The Underworld (The Atlas Series Book 3)

by Becca C. Smith

  Chelsan shook her head. “No. If I told you about my life, you’d think I was crazy too.” Then she asked thoughtfully, “So what does that mean, you’re ‘Atlas?’ Are you supposed to be in the North Pole keeping the planet spinning or something?”

  Kala sighed in frustration. “I wish it was that easy, although thinking about it, that probably wouldn’t be that easy.” She re-focused. “I have to keep the balance of good and evil in check or the world will literally crumble.”

  “Whoa. I thought my life was hard,” Chelsan replied.

  There was no sarcasm or disbelief in the girl’s tone, which made Kala realize that Chelsan must have had it pretty rough as well.

  “Why do you think you’re in my head?” Chelsan genuinely wanted to know Kala’s thoughts on the matter.

  “What do you mean?” Kala was confused. “You’re in my head.”

  Chelsan eyed Kala as if to see if she was serious… Then she understood that Kala was telling the truth.

  “Nope,” she said, “you’re in mine. And that’s saying something. I have blocks up the yazoo that my grandmother taught me and she’s pretty good at this stuff. Maybe it’s because you’re Atlas? I’ve never had to block out a god before.”

  Kala was still reeling from the fact that she wasn’t in her own brain. It made a strange kind of sense. If she was in a coma her spirit was free to roam anywhere it wanted. Apparently, it wanted to jump into some poor girl’s head. “It sounds like I need to meet your grandmother.” Kala thought the next best thing would be Roberta. Maybe she could teach Kala more about this whole head-jumping process.

  Chelsan’s face revealed that she wasn’t quite sure if Kala meeting her grandmother was such a good idea. “Um, my grandparents are an acquired taste. Are there more of you? Gods, I mean?” She seemed curious.

  “Unfortunately. Zeus and Cronus are dicks, and so are the Titans, but some of the Olympians don’t seem as bad.” Then Kala added. “I’m sorry I hijacked your head. I have no idea how that happened.”

  Chelsan seemed impressed at the mention of the Titans and Olympians, then she turned thoughtful. “Well, usually, the way it works is: you have to think of the person whose head you want to jump into.” Then she shrugged. “But you don’t know me, so I’m not sure, either.”

  Kala considered it for second. “That’s so strange. I was thinking of Zeus.”

  Chelsan shrugged. “Well, I’m definitely not him. What exactly were you thinking about him?

  Kala contemplated, “I was thinking about how he had lied to me about a prophecy of a girl…” She froze.

  “What is it?” Chelsan picked up on Kala’s sudden mood change.

  “This might sound weird, but would the phrase the one that knows death apply to you at all?” Kala asked, scared of the answer.

  She didn’t need Chelsan to respond. Kala could see from the paler shade of white Chelsan’s face turned that the phrase definitely meant something to the girl.

  “I control dead things,” Chelsan confirmed. Her voice was small, as if admitting this to Kala might put her in danger.

  Kala was terrified to ask her next question, but she plowed ahead despite her fear, “What year is it?”

  Chelsan hadn’t been expecting that. She tilted her head to the side and replied, “2321.”

  Before Kala could respond, she was being pulled out of the forest at lightning speed. Trying to hold onto anything she could, Kala grasped only air as her body flew into the darkness once more.

  If Kala hadn’t died already, she would have thought she was dying now since she saw a light at the end of the black all around her. Instincts kicking in, Kala steered herself toward the glowing beacon, knowing it was the right thing to do.

  The closer she was to the light, the brighter it blazed, until Kala was on top of it. Not stopping for a second, Kala jumped as if she were leaping into the sun itself…

  DAY FOUR

  Chapter Nineteen

  Kala woke up gasping for air. Her head yanked to a halt as she realized she was hooked up to one of Turner’s brain machines and the wires had been pulled taut from her leaning forward.

  “We got her!” Turner’s voice beamed beside her.

  Finally catching her breath, Kala ripped off the suction cups attached to her head and took a moment to view her surroundings.

