by Jessica Gunn
“Huh,” he said. “She had a ring. Fine, you can ride with the ambulance, miss. You two can come with me in my cruiser.”
Sarah’s gaze found Weyland’s. “Ring?”
Weyland shrugged. “Not that I know of. She and Trevor would have told everyone.”
I bit my lip. Weyland was right. They would have, except… He must have proposed to her right before the attack in Hawaii. “They didn’t have time to.”
Watching Chelsea sleep in a hospital bed was now my most hated activity. She was out for so long that the nurses had sent Sarah to get some sleep in a nearby lounge. She and her parents were worried sick, but Weyland had snuck in some extra healing, so all we needed was for her to wake up.
Finally, hours later, Chelsea did. Her eyes fluttered open and my chest relaxed, breath coming easier the second I saw her hazel eyes. She sat up quickly, then cringed.
“Chelsea,” I said. “You’re safe now. Relax.”
“Where’s Weyland?” she asked.
“With your sister. They’re sleeping down the hall. No one’s convinced it was an accident.” So we’re worried your sister might still be a target.
“It wasn’t,” she said.
I leaned forward, my eyes narrowed. “I didn’t think so.”
Long moments passed as her lips worked around words that never came. Finally, she said, “Trevor was there.” Her voice broke, but she blinked rapidly, clearing away any tears that might have been there.
My eyes widened. “What?” Was she serious?
“He drove the other car.” She looked down at her hands, then the rest of her body. Did she still hurt? They’d hooked her up to a morphine drip, but even though her powers were gone, I wasn’t so sure something as innate as toxin resistance would be, too.
But she was wrong. “No, he didn’t,” I said. “The other driver was a forty-year-old man. A drunk. They found him on the other side of the road. He’d been ejected from the car.”
Nausea rolled over her features. “Like that makes this easier.”
My breath tinned. “It doesn’t. Are you sure you saw Trevor?” The ramifications of that, if she had, were too numerous to even entertain right now.
“Yes,” she said after moments of thought. “I don’t know why or where he went afterwards, but it was him. He—”
Anger built inside of me with every word. I tore off my chair, letting loose a low, frustrated growl, and paced violently from one end of the room to another. My fists curled and uncurled at my sides, knuckles turning as white as ivory.
She turned my head away from me. “Stop, Josh.”
“No. I…” I kept pacing through my silence.
“Josh.”
I stopped pacing and met her gaze. “I told him to protect you.”
Her eyebrows scrunched together. “Excuse me?”
“When we left SeaSat5 the last time, after we rescued it. I’d known then that something was off with the General, and thanks to Valerie, we now know that’s when his control over us had started. I made Trevor promise to protect you because I knew I wouldn’t be able to anymore. And he swore he would.” My jaw worked. “And now this.”
My chest heaved with all the words I didn’t want to say. I’d fallen for Chelsea, so hard and so fast with absolutely zero recovery time that this, especially this, was too hard. Giving her up—that wasn’t what had happened. She’d always belonged to Trevor. But that he’d willingly join the enemy, or be so weak that he couldn’t fight them to keep Chelsea safe drove me insane. Thought by thought. Stitch by stitch in each of Chelsea’s injuries. In Valerie’s. Arguably two of the most important people in his life, and here Trevor was, destroying them both.
Even under General Allen’s control, I’d never have put Chelsea in danger. We’d left her in Castle Island, yeah, but she’d been safe and it hadn’t been where he’d wanted us to leave her. Even under his control, I’d protected Mara. And I had to believe—I knew it to be true—that even if General Allen had ordered me, brainwashed me, into hurting Chelsea, I’d never in a million years have done it. I’d sooner put a bullet in my own brain.
But then the darker part of myself, the part that’d lived through overseas deployment and had survived somewhat intact all the things the General had made us do… that part of me knew what happened when the brain was forced to fight itself.
I might have become the only person to know what Trevor might be going through, and I couldn’t even help him.
