Gyre (Atlas Link Series Book 1)

by Gunn, Jessica

  I didn’t want to, mostly because I wasn’t sure what we’d found. I grabbed a lamp and placed it right inside the new room. The light revealed shelves of relics like our Artifact Room on SeaSatellite5. My eyes scurried to count them all. Five. Ten. Twenty shelves, stocked full of busts, small statues, pottery, paintings, and things I didn’t recognize.

  Chelsea looked at each in turn, her fingers brushing some longer than others. Were those the Link Pieces Valerie and my family were so concerned about? Had we found an entire room of Link Piece time travel tools? My heart thudded in my chest so forcefully, I thought it’d explode out of its confines, but it continued to beat like a bass drum.

  Chelsea finally stopped and turned to me, a hand running through her hair. “Trevor.”

  “I know.”

  “This is amazing.”

  “I know.” No, it was terrifying. All these tools, all these weapons Thompson and my mother would go to war over.

  “What if this whole structure is filled with artifacts? Every single room on every floor. Every wing. Every thing.”

  It’d be my worst nightmare, that’s what. I wouldn’t doubt that Atlanteans hoarded Link Pieces in this place. If they were fighting a long-time war, if Atlantis really wanted sole control of time travel, they’d absolutely stockpile them.

  Except this building wasn’t just a museum or lab. It absolutely was an outpost, a platform for war, and I’d inadvertently handed it over to an Atlantean. To Chelsea. To the military.

  I just reignited a war.

  Chelsea

  swiped my keycard at the console outside the Bridge and entered. For two days, I’d had the outpost-lab to myself, and today I’d have to hand it off. Was it possible to be excited and sad at the same time? Because that’s how I felt: excited to share but overprotective of the find. Sad to see it be explored by someone else. Someone outside the crew of SeaSatellite5.

  Ensign Olivarez sat ready for me at his station, views of the outpost onscreen.

  I stood beside him. “Hey. What’s it looking like, Ensign?”

  “Freddy,” he reminded me again. “If you insist I call you by your first name, call me by mine.”

  I flashed him a smirk and checked out his name patch. “Okay, Alfredo.” He gave me a come on look, and I shrugged. “Fine, Freddy, what’s it looking like today?”

  Freddy shifted screens and pointed to a part of the complex I hadn’t seen before. “We found a fourth floor, also flooded. I didn’t expect to find a lot from a bird’s eye view, and the auto-DSVs aren’t finding anything, either. Everything else will have to be discovered hands-on.”

  Figured. I sighed. “Sounds good to me.”

  Freddy shifted screens to NANA readings. “It’ll also have to sound good to the Captain, or you aren’t going to explore anything, period.”

  “I know.” I stepped away from Freddy’s station. “The military archaeologist is flying in today, anyway.”

  “When?” he asked, eyes on his station.

  I didn’t know for sure. Didn’t even know their name. “I’d assume not long after we flip.”

  “So, about thirty minutes from now.”

  I checked my watch. Just enough time to catch breakfast. My stomach grumbled an agreement.

  Freddy laughed, apparently having heard it. “Better get some food, then don your briefing look. Rumor says you’re the one giving it.”

  Public speaking, my favorite thing. “Great.”

  Exactly forty-two minutes later, SeaSatellite5 flipped to accommodate a helicopter landing to drop off the military archaeologist. I sat in the Briefing Room and stared at the Amarna piece, waiting. The door clicked open to Captain Marks and another man. He shut the door behind him and greeted me.

  I stood and shook hands with the military archaeologist. “Hi, I’m Chelsea.”

  “Doctor Connor Hill.” Dr. Hill was in his early thirties, with dark charcoal hair and a strange favoritism of his left foot. He stood there, off-center, his right foot stretched out before him.

  “A civilian?” I asked.

  Dr. Hill gave me a small smile. “I work for the military, but I’m not one of their flyboys.”

  I smiled. To be honest, I was afraid of what a strictly military archaeologist would mean. There weren’t many, and of those who bore actual ranks, their duties weren’t exactly condoned by the rest of the archaeological academic body.

