Who was she? For all I knew, what came of this conversation determined my fate. Dammit. If I didn’t get out of here, I’d never graduate. Two weeks out from D-Day, and I’d ended up here, my thesis left to rot in student-hell forever.
“My name is Dr. Helen Gordon. I’m a scientist here on SeaSatellite5,” she said.
“Hi.” My pulse raced. Here was the person who’d be experimenting on me, no doubt.
Dr. Gordon gestured to the table, a haggard clunk of metal in an already steel-saturated cell. “Could we talk about what happened today?”
“Do I have a choice?”
Her eyebrows rose at my response. I sat down, ignoring the look of offense on her face. Dr. Gordon didn’t appear hostile like Mr. Trigger-Happy or disbelieving like the Captain, despite his best attempts to hide the emotion. I shouldn’t have mouthed off to her.
Dr. Gordon sat opposite me and folded her hands on the table’s cool surface. “Captain Marks showed me the security tapes. Your ability is mesmerizing.”
My eyes met hers. She’d been the first to say “ability” rather than “anomaly” or “weird thing.” Why? A portion of my bottom lip fell into place behind my teeth. Two could play this game.
“If you want to call it that,” I replied.
“I do,” she said. “There are stories of others able to do the same thing, but I’ve never seen it firsthand. It’s stunning.”
I straightened. “You’ve heard of this before?”
What does she study that involved teleportation? Stupid question—urban myths about people with teleportation abilities have populated our world over the centuries, but they usually involved stories of Titans and gods and demons.
Something thick and sticky slunk down my throat. Was I a demon? I’d never paid attention in Sunday school—that was more my sister’s thing—but… demons at least had the possibility of making sense.
“I’m not a demon, am I?”
Dr. Gordon chuckled. She actually chuckled. My chest rose and fell like a jackhammer, my lungs fighting for breath. I was a demon and damned to Hell. Well, at least I could accompany my thesis there. Maybe I’d give lectures to the other damned souls about Bigfoot and the pyramids being alien creations.
“No, you’re not, Ms. Danning,” Dr. Gordon said, leaning forward. She reached a hand across the table. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, thank god.” The words flooded out of my mouth. A chuckle bubbled to the surface at the irony. “And call me Chelsea,” I corrected her, ignoring her concern. I didn’t need it. I needed a way off this damn ship. And besides, if she planned to condemn me to prison for something as personal as my “ability,” the least she could do was call me by my first name.
“I’m Helen.”
“Okay, Helen. If I’m not a demon, what am I?”
She sucked in a deep breath. Anyone not watching her as closely as I was wouldn’t have noticed. She was ticked, hiding something—or wasn’t planning on sharing all the details, given my current state of asshatery. Couldn’t blame her.
“That is a more complicated question than the one you want an answer to,” she said.
“Nope,” I said. “Asking, ‘What am I?’ will definitely also provide an answer as to what happened.”
Helen’s demeanor didn’t shift a single molecule. Her face remained calm; not quite blank, but not showing any more concern than interest or annoyance. They blended together in a thin mask of almost emotion. She took in slow, deep, near-imperceptible breaths.
Whatever I’d become, whatever had happened to me, must not be doom-worthy—it was classified. Mega freaking classified.
I took a deep breath, readying myself. If I wanted to get those answers she was withholding, maybe I’d have to divulge another secret of my own. “Look, I don’t know what happened today, but I do know it’s not the first time something… odd has happened to me.”
The day the rumors about my break up with Ray first flew around boomeranged to the forefront of my thoughts. It’d been two days after the night I’d met Trevor at the Franklin three months ago. Then Lexi had managed to convince people Ray had broken up with me because, not only had I held out on him in the sex department, I’d cheated on him with someone. A whole slew of terrible things had been written on social media in the following days, and they’d brought my band into it. The whole thing was ridiculous from start to finish, so ridiculous that when Logan had come backstage mid-show a week later to give me a heads-up of what had happened, I’d gotten so angry that I’d snapped a mic stand in half.
