Gyre (Atlas Link Series Book 1)

by Gunn, Jessica

  “Thing is,” she said, her voice low, “you had every choice in the world because you’re not a soldier.”

  My heart cracked around her words. She couldn’t know how painful they were, to know it was the absolute truth. I wasn’t a soldier. I didn’t have powers. And because of it, she’d almost died. Because of me, she’d taken a bullet to the gut. She might even be here because of me.

  “I have no idea what’s going on anymore,” she continued. “Six months ago, my day consisted of classes and rock shows. Now, I’ve killed someone, found evidence for Atlantis and Lemuria, and can make a light-show spectacle of myself.” She rolled her head onto her shoulders. “I think I want to go home.”

  “For good?” I almost didn’t want to ask. Our relationship may be in shambles, but her work with the Atlantean outpost was something she was meant to do. Practically her birthright.

  I didn’t want her to leave for my own selfish reasons. When I was with Chelsea, freedom had finally come. Even during the hijacking, even in spite of it all, she was everything. And here she sat, ready to take that all away. I’d thought I’d lost her, but here she was. I couldn’t bear the thought of her walking away from me. From us. From everything we had on SeaSatellite5.

  “This isn’t my life, Trevor,” she said, her voice breaking. “I go to school or work, come home, do homework. Then I go on stage. That’s it. That’s what I do. I don’t travel the world’s oceans in search of Atlantis.” She swallowed hard and looked down at her hands. “This was an internship, Trevor. It wasn’t meant to be permanent.”

  In other words, neither was I.

  Chelsea

  aybe before I was shot, before I murdered someone, I could have handled things. Before then, it was just death. Not caused by me, but witnessed nonetheless. I’d been there before. Death wasn’t new. But I’d killed someone. Self-defense or not, I couldn’t stay here. Couldn’t talk to Trevor without space to run away and figure out what I’d become since meeting him.

  By the time Captain Marks had escorted me from the Infirmary to the Briefing Room to meet with Dr. Hill and his team, I could stand. Wincing for every second of it, but I stood nonetheless. I didn’t understand my healing abilities at all. The burn mark Thompson had given me still hadn’t healed, but my gunshot wound was on its way to full—but scarred—recovery just two days later. Dr. Gordon said the burn mark would take weeks or longer to fully heal, if at all. The poison Thompson had used on me was meant to slow down Atlanteans. And slow me down, it did. At least my active powers were back.

  Dr. Hill’s crew conducted my briefing without the presence of any SeaSat5 officers or science staff. My pain quickly turned to annoyance, but it softened at the sight of Dr. Hill, whose right arm was in a sling. Lacerations marked his cheeks and neck, and dark bags hung under his eyes.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. A dumb question. Clearly.

  Dr. Hill shed a small smile. “I’ve been better.”

  I pointed to the closed door. “Why all the secrecy?”

  “This is Army Major Howard Pike and Sophia Burns,” he said, introducing me to the other two people in the room. “We owe you an explanation, one which is highly classified.”

  “I’d say that’s an understatement.” He’d come aboard SeaSat5 all those weeks ago, knowing exactly what we’d found, like Trevor had. Then he’d lied to me, like Trevor had.

  I took a deep breath. “I’d like to hear it, if you’re up to it. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  He nodded. “Dr. Gordon took good care of me. Another day with the Lemurians, and it might have been a different story.”

  Satisfied with his answer, I glanced at his companions. Howard Pike looked more like a movie star than an Army Major. He had a young face free of wrinkles, but the traces of grey in his otherwise jet black hair betrayed his age. Sophia’s dark-caramel skin was a shade lighter than her hair, a combination that made her bright green eyes stand stark against the darker colors. Both of them wore the same military fatigues Dr. Hill had worn when he’d first boarded SeaSat5, except, this time, TAO patches stood out against their black uniforms. My brain, muddled by painkillers, couldn’t make sense of it all.

  “Do you want me to explain things or would you rather ask the questions yourself?” Dr. Hill said.