  Derek, Owen, Talan, Roberta and Turner were with Kala in a small room that housed the brain machine and a small computer station next to it.

  It was comforting not having a ginormous group of Grigori and gods hovering over her.

  And these five were the people she trusted most in her life right now.

  Derek was the first to help Kala unhook the rest of the equipment fastened to her. As soon as she was free her arms wrapped around her best friend in a tight hug. “I missed you too,” Derek chuckled softly in her ear.

  Kala pulled away, smiling. “You have no idea.” Then she asked Owen. “Where are the Olympians? And how the heck did Cronus get into the Compound? Especially after the damage Rotoph caused him.”

  Owen answered, “The Olympians are here and secured. Ashliel is trying to help them locate the rest of their brood. No one seems to know where Zeus’s offspring are. Cronus used whatever strength he had left and took advantage of our massive teleportation, essentially hitchhiking in with us. But there’s no way he can get in here anymore. Hera is making sure of that.”

  Roberta added. “We were quite worried about you. I tried to travel into the machine to pull you out, but you weren’t there. Your essence was somewhere else. We were afraid Cronus hid it somewhere and we’d never get you back.”

  That thought was frightening. “He could do that?”

  “We honestly didn’t know,” Turner answered. Obviously, we were mistaken.”

  Roberta added, “It wasn’t until Talan tried to reach you that we were able to pull you back.”

  Kala’s eyes met Talan’s. “Thank you.” Then she addressed the group. “I somehow managed to jump inside the head of the girl from the prophecy.” Admittedly, Owen and Talan were far more impressed by this news than the human side of the room, but seeing as prophecies were new to Derek and the Turners, Kala wasn’t surprised.

  Talan asked, “From the future?”

  Kala nodded. “She said she could normally block out people from jumping in her brain, but somehow I got through.”

  This idea seemed to excite Roberta. “I’ve been trying to perfect that technique for years, but there are still flaws. I’d love to pick her brain.”

  “Considering she’s three-hundred years in the future, I don’t think that’s possible,” Kala said.

  Owen stepped forward, taking over the conversation. “We’ll have to talk more about this later. You only have an hour to complete your Atlas mission.”

  “What?!” Kala’s head flew up to see the clock.

  0d 0h 59m 34s.

  “Holy crap!” Kala’s heart raced. “I don’t even know where it is! And Cronus and Hades are supposed to be there! As in already captured! How is that going to be possible?”

  “Slow down,” Talan tried to calm her. “Just tell us about the vision and we’ll help you.”

  Kala knew that Talan already had some knowledge of the task since she had described it to him briefly when her memory had been wiped by the River Lethe. Carefully, Kala told the small group every detail of her vision. She didn’t want to leave anything out, hoping that someone would pick out an aspect that Kala may have overlooked.

  After she finished, Kala asked Turner, “Do you think that room is here in the Compound?”

  Turner looked as if his brain was moving a mile a minute. “We need to keep this between the six of us. Harry can never hear of it.”

  Kala was not expecting that kind of reaction. She knew Turner didn’t trust Clifton and neither did she, to be honest, but the way Turner had just expressed himself led Kala to believe he had a motive she wasn’t recognizing. “Not a problem, but why the secrecy?”

&nbs
p; Turner looked over at Owen and Talan as if he was unsure if he could confide in the Grigori.

  Kala tried to assure him, “You can say anything in front of them.”

  Turner did not seem convinced. “I have an idea of why your vision showed us strapping Cronus and Hades to my machines, but I’m not sure your Grigori friends would agree to let it happen.”

  “They don’t have a choice. If it’s the Atlas mission, they have to accept it or the world ends. Tell me what you’re thinking.” Kala could see that Turner held the answers and she needed to know them.

  Owen confirmed, “Kala is right. We would never question the mission.”

  Tilting his head sideways as if he found that hard to believe, Turner answered, “’Never’ is a strong word.”