  “Thank you for coming,” I said.

  “Rumor has it you think you’ve found something Atlantean.” He paused before adding, “and a mummy.”

  We all took our seats at the table, and I pushed the Amarna piece to Dr. Hill.

  “This is what gave it away for me, but yes, Atlantean. The complex is made up of a small number of rooms and a few floors, so it’s not the whole city. But the amount of artifacts, art work, and texts in there is far too overwhelming for me to handle alone. It’s incredible, as are the remains. I’m not good with that stuff, though, so I can’t tell you much about her.”

  “I’ll have my archaeological team work on that immediately.” Dr. Hill looked at the Amarna piece for a few more moments and then up at me. “This is incredible.”

  I smiled at him. “Wait until you see the rest.”

  “When can we go over?” he asked, eagerness lacing his words and expression. I couldn’t blame him. Atlantis. It still didn’t feel real half the time.

  “If you go now, you’ll have to stay there until we flip the ship, or we can wait an hour and all go together,” Captain Marks said.

  I looked at Dr. Hill, who stared at the piece, mesmerized. “We can go over now, and I can babysit Dr. Hill,” I told the Captain. “If it’s okay with you, sir.”

  “I’ll send Lieutenant James with you,” he said. “I would send the Lieutenant Commander, but I need her at Communications for a bit longer.”

  “Should I take Dr. Hill to get suited up?”

  “Yes. I’ll have Lieutenant James meet you downstairs.”

  He stood from the table, and the rest of us followed. I led Dr. Hill down to Shuttle Dock and got him set up in a wetsuit before donning my own. On the ride over, we discussed how unqualified I was for this, and if he had the connections to get me qualified when this was complete. I then recounted the mummy story for him. And the secret room.

  When we got to the complex—Dave in tow—Dr. Hill couldn’t keep his jaw from falling open. He looked like I must have: giddy with excitement but focused with intrigue, like he couldn’t believe this was real. Then he pulled himself together with a deep breath, and headed straight for the books.

  “Most of them are in a language our Communications Officer can’t read,” I said, trailing after him. “We think it’s related to Greek, but she can’t figure out how.”

  Hill nodded. He picked up a book and, after a few moments, said, “I’ve seen this language before, but it’s rare.”

  He can read it? Or does he just recognize it? And just how rare was rare?

  “What is it?” I asked him.

  “I suppose it’d be the written language of the Atlanteans, if you found the texts here,” Dr. Hill said with a shrug, like his words held no weight at all. But they did. The written language of Atlantis. So. Freaking. Cool. Ohmigod.

  “Cool,” Dave said, flipping through the pages of his own book. He had it balanced on his good hand, using his knee for support. Seeing the cast still on him made a guilty pit form in my stomach.

  I wandered over to a table we set up and snagged the journal that’d captivated me since the other day. “This is written in the same language. Think you can read it?”

  “Maybe,” he said, eyeing the journal. He took it from me and scanned a few of the handwritten pages. Some had a string of letters near the top or bottom of the pages, written in a different style from the rest of the words. “Huh.”

  “Huh, what?” Dave asked before I did. Huh wasn’t a good enough response.

  Dr. Hill held up a finger, remaining silent a moment longer. I turned from him
, busying myself with surveying our findings. Art. Texts. Thousands of years of history slept here in a watery slumber. I didn’t want to disturb any of them, but the prospect of what we’d learn was too tempting to leave the artifacts alone. When I was sure it’d been at least five minutes since he last spoke, I asked Dr. Hill again what the journal said.

  His eyebrows furrowed together. “It’s an interesting story about a couple who escaped Atlantis with a small child.”

  “Escaped?”

  Dr. Hill nodded.

  “Why would you want to escape a supposedly amazing city?”

  “Why do people want to escape paradise, you mean? Plenty of reasons. I can work on a translation, if you’d like.” He didn’t look up from the text once.

  All righty, then.

