by Jessica Gunn
Would this start another major war?
“Captain!” the forward navigations officer shouted. I didn’t know his name, but his red hair and large eyes were vaguely familiar. I hadn’t gotten much chance to work with Atlas’s Bridge crew yet. “Captain, look at this!”
“On screen,” Tessa ordered.
The middle monitor burst in color, showing the water of the bay bathed in sunlight. And then a shadow. One massive, blackened shadow.
“What the hell is that?” I asked.
“Don’t know,” the officer said. “It’s too big to register on the camera.”
Tessa didn’t miss a beat. “Zoom out. Readjust.”
“Hold on,” I said, backing away from her. “I’m quicker.” This, at least, I could do. No weapons station for me. Without waiting for Tessa’s response, I tugged on my teleportation power and brought myself outside to Atlas’s hull.
I stood basked in the shadow of a mammoth object, easily dwarfing Atlas. The object crested the surface of the bay, sitting almost on top of it like a risen submarine. But if the top was this tall, what’d the bottom look like? Could be iceberg syndrome. But more than its appearance, it was the unease, the fear that washed over me while my eyes roamed over the ship, that had me swaying.
This is the White City’s ship. Why bring it here? Unless…
My answer came as a glowing orb formed at the bow of the enemy ship, bright and hot, creating a large mirage. It doubled in size, tripled, energy rippling off of it.
“What the—?”
A high-pitched screech whistled from the energy ball, just like when those green comet-like things had fallen across the sky.
“Shit!”
I teleported inside the ship as the orb expanded to critical mass and a laser shot out of it. Only, I’d run into the teleport, so when I landed on the Bridge, I ran straight into someone. Weyland caught me, glancing down at me with a flash of concern crossing his eyes. I snatched the headset right off his head and said, “Trevor. Shield. Now.”
My panic must have transcended words because Tessa swung up her hand to her headset and she ordered, “All hands, brace for impact!”
I reached for Weyland’s arm and he gripped the banister closest to him, keeping us both upright as the entire station rumbled, then teetered, slipping sideways before the largest explosion I’d ever heard wracked the area. Wires and pipes blew above our heads, electrical systems short-circuited.
“Status!” Weyland called out after slipping his headset back onto his head. “Every department, now!”
Various officers stated the status of their staff and their departments, but I watched Weyland’s face for one in particular. Engineering. Trevor had been down there when the laser had gone off.
“Engineering!” Trevor’s voice flooded over the system. “Shot to hell, but we’re okay. And that was with a small shield up.”
“Are you serious?” Weyland asked.
I pulled on Tessa’s arm. “We need to get out of here. Evac everyone.”
Her jaw worked. Atlas was brand new. I didn’t want to leave it, either, but if it saved everyone’s lives, I didn’t care about the station. The White City clearly had the more advanced tech. They could probably time-travel with their behemoth ship, too. They didn’t need the damn Atlas. They wanted it destroyed for good, so we couldn’t use it. Damn them!
“Call it,” she said to Weyland. Then to the Bridge crew she said, “Get to the evac stations. Use the shuttles and get as far away from here as you can. Now!”
The Bridge crew all stood and walked, not ran, out the blast doors. I dropped down to the main column of the command center and opened the panel at the bottom. “Headset,” I called out.
Tessa produced one and handed it over.
“Trevor, tell me how to dismantle the map system,” I said.
“They don’t need it.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want to make this easier for them. Tell—”
The station convulsed, explosions shooting off again and again. Alarms cried out. Fire. Hull breach. Life support failing.
“We need to leave,” Tessa said, her hand on my arm.
“Crew’s almost cleared out,” Weyland said to the both of us. “If we’re going to go, we need to go now.”
I shook my head, fingers not leaving the wiring inside the control column. “Absolutely not. I’m not letting the General get a single damn win out of this day. I can teleport. I’ll leave at the last second.”
“You’re not good at determining what that last second is,” said Weyland, sending me a knowing look.
