by Jessica Gunn
“Drop your weapons,” came a voice from behind the light wall.
I tightened my grip on the pistol. Come on, Sophia. What are we doing? Long moments passed as no one complied with the male voice’s order.
“Unless you want the city’s soldiers bearing down on our position, drop your weapons now,” he said again. “We do not have time.”
Wait—what?
“Then lose the light,” Weyland said. “We can’t see a thing.”
“Do it,” Sophia ordered, slipping her weapon off her person and placing it on the ground. We all followed suit.
The light fell as soon as the last of our weapons hit the dirt ground. In the sudden darkness, my useless eyes couldn’t follow the man’s movement or that of the other footsteps around me. Hands closed on my shoulders and tugged me into the forest.
“Hey!” I shouted.
Another hand closed over my mouth. “Hush, child. We can’t be caught, as you nearly were. Another few steps and they would have seen you.”
My skin crawled at the woman’s touch, and it took everything within me to fight the instinct telling me to bite her hand and wriggle free of her grasp. If these guys weren’t from the city, or at least not from the part of the city that’d likely kill all of us on sight for being here, who were they? And what did they want? The idea of waiting to find out, to not fight this, gnawed at my stomach. Suddenly, the idea of surrender became too passive and cowardly.
But as we were forced along the path into the forest, weaving between trees and around clearings, leaving the city behind us with every step, the woman’s grip on my mouth loosened. After an hour of walking and not asking questions other than silently up at the sky, I stopped walking. Sophia and the woman turned back, probably to ask me why I’d stopped, but Weyland froze too.
“Finally,” he said. “Didn’t think you’d wait this long to ask what’s going on.”
I gave him a look. “Why didn’t you ask?”
The woman’s gaze flitted between us like she didn’t see what she wanted to until her eyes found Valerie’s. “You.”
“Me,” Valerie said and, to her credit, didn’t so much as offer the woman an eye roll. “Me what?”
The woman lifted up her arm and tugged the sleeve of her burgundy tunic up to her elbow. She held it up for Valerie to see. She had that some vine-covered Lemurian tattoo that Dave had. “You’re Lemurian too, right?”
My stomach sank. The Lemurians hadn’t been an enemy of mine since we’d formed a truce following our rescue of SeaSat5 from Atlantis’s clutches, but why was a Lemurian here?
Valerie huffed. “Yeah, but I don’t have one of those tattoos. What’s going on?”
The circle around our group broke, allowing another man to come forward. Valerie made a noise of recognition but didn’t say much else. Her brow creased as the man came closer. With at least a dozen Lemurians around us, I couldn’t tell if she was worried or confused.
“Hello, Valerie,” said the man. He stood tall, and he had sandy blond hair, dark brown eyes, and scraggly facial hair. He wore a burgundy tunic over dark green, almost black pants, like a depressed Christmas decoration. “It’s been a while. Do you remember me?”
“Define ‘a while,’” she said, even as her gaze roamed his face, and then she looked over the woman standing next to him.
“Valerie?” Sophia asked. “Friend or foe?”
“Considering we’re in the White City’s time-place, I’d say any Lemurian falls under friend,” Dr. Hill said. “Enemy of my enemy and all.”
The man extended a hand. “I’m Ezra, and this is Janine. We’re here because we came after the Lifestone, but we got stuck. JoAnne should have told you about our mission.”
“Wishful thinking,” Janine muttered, “considering we went against her orders.”
“I’ll be damned,” Valerie exclaimed, her eyes lighting up. She took Ezra’s hand and shook it slowly. “Ezra. Trevor’s uncle, right? JoAnne’s brother?”
“Uncle?” I asked. Trevor had never talked about his family beyond Abby and his mother.
Valerie waved us over. “We’re safe. Didn’t you disappear off the face of the planet or something?”
Ezra nodded, then pointed in the direction we’d been traveling. “Something like that. We’ve been living out of a cave not far from here. We should move while we don’t have company.”