And, by extension, I couldn’t help Chelsea. Couldn’t keep her out of the damn hospital for more than two weeks. Thank god Weyland had healed her at the crash site. Even the doctors said it was a miracle she hadn’t suffered a traumatic brain injury. She might have, if Weyland hadn’t gotten there when he had.
Chelsea’s eyes didn’t waver, didn’t relax.
I dropped my hands and slid them into my pockets. “I just hate this.” What’d happened in Hawaii. What kept happening here. What might happen if we didn’t stop the White City or steal back the Lifestone.
“No kidding.” She lay back on the bed and sighed heavily. “How long am I stuck in the hospital this time?”
I rubbed a hand over my chin, then up through my hair. The eternal question. Thanks to Weyland, she wouldn’t have to be admitted for as long as normally required, but the doctors had started asking questions about her quick recovery from her already curiously low amount of injuries.
My stomach lurched. I’d been in a rental two cars behind her. I’d watched her van fly across the intersection on its side, metal sparking. “We’re hoping someone in the military brass can get you discharged quickly again. It worked last time.”
She snorted. “My hospital records must look like a farce.”
I frowned. “Better you’re on SeaSat5 right now then stuck in the open here.”
“Right. I’d totally rather have the station as a target for another attack.” She had a point.
“Okay, but there’s—”
“Nowhere else to go?” she finished for me. “I’m aware. But it’s also a lie.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Fire burned in her eyes, hot and fierce. “We can go to the White City. Steal back that damn stone of immortality before General Allen can get to it and destroy the stupid thing. Lemuria won’t be able to hoard it. General Allen won’t use it for his own agenda—whatever the hell that is. And the White City will shrivel and die, as it should.”
Her words sent goose bumps shooting up my arms. “You’d doom their entire race because of General Allen?” I asked.
She tilted her head as though I were a dumb child unable to keep up. “No. I’d doom their entire race to a normal lifespan because it’s fairly obvious that no one’s able to handle time-travel. Not the Atlanteans who almost tore reality itself apart, nor these idiots who think they can use their pocket universe bull to live longer. Living longer equals more children, which equals higher population, which equals every disaster, human-existence-ending movie in the history of cinema. We all know how that ends.” She shook her head. “The Lemurians seem to be the only people capable of dealing with this responsibility, but at the rate they produce these bad eggs hellbent on exterminating other cultures, they don’t deserve the Lifestone either. I’m going to obliterate the damn thing with my bare hands. I’m so done.” She threw her head back and looked up at the ceiling.
“Wow.” It was all I had to say to that magnificent tirade.
“I know. I sound like a spoiled child.”
I shrugged. “Frustrated child, maybe. Not spoiled.”
She glared at me. “Ha ha.”
Frowning, I said, “I’m trying, Chelsea.”
She dropped the frustrated-angry mood instantly, her whole body relaxing. “I know.”
Neither of us spoke for long moments. I relaxed into my chair. “What now?”
“We get back to the station and plan the mission to La Ciudad Blanca,” she said. “We go there, somehow find the Lifestone, and even more vaguel
y survive the mission. Then we find a way to get Trevor back before we all retire and never time-travel or Link Piece hunt ever again.”
I nodded as she spoke. Though I knew her words were exaggerated and even sarcastic in nature, she’d told me what her ultimate life plan was. That was it. And mine, too. “Sounds perfect. Think TAO will let me go after this so I can retire, too?”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “You’ll be a hero to present-day Earth. We all will. We’ll be showered in accolades and given all the beach houses and hammocks we can stand.”
“And drinks.” What I wouldn’t give for one now.
“All the alcohol. Every last drop of it everywhere.”
Silence enveloped us again. This time, neither of us broke it. It was easier to fantasize about the future than it was to accept the present. Or think about the past.
Chapter Fourteen
CHELSEA
I spent the next few days constantly fending off Weyland’s attempts to heal the various abrasions and my sprained wrist. He was not a fan of my “don’t heal me all the time just because” policy. For one thing, it always left him weak. And that might not be something that he’d ever get over. Every ability had its limits. Maybe that was his.
