by Jessica Gunn
“You’re slowing down,” she pointed out. “Should we stop discussing your relationship issues?”
I tossed a punch back at her, then dropped and swung my leg around. It didn’t connect, so instead of knocking her to the ground, I looked like a misshapen top spinning around in a room full of gym equipment, mats, and punching bags. My sparring sessions with Sophia were more like therapy sessions lately. With me coming close to besting her, and the anniversary having just passed yesterday, we couldn’t really help it.
I liked Sophia. She was pretty cool. Her parents had moved to Ireland when she was still a baby, so her Irish accent betrayed her caramel skin. Sophia was Atlantean-strong like me, and she could control water too. She could also teleport. But she was smart, calculating in ways I’d never be.
“You need a relationship to have relationship issues,” I said and rose, no longer an upturned sea turtle.
Sophia stepped back and dropped her hands, signaling the end of the session. “Break up again?”
My eyes slid to the ground, then shot to the ceiling with exasperation. “I don’t know what we are. Half the time he’s the same guy I’ve always known. Then we’ll be on a mission and what happened with SeaSat5 comes up, and I want to slug him all over again.”
“It’s been two years,” she ventured slowly.
“It’s a wedge.”
Sophia lifted her hand and closed it into a fist. I followed the line of sight to a water bottle on the other side of the room. She moved her fist in a tight circle. The water within the bottle responded, gyrating into a tiny whirlpool that moved the bottle under Sophia’s direction. Right across the room into her waiting palm.
Show off.
She unscrewed the top and took a drink. “So talk it out, and move on or get back together.”
“We do talk about it sometimes. But that’s not the whole issue.”
“Then what is?”
I sat on the mat beside me. “He’s mad I won’t let him protect me. Like ever. Men.”
Sophia’s eyebrows shot up. “You’re not exactly someone who needs protecting.”
“Exactly!”
She held up her right pointer-finger. “That doesn’t mean he won’t want to. You’re someone he cares about, Chelsea. Someone a lot more powerful than he is. And you haven’t always been that way. He’s been trying to protect you from the start, as far as I can tell.”
I rolled my eyes. When Trevor and I had met, I was at my lowest. We had both ended up in that alley in Boston, both escaping something. Then Dave had mugged me and Trevor had intervened. How much more vulnerable could you get?
Was that what attracted him to me in the first place? Was his perceived ability to protect me what had attracted me to him too? I mean, a little… I guess.
Okay. A lot.
“I’m not that girl anymore,” I said.
Sophia smiled. “Yes, you are. Somewhere inside, she’s still there. Underneath the façade you put up.”
My eyes narrowed. “What façade?”
“The can-do attitude. The sense of invulnerability. You think no one can touch you,” she said.
Well, has anyone? There was a huge potential to get injured anytime we traveled through time. Everything from falling off cliffs and poison darts to swords and god-knew-what diseases. Still, I hadn’t gotten more than a scratch on any mission, including the times we’d run into Lemurians who weren’t exactly thrilled to see us. Did that make me good or damned lucky?
“Why don’t you take your leave time to think about the difference between strength and foolishness,” Sophia said. “You are powerful, yes, but you’re still human. You’re still a young woman with a man who cares for you very much, despite everything. Don’t toss him to the wayside because you think his chivalry is irritating.”
I swallowed hard. “You’re right.” I’d given Trevor the short stick all along, and I knew it.
A knowing grin spread across her face. “Of course I am.”
he briefing ticked by as minutes turned into hours. Calculations based on the Waterstar map projected we would land sometime hundreds of years from now, meaning we’d be interacting with our direct future—something potentially more dangerous than screwing up the past.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” said Dr. Hill. “Until this morning we had no idea the calculations projected so far.”
General Holt’s jaw set hard. “You were the one who piqued interest in this particular piece to begin with.”