I exchanged glances with Sophia, Weyland, and Dr. Hill. If this really was Trevor’s uncle, someone Valerie recognized and hopefully knew on some level, then we could trust them.
But could we, when there stood a good chance that Trevor had willingly joined the White City’s side?
“Guys,” Valerie said. “Come on. I know him. He helped train me when I first got my powers as a kid. Would I really lead you into a trap?”
I swallowed my first ten responses that all said, “At one time in our lives, yes, you would,” and instead settled for an, “All right.”
We trudged on for another two miles through thick rainforest and humid air before finally arriving at the mouth of the cave Ezra’s people called home. Their encampment had been set farther back than the fire at the mouth, but only a mother and her baby greeted us.
“Are there more of you?” Valerie asked.
Ezra shook his head. “We came as a contingent of fifteen. Some were killed during our initial clashes with the White City, but we managed to convince their soldiers that we’d all died. We’ve been stuck here in their time-place ever since, unable to identify a Return Piece.”
“And without a sanctioned mission, JoAnne presumed us dead,” Janine said. “Our own fault for jumping ahead of ourselves.”
“Come,” Ezra said, gesturing to the cave as the woman, introduced to us as Kara, embraced Ezra. Another cousin for Trevor, one he didn’t know he had. One he might never know about. I swallowed down the sorrow lingering along the horizon of my mind at that thought. I’d find him, convince him everything the White City said was a lie, and make him come home. End of story.
None of this was Trevor. He’d never do this.
But he had.
We followed them farther into the cave and were offered a meal of hot broth. Valerie never strayed far from the group, but I could tell from her bouncing feet that she wanted to get to the bottom of Ezra’s story. I almost envied her, that she had this connection to Trevor’s past that I didn’t. It was almost as if she was getting closer to finding him than I was, even if I knew that wasn’t true. But I also envied her training, that she’d grown up with her abilities. That she’d had someone to guide her when her powers had revealed themselves.
When we’d settled in, Valerie leaned toward Ezra and asked, “How long have you been stranded here?”
He smirked, but there was nothing mirthful about it. “Too long. Long enough to see my child born. The Lifestone has been missing from Lemuria’s temples for over a year, but for a while, no one could decide what to do about it.”
“It was obvious La Ciudad Blanca was behind it,” Kara chimed in. “The Lifestone could feed their need for time energy eternally, if used properly. It offers the wielder the ability to essentially bend time around themselves or others. It’s sort of the idea behind a fountain of youth, but not at the same time.”
My mind spun every time someone even mentioned stuff about bending time, so I set all of that aside. “They need that to live. That’s why JoAnne sent us here.”
“She sent you because the super soldiers among you can get back,” Ezra said. “Don’t be fooled. It wasn’t because she thought you’d actually succeed. She used the Atlanteans in your midst to get you here, maybe get you home, but as long as she gets the Lifestone back so the council promotes her, she doesn’t care who returns it.”
Ooookay then. I knew Trevor’s mother didn’t like me. Or TAO. Or SeaSat5. But damn. “Can’t say I’m surprised.”
Without Sophia, Weyland, and me, Lemuria didn’t exactly have a connection to time-travel beyond their own natural abilities. Le
murians had an innate aptitude for using Link Pieces, but they didn’t know something was a Link Piece until they touched it, and when they did, all they saw of the Waterstar map was the direct connection between that Link Piece and where it led to. A normal Atlantean saw basically the same, but super soldiers had the whole map at their disposal. And for a good few months, I’d had the entire Waterstar map as an overlay across my mind. Instant access to every piece of knowledge regarding time-travel ever, and I couldn’t remember a single bit of it.
I couldn’t even see time-travel in action.
“But this isn’t a lost cause,” Dr. Hill said. “I mean, the Lifestone is here, right? She wouldn’t send us on this mission if the contrary were true?”
