by Jessica Gunn
“End her,” the woman soldier said. “Or dispose of her. We don’t have time for this.”
The floor shifted beneath us, lowering against the walls like one of those god-awful amusement park rides. The ones where the walls spin as the floor drops and all of a sudden the only thing keeping you from falling to broken legs is the gravitational force. Shit, shit, shit. It dropped only an inch or two at first, then entire feet. I hobbled across the cracking floor, dodging ceiling bits and other parts of the booby-trap as best I could, but the floor being dropped out from under me sent me to my knees. Trevor and his companion didn’t fare much better until the place finally settled.
It wouldn’t be a problem for them, reaching the door. I knew that. He’d lift them up on water or she’d do the same with stone. Me, however…
Water continued pouring in, soaking me up to my knees.
“You can’t leave me here!” I shouted over the thunder of water. “You love me. I know you do! And even if you don’t anymore, General Allen needs me alive. The White City needs me, dammit!”
His face took on a stricken look for one passing second before his companion made a platform out of stone, pushed him onto it, and sent it flying up the tunnel that’d been created in the sinking floor’s wake. Then she turned on me and sent stone shackles flying my way, just like the other White City soldiers had been before. And, like before, I couldn’t dodge them. The handcuffs slammed shut around one wrist. I looked up at her.
“You missed,” I said, waving my free hand.
She chuckled and swept her hand across the air between us. A much longer, though thinner, rope of stone wrapped around the closest pedestal before connecting with my wrist. She’d cuffed me to the pedestal. I’d drown down here!
As if to emphasize my thoughts, the water rushed up to my waist and continued pouring in through the hole in the ceiling. So this was why they’d built the monastery on the waterfall—to trap anyone trying to steal from this room. And surely they’d drown in the tunnel hidden behind its walls, too, if they tried retreating to the palace.
The woman soldier rose herself above the water to Trevor’s side. He cast one last long look my way, then they disappeared above the lip of the hole.
“Trevor!” I screamed. “Help me! I’m going to drown!”
I’d relied on water so much, had such a connection to it, could control it, and now it’d kill me. Kill me!
I reached inside myself for the connection, for the super soldier part of me, for the Atlantean side of me, for anything, absolutely anything at all that’d save me. But after Trevor had taken away all of my powers, I was just a normal woman. And normal women drowned underwater.
Fear and panic seeped into my system. My body shivered as the water level rose, cooling my core temperature with the freezing liquid.
Was this it? Was this how I’d die, watching water rise up my waist to my shoulders, up my neck, over my ears? I stretched as far as I could, took a breath, then dove down to kick against the pedestal and try to break my bonds. It didn’t budge, and if I tugged too hard, it felt like I’d break my bones and still not make progress. I yanked my hand down against the cuff, my ears popping with the rising water level, and tried to slip my wrist through the hole now that water surrounded all of it.
Nothing. I couldn’t even move a centimeter before it hurt too much and I gave up. I kicked up just in time to get one last deep breath before the water rose too far above my head for me to reach. It stung my eyes and nose. Was this what it felt like to drown? Would it burn when I breathed in gulp after gulp of water?
Where were the others? They should have gotten here by now. Unless they’d hit more resistance, more soldiers.
Leave me, I implored them, as if they could hear me. The stone isn’t here; it’s not worth it. Get out and get home.
I released a big bubble of air. I didn’t have much left.
I closed my eyes and willed my body to relax, to preserve my oxygen for as long as humanly possible. I’d hold out. I’d make it to the end. This wouldn’t kill me. Not water. Not the very thing my ancestors had worshipped.
My lungs burned. There was no way I’d hold out much longer.
A hand wrapped around my neck and lips pressed themselves to mine. I startled and opened my eyes. Josh’s head was there and he pushed a breath into my grateful lungs. I punched his chest, trying to get him to leave me. He shook his head and examined my predicament, then held up a finger.