Dr. Hill nodded. “Yes, because the fact that it’s from the future gives us a higher probability of finding the pieces we need to get to SeaSatellite5.” The closer to the future we got, the closer to SeaSatellite5 we might become. In the very least, there’d be a higher probability of another cache of Link Pieces, like the Sargasso Sea outpost.
“How does that work again?” Chelsea asked around the hair-tie in her mouth. She was in the process of pulling up her long hair. Damn the length looked good on her. It tamed down her appearance from the wild firecracker I’d met in Boston years ago, but it made her more alluring and intimidating than ever before. Downright sexy.
“There’s a higher probability that our future descendants have amassed a collection of Link Pieces than anyone closer to our time,” Dr. Hill explained. “And odds are they’re all together in one place.”
Something bitter slicked my mouth. “Wouldn’t bringing anything back, especially more than one piece, mean risking a grandfather paradox?” You know, the whole “go back in time to meet your grandfather, accidentally kill him, and now you and your own father don’t exist” thing.
“Exactly why I think we should scrub the mission,” Dr. Hill stated. “Just because our calculations say there’s something there, doesn’t mean there is.”
My eyes swept to Chelsea, who looked like she was about ready to condemn Dr. Hill.
“Then let’s not bring anything back,” she said. “Let’s just go and check it out. There’s a very narrow window of pieces that can be used to connect to SeaSat5’s current place in time, but we don’t know exactly what they are and we need to. It couldn’t hurt to look.”
I was sure my jaw slid straight down to the table.
Chelsea shot me a look. “If we’re worried about creating vast alternate dimensions into which we could fall on our way back to our own home-time, we wouldn’t be doing this at all.”
“Chelsea’s right,” Sophia said. “The Atlanteans wouldn’t have used Link Pieces if that was the case. If they were advanced enough to figure out time-travel, they would have also discovered any consequences and either corrected them or discontinued the practice altogether.”
“There’s no way of knowing that for sure,” Dr. Hill interjected. “The Link Pieces are one-way.”
No one spoke for a few moments and when it looked like no one would, General Holt filled in the silence. “The mission is a go. If the original calculations are correct, the risk is worth it.”
Various nods and drawn faces filled the table.
“You will depart in one hour,” said General Holt.
When our group assembled in the Transfer Room forty-five minutes later, Chelsea was nowhere to be seen. Pike’s icy gaze drilled into me, waiting for an explanation I didn’t have. I wasn’t Chelsea’s keeper.
Pike’s stare held fast.
I sighed. “I’ll go find her.”
I backtracked into the hallway en route to the elevator. Two floors and a few turns later, I reached her quarters. She’d left the door open an inch, like she’d rushed in and didn’t care. I knocked softly on the frame, but her answer wasn’t to me.
“I know, I know, Sarah. I’m sorry,” she said as she flopped onto her bed. I peeked in through the crack. She had her fatigues and sidearm on, ready to go. “I have a feeling this dig isn’t going to be as quick as I thought.”
The audible half of the conversation paused while Sarah, Chelsea’s sister, responded. Chelsea ran her fingers through her hair, bangs flipping through her f
ingers at awkward angles, and sighed.
“I can’t control the length of digs,” Chelsea said. “Believe me, I wish I could—” Another break where Sarah interrupted her. “Well, that’s because earlier today the outlook was in the band’s favor.”
She closed her eyes as Sarah spoke. I wanted to back off, give her a few seconds of space. She knew we were late, evident in the way her foot tapped along the floor. But calling Sarah now to warn her we might be late coming back was probably better for Chelsea than if she’d called Sarah a day late.
“I know how important the show is,” Chelsea whispered. “We’ll all rehearse together. I just won’t be there Tuesday, okay?”
Today was Saturday. She planned to be busy until then?
A beat passed in silence until Chelsea pouted and pulled her cell phone away from her ear. She rocked forward and placed her elbows on her knees, sitting on the bed and letting her head fall into her hands.
I knocked on the door again. Shitty timing, but we had to go. Chelsea lifted her head, brushed some hair behind her ear, and looked up at me.