Eventually, they called my parents. They’d been hiding out somewhere following Atlantis’s isolation, looking for fellow refugees they knew and telling them about the news. They hadn’t really hung around. But they came as soon as they heard about me, and my father had healed me almost fully—despite my protests.
Then the Captain had asked for their help in going after the Lifestone, and they’d flipped. Something about how we hadn’t learned our lesson with Atlas, and how our ship was just the beginning. I hadn’t seen them since.
It hurt. But I’d agreed with every word. After the Lifestone mission, I planned to find them and set things right.
On the fourth day back at TAO, I had my first unexpected visitor. Major Pike knocked on the door frame to my lab. I wasn’t sure when it had become solely mine. For the longest time, I’d shared one with Dr. Hill. At some point between rescuing SeaSat5 and the destruction of Atlas, I’d somehow earned privacy to do my work. Or, as I’d most recently used the room for, escaping from reality. The more distance I put between myself and what was going on outside this room, the more sanity I retained, the less worry I had, and the more I easily forgot what a wreck the night of the fan concert had been.
That night that should have been the highlight of my musical career thus far. Jesse O’Malley had been so affected and concerned about the accident that he’d offered to pay my medical bills. I turned him down, obviously, but that he cared that much had floored me. All my life I’d looked up to him as a musical role model, as a hero, and there he was, being one in real life.
Needless to say, everyone was eager for me to get better and for the tour to start. Too bad we had a mission to La Ciudad Blanca to carry out first. Which was probably what had brought Major Pike to my lab tonight.
“Hey,” I said.
He lingered in the doorway. “Think you’re up to going on this mission?” Pike made his way to the chair on the other side of my desk and sat. “I know you’re still healing.”
“I’m fine,” I snapped. I hadn’t meant to. I was just tired of people asking if I was okay. Are you in pain? Do you need painkillers? Is it weird to heal at a normal place? Was Trevor involved?
Was Trevor involved?
When did that become a question that now meant something bad? When I’d joined SeaSat5, it’d always been people wondering how Trevor and me meeting once for five minutes had led me to the station. Now all everyone ever wanted to know was what evidence there was for him being brainwashed, and if it weighed heavily enough against the tape of him attacking Valerie.
And seeing him after my crash.
I closed my eyes and forced breath into my lungs. The action was enough to soothe my frayed nerves, just a little. “Sorry. What I mean is, I’m okay. Or I will be. I want to get back to normal, and while this quest is anything but, it’s close enough for me.”
He nodded. “I figured. Unfortunately, both Admiral Dennett and General Holt disagree.”
My jaw slammed shut. “Excuse me?”
“Easy,” he said, lifting a hand to pacify me. “It’s a combination of that accident, you no longer having your powers, and the fact that this might hit too close to home for you.”
My eyes narrowed. “If it’s too close for me—and by close, you mean Trevor potentially being the biggest traitor we’ve ever known—then it’s too close for everyone here. So that argument is total bull.”
“Agreed,” he said. “I already pleaded that case.” I wanted to believe he’d fought their decision for me, but I knew it wasn’t true. I’d done a lot of things wrong in Pike’s eyes, enough that any respect we’d had between us upon Trevor and I first arriving at TAO was gone for good. Accidentally shooting him at the National Museum of Natural History. Joining TruGates. Returning there even knowing what awaited me. So many things. No, Pike hadn’t championed me in the “I’m too close to it” argument.
“I can fight,” I said. “Just because my powers are gone doesn’t mean I’ve suddenly turned into a useless damsel.” Although it sure felt that way, even appeared so after all this. And I hated the way those thoughts slipped beneath my skin in winding, doubt-inducing movements. There wasn’t anything I could have done to prevent that car accident. And when that Not-Valerie White City soldier attacked, I’d been too injured to fight back. I hadn’t been useless, only wounded. Something I hadn’t ever really been before. But the wounded still had hope. And so did I.