He kicked back to the surface. I watched him as he took in another full breath and dove back down to me, took out a knife from his belt, and pounded the handle of it against the stone holding me captive.
I shook my head, then grabbed on to his wrist, and forced his attention to me. I wiggled my fingers in front of him, holding them in one place, then moving them to the other side of my body. Teleport. Can Valerie teleport me out of here without leaving my limb behind?
Was that too complicated a sentence?
He rolled his eyes and pressed his lips to mine again, feeding me another breath.
Again and again he tried breaking me free, even as the water continued rising above us. I couldn’t really see the level getting higher, but my ears popped more often and the sheer mass of the water above us had made everything start to hurt. I wouldn’t last much longer, and neither would he. His oxygen breaks grew more frequent as the distance to the surface grew, and he lost more air to the route each time. The only progress he had to show for his troubles were some stone flakes.
I can’t let him die down here with me.
As he kicked off the floor to get more air, I forced myself down into the same position as before, both feet braced against the pedestal. Then I grabbed hold of my cuffed wrist with my free hand, coned my fingers as tight as possible, and pulled with everything I had in me. Pain starburst across my vision, but if I could just get my hand through this cuff, regardless of what damage it caused me, maybe, just maybe, I’d live. I yanked, and my bones cracked and shattered as my hand passed through the cuff. My lungs screamed, out of air, but I didn’t move a single inch until the very tip of my middle finger was free.
Josh reached me as black spots danced along my vision and pulled me to the surface, eyes widened at the sight of my shattered hand, fingers bent at strange angles. I’d probably never play guitar again. He heaved me over the lip of the hole as Valerie led the others into the room. I coughed up water, Josh rubbing my back, and tried to catch my breath.
“What happened?” Valerie asked.
“Tre—” A cough cut me off.
“Easy,” Josh said. “She nearly drowned. They chained her down there and left her to die.”
“Gone,” I wheezed. “It’s gone.”
“The stone?” Ezra asked as he knelt next to me. “Are you okay?”
Weyland took up space on my other side, his fingers already reaching for my hand.
“Don’t!” I shouted. “Not now. Please, don’t touch it.”
Weyland and Josh exchanged a look over my head.
Ezra’s hand landed on my arm and he held the other one up. “We must leave before any other soldiers or priests show up,” he said. “Hold on.”
I closed my eyes against the pain throbbing a steady staccato in my fingers and lungs. Josh rested a hand on my lower back, a quiet reassurance of safety, as Ezra teleported us to the cave. Sophia produced a heaping pile of machinery from the pack still on her shoulders.
“Found this on our way to you,” she said. “It’s a Link Piece-making device.”
“Well, ‘found’ is a bit of a strong word,” said Dr. Hill. “We fought our way to it. One of the priests had it in his hands. They might be calling for reinforcements. I think it’s a radio device, too.”
“Do it then,” Pike said. “Now. Get us home as fast as you can. All of us.”
Sophia looked over her person. Her eyes widened with an idea as she tugged her dog tags out of her shirt and ripped them off her neck. She slid the tags into the machine, then pricked h
er finger with Weyland’s assistance. The same procedure we’d taken when rescuing SeaSat5. With the blood in the system along with something she had a connection to, it ought to work. And it must have because both she and Weyland visibly relaxed moments later.
“All good,” Weyland said. “Let’s go.”
We all joined hands and returned to our home-time, emptyhanded and broken.
Chapter Twenty-Four
CHELSEA
I didn’t have time to so much as sit down before they hounded me with questions. General Holt wanted to know what’d happened and everything Trevor had said. Major Pike demanded a play-by-play. Only Josh’s insistence, my troubled breathing, and Valerie’s tense presence kept them at bay. When they’d finally scared them off, Valerie paced the distance between my hospital bed and the door. Josh found me an oxygen mask and hooked me up to it.
I removed the mask to ask Valerie, “Why are you pacing?”
She froze and turned to me. She stared for a long moment, tears building in her eyes. Her face grew red and splotchy.