And the tequila thing. I could also drink a bottle of tequila—or rum, or whiskey, I wasn’t picky—by myself and come out barely buzzed on the other end. No matter how hard I tried or how much I spent on the good stuff, I never, not once, had gotten drunk.
Okay. So maybe that was odd, too.
“Oh?” Helen asked, drawing my thoughts back to the present.
Oh? That was the best she could offer? Crimson streaked across my vision. “Why bother sitting here surprised if you clearly know more than you’re letting on?”
“Because I’ve never seen these abilities in anyone so young before. It’s… strange.”
My eyebrows scrunched. “Well I’m glad you think it’s ‘strange,’ just like the rest of them.”
She leaned forward in earnest. “I want to help you.”
I glared into her unwavering stare. If she really wanted to help me, she should get me off this damn ship. “How?”
“Your abilities are genetic. Some fall down through family lines, but not all appear in every generation. Because I haven’t heard of your parents, it’s safe to say these abilities skipped a generation or two.”
Confusion wormed its way through me, twisting my ability to focus into frustration on its way to my fists. I closed and opened them a few times. Why the hell did she need to be so cryptic?
“So…?” I asked.
Helen’s lips pressed together then widened with a smile. “I don’t mean to make you upset,” she said. “I don’t think you recognize how special you are.”
I let my head roll onto my shoulders rather than speak, and breathed deeply. In. Out. Teleportation didn’t equal “special” in my mind. Teleportation meant inconveniences, freakiness, popping into places I shouldn’t be. Not special. That was reserved for something else. Some other power. Some other person.
“I want to learn from you,” she said, which basically meant: I want to study you. The lingo wasn’t new. We social scientists spoke the same way.
A startling seriousness darkened her eyes. Underneath it, though, rose a glimmer of fondness, of caring. “I have an ability, too, Chelsea, and I believe our abilities are connected in origin. I study this origin, to better understand it. I also want to help you learn to control the ability you have now. You deserve the chance to understand what’s happening to you.”
She was right. I did deserve that chance. But what did I want more: to get off this tin can in one, un-cuffed piece, or to figure out what had happened today?
I brought my cuffed hands up to my forehead—or, I tried to. My wrists pressed against my eyes and nose with my fingers waving somewhere above my hairline. “How do you plan on helping me when the Captain wants me jailed?”
“Lieutenant Weyland wants you in the brig,” she corrected. “He’s doing his job, that’s all. The Captain ultimately decides what happens to you, and he knows what I study and why.”
I blew out a harsh exhale. What did my abilities being connected to hers have to do with the military? Flashes of black-ops soldiers danced across my imagination. How many things on this satellite station, research included, were classified, and how deep into all of it had I dove?
Everything, and damned deep.
Again, I found myself hoping all of this was a dream. Like, at any point, I’d wake up in South American Archaeology with the imprint of my pen and spiral notebook on my face, my professor babbling on about something I didn’t care for because I took the class as an elective.
I’d wake up, the confrontation with Lexi nothing but a dream, and Logan would point me out to the class.
“Damn, Chelsea,” he’d shout. “Falling asleep again.”
Our classmates would hoot and laugh, and the professor would chuckle, and I’d go beet red, and things would be normal again.
But a sinking feeling bloomed above my heart and trickled down my spine. “Normal” wasn’t a luxury I’d get to enjoy anymore. I wasn’t going to wake up. I wasn’t going to pinch myself and suddenly be in the city, on stage, not seeing Trevor in any crowd. Because all of this started the night I saw him there. The night he chose to go to my city, to my show in my venue. He disrupted my life, and now here I was, disrupting his and everything else.
Trevor
bsolutely not,” she called from the bathroom.
Pacing outside Chelsea’s holding room was all I could do to keep calm. I didn’t know why she’d come here, but if she didn’t take Helen’s offer…
What if she did, but only because it was better than the alternative, and she ended up hating this place, hating me?