Pike leaned forward in his chair and put his forearms on my desk, as though asking for me to hear him out. History said that whenever Pike needed me to listen this closely, I was sure to find myself being reprimanded. “Hear me out, okay? You’ve had your unnatural strength for almost your entire life, whether you recognized it as such or not. Same with the whole resisting-toxin thing. You’re used to those things. You rely on them subconsciously.”
I bit my tongue. He wasn’t wrong, but that didn’t make me any more eager to hear it. I hadn’t recognized those powers for what they were growing up. I’d just thought I could drink a ton and run faster than the other kids. I’d thought all the crazy, far-out homeruns in gym class were coincidental. Even when my dentist couldn’t find a way to put me under for my wisdom teeth surgery, I’d thought it was funny and annoying.
“I’ve managed so far,” I said.
“It’s been all of three weeks since the attack, Chelsea,” Major Pike said. “You haven’t been in a fight. In fact, you’ve spent a good amount of those three weeks in a hospital bed.”
“So let me spar with Sophia and prove myself.” I clenched my fists. “You can’t leave me behind on this mission, Pike. It’s—”
“Not fair?” he asked.
I shot him a glare. “Not right. Trevor’s family is asking us to retrieve the Lifestone. We’re going to La Ciudad Blanca. I can see the Waterstar map when I touch Link Pieces, so I’m still a super soldier, with or without my other abilities. This all started when General Allen targeted me. I will see it through to the end no matter what. Besides, even without my strength, I can fight and shoot better than most of the soldiers TAO’s brought in the last few months.”
Part of that wasn’t true. In reality, General Allen had targeted Weyland before I had even been in the picture. And Weyland had been on SeaSat5 for a good year before I’d turned the station into a Link Piece by teleporting there. I was icing on the General’s cake, the treasure he’d found at the bottom of the chest while looking for something else.
My heart sank. One hell of a treasure, I was. Maybe the White City was trying to kill me because they thought I could make another Link Piece that led to Atlantis’s present home-time. How closely related was the General’s agenda to theirs? Was it even close at all? I got the feeling that wasn’t the truth.
Then what is?
Major Pike’s expression didn’t change. He must have anticipated my reactions because not even those words had swayed him. “I don’t know, Chelsea.”
“Major, it’s me. I can handle myself.” A nagging in the back of my head begged to differ. “Let me prove to you that I can do this, Pike.” I looked him straight in the eyes. “Please. I have to be on this mission. I have to do something. If I sit here for any longer, I’ll go insane.” Maybe I already had. I wasn’t willing to watch them go on one of the most dangerous missions TAO had ever conducted and do nothing. Not with something like the Lifestone on the line.
Not with Trevor still half-missing and half-possibly-maybe helping the White City kill me.
Major Pike let out a breath. “Fine. Meet with Sophia and see where you’re at. But I’m not taking you on this mission if I think you’re not up for it.”
That lit a fire in my veins. “My powers being gone doesn’t mean I’m any less of a soldier. It just means I can’t fling people across the room.”
“Understood,” he said as rose off the chair. “Sophia and I will be the final judge of what happens. I’ll win your case with the military brass, but you’ll have to convince me first.”
Unfortunately for me, convincing Major Pike of anything was often the hardest battle of all.
“I will.”
Nodding as he turned to leave, he said, “I hope so.”
Sophia’s fist flew at my face, but it was her foot I had to watch out for. She started sliding it across the floor, prepping to sweep my feet out from under me. I threw out a hand to knock her fist off-target as I stepped backwards, avoiding the sweep. Then I brought my knee up and let loose my own kick. It connected—and she was sweating, so I knew she wasn’t taking it easy on me—but she only staggered back a little bit. It was nowhere near the impact I’d have at full-strength.
Sophia grunted, backing off of the sparring mat. “Your natural fighting abilities haven’t changed,” she said between heavy breaths.