Oh, boy.
“Valerie, everything’s going to be—”
She shook her head. “No. It’s not. Chelsea, I have to tell you something and you’re not going to like it.”
Josh’s eyes narrowed on her. “What’s wrong?”
I looked between both of them. When had these two—my ex-boyfriend and the woman who’d stood by while Thompson had killed Michael—become my protectors, my support system? Why did I have the feeling that was about to suddenly crash apart?
Valerie worried her lower lip and crossed her arms over her chest. “We had a plan.”
“Who had a plan?” Josh asked.
No. Please no. “Don’t tell me…” Valerie and Trevor had hidden things from me before. His illness when he’d had the map in his head. And the fact that she was alive and back at all. That they’d known I was in trouble at TruGates, that all the super soldiers were.
Valerie wrung her hands together. “I found out the White City—their council—wanted you. Because of the Waterstar map being in your head, and the fact that you’d made SeaSat5 into a Link Piece that led to Atlantis. Even with the Atlas Cache destroyed, there’s still this stain on time there. A stain big enough for them to feed on for their life-blood.”
My fists clenched, heart rate skyrocketing, and I had to close my eyes and force myself to take deep breaths from the oxygen mask to keep from losing my absolute shit on Valerie. “Do not, I swear to god, do not tell me you handed Trevor to any sect of the White City as a substitute for me.”
Valerie’s strong exterior crumbled under my accusation and tears spilled from her eyes. A broken sound left her mouth. “To protect you from them, from General Allen, from—”
“From no one,” I hissed. “You two do this, the both of you, all the damn time. And not once have you ever stopped to think that maybe I should have a fucking say in my own future!”
Josh reached out for me. “Chelsea, please—”
“Absolutely not,” I growled. “You’ve hid all the big things from me for years, and now you pull this? What even was the plan? Did you know he took my powers? How did he take them from me?”
“That I really, honest to god, don’t know,” Valerie said. “He’s never had abilities. Not as a kid, not now. And he’s Lemurian. There’s no way he can have Atlantean powers, not even with the connection you two shared. His body isn’t built for it. Our magic is inherently different, like we talked about with the fire and water.”
I nodded. “So, what then?”
Valerie heaved a breath. Her reaction made it difficult to stay mad at her despite the betrayal stinging in my heart. Whatever plan they’d made, it’d happened on the heels of the best moment of my life—Trevor proposing to me. She may have lost her best friend to this, and I so, so empathized with that, but I’d lost the love of my life because neither he nor his best friend felt I could handle the truth enough to work with them on a plan that had changed literally everything.
“We knew they were coming for you,” Valerie said, “so we convinced them Trevor was the soldier instead. He doesn’t have powers, so he’d never used them in front of the White City soldiers, and since General Allen had always suspected something was off about Trevor all along, we took a gamble on the fact that this particular sect had no idea Trevor was a descendant of Lemuria.”
I… had no words for that. Trevor had used his own relative powerlessness to his advantage, something he’d normally never do because he’d usually been too busy wallowing about it. “And they bought it?”
Valerie nodded and sat on the bed next to me, a daring action considering I wanted to punch her in the face. “Yes, and that’s the last I’d heard from him. Unless he needed a quick way out of their lair, he wasn’t going to contact me. When he’d gone missing after the attack on Pearl, I’d assumed it had all gone according to plan, that he’d proven his loyalty when he’d knocked me out.”
“Wait a minute,” Josh said. “You were devastated and confused about that. I was there when you woke up.”
“Seriously,” I said. “Crying, even.”
“Oh, come on, Chelsea,” she said, her eyes wide and imploring. “I had everyone on SeaSat5 convinced I was a good little engineer graduate student working an internship and nothing more. Then I got Thompson on board SeaSat5 and let him wreak havoc until I’d convinced him I was still his minion. I lie, Chelsea. I lie well.”