I nudged open the door to pop my head in. Her room was too neat. Not that Chelsea was a messy, unorganized person, but everything had been set to perfection. Her spotless desk matched her bed that’d been made with precision. The only things on her floor were the instruments she’d bought to replace the ones lost with SeaSat5. Someone obviously hadn’t slept last night.
Although I already knew the answer, I asked, “Everything okay?”
The hand holding her cell phone flew up as she rolled her eyes. “Dandy.”
“What was that about?” I didn’t bother hiding the fact I’d overheard.
Chelsea’s eyes betrayed her calm response. “We’re supposed to be playing Juxe in Jersey and Philly in a month as a relatively unknown band. Sarah and Kris want everyone to practice all the time, but with the back-to-back missions we’ve had lately, going to that temple so many times… Pike said this will be a short one, but I have a bad feeling about it.”
“Juxe?” It sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“It’s a big tour, goes coast to coast,” she said. “We were only able to get into two show dates, but Jersey and Philly are places we haven’t played yet, so…”
I pushed the door open and stepped inside her room. “You guys will get to practice. You have leave time after this mission. We all do. You guys are better than half the bands there.”
A smile edged her lips, but it was laced with a sadness she couldn’t hide. “I’m afraid this job’s producing a conflict of interests between the band and me. Two years ago it didn’t matter, but now…” She shook her head and looked away. “If forced to choose, I can’t say which I’ll walk away from.”
Could she honestly leave TAO and our mission behind before we found SeaSat5 and the crew? “What do you mean?”
“Neither of these things— the band, traveling through time— were what I wanted to do. Becoming a rock star was an accident, a byproduct of Sarah and the band’s dreams. I can’t let my sister and best friends down. I don’t have it in me to walk away after years of building this with them.”
“And what about Captain Marks?” I asked. “Freddy? Christa?”
Chelsea looked to me. “You and TAO are going to find them someday, with or without my help. I may be able to go up against the Lemurians because of my powers, but the calculations you make with the Waterstar map… Trevor, you’re brilliant. You’ll find the missing Link.”
I chuckled. How could I not find it funny we thought so oppositely about this? “My 3D rendering would be nothing without the progress you’ve helped TAO make.”
“Don’t you ever think it’s all just a bit ridiculous?” she asked.
Okay. Maybe not so dissimilar after all. I sat down beside her and took the risk of wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She laid her head against my chest. Her reaction confused me more than the risk I took to get it.
“Those were my thoughts the other night, after we got back from the bar,” I confided.
“Sometimes I wish we never found that cache of Link Pieces in the Sargasso Sea.” Her words were barely louder than a whisper, but said with the weight of a thousand stones. “Everything was fine until then, and you know it.”
It wasn’t, really. Everything had started when Chelsea showed up. Valerie, my old colleague and partner in all things Lemurian back then, started threatening to bring the war to SeaSat5 the second Chelsea had teleported on board. If Chelsea hadn’t appeared out of nowhere, I would have never gotten the chance to meet her again or work beside her on SeaSat5.
But if Chelsea hadn’t shown up, things would have still been blissfully boring, and in a few years, I would have been making video games for the masses, not rendering a map for the military.
I didn’t say anything back. She didn’t need to know that sometimes I wish I’d never walked out the Franklin’s alleyway door at all.
I kept quiet and pulled her closer to me, clinging onto the moment as they were few and far between these days. The smell of her shampoo lingered on me even after we met the team for Launch.
y the time Trevor and I joined Pike, Dr. Hill, and Sophia in the Transfer Room, I’d pulled myself together. No more whining, no more worrying. The stuff with the band could wait; SeaSat5 could not. Whatever was on the other side of this Link Piece couldn’t either.
A wooden African idol stared at me with wild, sunken eyes. The visage jolted me so much my skin crawled. I really didn’t expect this to end well.