  “Am I really from Atlantis?” At least that question sounded saner than what is an Atlanean super soldier?

  “Your ancestors were,” he said without hesitation.

  “My sister doesn’t have powers. Neither do my parents.”

  “It’s possible the active powers skipped a generation,” Dr. Hill said. “Some of the other traits must be there, though.”

  I snorted. Sarah could barely drink three beers without hitting her limit, versus my one bottle of tequila to maybe get buzzed. And I’d never noticed anything weird about my parents. “I really don’t think so.”

  Dr. Hill shrugged. “It’s something we would like to look into, if you’d let us. From our understanding, people like yourself had ancestors who stole their children away through Link Pieces that allowed them to escape a fate they couldn’t—to escape fighting a war they didn’t support.”

  So, that story in the journal was true. My ancestors saved their kids with time travel. That dream. Was someone trying to send me a message?

  “And Atlantis is at war with Lemuria?” I asked.

  Dr. Hill nodded. “Yes.”

  “Lemuria exists?”

  “Yes.”

  “And so does Atlantis?”

  More nodding from Dr. Hill.

  “Then where are they?” I asked. “The evidence we found in the Sargasso Sea doesn’t mean Atlantis was ever there, and all the other hypotheses seem ludicrous.” Antarctica. America. A missing continent in the Pacific.

  Sophia answered this time, an Irish accent wrapping thick around her words. “They are not exactly on Earth. Not as you know it.”

  “What, like separate dimensions?”

  “No.”

  I rubbed my eyes as if it’d help clear my mind. “Why are they at war?”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Dr. Hill answered. “We do know it’s tearing Earth’s core apart in time and space. We know they use what are called Link Pieces to travel through time, an action that destroyed their home-times. Your ancestors escaped before the Atlantean Destruction.”

  Of course they did.

  Trevor’s words haunted me. They oppose what Atlantis stood for.

  “Did the Greeks really stand against them?” I asked. “Wait—don’t tell me. The Athenians supported Lemuria and waged the war for them.”

  “Yes, actually,” Dr. Hill answered.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” I let out a long breath and fell into my seat. My abdomen contracted with the movement, sending a shooting pain crackling up my side. I winced. “What’s a Link Piece?”

  “Objects in time, usually man-made, and sometimes full-on structures,” Dr. Hill said.

  “So, like Stonehenge to Excalibur?” I joked. Their silence said at least one of those were true. I didn’t want to know which. “How do you know what’s a Link Piece, then?”

  “You and I can see them,” Sophia said. “Others, like Dr. Hill and the rest of the TAO staff, need special equipment.”

  “TAO? You and I?” I asked.

  “The Ancient Operation,” the Army Major finally spoke. Until now, he’d remained quiet, arms crossed at his broad chest. “Stupid name, don’t ask. We have to use scanners and the like, but Sophia can see them. She’s an Atlantean super soldier, too. Apparently Link Pieces shimmer or sparkle.”

  Like the journal. The one telling my ancestors’ story. It’d shimmered on and off since day one. I’d thought I’d dreamt it. Maybe not.

  “I guessed the journal was a Piece given the way it entranced you,” Dr. Hill said. “Was I correct?”

  I nodded. “Should I not read it or something? Do I need to keep it contained?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “But I have
a list of other artifacts that I believe are also Link Pieces.”

  “Why do you say ‘link’? Trevor said something about it all being a giant puzzle,” I said. “And Thompson said the Lemurians needed the artifacts to create a pathway to Atlantis.”

  “Through space and time. You can use them to time travel around Earth.”

  “Just Earth?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. Atlantis and Lemuria? Okay. Aliens? Hell no.

  Dr. Hill nodded. “Only Earth, but all of its pasts and futures. We’ve traveled quite the spectrum so far, from the Stone Age to the far future.”

  “So, what would the journal link to?” The time traveling part didn’t interest me. The journal was far more important.

  “Probably the Atlanteans who owned it,” Dr. Hill explained. “The connections are formed, usually, between the creator and the time and place of the objects’ creation. Or sometimes a strong emotional link can be formed between a time and a place and an object.”