My jaw worked, my teeth grinding together. And yet, even then, something nagged at the back of my mind. Like an unclear memory. “So how do I know you’re not lying about all of this right now, that you’re not actually also working with the same White City sect? Or that anything you just said about Trevor is true?”
Her eyes spilled tears as she stared me down. “He’s my best friend.”
I wanted to believe her. God, I wanted to. But… “You fed him to the enemy, Valerie. You left him in their midst, defenseless, and now look what’s happened.”
She looked up at the ceiling and blinked rapidly, wiping her cheeks with closed fists. “Ever since I was a kid, I wanted nothing more than for this dumb war to stop. For Atlantis and Lemuria to stop their antediluvian cock fight and get over themselves. But I wanted to be the one to end it because I thought I was the only one who didn’t have their head up their ass. Years ago, I’d have done anything to prove my ability to end the war. I’d climb up any political ladder, take on any job. That was how I trained with Ezra, how I’d gotten put on Thompson’s mission to take SeaSat5. But then I learned from Ezra that SeaSat5 was a Link Piece itself, an important one, and as much as I very selfishly didn’t want Thompson to figure that out and claim it for his own, I also knew that if either side got a hold of it, if even Atlantis realized what they’d had with a super soldier on board to boot…”
She shook her head. “Now… Now, I still want it to end. I want to run off with Charlie into the sunset like in all the movies. I want that normal you chased for so long, Chelsea. I get it now. So when I found out the White City wasn’t going to let things sit all nice and good, I made a plan with the only person I knew I could trust.”
“Trevor,” I said. She’d never trust me, not completely. Not like she did Trevor. And fair enough because I felt the same about her. Especially now.
“He was supposed to infiltrate and figure out their aim, then get us all back together to extract him and to end everything once and for all,” Valerie continued. “But something went wrong. Obviously, I mean. So wrong. Our fight on SeaSat5 was staged, but him teleporting out and everything since that moment, all of that was real and none of it was part of our plan. They must have gotten to him before their attack on Pearl and I didn’t catch it. Didn’t even notice.”
I reached for her hand and placed it between both of mine. “I didn’t either, Valerie. No one did.”
“You what?”
JoAnne Boncore stood before us, utterly dumbfounded by our spectacular failure. Not only had we failed to r
etrieve the Lifestone from the White City, we’d also run headfirst into her son and failed bring him home.
“He has Chelsea’s powers,” Valerie said, jumping to my defense yet again. “And we were in the heart of La Ciudad Blanca. Give us a break.”
JoAnne’s eyes narrowed to slits. She glared at Sophia and Weyland. “Thousands of years ago, your parents were charged with more dangerous missions and went alone. Yet you couldn’t handle this.”
“What the hell did you expect?” I shouted, rising from my chair. Raising my voice, the air needed for that didn’t come easily, but I pushed through. I wrung my healed hand. Weyland had healed it the best he could after Valerie’s confession, but it still hurt like a bitch. “Have you been there? Have you ever fought their soldiers?” Have you ever seen the extent of an Atlantean’s powers? The sheer strength Trevor had, the new ways in which he’d learned to use my powers in such a short amount of time—things I’d never even tried doing—astounded me. “There’s no way we could have predicted Trevor would have my abilities. Or that he’d be an expert at wielding them.”
“Or that I’d be recognized,” Josh said.
Ezra stepped forward, a peace offering. “JoAnne, with all respect, we tried our—”
JoAnne swiped her hand through the air. Gone was the barely-restrained annoyance from the woman who’d given us this mission to begin with. She’d been replaced by this new JoAnne, who had fire raging in her eyes. “The Lifestone is missing,” she hissed, “which is possibly worse than the White City having it. At least they’d know what to do with it. In the wrong hands civilizations could fall, the precious balance disrupted. Immortality can give one the keys to time that few can actually handle.” She pulled in a tight breath, then continued her tirade. “All you had to do was recover a single stone, one predominantly displayed, so that you couldn’t possibly have missed the tiny, glowing amber orb.”