“Oh, it’s here,” Ezra said. “In the temple at the very edge of the waterfall. It’s only accessible by a deep underground cavern that runs under the falls, inside the cliff. And the entrance to that is from somewhere in the palace.” He looked to his wife. “I can get us into the throne room without an issue. Their royals are never in the city for safety’s sake now that the Lifestone is here. Even they don’t trust their own priests with the Lifestone’s power. One wrong intention and their very existence ends as the stone’s time energy runs out.”
Ezra’s wife nodded. “I managed to convince them to hire me as a cleaning person before I had Brody. I can use showing him off as an excuse to get close, then Ezra can teleport you all to me.”
It sounded great in theory, but in practice… “That’s too easy.”
“It won’t be,” Ezra said. “They may think we’re dead, but as soon as we land in, the throne room alarms will go off. We’ll have maybe a minute on them once we’re in the tunnel. We have powers that can fight theirs, but matching them is a different story. It’s part of the reason we haven’t gone after the Lifestone yet. We can get into the temple, but getting out… getting home…” He shook his head. “It was pointless to try it alone. But now that you’re here, we might stand a chance.”
“And what would have happened if we hadn’t come?” Sophia asked. “There’s no way for you to know anyone else would have.”
Ezra’s wife shifted uncomfortably. “We’d planned to live the rest of our days in secret.”
I frowned. Even with us here, it might not be enough. “I don’t have powers,” I said. “Mine were stolen from me during a White City attack.”
“Thankfully, we still have ours,” Sophia said. “I can’t imagine being stuck here for days, never mind months. We’ll take you back with us, obviously.”
Valerie nodded her agreement. She wouldn’t be leaving them behind. But Ezra ignored them, his eyes finding mine with an expression caught somewhere between pity and concern. It didn’t make sense, and he held it for a lot longer than socially acceptable for acquaintances.
I looked away from him as he said, “They can do that, the people of the White City. Their powers are based in earth and life. They can suck it away just as easily as they build mountains and heal their dead with the Earth’s energies. If they’re able to take abilities away… I believe it.”
A chill swept over me at his words, raising goose bumps across my arms. I rubbed them and said, “I’m well aware of their life-sucking powers. I think that’s what they did to me during the attack on SeaSat5.” The White City soldier hadn’t just been strangling me with telekinesis, he’d been trying to take my very life force, my connection to time-travel itself.
“They’re powerful,” Ezra admitted. “Far more than Atlantean super soldiers. Which kind of puts the whole Atlantean-Lemurian war in a hilarious perspective.” He shook his head, laughing. “All those thousands of years we’d fought each other when we should have been tracking down every single citizen of the White City and either killing them or figuring out how to send them back to their own reality. Their own version of Earth.”
“Better we fought over control of time-travel than figure out how to fight a cross-reality war,” Valerie said.
But even as the words passed her lips, I realized she was wrong. Because of the Atlantean-Lemurian war, Atlantis had created super soldiers, individuals like me who could fight the Lemurian’s natural abilities. As a side effect of that, we were able to see the entirety of the Waterstar map. This was the reason General Allen and his people had spent so long hunting the two generations of soldiers down. To kill us, or capture us, and take that ability. To pervert it into some ridiculous life source.
“It would have been better if our people had learned to get along from the start,” Sophia said. “No war, no map, no lives lost. And if the White City had shown up either way, at least they wouldn’t have had a reason to stay instead of taking up a new home in our reality.”
Ezra lifted his hands, stopping the discussion. “What’s done is done. All that matters now is that we retrieve the Lifestone before La Ciudad Blanca uses it in whichever way they’ve planned.”
“Or,” said Kara, “in the worst case scenario… If they’ve somehow captured the super soldier who supposedly has the entire Waterstar map in their head, they could use it in combination with the Lifestone to rip time apart, piece by subatomic piece, for the energy, the immortality, and who knows what else? The possibilities are terrifying.”
I gulped and tried not to look too guilty. I’d been that super soldier, but with my powers gone, so too had the map left my head. Where they’d run off to was anyone’s guess, although the popular theory was that the White City soldiers had somehow stolen—
My stomach dropped through to the floor, my breath thinning. “Oh shit.”
