Landlocked (Atlas Link Series Book 2)

by Jessica Gunn

  I found nothing. If Trevor wasn’t here, then I couldn’t get my call for help out in the most inconspicuous way I could think of and I’d be screwed. I had no doubt General Allen had someone tapping my calls and watching me carefully. If he had access to Lemurians, it was possible.

  Deep into song number two on the list, two things happened simultaneously. My eyes made contact with someone, but it wasn’t Trevor. General Allen stared daggers at me from the back of the crowd, and I had a hard time grappling with the fact he was here. I stuttered over my own written words. Then, as a rush of warmth flooded me, my fingers stumbled over some strings. Suddenly the guitar seemed lighter.

  My powers were back.

  Sarah walked up to me as she played. We stood facing each other, as planned, and she lifted the nose of her guitar as she swung it back and forth. Then she stopped, pointing it to stage left.

  I closed in on my mic to sing the breakdown of our second song. My eyes desperately searched the crowd for the face Sarah saw. There, eight haphazard rows in, was Trevor. He stood relaxed, not yet aware of what was going on. He wouldn’t know until I introduced the song in about forty seconds.

  I ended the song with my hands shaking. I had to keep my poise as I sang this next song, which also relied solely on me for the main guitar. It wouldn’t have been fair to force Kris to learn and continually practice a song he may never have to play. Knowing General Allen stood at the back of the crowd only added more pressure. If he saw Trevor there, if he saw me falter with my own words…

  “This next song is wicked old. So old that no one outside our hometown probably knows it.” I laughed, but it came out weird. Fake. “It’s called Contents to Burn. Sing it if you know it.”

  But of course no one would.

  The very second I stopped talking, Trevor’s eyes bugged wide. I backed away from the mic stand and played the song, ceasing all further eye contact.

  The deed was done. The message sent.

  I was in trouble. Sarah’s blue converse meant Atlantean. Kris’s red guitar meant Lemurian. My green tank top said Go. The first and second song we played meant Secrets compromised.

  The rest was up to Trevor.

  ecrets Compromised.

  TAO. Tell. Thompson.

  Duress.

  Killed.

  Then Phoenix and Lobster closed with the song Chelsea dubbed to mean “officer killed in action.” Before Chelsea and the band left the stage, my eyes took in as much as they could. Every color meant something. Chelsea’s two-year-old instructions swarmed my brain as I processed what she’d meant. Go. Atlantean. Lemurian.

  Atlantean and Lemurian secrets compromised. Go tell TAO. Thompson. Duress. Officer killed in action.

  Her closing remarks rattled me the most. “We want to thank Juxe for inviting us to play these two shows. Seriously, thank you, even though I’ve had issues with my mic all day.” She laughed. “My bad. I promise my mics aren’t always this messed up.”

  Mic.

  Mike. My fault.

  My heart crashed to a halt. Someone had died and she blamed herself for it?

  So her whole message read: Atlantean and Lemurian secrets compromised. Go tell TAO. The situation was similar to what happened with Thompson. I am under duress. Officer was killed in action and it was my fault.

  Phoenix and Lobster’s crowd dispersed. I surged past the swarm of people moving in the opposite direction, trying to fight my way toward the stage. Two rows of people from the front, Chelsea looked back into the crowd and me and glared. It stopped me dead in my tracks.

  What? I asked her.

  She made a point of fixing her shirt, pulling it down and adjusting her bra straps. Green meant go.

  My brow furrowed. Go tell TAO. Yeah, I got that part.

  She shifted her shirt again.

  I ignored her and, as best I could, made my way to the door for backstage. Two security guards stood there, unmoving. I turned, looking for another path, when I noticed Sarah jogging toward me. “Hey!”

  “Trevor, you need to go,” she said.

  “But—”

  “Get the hell out of here, you asshole!”

  Her tone was desperate and didn’t match her actions. Purposely so. The two guards stepped away from their post and came up to me.

  “You need to leave,” one said, cross his arms at his chest. “Now.”

