There was that damn map again.
Thompson stepped toward me. The other guards mirrored him and inched toward the SeaSat5 crew. Not good, not good. The poison seized me. I reached behind me for purchase, the reassurance of a station within grasp. My fingers slipped over keys and buttons. I tried not to push any.
“Here is your choice,” Thompson said, pinning me with a stare. He gripped the handle of the gun at his side. “You come freely with us, along with all of the artifacts, once we dock at my employer’s location, or I start killing off members of this crew.”
The Lemurian mark beneath my collarbone burned, reinforcing his once-threat. He’d taken my powers once, and he’d do it again to me, or worse.
My gaze darted between Captain Marks and Thompson. “Why didn’t you capture me hours ago? If you knew this entire time, why not just take what you need?”
“We needed to be sure,” Thompson said. “And we need the satellite station.” Which made no sense.
“Then what will you do with the crew?”
“They’ll be sent to home-port in shuttles,” he tugged his gun free from its holster. “What is your choice?”
So, I either save my own ass and have to live with the death of Michael but sacrifice my freedom and maybe ultimately my life, or watch him kill everyone else one by one. Those were my choices. My life or theirs. My freedom or their lives.
Tears streamed down my cheeks and into my mouth. My throat coarsened and dried, and the world spun a dizzying dance. I could barely focus through the spin and fog. I sobbed. I knew what my decision would be, but was too cowardly to make it. How did it come to this? Months ago, everything was so normal.
I can’t do this. My body shook, and I couldn’t form words to answer him.
“Well?” Thompson asked.
“I—I—” Nothing else came out. My eyes darted around. The choice was so easy: me or them? But I couldn’t make it. I couldn’t.
“How about this,” Thompson said, yanking my hand upwards. He plopped his gun in my open palm. The metal’s weight was heavier than I expected. He lifted my hand and stepped back.
I looked up from the gun, through the haze of poison, and found myself staring straight down the barrel at Captain Marks. “No.”
“Shoot him,” Thompson said. Another gun cocked. I risked a glance and found he had his pistol trained on me. “Or I shoot you.”
Sweat caked my back and arms. There had to be a way out of this that didn’t involve someone dying. There had to be.
My mind spun as I tried to think my way out. But your brain doesn’t listen to reason when staring down the barrel of a gun. “You need me.” The plea was weak. I had nothing more to offer.
“Fine,” he said and re-aimed. “The Captain or Mr. Boncore. You choose.”
“No!” I shouted. Oh god, oh god, oh god. “Kill me instead.”
Weak. Defeated. If he wanted me, Thompson should just take me, dead or alive. My life didn’t mean this much. I didn’t mean much. I hadn’t done anything worth living for. But Trevor, he built this station. He would change things. Invent things, incredible things. If it’d save Trevor or Captain Marks, Thompson should just kill me.
“It’s okay, Chelsea,” Captain Marks said, like he could read my thoughts. His eyes begged me to take the shot and kill him, despite the consequences. Him or his crew—it wasn’t a question for Captain Marks. There was no contest.
What made me such a damn coward that I couldn’t make the same sacrifice? That I couldn’t turn the gun on myself and make that choice for Thompson? For everyone here?
“This will happen one way or another,” Thompson assured me. “You’ve failed to take me seriously from the get-go. Now, you have a choice to make. Shoot the Captain, or I will kill Mr. Boncore. If it is any consolation, if this scenario happened a thousand years ago, you’d kill Trevor immediately for his heritage.”
He’s Lemurian. How had I been so stupid? Thompson played us, and Trevor played me. A few hours ago, I agreed to help Trevor end this, and now I could—with his death. And a part of me, ever so small and ever so hidden, wanted me to do it. It inched my finger closer to the trigger. Because Trevor was Lemurian. Because Thompson’s behavior flipped another switch in me, made my body reach for something ancient inside itself, this super soldier Thompson kept going on about. She called inside of me, begged me to follow through.