  Kala could see that Turner was having a real struggle trusting that Talan and Owen would be on board with whatever was rolling around in his head, so she suggested, “We can talk privately if you want, but they’ll eventually find out.”

  Talan stepped forward. “You’re talking about harnessing Cronus and Hades’s powers to use for your own purposes.”

  Turner had the expression a child who was just caught stealing a candy bar.

  Talan had been disguising himself as Turner and Roberta’s mentor for years now, so he knew the couple better than anyone. Now Talan nodded in understanding. “Roberta has been able to raise the dead, but you don’t want to be tied down to spells to keep them animated.”

  Roberta and Turner’s faces went pale at the accusation, but they didn’t deny it.

  It took a moment for Kala to process. “What?”

  Owen slowly appreciated the situation. “Remember, Kala, when you came here to the Compound to reassemble Talan and Turner’s two assistants? You were worried about them talking to General Clifton and I told you they could be trusted.”

  Kala vaguely remembered the moment. “I guess.”

  “Those were walking corpses, so there was no threat of them turning sides.” Owen asked Roberta. “If you aren’t controlling them, who is?”

  Roberta answered cautiously, “I have a handful of warlocks in a secured room. They keep the corpses animated during the day, but it takes a lot of energy. We can only control a handful at a time. They can’t function on their own.”

  “And why on earth would you do this?” Kala seemed to be the only one disturbed by this news. Then she glanced over at Derek. His dark skin almost appeared pale at where the conversation had headed.

  Turner wasn’t fazed at the disgust in Kala’s tone. “For security and control. If I control everyone around me, I can never be betrayed.”

  Remembering the vision Cronus showed her of the future, Kala realized that this was probably the first step in Turner’s journey to becoming the most powerful man in the world.

  Power of the dead: Hades was able to control corpses, but they could also perform tasks on their own.

  If Turner could harness that ability…

  “If you control Hades, you control the dead,” Kala concluded.

  Slowly Turner nodded. “On a grand scale. One I could never achieve with just magic.”

  “But how could this restore balance to the universe?” Kala was at a loss.

  “I don’t just want an army of the dead, Kala. The balance that your mission will bring is what I need to do with Hades’s power,” Turner admitted. Then, addressing Owen and Talan, he explained, “You two know even more than Kala and Derek that we humans will destroy ourselves in the next twenty years, thirty if we’re lucky. Things have to change for this world to survive and this Atlas curse or whatever it is, knows that. And, it knows, I’m the only one who knows how to stop it.”

  His eyes now turned to bore into Kala’s. “Everything happens for a reason. Tell me, you’ve seen the future. I can tell by the way you look at me. Do I make the world a better place?”

  Kala paused before answering, then clarified, “The world, yes, but the people…” The images of people being murdered to maintain population control.

  Turner didn’t seem fazed by her implication. “Your curse isn’t about balancing people, it’s about balancing the planet. As long as the planet survives, then humans will, too. The curse doesn’t care if the thousands of lives Fortski could have saved with his cure for cancer die. It only cares that we stay on our path. Our path leads to survival.”

  Turner said it with such conviction Kala believed him. She could see the man from the future now. Hard, cold, evil even – but doing things for the greater good of the planet. Like her.

  And his words rang true. Kala had always thought about the Atlas curse saving lives, because she was a soldier and that was what she was trained to do. But it wasn’t about that at all. It was why a horrible act had to be committed every four days. The planet didn’t see it as being an act of atrocity at all, it saw it as a necessity for survival. It was about saving the earth itself, weighing its options and deciding on a path that led to its continued existence. It didn’t matter who or what lived on it as long as the world stayed intact. That was the balance.

  And Turner was the man to do it. Kala remembered all the good things about the future: no more roads, just grass and trees, fuel cell cars that recycled water so there was no such thing as droughts, no waste or garbage, just clean. Clean air, clean water, clean soil. It was a Utopia of sorts. Only Turner and Roberta would know what the trade-off was to obtain this healthy world: culling the population by any means necessary, but not so much that the public would notice. Take out the unwanted and blame it on a natural disaster. No one would question it. They’d only say a silent prayer in thanks that the world wasn’t too overpopulated to live in.