  I ignored them and looked to Sarah. “Is she okay?” She nodded the slightest bit. The second guard nudged me. “Okay, all right. I’m leaving.” So green meant get the hell out of dodge, not tell TAO.

  Still, I wasn’t letting this go.

  I paced my hotel room until I couldn’t stand. Damn the Waterstar map and damn me for forgetting Butch’s medicine at TAO headquarters. Call me crazy, but I didn’t want to get closed out of Juxe for what appeared to be a blunt. Sophia would be by soon to pick me up.

  I waited all of an hour before I couldn’t hold off calling Chelsea any longer. Shaky fingers made dialing her number hard.

  The call connected. “Trevor.”

  “Are you okay? Wait—obviously not if you played that song.”

  “I’m deep in it.”

  Silence encompassed us. I thought she’d say more. “Come to me so we can talk. I actually really need to talk to you about something,” I said.

  It sounded like she shifted the phone from one ear to the other. In the process of doing so, loud background noises pierced my ears. I held the phone from me until they died down again.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  Frustration flashed through me, hot and unpredictable. “You asked me for help.”

  “Oh God, he’s here, too.”

  “Who, Chelsea?”

  “Shit,” she said, quick and low. “Trevor, I got to go. Stay safe, okay? I’ll call you again soon.”

  Before I could tell her about Valerie, she hung up. I wasn’t bound to sleep for days. First Valerie and my mother come out of the woodwork, and now Chelsea’s side-mission was involved, too?

  Every time he hurts me. My fists clenched. No one would hurt her again. The next time she called, I’d find out where she was and make Valerie take me to her. I’d protect her, or at least find Josh’s damn number and make him protect her.

  Blue lights filled the room, a rippling waterfall, as Sophia appeared. “Are you ready to come back?”

  I nodded. “More than you know.”

  I am lost in a swirling vortex, a gyre housing the Waterstar map. I don’t know what I’m standing on, but it’s solid and moves with the maelstrom. Whizzing and screeching fills my ears and I find myself immediately disoriented. I rub my eyes. I know this must be a dream, because awake, I never see this much of the map. Awake, I am not this confused.

  I’m thrown to one side, hard against stone. I land on my wrist. Pain throbs around the joint. Invisible wind pushes my hair and clothes in every direction, and standing up is impossible. When I do finally stand, I come face to face with the very perpetrator of my condition: the statue that carried the plague from the future. I jump back from the statue as it shimmers in blue light. Blue, not red. I will not let it plague me again, not even in my dreams. Only this felt less like a dream and more like a hallucinated reality.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?” His voice is loud, almost shouting in order to be heard over the vortex around us.

  I turn to find Dave standing as nonchalantly as humanly possible. As Lemurianly possible. Why was I dreaming about Dave, the guy who’d pretended to be everyone’s friend on SeaSat5, but had sold us out in the end? Who handed SeaSat5 over to the Lemurians, himself on board? He was taken by them, too.

  He shakes his head. “You aren’t dreaming, kid. I’m delivering a message to you.”

  A loud bass noise fills the scene, knocking me back onto my ass. Dave walks to me and offers his hand. I brush it away and stand on my own.

  “I am not the enemy,” he says. “But it’s time you learned who is.”

  He waves his hand and all of a sudden we a
re standing before SeaSatellite5. It is berthed at a futuristic-looking dock inside a large stone room with a domed ceiling that soars up at least twenty stories high. Beneath it, people stand around, some with clipboards and some with weapons slung across their chests.

  I strain closer to see what the people with clipboards are writing. I can’t read it, but I recognize the language. “Atlantis?”

  Dave waves his hand again and we’re standing in front of the plague statue once more. “You contracting the plague was a mistake. It was meant for Chelsea.”

  “I know that,” I said. “TruGates is hunting Lemurians. Someone is hunting super soldiers.”

  Dave’s eyes grow dark. “It’s more than that. The Waterstar map in your head wasn’t meant for you, either.”

  Suddenly I’m disgusted by talking to him. “You sold us out.”

  He nods. “Yes, I did. But I was wrong and I know that now. Trevor, you have to believe me.”