My focus narrowed on the gun, on Trevor, and I zoned out everything else. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs simply wouldn’t take in air. My hand shook violently with the effort of not giving into that super soldier temptation; I almost lost grip of the gun. Bile rose in my throat. Thompson was right. I wanted to kill him, and I hated it. Hated it. I hated all of this.
Trevor struggled against his captor, unwilling to hold eye contact with me. “Why are you doing this?” Could he sense the change, too? This Atlantean presence inside me?
My fingers twitched around the trigger, not shooting but not moving away, either.
Thompson cut his eyes to Trevor. “It would be wise for you to be silent.”
“Just kill me and end this,” Trevor pleaded. “Then all your loose ends are tied up, and no one will know the difference.”
My blood burned. I couldn’t tell if it was poison or betrayal fueling the fire.
“Make your choice, soldier,” Thompson ordered me.
My fingers froze, my mind playing a million and one scenarios over and over in my head. If I shot the Captain, Thompson could shoot Trevor for fun. Despite whatever his true loyalties were, he didn’t deserve to die. Not like this. Not when a part of me yearned for it. But if I shot the Captain, I could end this. It’d be over so quickly. Or I could shoot myself, but Thompson could still kill both of them—and the whole crew shortly thereafter.
My eyes flitted across the room. Each SeaSat5 crewmember had one or more guards on them. This Atlantean super soldier inside me—whatever that was, and whatever that meant—she flipped the same switch when Thompson charged me with fire. I closed my eyes and focused on the emotions playing in my system. Aligned them. Used them.
Arms shaking, I lifted the gun and re-aimed it at Thompson—and fired.
The blast doors of the Bridge exploded in a shower of fire and metal at the exact same moment. I continued to pull the trigger. Five bullets left my gun before pain ripped through my stomach, tearing my skin and organs. Blood splattered across my vision, and I fell to the ground. The pistol tumbled out of my hand.
The gunfire of a dozen or more weapons ricocheted throughout the room, lighting up everything from Lemurian soldiers to SeaSat5’s control stations. Sparks from electrical fires lit up the Bridge in a haze of white light.
Someone fell over me, shielding my body. Dark skin, darker hair. Freddy. He turned me onto my back. All I managed was a small smile. Freddy was pretty handsome, now that I looked at him.
He didn’t return the smile. I frowned.
His torso moved into view as gunfire echoed behind him, muffled and out of focus. Then the room fell silent. This must have been dream or a hallucination.
A constant white noise thrummed through my ears, echoing my throbbing pulse. I couldn’t hear what Freddy said, but his face was frantic, wracked with chaos. He was yelling at someone. Hands pressed down on my abdomen. It hurt. Why was Freddy hurting me?
Trevor’s face came into view, then the Captain’s. Then Hill’s. Dr. Hill?
Confusion sunk in, more intense than the white noise or bright lights. Before I could make any sense out of anything at all, my world fizzled into unconsciousness.
Trevor
hey’d kept Chelsea in surgery for what felt like forever. I slumped in a chair with my feet bridging another one, waiting for her to wake up. I wanted her to stir so I could prove to myself she made it out alive. Dr. Gordon and her staff were optimistic about Chelsea’s recovery, but even getting that prognosis had taken three hours.
My feet slipped against the chair as the image of Chelsea getting shot played across
my vision. The echo of that gunshot, the utter silence that encapsulated the Bridge as it rang out, would haunt me forever.
I retrieved the chair and propped my feet again, rubbing my face. Stubble scratched my hand. Chelsea would wake up to some scruffy-faced stranger; one who she may not want anything to do with anymore. If Captain Marks even kept me on SeaSat5 after this debacle.
Captain Marks was currently trying to secure the station. He’d informed me the only thing he wanted me to do was wait for Chelsea to wake up and then sit with her until he could figure out what to do with me. I didn’t blame him. While I wasn’t the person who dropped the ball on this mess, I hadn’t exactly stopped it from happening.
