Gyre (Atlas Link Series Book 1)

by Gunn, Jessica

  I marched to my station, arm wrapped around my middle, refusing to make eye contact with Thompson. There’d be plenty of time for that, and, right now, checking the damage they’d inflicted on Humming Bird and the outer hull was more important.

  Captain Marks grunted against the restraints. “What do you want?”

  Thompson paced away from Captain Marks, following me to my station. “Your satellite station.”

  “Why?”

  “I need it. Don’t I, Mr. Boncore?” Thompson scratched at his ratty red beard.

  “It’s Trevor, you idiot. Mr. Boncore is my father,” I snapped as I called up the diagnostics program. The good news: they hadn’t severely crippled the station. Life support was still running, but they’d nicked one of the generators on the way in.

  “You damaged life support,” I said. “The hull can be patched by extending the prototype shield. As for the rest…” They’d cut through the decks, destroying wires, and they needed the crew to run the Bridge. I couldn’t do it alone.

  “How long until you have everything repaired?” Thompson questioned.

  “Are you kidding me?” I pointed to the ceiling. “You blasted your way in. What do you think?”

  He picked up his gun—completely for show. If he wanted to kill me, he would have done so two minutes ago. “Watch yourself, Trevor.”

  “Like you’d shoot me. My mother would have your head.” The threat sounded nice, but she’d pick her ex-lover over me any day after I’d betrayed them by keeping the outpost a secret.

  “JoAnne wants the ship.” He leaned in close and whispered, “I don’t think she cares who’s still alive on it.” He tapped the barrel of his gun on the side of a console. “Run a biologics check and pull up a schematic onto one of those main screens. I want to make sure we’ve got everyone.”

  My stomach sank. Everyone would be caught. How long would it take them to find Chelsea at the outpost?

  I melded the two screens onto one, so he could map where the crew was. Deck by deck, they corralled the crew like sheep.

  Thompson wandered off, waving to one of his men. “Take the Captain and put him with the others.”

  I blew out a deep breath. If Chelsea stayed at the outpost, unnoticed and unaware of the situation, maybe we had a shot. As long as I knew she was safe from Thompson’s guys, I could think. But Thompson came here for the outpost. Chelsea was not safe.

  I glanced around the Bridge. Could I make a run for it? Could I get down to Shuttle Dock before they caught me? Some mad part of me thought so, egging me on. I waited until Thompson was on the other side of the Bridge and then I sprinted out of my station.

  Bright red and orange lights blinded me ten feet from the blast doors. I stopped short and threw my arms over my eyes, lowering them only after the lights dimmed.

  Valerie stood in front of me with her hands on her hips and a smirk on her face. “Did you really think you’d get away?”

  Holy. Shit. “D-did you—?”

  “Teleport?” Her smirk shifted into a grin, lifting up the corners of her mouth. “I’ve been able to teleport since the day I was born. Did you really think they’d send two incapable people to watch the station?”

  My chest constricted. My breathing came fast, uneven. Valerie had powers. Valerie was one of them. One of the extremists I’d set out to protect SeaSat5 from. One of those who’d fought the war, so they could destroy Atlantis. And they just took the station, a cache of Link Pieces sitting not a quarter mile away. A trail that could lead them to the very city they wanted to extinguish.

  Valerie wasn’t just on Thompson’s side.

  Valerie was one of them.

  Chelsea

  ere’s another,” I mumbled, marking the size, color, and length of the text in my lap in my notebook. More Atlantean texts. More things I couldn’t read. More things to pile on Dr. Hill’s plate, if he could figure out how to translate them. If not, we’d never be able to read any of this, never mind get around to cataloguing the rest of the artifacts.

  “Add the text to my pile on the station,” Dr. Hill said.

  “I shouldn’t have to. Can’t we take some time to figure out a cipher or something? Isn’t that how you translate languages you don’t understand?”

  He chuckled. “Kind of. I’ll have my team work on it once they get here.”

  I huffed, blowing hair out of my face. “Your team better be miracle workers. Don’t know how else they’ll get all this done.”

  “We’ll likely have to take some with us.”

