand Summer Shit-Show,” as Chelsea preferred to call it.
I ran a hand through my hair as I regained enough focus to work on the 3D rendering of the Waterstar map. I’d come back to my lab after the bar to work, but I wasn’t getting anything done tonight. Not on the anniversary. My lack of focus wasn’t entirely SeaSat5’s fault. This stupid system needed near-constant maintenance, between the archaeologists adding information all the time, and the technology’s young age. If the system were human, it wouldn’t even be teething yet.
But I chugged along, working on it day and night, mostly because I missed working on something, anything. I missed having a system to look after or a game to moderate. When Lemuria had stolen SeaSat5, they’d murdered my life’s work with it. Hummingbird had died at the hands of someone I once called a friend, and without the system, my life felt empty. Void not of meaning, but of purpose. Even focusing on finding SeaSat5 wasn’t enough some days. The goal was too vague, too up in the air. Fixing a system was within my grasp, something my fingers and brain could work through and repair.
But the 3D rendering system… I couldn’t keep up with it. The whole “be careful what you wish for” thing.
General Holt, commander of TAO, had us running through, or otherwise examining, so many Link Pieces that when I finally had time to work on the map system, I spent the time doing routine cleanings. Then add another few hours for new Link Pieces. My days were long, and my nights barely existed at all. Maybe it was a good thing I wasn’t social like Chelsea. Unlike her, I couldn’t afford to drink and party nights away, bouncing between TAO and Boston in an instant.
Story of my life, but I didn’t mind. If this database was going to keep up with our exploration and experimentation, someone had to take the hit, and it may as well be me. Chelsea could contribute her strength and abilities to the search for Captain Marks and the crew, but all I had to add were computer skills, which paled in comparison, and it frustrated me to no end. Maintaining this type of database was hard, and all Chelsea saw was a twenty-one-year-old with his face cemented to a computer screen while she was off training with Sophia.
I was no soldier, and I knew that. I’d known it all along.
Evidently, as much had changed as had stayed the same since Lemuria stole SeaSatellite5. At the moment of its taking, Chelsea and I weren’t exactly on super solid ground in our relationship. We’d just agreed to deal with things slowly. When we’d joined TAO, I thought we would eventually find our way back to how things were before the hijacking. And you know, things were generally fine until the first anniversary of SeaSat5’s theft came around, and “Grand Summer Shit-Show” happened, and then it all went to crap.
Not saying I wasn’t as off-kilter. It seemed pointless to dwell on the fact that they were gone when that time could be spent actually working on ways to get them back. SeaSatellite5 didn’t up and disappear. The station was out there, somewhere, in time. Hiding. Waiting. Hopefully with the crew still alive. It was impossible to know for sure, or to know if, to them, any time had passed at all.
Would Captain Marks hate me once we found them, not for Lemuria winning again, but instead for their rescue taking over two years? If we ever found the station, would Chelsea forgive herself? I missed her warm smile. It came out in spurts here and there, but she’d never been the same. When I thought about it, our entire relationship was pretty laughable.
The system beeped at me.
“Finally done with your updates?” I asked.
Another loading screen appeared, and the program continued merrily on its cleansing way. My head fell back in time with a frustrated groan escaping from my lips. I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands. Some days,
all I could think about was how stupid this all really was.
“Why are you still here?” a voice said from the open doorway of my lab.
I spun my chair to face Major Howard Pike, otherwise known as Major Iron Tights for being such a hard-ass all the time. He was the kind of guy you could joke about behind his back, but if you ever said it to his face, he was as liable to laugh with you as he was to throw you against a wall and yell the skin off your face.
You could imagine, then, the fun he’d had getting acquainted with Chelsea and me, especially given Chelsea’s civilian-minded insubordination issues of the last twenty-eight months. I could count on one hand the only military officers she truly respected in that time: Captain Marks; Weyland, SeaSat5’s old Head of Security who’d been reassigned after the hijacking; and Freddy, our friend. All gone, but they were the only three that hadn’t ended up an enemy, like Dave. And after what she’d perceived as failing to save them, Chelsea hadn’t exactly been the best team player.