They’d never found Valerie. I doubted Valerie remained on board. With the ability to teleport, she’d be long gone by now. She’d been missing since before I found her note—another reason Captain Marks wanted me out of the way. My loyalties, however screwed up the ties, were clear. If I’d wanted to take the station down for Lemuria, I could have done so anytime within the last year. But I’d chosen SeaSat5. Having me out in the open while they vetted the rest of the crew and searched for Valerie was dangerous. Though looking at Chelsea right now, her hooked up to IVs and other monitors… being taken out by Valerie wasn’t something I didn’t welcome. I may not have done the work, but I’d said nothing.
Valerie.
I pulled a piece of paper from my pocket. Construction paper. Red. A wish had been scribbled onto it, the paper folded up on my tenth birthday, the night of my indoctrination into modern Lemurian society. They’d done it as this weird ritual, and, supposedly, if you’d nurtured the wish with enough thought and work (and magic, I assumed), it’d come true. It was supposed to stay inside a dreambox until that day.
Valerie had a dreambox too. All Lemurians did. But I’d never found out what her wish was, and was too chicken shit to read my own. I’d opened my dreambox before Captain Marks had condemned me to the Infirmary, but I’d done nothing but stare at it out of nostalgia, or fear of what had happened, since.
I got a feeling I already knew what the wish was.
My fingers obeyed the unspoken command and unfolded the paper. I drew a deep, steadying breath to prepare myself for whatever was written inside. I pushed up the corners of the paper and held it out straight.
I wish for someone to end the war. A savior, Lemurian or Atlantean. It doesn’t matter. Just end it.
My eyes closed on the words, lips tightening around what they meant. Emotion clogged my throat so tight, I couldn’t breathe.
A moan sounded from Chelsea’s bed. I looked over at her. Was she that person? Did she randomly pop into and disrupt my life so completely and thoroughly, just to end the war?
Chelsea stirred and, before I could tell her not to, she sat up—and immediately fell to the recovery bed with a whine. “Ow.”
“Relax, Chelsea.” God, her name felt like a curse now, like something I didn’t have the right to say. She probably hated me for this. Because of my wish. Because of every damn thing that’d happened since we fucking met.
My chest tightened when her eyes met mine, collapsed by an unseen source. I should have gone to her side, but I couldn’t, not knowing if she even wanted me there in the first place.
“Why am I in the Infirmary?” Her voice was soft, laden with lasting grogginess.
My hand formed a lazy fist in front of my mouth, constricting in self-loathing. “You got shot.”
“Well, that explains my inability to sit up.”
Her indifference struck a nerve. My jaw worked side to side. How could she be so cavalier about this? “It’s not something to joke about.”
“Did I laugh?” She winced and ran a hand over her abdomen. “Whatever pain meds they’ve got me on, I don’t think they’re working.”
I stood and paced toward an intercom by the door. “You may have torn something by sitting up. I’ll call Dr. Gordon.”
“It’s fine. Don’t.”
My thumb hovered over the CALL button. I searched her eyes for any evidence of pain or discomfort. “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She pressed a hand to her forehead, not in pain. Trying to focus. “What happened?”
I should call Helen. In the very least, she’d want to know Chelsea woke up.
I pulled up a chair beside her recovery bed and sat down, relaying the scene to her piece by piece. She’d pointed the gun at Thompson and fired. Hit him square in the heart, actually. One of Thompson’s guys had fired at the same moment and a single bullet had sliced through her. Freddy had broken free of his captor, slugged him hard enough for the guy to drop his gun, and pistol-whipped him.
“I don’t remember being shot,” she interrupted, staring at her hands. “I don’t remember firing the gun, either. It’s all a big blur. But I do remember Freddy’s face.” She glanced at me. “He protected me, didn’t he?”
I nodded. “He covered your body with his. A military rescue team stormed the Bridge moments after you fired the first shot.”
Bullets had whizzed by my head, sticking themselves into stations and walls and human flesh. Screams and shouts had inundated the air alongside barked orders, yelped and cried. I had ducked behind my station as soon as Freddy had shielded Chelsea.
The firefight had ended almost as fast as it’d started, but the damage had been done. Weyland had suffered a bullet to the arm, Chelsea had been shot in the abdomen, and the entire Bridge had been decimated by gunfire. Thank god Thompson had flipped the station vertically after the flooding incident, or who knew what would’ve happened.