I stopped and leaned against a wall. She didn’t even know me; how could she hate me? And, more importantly, why did I care?
Because I’d lied instead of immediately defend her. Because I was scared. Because she’d appeared out of nowhere and popped past the exact piece of technology responsible for my employment onboard this satellite station. Chelsea circumventing the shield meant my machine had failed, my shield was pointless, and I was back to square one. Add in Valerie’s goading about our “orders,” and everything grew into one large pile of crap.
And, not least of all, because some part of me still wrung itself at the sight of seeing her hurt and confused. In Boston, after her attacker had fled, and now, here, because of a power she didn’t know she possessed. I wondered if the coincidence had struck her yet, how we’d gravitated toward each other three months ago, and how she now stood on the other side of this wall. Or how coincidental it was that Helen worked with Atlantean descendants. Or how great a chance that this was the vessel the Lemurians had their eyes on.
The door to Chelsea’s holding room slid open, closing my thoughts with it. I saw the coincidences, yeah, but I had no idea what to make of them. Especially because she was Atlantean.
Helen strolled out of Chelsea’s holding room, and I pressed off the wall to join her. “How’d it go?”
Helen sighed as the door slid shut behind her. “She’s scared and frustrated, and she has every right to be.”
My heart sank, a heavy weight falling into my gut. “So she’s not going to take your offer?”
“No, I think she will. She’s a scientist. Her curiosity will ultimately outweigh everything else.”
“You hope.” And so did I. Beyond figuring out how she got past my life’s work, I couldn’t knock the idea of getting a second chance with her, an idea soaked in stupidity given the last few hours. Everything about her called to me, even the way she’d looked at me from the stage three months ago only to turn away as if she’d never seen me at all. “So, what now?”
Helen adjusted her lab coat and brushed invisible dust off her uniform pants. “Now, I talk to the Captain and hope he’ll hear me over Lieutenant Weyland.” Helen frowned. “Chelsea needs help. I thought I’d found everyone who might exhibit abilities. I feel responsible for this, as if I’ve let her down for not finding her and her family sooner.”
“It’s not your fault,” I assured her. “Sometimes people just fall through the cracks. You can help her now. Besides, I know Captain Marks will listen to you.”
I didn’t know where my confidence came from. It wasn’t like Captain Marks was also interested in how Chelsea got through the anti-Lemurian shield—he didn’t even know it existed in such a capacity, or how Chelsea teleporting onboard proved his ship was unprotected. Torpedo counter-measures were one thing. An all-out Lemurian attack was an unknown quantity. I knew so little about the Lemurians’ supposed abilities, and the only person I trusted enough to ask was… unavailable at best. Nearly comatose at worst.
Helen tilted her head, questioning me without saying a single word.
I changed the subject. “Can I see her?”
Helen gave it a moment’s thought, long enough that I thought for sure she’d say no. “She’s still on edge.”
“Can you blame her?”
Helen shook her head. “Be gentle. That’s all I’m saying.”
She had no idea just how careful I knew I had to be.
I knocked on the door to Chelsea’s holding room. She didn’t answer. I dug my keycard out of my chest pocket and slid it through the card reader to my left. Chelsea sat at table, arms resting across it. The second the door shut, her eyes caught mine, and her jaw locked.
My hands flew up in front of me like her glare had been a physical blow. “Look, I know—”
“I don’t even want to hear it,” she snapped, crashing her cuffs onto the table. The screeching clank of metal on metal echoed across the room.
“Chelsea—”
“You lied to a Navy Captain about knowing me.” She lifted her hands like she wanted to point to herself, but she couldn’t with the cuffs binding her wrists together. She cursed. “A single ‘yeah, I know her’ the second you’d ambled through the door could have saved me from this. Instead, my options are prison or lab rat. That MP thinks I’m a spy or something because you hesitated.”
I swallowed my first response, something along the lines of “I barely know you!” and let air fill my cheeks before speaking. “I’m sorry, okay? Let me explain, please.”