Tessa’s grip on my shoulder tightened. “Can you dismantle the system?”
No. At least, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I could. I tapped my headset again. “Trevor?” Nothing but static returned my call. “Trevor? Are you there?” I looked up at Weyland, questioning.
“He probably evacuated with the others,” Weyland said.
Of course Trevor had. Only I’d be stupid enough to stay behind until the very end. Except—no. Trevor was just as stubborn. “Trevor, are you still on board?”
Silence, save for the occasional crackle of static. I swallowed hard, searched for him on the periphery of my mind, wishing for once that emotion and our telepathy was enough to reach him again. Long moments and still nothing.
Another explosion rang out, another laser bombarded the station. The ceiling above us cracked, fell. I pushed Tessa past a huge chunk of debris.
“Go!” I shouted over the rubble. The floor beneath our feet began falling away, just like the rest of the station. “I’ll get to Engineering and finish the job.” The system was accessible from the Bridge, sure, but Trevor was probably working on destroying it in Engineering when the shield—what little shield we’d had—fell apart. I had no way to be certain that was what he was working on, but my intuition said so. A gut feeling I felt so deep in my heart, it must have been true.
Tessa moved to cut me off, but Weyland slapped a hand onto her shoulder. To me he said, “Stay put.” He flashed out in a blue wave of teleportation. In the pregnant moments he was gone, my rapid breathing spiked my heartbeat. Every throb pulsed in my neck, as if something were living there, pushing against the skin. Quick. Patterned. A wave hello. A strum on a guitar.
I ran my hand through my hair, over my face. Atlas. The base. All our work, destroyed or soon to be. What was next, TAO? Who was next, me? Too many questions. Too little time.
Weyland’s cascade returned and together we teleported to Engineering.
My gaze took in the carnage, my breathing stopping altogether. “Oh god.”
“Don’t,” Weyland said as he stepped over fallen desks and filing cabinets. We carefully moved closer to the systems room. “Keep moving.”
But as we rounded the corner, we both froze. The ceiling above had collapsed, as had one of the walls. Fires burned despite water pouring down from the sprinkler on the one section of ceiling that hadn’t fallen. Then I saw what had caused Weyland to freeze. On the other side of the room, crushed beneath a machine that’d toppled over sideways with the force of the wall blowing out, was an officer. An engineer.
Flashes of Michael dying consumed me. Of Trevor bleeding out on Pike’s shoulder in the Atlas Room beneath Atlantis.
“Don’t,” Weyland said again. He rushed over to the soldier’s side and reached down, careful to avoid the pool of blood and mangled limbs. He didn’t need to say it. There was no way anyone that crushed could have survived.
Weyland moved away as if he didn’t care. As if he didn’t have time to care. And really, we didn’t. But how could he brush death aside that quickly? For all the times I’d tried to convince people I was fine after a tragedy, I’d never once succeeded. Weyland just swallowed all reactions down and kept moving.
I followed him again. That was all I could do.
The Link Piece system had its own room, a closet, really, tucked behind this one. Another door. Another fallen ceiling. Still no Trevor. But
no other casualties, either.
“Okay, what do we do?” Weyland asked, hands on either side of the man-sized console. It looked like a display case with two hand-holds jutting out from either side, a touch-pad on each hand-hold. In theory, you slipped the Link Piece inside the case and put your hands on the pads. An Atlantean super soldier could force Atlas to then time-travel along with it.
Except we’d never gotten the chance to test the system.
“Break it. Make it so unusable the General might actually cry,” I spat out. Fuck him. I hated him so damn much.
I pushed Weyland out of the way and opened a side panel. Wires ran everywhere, the only thing left intact on this entire deck. The floor beneath us shifted as if to reinforce that point.
Weyland shimmied sideways, farther away from the closest wall. “Need to hurry,” he said.
“Really? Hadn’t noticed.”
He startled when I wrapped my fist around a bunch of wires and yanked them out of the console. The system sparked and burst, shocking me back onto my ass. The hairs on my arms rose from the electricity.