I couldn’t blame her, though. A lot of weight had been placed on her shoulders—part of that being my fault—and suddenly there she was, the center of an attention she wouldn’t have had if we’d never met. Our current situation started when I had left the Franklin through the same door she had on the night I’d ran to Boston to escape the military. If I had never gone through that door, none of this would have happened. None of it.
“I couldn’t sleep,” I told Pike, who was still waiting for an answer. “And we’re behind.”
He leaned against the doorframe. “I know what day it is. Wasn’t surprised when you guys high-tailed it out of the base earlier.” He pointed to my computer. “That stuff can wait. I plan on talking to General Holt about our travel schedule first thing in the morning. Even a Link Piece every two weeks is too much.”
There were only five of us that traveled through them, to minimize damage to the time-stream and history. But that limitation had worn us thin now that we had a mission to complete: bringing SeaSat5 home.
Still, my eyebrows rose. He’d insinuated Chelsea and I were tired. More of this military, non-military bullshit. “We can keep up.”
“That’s not why,” he said. “If we explore too much, we add to the Waterstar map too quickly for you to update the 3D rendering from which we operate.”
“There are other engineers,” I said, even though we both knew I was the only one for the job.
“You guys have added more Link Pieces to our version of the map in the past two years than we’ve seen in the last five.” Pike walked over to the window in my office. He stared down at the room where the mock-up of the Waterstar map was kept. TAO had used this crude model before I came along. “I know you two were assigned to TAO because of SeaSat5.” Pike paused and sucked in a breath, like he was calculating his next words carefully. “As much of a pain in the ass as you two are sometimes, I can’t thank you enough for your hard work in filling in the blanks. You two deserve some downtime.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “this seemed like a better alternative than what the Admiral really wanted to do to me.”
Captain Marks had been quicker to forgive me for risking SeaSat5 in my delusions about Lemuria. The Admiral, now knowing the full score thanks to TAO, had been much harder to convince. My alternative to TAO was… much less cushy.
Did I know there was a possibility we’d be hijacked? Yes. But I hadn’t actually believed the probability of it happening warranted any attention. Atlantis and Lemuria were supposed to be fairytales, cities and continents lost to the gods and seas so long ago, whether they existed or not no longer mattered. And they certainly weren’t supposed to still care about Link Pieces.
“You don’t want me to comment on that,” Pike said.
I glanced back to the cleaning program on my computer screen. “No comment needed.”
Pike trusted me, I thought, but I knew he didn’t trust my so-called “shady past.” I wasn’t fully convinced he didn’t have a few skeletons himself.
“Go to sleep, kid,” he said as he turned to walk back out the door. “Today was a long day.”
I nodded. “As soon as this sweep is done.”
Major Pike left, and I brought my attention back to my computer screen.
sighed. “I’m not sure what you want me to tell you.” This was not how I wanted to spend the morning after the two-year anniversary, and this briefing was driving me insane. After an hour and a half, Sophia, Dr. Hill, Trevor, Pike, and I still sat around a legitimate round table made of mahogany in the smack dab center of TAO. An hour and a half of talking for a mission that lasted all of twenty minutes and failed. One we knew would fail.
“Would you mind telling me what happened again?” General Holt asked.
Holt. He was a decent guy. Aged somewhere around forty-five years, General Holt had seen a lot of combat. Way more than we’d all seen here in our tenure at TAO, combined. Then Holt had somehow landed this gig fifteen years ago and had commanded TAO ever since. He was a tall, stereotypical military man, still with a full head of brown hair.
When Trevor and I had first gotten to TAO, he’d treated us with the same respect Captain Marks had had for me when I’d first boarded SeaSatellite5. That is to say that General Holt had been welcoming and ready to teach us the ropes, but wary of our capabilities. Trevor could probably take down all of TAO within minutes, with his computer and engineering skills, and I… could definitely do some damage to say the absolute least. About the only thing I hadn’t been willing to do to prove myself to them was touch a gun. People usually died when I did. Even if Thompson had been the bad guy, even if it had been in self-defense, a gun was too powerful of a weapon for me. I didn’t want to handle them at all.