  That bit me the wrong way. SeaSat5 couldn’t anchor here forever, but we had enough room to store the artifacts on this floor. Why did Dr. Hill need to take them?

  To work on them. Duh. And yet…

  Some invisible force tugged on my heart, yanking it in different directions. Could I leave Trevor once my internship was up? I’d never thought about what would happen until now. Once we found the outpost, I’d assumed we’d be here for months. But would we? Would Captain Marks keep me on staff? I wasn’t qualified to stay onboard SeaSat5 when everyone my age had master’s degrees or higher—and years of genius research under their belts.

  I frowned. Grad school would take two years. Two whole years away from Trevor. Two weeks ago, I could have maybe been okay with leaving if I knew I would return afterwards. But now?

  I hadn’t grown up a genius like the rest of them. What made me think I could date one without jumping hurdles?

  “I actually wanted to talk with you about that,” Dr. Hill said.

  Wiping the frown from my face for now, I looked to him. “About what?”

  He shut the text in his hands and shifted on his step stool. “When our contract here is done, I wanted to ask if you’d like to join me to continue the work elsewhere. We obviously can’t publicize the find with articles, but I think it’d be a great experience for you.”

  “I…”

  Water in the main pool rippled until a head broke the surface. A thin frame pulled itself out of the water. The red mane unfurling from underneath could only belong to Valerie. She pulled down her scuba mask.

  “Morning,” she said, wiping her face with a nearby towel. “Dave, Captain Marks said to let you know you’ll be relieved around lunchtime. Christa will be over by then.”

  Dave turned and rubbed his stomach. “Thank god. A man could starve with the way these two work.”

  I rolled my eyes and resumed taking notes.

  Valerie joined me, looking over my shoulder. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. A chill rode down my spine. Why did Valerie suddenly care about what we were finding in here?

  “What are you looking at?” she asked.

  “Another Atlantean text.”

  She chuckled. “Still can’t believe we found this place. Ancient history lover’s Disneyland, don’t you agree?”

  Nodding, I said, “Absolutely.”

  Something grew warm next to me, turning into a full-on blazing fireball ten feet away. Heat enveloped the space, instantly drying out the air.

  Fire! There’s a fire!

  I stood but was shoved down from behind without care, my ass smacking hard on the stool. Fingers gripped my shoulder and held me in place. My hands curled into fists, ready to fight, but anyone able to hold me down couldn’t possibly be someone small enough for me to knock out. A body builder. A wrestler. I turned my head, a snarl building on my face.

  And froze.

  Valerie smirked down at me, her eyebrows lifted as if to say, Well, what now, sunshine?

  Across the way, a guy pulled Dr. Hill up and slugged him across the face.

  “Watch it, Georgie,” Valerie said to him. “Thompson said no more casualties on the first day.”

  Georgie sneered and threw Dr. Hill to the ground. Dr. Hill wiped his bleeding nose and reached for something behind him.

  Gun! Dr. Hill carried a gun?

  Georgie shot out his foot, kicking once to knock the object away from both of them. He kicked a second time, att
acking Dr. Hill’s ribs.

  “What the hell!” Dave bellowed from his corner.

  Valerie’s head snapped up. Dave had his own attacker in a chokehold.

  Valerie’s distraction provided me the opening to lift up an inch, hook my foot under a leg of the stool, and fling it up at her legs. She stumbled, giving me the chance to retreat and pull water from a puddle in the corner. She giggled and swiped her hand at me, a trail of freaking fire snapping to the water, evaporating my only weapon. Steam rose from where the water had once been.

  What the flying hell is going on?

  Lights like a thousand fireflies lit up behind Dave. A man materialized from within and smacked Dave’s head with the butt of a gun. My stomach leapt as he fell to the floor, unconscious.

  I withdrew until my back hit a bookshelf. A rattled urn shattered on the floor at my feet.

  “Well, look what you went and did,” Valerie said, making a tsk-tsk sound.

  The last man to appear, a dude at least a foot and a half taller than me, joined Valerie. “Boss wants to see you, little girl,” he growled at me.

  “Fuck you.” I was no one’s little girl. I searched out the area again, calling to water the way Helen had me practice. None came.