“Shit!” he cried. “Are you okay?”
I pushed myself off the floor. “Peachy.”
Turquoise lights swamped the room, followed by seven figures appearing from inside the Willy-Wonka-Land-themed teleports. The White City soldiers. Two on seven. Fan-fucking-tastic.
I grabbed water out of the air and chucked it at the closest bunch of soldiers first. They shouted but deflected easily, lighting up the water with electricity. Frying it. Evaporating it.
“Ah, shit,” I let out, ducking as one took a swing at me. He missed and I came up, three jabs to his abdomen, one to the face and a knee to his groin before he even blinked. He stumbled backwards. I looked over another’s shoulders, searching for Weyland. He wasn’t faring any better with three on his back. The others were at the Link Piece system, hands on the touch pads.
Oh, hell no, they don’t. I teleported sideways, a few seconds out of sync, and pushed them both back with my telekinesis. One flew through the busted-out wall, the other up through the ceiling.
“Leave!” I shouted at Weyland, my eyes on the Link Piece system. “I’ve got this. I’ll be right behind you.”
But even as I said it, one of the White City soldiers, thick with muscle, swung. He connected this time. Stars sprinkled the horizon as I was thrown back against a server cabinet. Pretty stars, all bursting across my vision as it narrowed to pinpoints. I blinked, trying to clear it.
“Stupid, naive Atlantean soldiers,” he spat, closing in on me.
I tried to move my arms. Tried to get my legs beneath me to push up. Couldn’t. Nothing wanted to move. What the hell?
The White City soldier stalked up to me, two of his buddies closing in behind him. He held his fingers up like a puppeteer, me the marionette. He had telekinesis. He’d flung me and was now holding me still.
I fought against it with all I had, an internal struggle Weyland couldn’t see. But that also could have been because of his own frozen state and half-closed swollen eye.
Teleport, I willed him. Just get the hell out of here. And yet, I hadn’t yet done the same. Trevor wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t finish what he’d started. If I didn’t keep this system out of the White City’s hands, whether they needed it to further their causes or not. I could not, would not, let General Allen win.
“You help these people touch the beginnings of time-travel and barely know anything yourselves,” the White City soldier continued. “Didn’t you learn anything in Atlantis?”
“Screw you,” I spat.
A crushing weight pushed in on my chest. Not a weight at all—his power. My breath squeezed out from my lips and, unable to gain it back, my vision closed in again. A thousand curses flew through my mind, none able to be voiced. I sought out Weyland’s good eye. Made contact. Nodded. Yes, leave. Escape.
His blue lights filled the air and then he was gone, like water sifting through a faucet.
And then there was only me.
The station rocked again, more debris falling everywhere. Move. Now.
My teleportation power called to me. The pull of it started in my feet, worked its way up my limbs to my mouth, where it almost became a command. Lights formed, I slipped between them and—
A hand closed around my hair and yanked backwards, pulling me out of my teleport and up into the ceiling. Through the ceiling up to the next deck above. Pain seared across my side, cracked like lightning against my ribs and stomach. Warmth seeped down my shirt, pants. I didn’t need to look. It was blood. Lots of it.
I rolled over anyway, fighting against the intense fire of pain, just to get a glimpse of the Link Piece system. One good teleport. One good smash. That was all that it’d take to ensure they couldn’t take it. But three of the White City soldiers surrounded the machine, completely ignoring the fact that Weyland had escaped.
The one who’d pitched me stood right below my body as it bridged the gap it had created. He looked at me and laughed, deep and loud. The rumble of it seemed to shake the floor.
“Fuck you,” I forced out, reaching for my teleportation power at the same time. But each reach became harder, farther away. The super soldier part of me was fading away. But she was waiting, reaching out on her own, and when she took my hand, we were gone in an instant.
