by Jessica Gunn
Freddy pushed off the wall and walked to the door. He paused before exiting and turned back to me. “I think you know how to fix things.”
Then he was gone.
A lot of pride was swallowed as I passed through the line on the Dinning Decks. Much of that pride threatened to make a return appearance on the elevator ride to her quarters. I didn’t want to apologize for feeling what I felt, but I had to. I never wanted to ruin her relationship with Josh, or completely destroy any chance of friendship between us. All I wanted was for her to understand, because for so long she was the only one who did.
The Lift moved the quickest it ever had, and soon I was outside her door like we were two years younger and a lot less jaded. I knocked on her door and, as per usual on SeaSat5, Chelsea didn’t answer. I tried the knob and it was unlocked, so I nudged the door open an inch. I was about to say her name, announce my presence, when her radio came alive.
The emcee spoke in excited tones. “And for another week in a row Phoenix and Lobster’s Lies takes the number one spot. Whoever these guys are and wherever they came from, let’s hope they’re not a one hit wonder! And how about a studio version of this song, guys? Huh? Huh?”
“Fucking hell.”
A sound like hard plastic compressing filled my ears, followed by a thud on the ground. I pushed the door all the way open. Chelsea sat on her bed, a crushed bedside alarm clock sitting in a wounded heap at her feet.
“If you hated it that much you probably could have taken the one from your room at TAO,” I said.
Her eyes snapped up to mine, and she stood. “What do you want?”
I pointed to the radio. “Isn’t that a good thing? Don’t you guys want to make it big?”
She charged toward me. “Get the hell out of here. I don’t want to talk to you right now.”
Okay, she was still angry. I held up the cookies in my hand. Oatmeal, her favorite. “Truce?”
She looked to the cookies, back up to me, then back down at them again. “What are we, five? I said I don’t want to talk. Please leave.”
“Is there a problem here?”
I craned my neck to the door. Josh stood behind me, giving me the weirdest look. His expression was caught somewhere between relief and sadness instead of the annoyance I’d expected. All emotions were gone in an instant, his face wiped to a clean slate. What did he think I had planned? I just wanted to apologize!
“No,” I said and held up the cookies to him. “I was trying to make amends.” I turned back to Chelsea. “I shouldn’t have screamed at you yesterday and shared things. That was wrong and immature of me, and I am sorry, Chelsea. The cookies were for nostalgic effect.”
“I remember,” she said, her face hard.
I tried to smile. I wanted to actually talk to her, but I guessed this was all I’d get. The important part was said. “Good. I’m sorry. I’ll leave now.”
“Probably a good idea,” Josh said.
He stepped out into the hallway to let me by. At the last second before turning back to Chelsea, when we were both in the hallway and out of her sight, he reached out and grabbed my arm. Preparing for a verbal assault, I glared at him. His eyes were soft, deepened by some measure of sadness I couldn’t fathom. His jaw muscles twitched as he drew out the exchange, leaving words unsaid it was so clear he wanted to tell me. Like he was trying to say something without speaking and was begging me to understand. Hell if I knew what he meant.
Then Josh shook his head, straightened up, and walked into Chelsea’s room. He left me standing there, completely puzzled.
What was that about?
went back to TruGates with Josh the following day to brief General Allen on the rescue mission. Any animosity present before I stole his team for my own mission was gone, and I found myself less scared of him now that I knew his agenda. He wanted to kill my kind, and I would not let that happen. The best way, for now, to ensure it didn’t was to come back to TruGates. So here I was. But every moment I sat in front of him, the more that fear returned, an insidious sort of doubting that squeezed my chest and planted seeds of anxiety. Of mistrust.
This was a bad idea. Even if I still had to figure out what the General was really doing in that chamber, even if I felt some measure of need to protect Mara and the guys from him, this was a terrible, awful idea.
In animosity’s place on the General’s face was a new emotion: arrogance. His smug smile put me on edge, but it didn’t own me. The feeling was mutual. It was only a matter of time before one of us won—likely him, if I couldn’t figure out his reasons for experimenting on Lemurians before I was kicked out of TruGates for good.
Josh made dinner that night, chicken parmesan that was even more delicious the second time around. Weyland had stayed behind on SeaSat5 at Captain Marks’s request. He wouldn’t be back at TruGates for a few days.
We opened a bottle of wine Josh had had in his apartment for years, apparently, and celebrated SeaSat5’s safe return. It was the most delicious red wine I’d ever been given the opportunity to enjoy. The merlot warmed my body, making it buzz with feelings of joy and safety.