  Seeing Turner’s future laid out for him, Kala felt a deep empathy for the man. They weren’t that far apart in their missions. Kala had to perform the unthinkable for the greater good as well.

  Their goals were the same: protect this world by any means necessary.

  It was as if Kala was renewed. Maybe this was what it meant to be Gaia’s child. Maybe that was why she was destined to be Atlas, to be the Fated One. Her first priority had to be the earth, because without it, no life could exist.

  No more needed to be said. Kala looked at Talan and Owen, searching their faces for approval or disapproval. She almost wanted to laugh, because the same expression was in both their faces: trust. They were leaving the decision to back up Turner to her. Glancing over at Derek, Kala saw that he was shocked by everything he had heard, but his loyal eyes were with Talan and Owen.

  Kala had never felt more connected to anyone than these five people in her entire life. Even more than Jack, and that was a hard thing to admit.

  To Turner, Kala said, “I don’t need to know the details. I trust you.”

  “And you know why Harry can never find out about what we’re doing?” he asked of the room.

  Kala responded, “Because he’d try and steal the power for himself and use it to get rich and powerful, not for the greater good.”

  Turner sighed in relief, “Precisely. This Atlas mission has to stay between the six of us. No one else can know.”

  But Gaia was also a part of her vision… It was time to fess up. Only Owen would be shocked since Talan already knew her secret. Turner, Roberta and Derek might find it fascinating, but only Owen would truly understand the ramifications of what it meant to be Gaia’s daughter. “Remember, Gaia was in my vision as well. We have to tell her. I don’t want to spring it on her when we’re in the room. After all, we are going to capture and harness her son and grandson for all eternity.”

  Roberta was thoughtful. “She was on board in your vision though, correct?”

  Kala nodded. “Yeah, she was with us. Being that she’s Mother Earth, I don’t think she’ll have a problem with our motives. I just have to figure out how to contact her.”

  Talan glanced at Kala, unsure, and she took that as her cue. “I should tell you something else before we proceed.” All eyes were on her. “Gaia visited me when I was in
the caves under the ocean.” Kala paused, trying not to sound dramatic as she confessed, “She told me I was her daughter.”

  As she predicted, only Owen was taken aback, but then his eyes lit up and he touched her cheek with his hand affectionately. “I always knew you were special.”

  This was getting a little too dad-like in front of the crowd, but Kala didn’t mind. She loved the fact that Owen would always see her as his daughter and she’d always see him as her father.

  Turner cleared his throat. “We are on a time crunch here.” He motioned to the clock with his head.

  0d 0h 45m 23s.

  Kala’s heart jumped in her throat.

  “I still don’t know how we’re going to track down Cronus, Hades and my mom and get them to…” Kala eyed Turner for an answer as to the location.

  “Los Angeles,” he replied simply.

  “Los Angeles? Are you freaking kidding me? Where is this place?” Kala was more than shocked to find out that the location of her vision was clear across the country. Luckily, teleportation was on the table, but still… she was running out of time.

  “Not even Harry knows about this place in LA,” Turner answered. “It’s an underground site like this one, but it houses only my people. I let Harry think all my best scientists and engineers are here in the Compound and, by keeping Fortski here, there’s no reason for Harry to even suspect I have another facility.”

  Kala supposed Turner was right, since Fortski was considered the smartest man alive. General Clifton would assume that Turner kept his best people with him and not in another location. “How can you be sure that the room in my vision is in this Los Angeles facility?”

  “Because the only two brain machines that would work on beings as powerful as Cronus and Hades are in the Los Angeles headquarters,” Turner explained. “If I concentrate on the location, can you teleport me there, if you’ve never been?”

  “I have no idea.” Kala suddenly saw a whole new set of problems. “If Turner is the only one who’s been to the location, then how are we going to teleport there?”