I treated the idol with caution. Though I claimed my spot across from Sophia like I normally did, I watched the Piece with wary eyes. My instincts weren’t always right, but something told me to call the mission off and run as far away as possible.
I glanced up at Sophia and saw none of my worries reflected in her eyes.
It’s just you.
“All aboard!” I shouted.
Sophia and I linked hands above the idol, each of us with one hand on the carving itself. The other three placed their hands over ours like this was some kind of team huddle.
Within moments the Waterstar map encased my mind, my vision. Cerulean lines shot out before me, connected to objects at various points in the distance, sliding past me as the route of the idol’s connection became clear. Sophia stood next to me in the hazy blue around us. She guided our travel through time like we were a chair on a ski lift headed for the top of a mountain. Then, as quickly as it appeared, the map was gone.
I blinked a few times to clear my head and to orient myself with our new environment. Our new place-time.
Darkness shadowed our immediate surroundings, making it hard to see much outside of our little group huddle. Pike shifted his gun down, something he never did, even when faced with cultures who had no idea what a gun was—something that happened more times than not. Turns out the Link Piece makers liked their connections to the ancient world. Their fascination made Link Piece travel fun for Dr. Hill and me while Trevor found the lack of technology horrific. Sophia didn’t seem to care either way, except that one time we ended up in the Scottish Highlands and she refused to speak the whole time we were there.
Trevor dropped his pistol next. Strange for him, too. I slowly looked around us.
Soldiers in forest green tunics surrounded us, terrifying-looking guns held at the ready. Those things might actually shoot lasers or plasma instead of bullets. Hey, it was the future wasn’t it?
I glanced up at the ceiling. A familiar drawing stared down at me. A Waterstar map.
These guys had their own disembarkation area. But did they have their own 3D rendering? Heck, by now they should have 4D. That’d keep Trevor busy for hours.
Someone broke through the crowd and motioned for the soldiers in dark green to drop their weapons. She had long black hair and severe facial features. She seemed to pick apart every detail about me with her eyes before moving on to Sophia, to Trevor. A shiver of unease spread through me. I couldn’t tell if sh
e was annoyed by our appearance or confused. She came up to Sophia and me and stared at both of us for an uncomfortable length of time. She was slight, too, with an almost elf-like body that made the whole staring thing rather comical.
“You two are of Atlantean descent,” she said. Not a question. More like an accusation.
“We are students of the Waterstar map,” Sophia said, ever the diplomat I’d never be.
“But you are Atlantean,” the woman repeated.
“Yes,” I said.
The crowd of soldiers murmured, talking amongst themselves. Though their individual conversations remained quiet, the hum of them being spoken all at once turned into a dull roar.
Pike looked around as if he considered each one a threat. “We’re just exploring some Link Piece connections. Nothing more.” His green eyes narrowed, body stiff. I could tell he wanted to bolt, or at least stop talking.
“From the past?” the woman asked.
The skin on my arms prickled at the way she said “past,” as though it were an insult or something to be suspicious about.
Something’s not right.
Trevor nodded. “Yes.”
The woman looked to him. “You are not Atlantean.”
My breath hitched. If Lemuria and Atlantis were still at war, and if she’d accepted Sophia and me, what would she and her people do to Trevor? Even if he disowned every part of his family following SeaSat5’s hijacking, he couldn’t change his Lemurian blood.
Trevor stood his ground. “I don’t side with Lemuria.”
The woman clicked her tongue and returned her attention to Sophia and I. “I am Germay. When did you come from?”
“Somewhere in the 2010’s,” Pike supplied for us, answering my unspoken question. He didn’t trust them, either.
“When are we now?” Dr. Hill asked.
“3001… A.D., I believe you would say.”
We’re enough into the future that they changed the dating system? Great.
I sucked in a slow, deep breath. That’s pretty far ahead of us. Much farther than I think Dr. Hill had predicted, and definitely much farther than we’d been prepared for. We should turn around and leave before they say something that changes their past, or we learn something that accelerates our future.