With the Bridge secured, Captain Marks had called for the senior staff to do what they could to reset the ship’s systems so we wouldn’t be dead in the water. He’d relieved me to come here after Humming Bird was stable.
Chelsea stayed quiet after I finished. I reached a hand out to her. She took it.
“I killed him, didn’t I?” Her voice was sad and small. It fractured my heart into an infinite sea of tiny pieces. She wasn’t a soldier. She didn’t deserve any of this. Not the war, not the pain. And I could have saved her from it, either by telling Captain Marks what might have happened, or by doing what Dr. Hill had wanted and handing her over to TAO.
“Don’t think about that right now,” I said. “You need to concentrate on healing. Your burn already looks better, so the bullet wound should heal fast.”
Her glare cleaved my heart in two.
“I don’t care about what’s happened to me. I care about killing a person,” she said.
“A person who already took a friend’s life and threatened others’. It’s called self-defense for a reason.”
“Self-defense… That’s so not the point.” She ripped her hand away. “I killed him. Guess it’s a good thing I chose archaeology over straight-up anthropology. I’d never get into grad school. Like, ‘Oh, ignore the pesky murder charge. Really, I love people.’” She rolled her eyes then looked away. “Did anyone else not make it?”
I swallowed hard. Her way of dealing with things (i.e. not actually dealing with them) wasn’t going to work this time. She would spiral; it was only a matter of when. “All other crewmembers are fine. Weyland’s arm is in a sling, but he’ll survive.”
“And Thompson’s crew?”
“The ones who survived are being held for questioning. Eventually, they’ll be imprisoned in some military compound.”
“Is Valerie one of them?”
I shook my head. “She’s been missing since before the Bridge incident.”
“What about Emma Rose?”
My eyebrows furrowed. The name wasn’t familiar. “Who?”
“The Chief Engineer who told me how to reconnect the communications buoy.”
I wracked my brain for an engineer by that name. There was no Emma Rose. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
Chelsea glared, determined to fight me on this. “Well, she’s real. She messaged me in Mega Rush 2. Gave me instructions.”
In
my game? Only people with a profile could get—
Emma. Rose. Valerie and Abby’s middle names. My heart twisted. Why would Valerie help Chelsea reconnect the buoy?
“Uh, Emma isn’t a real person,” I said. “Emma is Valerie’s middle name.”
“Then who’s Rose?” she asked.
I squeezed the bridge of my nose, a headache forming behind my eyes. “It’s Abby’s middle name.”
Silence sat uncomfortably between us. All I could think about was the dreambox. Chelsea, the “savior” I’d wished for nine years ago.
She shook her head. “I don’t understand. Why would she help if she sided with Thompson, then disappeared?”
“I have no idea.” I didn’t think Valerie had wanted anyone to die, and that could have been why. Or maybe she thought Thompson would go off the deep end and botch their collective mission. “I wonder if we’ll ever know.”
“I don’t care. She stood by and let too many things happen.” She turned to me with a frown. “And what about you?”
The quick subject change confused me. “Excuse me?”
“You knew exactly what we found, when we found it,” she said, her words striking like rocks from a slingshot. “You knew those artifacts were something more than art.”
Time for the truth.
“I assumed what we found may have been something of interest to people beyond our chain of command, yes. But I wasn’t sure any of them were Link Pieces. I can’t see them like you can. They’re just artifacts to me.”
“But there was a strong possibility we had found whatever the hell a Link Piece is?”
“There’s always a possibility. Anything could become a Link piece. That journal you write in, your guitar, your cell phone, the Empire State Building—anything man-made. Anything touched by humans. It’s a giant puzzle, that’s all it is.”
She closed her eyes and breathed deep. “I can’t believe you knew all of this and lied.”
I balled my fists. “I didn’t have a choice, Chelsea. I’m not a soldier like you. I’m an engineer. My only weapons are ballast systems, not powers and strength. When those systems break, I have no other choice.”
Gyre (Atlas Link Series Book 1) Page 26