  We went over what I’d already done and what we still needed to do. During the third or fourth hour, after Dave left due to boredom, I moved to the wardrobe, intent on showing Dr. Hill how we’d found the mummy. But I stopped short, my eyes zeroing in on a drip of water. Then another, and another. I walked underneath the drip and inspected it. The hole widened, water slicking my face in a steady stream. “Uh, Dr. Hill?”

  “Yes?” His face didn’t leave the book in his hands.

  The crack widened again.

  “We’ve got a leak. I need something to plug it with,” I said.

  Dr. Hill looked up to where the water now flowed in a steady stream above my head, soaking my clothes and the floor beneath us. I grabbed a stool and stood on it, throwing my hands up, trying to plug the leak.

  The water rushed out past my hands in torrents.

  “Help!” Panic sparked a flush of adrenaline. The artifacts. This can’t happen!

  Dr. Hill ran to where I stood helplessly staring at the water. The pressure around the hole broke, and it expanded, allowing waves of water in. I was thrown off my stool and landed hard on the ground, wind knocked out of me. This was the find of the century, and it would be drowned like its parent city. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t.

  No! The word echoed through me to the very core of my being. The torrent slipped into focus, like a super high-def camera had sprung to life inside my mind. I stood up through the torrents of water with my palm held toward the hole, focusing on nothing but the flow of the water and wanting it—no, needing it to go the opposite way, out toward the ocean.

  Something snapped taut inside me and laser-focused my vision. The water flowed backwards, following some invisible push from my hands.

  Then I blacked out.

  They ran, feet plunking against the puddle-ridden road. The man gripped his wife’s arm tight, her other arm pressing her toddler flush against her chest. The baby didn’t make a sound, despite the rain pouring down on all three of them.

  The family took refuge in a building with walls and staircases spiraling to a high ceiling, every surface laden with artifacts and paintings. The toddler stared at them, unaware of her parents’ frantic movements.

  A flash. A crashing sound. A blue light.

  Then nothing, nothing.

  My eyes fluttered open, head pounding. I lifted a hand to cradle the aching, but an IV line greeted me instead. I cringed. Gross.

  “I see someone’s finally awake.”

  Trevor sat in a chair next to my bed. He closed the book in his hands and scooted the chair closer with a smile that shone like sunshine. It cut through my grogginess.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I looked down to my hands and stared. “I had a weird dream. How long have I been out?”

  He glanced at his book for a moment. “Not as long as you think. Only about an hour or so. Dr. Gordon thought you’d be out for longer. She said you’re fine but wants to know what happened.”

  I let my head fall against the pillow. Memories of me pushing water out through the hole into the ocean bombarded my brain. “I developed another freak show.”

  His eyebrows furrowed. “Excuse me?”

  I lifted my hand as if holding a ball. “A power. I developed another power. Most people just have one, right? Maybe two. Now I have a third?”

  Trevor shrugged and relaxed into his seat, but his breath caught loud enough for me to hear. Why?

  “Do you remember what happened?” he asked. “Dr. Hill said the room flooded, but you plugged the leak somehow.”

  “Yeah, with my bare hands. I think I forced the water out into the ocean.” But then how did they plug the leak? “What happened after I passed out?”

  “They sealed the hole for good. Don’t worry about it. How are you feeling?” He grabbed my hand and held it between both of his, a warm cocoon for my cold, trembling hands.

  I wanted to respond with my normal peachy but mulled it over. Other than some aches, I seemed to be all right. “I’ve got growing pains.”

  He smiled at me then stood and kissed my forehead. “Helen will check on you soon. I’ll let her know you’re awake.”

  He retreated. Helen appeared not long after. She checked me over and, finding nothing amiss, rambled on about my newfound affinity with water. She asked a lot of questions about what happened and made me try to control water again. But of course the ability didn’t work a second time, and it appeared learning to control this ability would take as many sessions with Helen as controlling my teleportation had.