  “You’re untrained,” Valerie said. “And I think Georgie’s idiotic entrance dried the place out. Nothing you can do, girlie.”

  Why did Valerie attack me? Why did Dr. Hill carry a gun? What the hell was up with the fireballs and red lights?

  Teleportation. Mine were blue. Theirs were red. Valerie’s were red.

  Valerie had powers?

  My eyes flicked from her to tubby, to Georgie, then to Dr. Hill. He looked up at me with pleading eyes, though what he was begging for, I had no idea.

  “Stop trying to get out of this,” Valerie said, stalking toward me.

  I stood my ground. “Who are you, really?”

  “Same as Trevor, just a bit more advanced and a hell of a lot more loyal.” Valerie stopped three feet from me, grinning from ear to ear. “My employers need these artifacts. We’re going to spend the next twenty-four hours collecting them for storage on the station. Then we’re going to take the station away from here. You”—she tapped the space between my collar bones—“you’re going to cooperate. None of this powers crap.”

  I grabbed Valerie’s finger and twisted it away from me. Something snapped, and I winced. I hadn’t meant to break her finger, to hurt someone again, but the curse flying from her mouth was satisfying.

  She shoved me hard against the bookshelf. “I told you not to try that shit!” Valerie’s fist connected with my jaw with incredible force.

  I yelped as the back of my head smacked the shelf behind me. Tears blurred my vision. When she drew her fist back, I tasted blood.

  “Valerie,” tubby warned.

  She took a deep breath to calm down and waved him off. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Bitch broke my finger.”

  “Knew there was a reason I didn’t like you,” I hissed. But what I’d thought was jealousy turned out to be something more.

  Was Trevor involved, too? She certainly made it seem so.

  No. No way in hell. Trevor wasn’t violent. Or evil. But if Valerie had hidden so well, who else was hiding?

  My eyes skittered to Dr. Hill. They’d beaten him up, but he knew how to read Atlantean. And Helen studied people with powers, for god’s sake. Was there anyone left I could trust?

  Tubby and Georgie manhandled Dave and Dr. Hill into standing (though submissive) positions. Valerie’s other guy, the one who Dave had knocked unconscious, stirred.

  Valerie reached out and slapped her hand onto my shoulder. Heat radiated from her fingertips. She’s gonna burn me! Shit!

  “Ready to go?” she purred.

  I threw my head back but didn’t connect. “Fuck you.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Love you, too, girlie. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  I swung at her. She caught my fist and crushed it with her own. I couldn’t help but cry out.

  “Why do you keep fighting this?” she scolded.

  Foreign red lights encompassed us before I could spit blood in her face.

  Trevor

  y teeth gnashed together as I fought the intense desire to punch Thompson. It’d get the crew nowhere and me knocked out. And since I was the one crewmember who knew exactly how screwed we were, I figured I better do everything possible to stay alive and conscious.

  They’d screwed up Humming Bird bad. The system emitted the strangest electro-magnetic field I’d ever seen. Not good. And that was just the start of our problems.

  The fiery light of Lemurian teleportation filled the center of the Bridge. The moment Thompson’s crew teleported in from the outpost, Chelsea’s eyes were squeezed shut, her body relaxing like she was trying to teleport. Except she didn’t. She hadn’t moved an inch. Valerie chuckled and scolded her for trying to use her powers.

  My thoughts swam back to weeks ago, to the question about how Atlantean and Lemurian powers interacted with my shield. The answer I was looking for? Atlantean and Lemurian powers did, in fact, vibrate at different frequencies. Whatever they’d done to Humming Bird had stopped Chelsea’s powers but hadn’t inhibited the Lemurians’. Damn.

  “Let her go,” I demanded as I stood. If Valerie fucking hurt Chelsea, I’d kill her.

  Freddy, the only senior staff left on the Bridge, managed maybe three strides before one of Thompson’s men stopped him.

  Thompson gestured over his shoulder. “Who? This girl?”

  “I’m fucking serious, Thompson,” I growled.

  “Yes, I believe you are. Unfortunately for you, she’s the enemy.”

  “You’re the enemy, you asshole,” Chelsea shouted, wriggling in Valerie’s grasp.

  Valerie laughed and tucked her mouth near Chelsea’s ear. “Told you Trevor lied.”