The security feed. The black and white teleport.
Trevor had once had the map in his head. He’d teleported off Atlas. Trevor was now presumably working with the White City on their quest for whatever, whether brainwashed or not.
Trevor had my powers.
Trevor had stolen my powers from me.
Sophia’s brow creased. “What’s wrong?”
I swallowed down a black, sticky pit that’d formed in the back of my throat, full of bile and all the horrific possible scenarios. “Trevor might have the map again. Maybe. I don’t know how, but—no, that’s not possible.” I looked to Valerie. “Is it? I mean, it’s a fluke he had the Waterstar map the first time, right? How could he have it again and not be almost dead like on Atlantis?”
“He was doing just fine until we got near the Atlas Cache,” she snapped, but we both knew that was enough of a lie to warrant not saying anything. “It was the laser blast wound that sent him to the stasis chamber.”
Ezra and Kara exchanged looks with each other and glances with others around the cave. “Are you saying you know which super soldier has or did have the Waterstar map in their head?”
Do I tell him? Valerie offered no advice, not even a glance my way, and neither did Sophia.
“No, Ezra,” I said. “I’m saying I am that super soldier. Or I was.”
Chapter Twenty
JOSH
Stonehenge, One Year Ago
As soon as we landed in the past, the Atlantean super soldier made a break for it. The man who had just moments before been a slack-jawed, lifeless person had suddenly turned into someone running for their life.
“Hey!” Eric shouted, yanking him backwards by the handle on his vest. “Not so fast.”
The Atlantean super soldier spun fast, grabbing Eric’s gun from his holster, and pointed it at him. “I won’t let you do this. I won’t let you use me as a pawn.”
Another gun’s safety clicked off and before I knew what was happening, Mara fatally shot the super soldier with zero hesitation or concern for our mission. I spun on her, reaching for my own pistol as my gaze swept the area. There was no one around that I could see, although a forest stood a quarter mile away.
“What was that for?” I asked Mara.
“The General said to watch him,” she said, her eyes sort of hazed over. The fog of war. Sometimes when things happened too fast, each of us had a reaction that wasn’t always logical
. “He told me to deal with the situation if he acted out. It’s like the General.”
“That he’d likely run as soon as we left the base?” I said. “Yeah. That makes sense.”
A lot of things hadn’t added up for a while, the major one being why the Atlantean super soldiers that the General had on tap had stayed when we knew for a fact that he’d been killing a bunch of them. It was one of the things I’d overheard Chelsea and Valerie talking about before we’d left everything at TAO behind.
But still, we’d come back to TruGates. And still the Atlantean super soldiers under the General’s command stayed put. All they’d have to do was teleport out. So of course he’d tried to run once we got here, incredibly far removed from the General’s reach.
“Here’s a problem,” Eric said. “Why would he say to do that if we need a soldier to time-travel back to him?” He holstered his pistol and ran a hand through his short hair. “Now we have none.”
“We don’t have a Link Piece, anyway,” I said.
Mara shook her head. “All of that’s not true.” She slipped her pack off her shoulders and tugged out a device the size of a portable CD player from the 90s. Mara poked a button on the side and a lid opened on top of the device. Inside sat a coin. Roman. I’d gotten used to seeing them around TruGates but had never known why.
“He gave this to me,” Mara said, her eyes still all tight and glazed. What was up with her? “He said it’ll get us home regardless of the outcome of this mission. It makes Link Pieces.” She closed the lid and the device beeped, a light flashing yellow on its side. A touchscreen appeared on top of the lid, allowing someone to type in some sort of command.
I shook my head. “That’s insane.” No matter how many times we went on these missions for the General, or how insane that rescue of SeaSat5 had been, none of this would ever settle in my head. Ancient cities, massive time-travel wars. Powers and artifacts and Roman coins that could bring you home. It was all too crazy, too out of the box for me.