“You’re coming with me, right?” I asked Josh. “To help get everyone up to speed on TruGates’ operations?”
He nodded and poured us each a second glass of wine. “For a few days. Then General Allen’s got a job for us. You can probably come with if TAO can spare you.”
A grin spread wide on my face. “Good, because I kind of don’t want you out of my sight for a while.” Especially now that he’d given me another chance.
“Oh?” he asked, a sly smile playing on his lips. “Is that the case?”
I gave him my best seductive smile. “You betcha.”
After dinner we had dessert on the couch in the living room. While I tugged my shirt and pants on afterward, Josh lit a fire in the fireplace and retreated into the kitchen.
“I thought I told you I didn’t want you out of my sight?”
“I’m getting us some cocoa. Cool off some.”
Well that’d be hard to do with the fire and Josh’s skin against mine if he didn’t put a shirt back on. Josh emerged a few minutes later with two mugs of hot cocoa, topped with whipped cream and chocolate sauce drizzled on top.
“This is either a foreshadowing of what’s coming later tonight or you’re trying to spoil me.”
He grinned, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I’d say either case will end happily enough.” He handed me one of the mugs and settled down next to me, pulling me close. He threw an arm around me as I took my first sip.
It was the perfect temperature. “My God, you are a saint.”
“That good?” he asked before taking a hearty sip from his own mug.
“Oh yeah,” I said. This was the best damn hot chocolate ever, summertime be damned.
I’d drunk half the cup when I leaned closer to him and pressed my lips to his. He returned with fervor, his tongue asking to dance with mine. I let him in and instantly noticed something weird-tasting. Alcohol?
I leaned back to ask why he’d spiked his cocoa and not mine when the world spun violently. Black dots danced around my vision. My body felt weighed down by a thousand pounds. Through the fog I heard my mug shatter on the floor as I lost my grip on it.
I struggled to find Josh’s face through the blurry, spinning world. I tried to hold onto him and tell him what was wrong, but my tongue felt three sizes too big for my mouth and unmovable, too dry. He looked back at me with a pained, guilt-filled face.
What had he done to me?
“Josh…”
I fell forward and everything went black.
he sounds of seagulls and crashing waves broke through the fog in my head. Every part of me felt heavy and dense. My eyelids refused to open at first, but slowly, they gained the strength they needed. With the sight of the ocean before me, water lapping inches from my face as the tide rolled in, I suddenly felt cold.
A wave crested closer than the last. The freezing water splashed my
face and into my mouth. I coughed as the saltwater choked me, and I forced myself through sluggish movements to lift my face off the wet sand. When I was halfway to sitting up, recognition slammed into me like a battering ram.
Castle Island, Boston.
I fell to the sand on my back and stared up at the cloudy sky. What the hell happened to me? Did I have a teleporting accident again? No, that wouldn’t explain the dense fog in my head or the heavy weight of my limbs.
Water droplets sprinkled my face, tickling it with their coldness. I reached a hand up to wipe the water away. It was pointless. The rain came down faster than I could clear it away. It felt like I’d woken up from anesthesia, like I had after I got my wisdom teeth out at the end of high school.
A giggle escaped me. That’s probably when I should have known something was different. It’d taken the poor dentist a lot of drugs to sedate me back then.
“Drug.” My tongue wrapped around the word awkwardly, like it couldn’t quite form it. “Drug.” My eyes snapped open. Hot cocoa. Alcohol. Spiked hot cocoa. Drug. “Drugged.”
Josh had drugged me.
I closed my eyes again and thought of him. Maybe this was a joke. It had to be. Or at least a mistake. He’d probably accidentally done something to me, and I’d teleported here for safety, right? I’d come here a lot on my leave time after SeaSat5 was hijacked. I’d felt safe here. Renewed. I just had to get back to Josh, that was all. I closed my eyes.
The pull of my power was there, but teleportation never happened. My power never came across the chasm between us to meet me. We stood on separate edges of a grand abyss, with no bridge with which to cross. I put my hand above the waves. Nothing happened. My whole body felt weak and abused, light and unused.
I forced myself to stand. To walk off the beach. To trudge down the path to the main pavilion. It was closed, obviously. Cold and rainy did not beach weather make.
The rain started falling harder as I made my way out of Castle Island and back into the city outskirts. By the time I’d found an open convenience store, I was completely soaked through. Thank God my sweater wasn’t white.
I must have looked like a soggy, pathetic mess because the shopkeeper agreed without hesitation to let me use his phone. Or maybe he recognized my face in conjunction with Phoenix and Lobster.