  I don’t. I don’t believe a single word he says. But something in his eyes is absolutely remorseful.

  “Atlantis is the enemy. Thompson was after Link Pieces, yes, and Lemuria does want to destroy Atlantis. But that’s because the city is a danger to us all, in far more ways than you can understand,” he says. “Rescue us from Atlantis’s clutches, and I will tell you everything. When you find the station, Chelsea will see it for herself.”

  “Why lead us on instead of just killing us?” I blurt out before I can stop myself. I shake my head. “How do we rescue SeaSat5? Why is everyone so fixated on the station itself?”

  Dave disappears before answering any of the questions. The swarming gyre returns, invisible wind pushing me in every direction possible.

  sharp intake of breath shattered my sleep and I bolted upright, clutching at the blankets on either side of me. My throat burned, like I’d been screaming in my sleep after the day-long Juxe show. Every inch of me felt damp and heavy. I pressed a hand over my heart as it beat in irregular stutters, and ran my fingers through my hair.

  Dave. SeaSat5. A statue. The Waterstar map. All through Trevor’s eyes. I’d spoken and Trevor’s voice had come out.

  I jumped out of bed, somehow managing to not wake Josh up. His snores continued as though nothing happened at all. But everything had just happened. Everything.

  I shut and locked the bathroom door behind me, turned on the faucet, and splashed cold water onto my face. I lifted my eyes and stared at myself in the mirror. I know where SeaSatellite5 is. Or at least I knew we must have that Link Piece in the vault back at TAO. How else would I have known what to dream of? But the terrifying statue wasn’t familiar. Maybe they’d found it while I was gone, or sometime before Trevor and I joined TAO.

  Dreams. My face wrinkled with confusion. That was no dream. That was a straight up premonition. Was that how Helen saw future events with her power, full-on 4D experiences?

  I snuck into the bedroom to grab my phone and retreated into the kitchen. I dialed Trevor’s number with practiced ease. Two, three, four times I called, hope fading with each and every unanswered ring that he was even awake. I checked the stove’s digital clock. It was midnight where he was. He should still be awake if his schedule hadn’t changed.

  By the seventh call, I was giving up hope that he would answer at all. I could teleport—no, if Josh woke up and saw me missing, if I left for TAO… I’d be gone for hours. I couldn’t do that to him over something so vague.

  Trevor finally picked up, his voice rushing through the phone, sending waves of relief that crashed me to the floor. “You saw it, too, didn’t you? Our telepathy transmitted it.”

  I slid down the food pantry door until I sat with my knees bent. “Yes. Trevor—”

  “Already on it. Just got off the phone with Major Pike. He’s going to call everyone in the morning for a briefing. General Holt is in early these days. I’ll be outside his office when he comes in.”

  I shook my head. “We need to move now.”

  “We need a plan,” he said. “If you saw the same thing I did, what Dave showed us… it’s going to be a trip getting there. It’s been two years. Another couple of hours isn’t going to change anything.”

  “How do we know we can even trust him? He fooled everyone. He destroyed Hummingbird.”

  Trevor hesitated for too long. No response.

  “Trevor?”

  “We already have the Link Piece Dave showed us,” he said. “It’s sitting on Dr. Hill’s desk right now. And we may have some other, uh, intel.”

  “Other intel?” I asked.

  “Long story.”

  My brain moved a thousand miles a minute. We’d seen the same thing. In the same premonition. But Trevor didn’t have powers. So, did I see the dream and transferred it to him thanks to the Altern Device? Or did Dave target Trevor? “I can be at TAO in two minutes. This is ridiculous.”

  “Don’t bother,” he said. “Rest up. If we act right away, the next few days are going to be more hectic than your last finals week at college.” He was trying to be funny. But it wasn’t funny. None of this was.

  “I couldn’t sleep right now if I tried. You realize I’m behind, too, right? By the time you get General Holt briefed, I’ll still be sitting in the kitchen twiddling my thumbs.” Shit. Actually, we had our own briefing anyway. I shuddered at the thought of seeing General Allen again. “Never mind. Just text me when you know a meeting time.”