  “And the others? What else do you think is one of these Link Pieces?”

  “There was a unicorn mirror we found. Do you remember it?”

  Yes, actually, I did. The mirror was beautiful, albeit aged. It had a unicorn engraved on the center—more of a decorative piece, I imagined, than a functional one—encased in a halo of straw. “Yeah, but I don’t remember it shimmering like the journal does.”

  “You have a stronger connection to the journal,” Sophia said. “Therefore, you noticed it first. The same happened with me and the first Link Piece I found.”

  Right. A thought occurred to me then. I looked to Dr. Hill. “Was there more to the mummy than you admitted, too?”

  His eyes narrowed in guilt. “Uh, yes. It looks like she was Atlantean and indeed your officer’s ‘sci-fi’ ideas were probably correct. It appears you opened a stasis chamber of some sort, and, at the time the woman placed herself inside, she thought she’d survive.”

  “There was a crack at the bottom,” I pointed out. “She never would have made it.”

  “No. Hence mummification,” Dr. Hill said.

  I dropped my gaze, feeling sorry for the woman. She was only trying to survive whatever she’d run from and ended up a dried up husk.

  “Is there anything else you didn’t tell me about? Like what’s up with this super soldier nonsense? Is that why I have powers?” I looked at Dr. Hill. “Why didn’t you say something when I plugged the leak?”

  “I couldn’t. Not until I knew for sure you were an Atlantean super soldier,” he said.

  “And you didn’t know until after SeaSat5 was hijacked?”

  “Unrelated,” Major Pike said. “When Dr. Hill didn’t check in before we arrived, we suspected something went wrong. Then Mr. Boncore tried contacting TAO.”

  “So SeaSat5 became the center of everything because of the outpost,” I guessed.

  “Yes,” said Dr. Hill. “Although, it’s more of a lab than an outpost. A museum of sorts.”

  “Figures,” I mumbled. Outpost implied war—which Atlantis was in the middle of, sure. But the way all the artifacts had been preserved and displayed had suggested a different scenario.

  “And I’m important because I’m some jacked up human?” I asked.

  “Aside from Sophia, you are the only super soldier we know about right now,” Dr. Hill said. “You both also have direct ties to Atlantis. Your power and ancestry are more important than you know.”

  That jogged my memory. I glanced at Sophia. “Thompson said he needed me because I can see some map. I think he called it the Waterstar map?”

  Sophia perked up, leaned over the table. “Can you see it?”

  “I don’t even know what it is.”

  “When I time travel through Link Pieces, a map takes over my mind,” Sophia said. “It shows the links between the Pieces. Where they go, where they don’t. It looks like a giant snowflake connecting everything with dates and times.”

  A legitimate water star. At least it made more sense for a name than TAO did.

  “So he wanted me because I can see it and he couldn’t?” I asked.

  Dr. Hill and Major Pike shared a look before the Major answered my question. “There must be something specific they wanted, and figured they could take the station’s artifact cache in the process.”

  “So you’re saying they weren’t after the artifacts at all? That they wanted me, and me alone?”

  “There’s no way to know unless your security detail can get it out of the prisoners,” Sophia said. “The Lemurians’ world is a complicated one. They’re not an organized society anymore. Their factions hold too many different beliefs and values to be coherent. It’s possible Thompson belonged to a sect that wanted the Waterstar map instead of the cache.”

  Great. That meant they might come after me again.

  “So now what?” I asked. I wanted to go home, but could I leave this find behind for good? No. I couldn’t. “I don’t want to stop working on this site,” I continued. “I mean, I don’t think I will. Everything’s a bit too crazy right now to make a decision.”

  “No one’s asking you to,” Dr. Hill said, leaning forward. “But, if you’re willing, I would like to—again—extend an invitation for you to come with us, so you can learn more about who and what you are. We want you to know about this war and how to use your powers to defend yourself.”

  “And learn how Link Pieces work?”

  “That, too. That’s what I was getting at when we spoke before the hijacking.”