Unfortunately, TAO had decided to thrust that training upon me whether I liked it or not. TAO claimed gun training to be a part of the necessary skill-set to work here where getting into firefights with Lemurians could happen. I’d promptly flung water from someone’s water bottle at our trainer’s face as soon as he’d said it.
I didn’t need a gun. But Pike thought I did.
I now had a gun, and wasn’t happy about it.
“Chelsea?” General Holt prompted in my silence.
“Right,” I said. “Sorry. We went in, didn’t find anything—just like I said we wouldn’t— then we got caught in the middle of the siege. We had to exit hot, hence the choppy re-entry.” We hadn’t done damage to the room, but it wasn’t the smoothest transfer through time Sophia and I had ever worked.
“The calculations based off the Waterstar map say there’s a Link Piece there,” Dr. Hill retorted.
I shrugged. “I don’t know what you want me to say. We didn’t find anything in the immediate area when the calculations said we should have.” But again, Link Piece travel wasn’t an exact science. For all we knew, the calculations had picked up our Return Piece instead of a second or third Link Piece.
“Retry your calculations,” Major Pike told Dr. Hill.
I groaned. Great. Another trip to a Roman siege, if we could find another Link Piece to get there.
General Holt stood and so did Major Pike. “Re-run the data and keep me posted,” he said to Dr. Hill. “You have a new mission slated to leave tomorrow night, and then a three-day break period.”
Yes! I could literally taste the freedom. It tasted like Sully’s Burgers on Castle Island in Boston. Nothing but me, a guitar, and the band for three beautiful days on that beach. My fingers fell under the table, contorting automatically to the chords of Phoenix and Lobster’s newest music.
“Meet here tomorrow at fourteen hundred for the briefing,” General Holt said.
“Yes sir,” came the choired response.
General Holt left, retreating to his office down the hall.
“I hope you all don’t mind, but I won’t be around at all during that break,” I said. Being able to teleport on command had that kind of perk. In the two years since discovering I had that ability, I’d been able to grow it to the po
int where I could teleport to mostly anywhere I had a connection, even a vague one. My hometown and the Franklin for example. I could teleport back to TAO, too.
Connections. That’s all it was, all any of this time-travel stuff was—at least in present-day. You needed a Link Piece to go anywhere too far off the present course of time. As it was, I wasn’t convinced I didn’t show up a few seconds out of sync when I teleported. Sophia said she also noticed it.
“Do you plan on heading back to Massachusetts?” Pike asked. He always kept tabs on me and Trevor, like he expected us to up and disappear like SeaSatellite5.
A pang zipped through my abdomen, right under my scar. God only knew what the Lemurians did with them. Lemuria had wanted the station and the artifacts on board, so what became of the crew? Maybe if we found the right Link Piece rather than just any Link Piece, we could appear right after they—we—landed. Maybe only minutes could have passed instead of years.
I nodded at Pike. “Yes. The band and I have some rehearsing to do.”
“Would you like to get in a sparring session before you leave, then?” Sophia asked.
“Most definitely.” I stood. “Is now a good time?”
She gestured toward the door. “Of course.”
Fifteen minutes into our sparring session and we still had no clear winner. When SeaSat5 had been hijacked, my wacky strength ability was untrained, undisciplined. I could throw a punch with the best of them, but landing one depended largely on how expectant the other party was of me throwing it in the first place.
Sophia had raised my skills to par, and I’d caught on so well that on a good day, we were evenly matched. She’d been studying various martial arts from a young age, before she came over to the United States to study for school. Add in all the Atlantean super soldier perks, and she could be a pretty unstoppable force. Stick us together with a small line of guns firing in your direction, and there was little your Lemurian powers or buddies could do to help you.
Sophia’s fist flew past my ear, snapping me out of my thoughts.