  “I will. And Chelsea?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re gonna get them back safe and sound. You know that, right?”

  I nodded. “Yes. I do.”

  “Good,” he said and hung up the phone. And just like that, the tension of the last three weeks lifted away. I sighed.

  “Everything all right?” Josh hovered above me, scratching at his stubble.

  I stood. “Definitely better than all right. Why?”

  “You’re sitting on the kitchen floor at three in the morning with a phone in your hand,” he said dryly.

  I smiled and crossed the distance between us, leaning into him. “We know where SeaSat5 is,” I said into his shoulder. “We’re going to get them back.”

  Although it’d been only a few days since Truman had died, the team assembled for another job. I intended on getting that job handed off to one of the other, less-qualified teams because I couldn’t care less about General Allen’s plans.

  As soon as the General started talking, I stood. “I have another proposition for you, General,” I said, surprising myself when my voice didn’t falter. With SeaSat5 within grasp, nothing, not even General Allen himself, could stand in the way. “This team is needed elsewhere.”

  TAO, for all its accomplishments, did not have the manpower needed for a rescue. The compound Trevor and I had seen was easily five times larger than the warehouse where Truman had died. Only our small group at TAO ever traveled through the Link Pieces, mostly because time-travel was so unpredictable, and the Army wasn’t willing to risk anyone else. But to save SeaSat5, they would. However, the five of us wouldn’t be enough. I assumed General Holt would call in the cavalry, perhaps some special ops guys, but having people who already knew what they were up against—even a little bit—would be best. Plus, Weyland would kill me if I didn’t at least tell him.

  The room fell silent at my words, and everyone other than Josh looked at me like I had five heads.

  “And what would that be, Ms. Danning?” General Allen asked, eyes like daggers.

  My jaw set and I stood taller. “Rescuing the SeaSat5 crew.” I didn’t have General Holt’s approval yet, but couldn’t see a reason why he’d deny using my team at TruGates. It’d be bad form, regardless of what little ties General Allen did or didn’t have to the actual military. Besides, rescuing SeaSat5 and the crew would trump any complications General Allen could possibly throw into the mix.

  A pregnant pause waddled about the four walls. Weyland stood and walked over to me. “I thought you didn’t know where it was,” he said like it was a secret an
d we weren’t in a room with other people.

  “We do now,” I said. “I can’t explain it all, you’d have to sign nondisclosure agreements and God knows what else. What’s important is TAO isn’t equipped to handle a rescue mission of this scale, and while the Army may recruit soldiers for the cause, you guys already know what you’re up against. They’re like me, with powers, but evil. Like the guy from the warehouse,” I said to Mara before lifting my gaze to General Allen. “If you can spare them it’d be much appreciated.”

  It wasn’t a question, but a dare to reject me, to deny the rescue of SeaSat5 when he and I alone in this room understood its importance in the grand scheme of things. Or, more to the point, was he really willing to not help get the Navy’s brainchild back?

  “Sir,” Weyland said, eager.

  General Allen’s stern façade faded. “How long will it take?”

  “I won’t know until I talk to TAO. If we get all the approvals we’ll need, then I can take these guys there. Trevor and I have to formulate a plan of attack as we’re the only people who know the ship well.” I glanced at Weyland. “Other than Weyland, of course. In the very least, I request Weyland be involved. He’s the only military personnel from the first tour who didn’t come back after the hijacking.”

  General Allen didn’t like the idea. It was evident in the awkward length of breaths he took, like he couldn’t catch his breath in one moment, and in the other he took too many. I struggled to maintain composure as his anger fueled my na-na-na-na-na-na response childishly itching to the surface.

  Mara coughed loudly. Guess I didn’t hide it as well as I thought.

  “Sir, SeaSatellite5 is the Navy’s most elite vessel in its fleet. It is also the only research vessel of its kind, and it’s currently in enemy hands. We need to get it back, and TAO needs this team’s help to do it. I’m going either way.” Try and stop me.

  He shrugged. His neck muscles twitched, betraying his outward calmness. “I can think of no better team, myself.”