I reappeared beside the three White City soldiers at the Link Piece console, my hands above my head. I called all the water I possibly could from the air around us, froze it into a block, and with everything in me, brought it down, telekinesis in tow, across the console right as the room lit up like a lightning strike—another explosion. Fear consumed me, every ounce of strength and breath I had left, but I pushed it down. Like Weyland had. Pushed and shoved and kept putting pressure on the Link Piece system until the whole damn thing splintered into a hundred thousand pieces. Just like Whack-a-Mole with Logan in his backyard that one birthday party.
I laughed, giddy with pain and the pleasure of success—however minute it was.
The entire world seemed to explode at that very moment, like the collapse of a super nova into a black hole, and everything, everything, went dead silent. Just long enough for me to have gotten used to it. And then—and then—
BOOM.
Chapter Three
CHELSEA
Pain pierced the blackness, lightning up every nerve-ending in my body. Slithering through my veins, working its way up from my side to my arms and head, radiating warmth outwards until it felt as if I was being burned alive.
Maybe I was.
I groaned, stirring. Rolled over onto my back. Pain sliced through my side, my lungs.
“Shit!” I cried. Which only hurt more. A broken rib or two at the very least, I was sure. I slid my right hand over my stomach to my left side, eyes still closed as I worked my way out of the blackness of unconsciousness. The ground under me was soft, wet against my back. I ran my left hand against the softness with my fingers splayed open. Grass.
Grass?
“Ah!” I groaned as the fingers of my right hand found the wound on my side. Sticky. Wet. I pulled my hand away and held my palm up closer to my face. It was covered with red blood the shade of death. Not good, Danning. Not freaking good.
I forced open my heavy eyelids. It took as much effort as opening a brand new pack of earbuds—impossible. A dark sky lay above me, stars poking through. Trees stood on the periphery of my vision. Grass and trees and starry skies. But I was covered in blood and in pain. What had happened?
Slowly, the pieces fell into place. Atlas. An attack. The White City. A soldier. The ceiling. Blinding pain. Me, nothing more than a puppet.
Atlas.
My heart sank deep into my stomach. Had Trevor gotten to safety?
“Chelsea?” someone called. Male. Familiar. But my muddled brain couldn’t piece it together.
Another voice, less familiar, cried, “Oh my god! Is she okay?”
“Chelsea!”
I’d
know that last voice anywhere. I’d heard it since the day she’d been born. Listened for it when she’d come home late. Wished to hear her laugh when things were bad. Held on to her hand in the times I needed her most.
I twisted my head long enough to glimpse Sarah, my sister, with her hands pressed over her mouth, her eyes wide, her face pale. Not concern, my mind registered. Terror. Utter and complete terror. More than she’d feel for what was probably a gnarly-looking injury.
That was when the sky darkened as someone’s large body encased my field of vision in shadow. A White City soldier.
Move, I willed my brain. Get up.
The super soldier inside me bucked, ready for round two. I wasn’t as sure but opened the door anyway. My vision slipped into razor-sharp focus. I kicked upward and vaulted myself off the ground, almost choking on the pain splintering from my ribs.
No time. Stop later.
The soldier caught my first punch, but the second connected against his jaw. I kicked a foot out from under him, grabbed his shoulders, and kneed him in the gut.
Keep moving.
But I couldn’t use my powers, either. Not with Sarah and Logan and god-only-knew who else right behind me. What had they seen before? Had they watched me teleport in? The sun had set hours ago, the area dark around us. But the moon shone bright in the sky, enough to light Logan’s backyard and illuminate the fight.
I backed off, wishing with all I had in me that I’d been at TAO instead. There’d have been a greater chance I’d had on my field gear. A knife. A gun.
I had nothing.
Stop whining, I told myself as I dodged another blow. But as I backed off his attack, someone grabbed me from behind. Before I could yank out of their grip, they wrapped an arm around my neck and pulled backwards. No air made its way to my lungs, my chest constricting in need and not getting anything. I jabbed an elbow into my attacker’s side, a heel to his shin. Nothing seemed to make a difference. His only reaction was a groan.