I dialed Josh and Weyland’s home numbers. The call never connected. I tried Josh’s cell. The same thing. I called Weyland’s cell phone twice and again, no connection was made.
I slammed my hand down onto the counter. “What the hell!” The shopkeeper jumped. I looked up to him. “Sorry.”
I returned to trying numbers for my TruGates friends. None of them worked. By the time I’d rounded back to Josh’s numbers again, I was sobbing and shaking. From the cold. From his betrayal. He said he loved me, but was that just a lie? How could he love me and still do this? Josh had drugged and airdropped me onto a beach, leaving me freezing and alone with only a head full of questions.
My breath came in short gasps as I tried to keep from crying hysterically in front of the shopkeeper. That’d probably go real well and end with a call from the cops. The cops were the last thing I wanted to deal with right now.
My fingers shook uncontrollably as I tried dialing the only person I could think of that’d help me with this right now, or at least answer their phone. It took me three tries to get it right. This time, the call connected. The sweet sound of ringing brought music to my ears despite doing nothing to calm me down.
The person on the other end picked up. “Hello?”
“Trev—” I couldn’t even get his name out of my mouth without balling and hiccupping and generally losing it.
“Chelsea? Chelsea, is that you?” His words came quick, confused. Concerned. “Chelsea, what’s wrong?”
“Gone,” I managed to get out. “Th-they’re gone. Drugged me. Can’t teleport. God fucking dammit.” My voice broke over the words.
It sounded like he shifted his cell phone from ear to ear. Background noises grew louder like he was navigating a crowded room. “Where are you?
My eyelids grew heavy. I closed them and rested my forehead on the outside of a plastic lottery ticket display. “You were right. Dammit, Trevor, you were right. I’m sorry. So sorry. I’m sorry.”
“That doesn’t matter right now. Sophia and I will come get you. Where are you?” he asked.
I swallowed hard and attempted to sort through foggy thoughts. Josh drugged me and left me behind. I loved him. He loved me. So why?
“Chelsea?”
I snorted to keep snot from spilling out of my nose and brought my free hand up to wipe my face. “Boston. Outside Castle Island.”
“I’ll call Logan to pick you up. We’ll get you from his house.”
I laughed. I actually laughed. “He’ll kill you. I show up there crying, followed by you? He’ll kill you on principle.”
“You’re worth the risk,” he said. “I’m not afraid of him, Chelsea. Not when you’re involved.”
I cupped my hand over my mouth as my heart broke. Everything hurt. My chest felt like it was shattering into a thousand pieces, everything growing more painful and real the more the drug worked its way out of my system. Where had Josh gotten something that could knock me down this badly? I didn’t know such a thing even existed.
“Chelsea?”
“I’m fine,” I said through my fingers. It was a lie. He knew it was a lie, too. “Just come quick.”
“I will, I promise. Hang in there.”
Hang in there.
Hang in there.
First and foremost, thank you to my critique partners, who listen to my crazy ideas, entertain them, and then help me make them work. René, Chy, Emma, and Xan—you ladies are invaluable sources of creativity, support, and enthusiasm. Thank you so much for helping me turn this series into something more than I ever hoped for. And thank you to my writer friends who always make this whole writing thing make sense, and a lot less lonely.
Thank you to the Waiting-On-2016 crew. This once small author group has grown into something greater than I ever could have imagined when we started last summer. I’d joined hoping for support and a place to join veteran authors and newbies like myself, and have instead found a writing family.
Thank you the team at CQ for being awesome and for everything that you do.
To my family, always, thank you.
And thank you, readers, for reading my books and allowing me to live my dream. Without you, authors wouldn’t be able to do this. Thank you.
Born in Connecticut and raised on science-fiction and fantasy, it was inevitable Jessica Gunn would end up writing novels. She spent most of high school binge-watching a plethora of “old” and current sci-fi shows before diving into fanfiction. Jessica wrote her first novels in high school.
In college, Jessica studied anthropology where she learned enough about ancient civilizations and flintknappingto inspire GYRE, her first published novel. But being honest, daydreams of Atlantis and other ancient mysteries have captivated her for over a decade.
Jessica now lives as a continuous student of the writing craft in small-town Connecticut. She remains an avid fan of stories of the wormhole and superhero variety. Oh, and villains. She loves villains. When not working or writing, she can be found attending to her ever-growing TBR pile and hiking the forests of New England.
To catch up with Jessica, follow her on Twitter (@JessGunnAuthor) or on her website,www.jessicagunn.com.
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