  I rubbed my forehead. This sounded completely absurd. “Say we are fighting a war, and say I am this soldier, and SeaSat5 is the new center of it… wouldn’t I be better off here?” Not that I’d done a spectacular job of protecting it thus far.

  Sophia spoke up. “You need training. You have no idea how to use your abilities to their full potential. I can help you with that.”

  “I can also train here.”

  Why did I have such an attachment to this place after what had happened? It’s like… whatever was pushing me to leave wasn’t strong enough to fight my connection to the station. And it sure was a connection. A powerful, protective one that gripped my mind and wrangled my rational thoughts away.

  “Wouldn’t you guys want to come here to protect this station, too?” I asked.

  “All that’s needed to protect the station is for you to remove yourself and all remnants of the artifact cache,” Sophia said. “And you would be better off learning your abilities from me than Helen.”

  “You know Helen?” I asked her.

  “I first learned about my abilities from her,” said Sophia.

  Sophia must be the other student with multiple powers that Helen had mentioned. It all started to make sense now.

  I gestured her way. “Does she know what you’re up to these days?”

  Sophia shook her head. “Not really. Though she was happy to see me earlier.”

  I bit my lip. This was too much information, too quickly. “Can I have some time to think about it?” The question was directed at Dr. Hill. “A few days or weeks?”

  He looked like he expected me to say yes and not question anything, but he hid it with a graceful smile. “Sure. Of course.”

  “It’s a lot to take in,” I offered in place of a positive, enthusiastic response on my end. “Especially after everything. I need time to mentally recoup.” Not to mention heal the rest of my body. I’d ask for a two-week leave from this ship—from everything. That would be enough time to decide.

  Dr. Hill nodded. “We’ll be in touch, then?”

  “Yeah, absolutely,” I said. “We still have an outpost to catalogue.”

  And, apparently, a war to fight.

  Trevor

  he Briefing Room threatened to swallow me whole. I deserved every bit of the good cop, bad cop routine being forced upon me. Dave sat across the table, smiling an encouragement as though what happened here didn’t matter, while Lieutenant Weyland paced behind him. Every few steps, he’d stop and a
sk a question, and then resume walking until another relevant inquiry came to mind.

  All I could think about was Chelsea. After whatever had happened during her meeting with Dr. Hill and his archaeology team, Captain Marks had granted her a two-week leave for some reason, and she’d left that same day. I wanted to know why—why she’d left and she didn’t tell me.

  Who was I kidding? I knew exactly why.

  Lieutenant Weyland reiterated a question with wild hand motions.

  “I’ve told you everything I know,” I said. Or what I could tell them. Dr. Hill’s team made it clear they didn’t want any SeaSatellite5 staff knowing about the time traveling end of things, or what Link Pieces were, or what TAO did in the background. Good thing Lieutenant Weyland’s main focus was on my involvement with Thompson and not on what I knew but wouldn’t say.

  “I think the Lieutenant’s issue is that you worked with us for a year and didn’t once give the suggestion that we’re in danger because of what we do,” Dave supplied.

  “I honestly never thought we’d find anything of value.” That was the god’s honest truth.

  “Did Ms. McAllister think the same?” Weyland asked.

  I heaved a sigh. Valerie again. She’d never turned up, meaning she’d definitely left the station before TAO had arrived. “Val thought we’d find something. She’s been loyal to them from the day they put us through school with aims of getting onto a satellite station.”

  “Were you aware she had powers like Chelsea?” Dave asked.

  My eyes narrowed. “God, no. I’d never asked her, but after what happened with my cousin, I never…” They didn’t know about Abby. “My cousin thought she kept running into people with strange abilities. It didn’t end well. After that, I refused to believe anything my parents or Thompson said was true about abilities—Lemurian and Atlantean alike.”

  “What happened?” Dave asked.

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.” Especially if Valerie’s guesses were correct. Not only had Abby run into super soldiers, the Atlanteans likely had tortured her too, all for information she didn’t have because our parents had lied to her about it all.