  “The weird thing is,” she said, “to the best of my memory, I’ve never heard of someone housing more than two abilities within themselves. Most of the time, it’s just one. Rarely, two. That you have three is remarkable.”

  “Can you control water?” I asked her. “Maybe you have two, too.”

  She only shook her head in response and flitted away to grab her clipboard.

  My thoughts swirled to the story about the couple who escaped Atlantis. Why would they want to run away? Why did they bring their child? Clearly they’d run from something, and that I could understand. But to run from Atlantis… their reason must have been a good one. Maybe they’d run because they’d had multiple powers, too. Maybe it was against their rules to have more than one. Perhaps having more than one was a genetic mutation that had occurred over the years and wasn’t common at the time Atlantis fell. It sounded ridiculous, especially coming from me. But it sure as hell explained my three powers.

  But the dream I’d had while passed out wouldn’t leave me. I’d been there with them. Running. Escaping. Their adrenaline had become mine, catching in my throat every time a memory of the dream seared across my vision. I shook my head to clear the apparitions.

  When Helen came to discharge me, I relayed the extent of my hypotheses to her.

  “Atlanteans had powers,” she repeated. “We know that. Do you think this couple or their child had multiples like you?”

  I nodded. “I don’t know how. It was like… I could feel it. If having multiple powers wasn’t something they could control, and was therefore illegal, they could have been trying to escape some form of punishment, or losing their child.”

  “Even if having multiple abilities was illegal, what were they supposed to do about genetics?”

  I resisted the urge to point out the obvious examples in our own history. “Look, my hypothesis could make sense. Think about all those stories of Atlantean survivors founding civilizations elsewhere. How many of those could have been people escaping, instead?”

  Helen shrugged, mulling it over. “I think it’s plausible.”

  Plausible. Completely reassuring. Something told me Helen didn’t know as much about Atlantis and the associated folklore as I did.

  There was a soft knock on the door, and Dr. Hill poked his head in. “Glad you’re awake.”

  “And feeling better,” I said. “Sorry for the scare back there.” I couldn’t imagine what he thought of me now. Unqualified and uncoordinated, with funky abilities to plug ocean leaks to boot.

  He shook his head. “No scare. I’m glad to see you’re okay.”

  “She should be able to continue to work with you later this af
ternoon.” Helen glanced at me. “If you’re feeling up to it.”

  “Oh, I definitely am.”

  Nothing would keep me from the outpost. Not crazy powers, and definitely not vivid Atlantean dreams.

  Trevor

  y radio beeped, the only sound I registered in the darkness of sleep. I rolled over and almost onto someone. Chelsea lay on her back, her face in a book from the outpost.

  “Did you sleep at all?” I asked her.

  After she’d been released from the Infirmary and had rejoined Dr. Hill in the outpost, we’d spent most of the night tangled up together on my bed, looking at stuff from the find. I must have dozed off sometime after midnight.

  “Uh-uhn.”

  Uh-uhn had become her typical, distant response ever since she’d started cataloguing the find. If you gave her time to examine anything, digging her out was impossible.

  My radio beeped again. “What time is it?”

  “Six. It’s been going off for a while now.”

  I climbed over her and off the bed. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  She shrugged.

  Okay. Enough distant responses.

  I moved over her until she had to drop the book to the ground. I leaned in, watching her expression turn from annoyance to happiness right before our lips met. She smiled against my mouth. There was my Chelsea. Beautiful and alive, not hyper-focused and distant.

  “Good morning,” I whispered against her ear.

  “Morning, yourself,” she murmured.

  She pulled me in, slamming her mouth against mine. Every hair on my body stood on end, like her lips were an electric rod against my soul. Her hands ran along my back as she rolled her hips against mine. Blonde hair slipped onto her face. I brushed it back and let my fingers glide along her temple, down her neck, and over her torso. Her hands trailed leisurely down my chest and between us, brushing against me, massaging me through my uniform. I throbbed beneath her touch. My hands passed over her breasts, kneading in slow circles. The same moment she fumbled with my uniform’s zipper, my radio blared.