Chelsea scoffed. “Why are you here? You seemed pretty freaking anxious to get rid of me before.”
“I was trying to diffuse the situation until Weyland left.”
If she weren’t cuffed right now, I bet she’d have crossed her arms. “Whatever. That was low, Trevor.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Weyland was too focused on seeing you in the Brig. I can do more for you without him in the room.”
She shook her head and looked away, but she couldn’t hide her quivering lip.
“It’s okay to be scared.”
She shot me an incredulous stare. “I’m not scared.”
I didn’t know why I’d said it. She very clearly wasn’t scared—she was pissed. “I’d be.”
She rolled her eyes. “This isn’t the first weird thing to happen to me, and, given the fact I live in Boston, it won’t be the last.”
Chelsea sounded confident, but her hands shook with every word. I wanted to reach out to her, to pull her hands into mine for some measure of relief. She wasn’t okay, and I didn’t know what to tell her to make it better. From where I stood, the version of the truth Helen told her was child’s play. With Chelsea still frightened, telling her the real story wouldn’t help at all. I didn’t want to be the one to tell her about Atlantis, that it still existed somewhere in time, and that it made her my enemy. Like she’d believe me anyway.
I leaned in to sit and take her hands, but froze. The cameras. What good would come of Captain Marks or Lieutenant Weyland seeing me getting close and comfortable with their trespasser? None. I pulled back.
“Those military guys… they brought you here, didn’t they?” she asked.
Couldn’t deny that anymore. I nodded and sat across from her at the table. “I was late to head back once shore leave was over.”
She scoffed and set her hands in her lap. “More like shore leave was over days before you showed up at the Franklin.”
I snorted a laugh and shrugged. She was intuitive; I’d give her that. I’d made it four days before the SeaSat5 guys caught up with me. I didn’t want to talk about my extended shore leave, but I’d play along if it distracted her. “Exactly.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And they’re the same officers who’ve locked me in here?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Why’d you run? If the Captain agreed to not throw me in jail, why’d they chase you?”
“Uh…” I sighed. “That’s not exactly what happened. I disagreed with some stuff and decided to try and get out of it. Didn’t work. It’s not the military, really—it’s complicated.” I crossed my arms at my chest. “Very complicated.”
“No elaboration?” she asked, eyebrows raised.
“Like I said, complicated.” That was the best I could offer without breaking military or ancestral rules.
“Well, then what do you think happened to me?” She looked away to study a wall. “I mean, what Dr. Gordon said about powers was weird, and she didn’t seem willing to clarify, either.”
Helen didn’t share yet because her research was classified, and I couldn’t explain its nature to Chelsea. Helen thought people with powers—like her and Chelsea—were direct descendants of Atlantean refugees, a fact much closer to the truth than Helen may ever learn. The knowledge would’ve made them both my mortal enemies a few thousand years ago. Lemurians against the Atlanteans, both lost civilizations so mythological that most of the world didn’t even know what their names meant. I wasn’t sure where Helen got her information, but I’d be lying if I’d said her research wasn’t part of the reason Val and I got placed here. The Lemurians were as scared as they were intrigued by Helen’s progress in mapping Atlantean powers throughout many generations.
I gave Chelsea an honest shrug. “You teleporting was cool.” Not necessarily a lie. If you took out what I knew about people with powers—that their ancestry traced back to Atlantis and Lemuria—being able to teleport around the world seemed like a fun power to me.
“Yeah, cool. Because I love waking up on secret military operations. It’s my favorite pastime, actually.” She huffed, floating some of her wildly cut bangs.
“Good to know,” I joked, hoping she caught the sarcasm there.
“Right, then.”
Something in her clipped, scripted responses worried me. Urged me to get her mind on something else. “So, what do you do for fun? When you’re not popping onto classified military property, I mean.” I smiled to let her know it was a joke.
Gyre (Atlas Link Series Book 1) Page 4