  Chelsea’s eyes snapped to mine, narrowing to slits the second they connected. Too many emotions mixed there for me to hold her gaze for long. I drew my eyes away, looking instead at the others. One of Thompson’s men slumped an unconscious Dave into a station chair. Georgie, a distant twice-removed relative, seized Dr. Hill, but it didn’t look like he wanted to escape. His free hand hung near his ribs, and his nose was jagged and bleeding.

  I glanced at Chelsea. I hadn’t registered her bleeding lip when she glowered at me. “What happened?”

  Valerie shrugged. “She wouldn’t cooperate.”

  I shot a glare at Valerie. “Bitch.”

  Her eyes widened. “Trevor, the language.”

  “That’s enough,” Thompson shouted. “Get the TAO scum down to the Brig. Valerie, take the soldier and watch her. Our focus is on holding the station until we get to port.”

  “Yeah, good luck,” I said. “Even if you can keep the crew corralled for now, you’ll never be able to hold us. We out number you ten to one.”

  “It’s called abilities, you idiot,” Valerie said.

  Didn’t matter. Sixty percent of the staff carried a weapon or had one nearby. If they hadn’t stripped them of firearms and locked them far away from the weapons closets, I gave Thompson twelve hours max before someone got loose.

  I groaned inwardly. Maybe not. They’d taken the Bridge in seconds, their powers would overrule guns, and I doubted Captain Marks would let his crew risk civilians getting caught in the crossfire.

  Dr. Hill struggled as they hauled him off to the Brig, shouting, “They’ll figure it out!” the entire way. Figure what out?

  “Didn’t know you mingled with those guys,” Thompson said, shaking his head.

  Play dumb. “Who?”

  “TAO.”

  So everyone knew about them but me. “I didn’t know.”

  “Right. A whole lot of that going on here, wouldn’t you say?” Thompson asked of no one in particular.

  “What the hell do you want?” Chelsea asked.

  Valerie shoved her toward a station. Chelsea couldn’t catch herself, but to her credit, she s
pun fast, fists up.

  “Didn’t we decide struggling wasn’t worth it?” Valerie asked her.

  Chelsea stilled but didn’t lower her guard.

  “Ah, yes.” Thompson paced toward her. My body tensed, but I didn’t move to intercept. Thompson leered at Chelsea. “I need you safe and in one piece for later.”

  Chelsea snarled and charged a step despite the shaking in her hands.

  Valerie stepped in and pulled Chelsea’s arms behind her. “I’ll watch her.”

  “See that you do,” Thompson said. “Finally got one alive.”

  Alive? What the hell?

  “Come on, girlie, off to our room,” Valerie said.

  “Call me girlie again, and I’ll—”

  “What? Splash me to death?” Valerie tugged Chelsea up off the station. “Get over yourself, you stupid Atlantean bitch. I hope they let me at you.”

  “One piece,” Thompson reminded Valerie. His warning didn’t matter. Valerie hated Atlanteans, thought they’d tortured Abby, left Abby as nothing more than a catatonic shell of the colorful person she used to be. Nothing in the world would keep Valerie from acting on that hatred now. Nothing Thompson could offer, anyway.

  “Keep your hands off her, Valerie,” I warned. “Don’t do it.”

  Valerie rolled her eyes at me and laughed. She and Chelsea disappeared in a wave of orange and red. My mouth ran dry. She’d hurt her, and there was nothing I could do.

  Thompson marched to my station and stooped over it. “How are we doing with the shield repairs?”

  “It’s covering the hole you burst your way through,” I snapped.

  He smacked the side of the station, causing me to jump. “Good. Keep it that way. And Ensign?” He directed a pointed look at Freddy. “Intervene again, and I’ll shoot you.”

  Freddy’s jaw clenched, but he sank into his station without protest. There was too much at stake to blindly fight back.

  “Now,” Thompson said, “Let’s get to work.”

  He barked orders at his crew, half of them tasked with holding SeaSat5’s crew on the main dining deck and the Bridge. He assigned the rest to collect artifacts from the outpost and bring them to the science decks. “I want to shove off within a few hours. Work fast,” he said.