by Jessica Gunn
“What’s wrong?” I repeated. “You’re alive—which means I didn’t shoot you like I remember doing. You’re here. We’re all here in medieval Europe like it’s no big deal. What happened?”
Trevor’s gaze found Valerie’s. “She’s been exposed to the powder, but her mind’s fighting her own memories.”
Valerie winced. “Maybe I went a bit hard. I figured since she’s pretty stubborn on her own, her mind wouldn’t appreciate the manipulation.”
My eyebrow cocked and I leaned over the table, glaring at Valerie. “Manipulation?”
“Relax,” she said, tapping the seat next to her for me to sit. “It was your idea.”
I shook my head. “No way would I let you screw with my head, Valerie. I don’t care how close we’ve gotten.”
Valerie shot Trevor a look only a best friend could give. I’d seen it on Logan’s face for most of my life. “I told you she’d be pissed. That she wouldn’t believe us. That she—”
“I’m right here, Valerie,” I said. When did everyone even show up again? How had I gone from being completely alone, with Trevor dead and Valerie possibly also in that same boat, all the way back to this? To Trevor and Valerie’s plan to save me and the world? “Someone start talking or I’m going back to camp.” Depending on what the truth actually was, I thought I’d rather take my chances there alone.
“We’re both alive,” Trevor said.
“Yeah, except I remember shooting you. Start there. What actually happened?”
“I changed your memories,” Valerie said, hand raised off the table like she was half-heartedly answering a teacher’s question. I supposed she was, in some ways. “I grabbed your ankle, remember? In the artifact room?”
I did. “I thought you were telling me you understood Trevor’s coded message.”
She shook her head. “No—I mean yes, I did understand it, but I had to make physical contact with you to change your memories.”
“You didn’t with Josh,” I said. “You had those fire-string things.”
She smiled small but triumphantly. “I’ve been training.”
My gaze found Trevor’s. “You all have. You did things I hadn’t even thought of trying.”
He nodded grimly. “Let’s get this part of it straight first.”
“Okay,” I said. “So you touched me and changed my memories. I didn’t actually kill him?”
“You didn’t fire a single shot,” Valerie said. “Though it was pretty damn close.”
“Really?” I asked. So he did have my powers that whole time.
He nodded. “Yeah, guess so.”
So Valerie had been shot, not Trevor, and I hadn’t killed anyone. Okay. I could handle this. I looked to Trevor. “Why would you fake your own death? There’s no way that was the actual plan you two had, was it?”
“It was your plan,” Valerie insisted again. “And no, that was a decision Trevor and I made based upon our original agenda going to unforeseen shit. But I’m a little fuzzy on those details myself. I had my memories altered, too.”
“Why?” I asked. “By who?” Atlanteans couldn’t do it, at least none that we knew. Which meant another Lemurian must have completed the alteration both times.
“We did it because even I’m not a good enough liar that I can pretend my best friend is an evil, traitorous bastard whom I shouldn’t care about saving,” she said. “No one’s that good. Ezra made the change before he went back to the White City.”
I blinked. Another few beats passed before I asked, “Ezra came back home before we got there? Why leave his wife and the baby? He wouldn’t do that.”
“He would if there was no other way to get everyone home and steal back the Lifestone,” Trevor said. “They had one device, and they decided to return home to get help with the Lifestone instead of using it to send everyone home none the wiser to the Lifestone’s whereabouts—which is why they’d gone without being sanctioned in the first place. Besides, you have to remember that Lemurians aren’t as efficient at time-travel as Atlanteans. It’s why they went to war all those centuries ago.”
Fair enough, although now I wanted to punch Ezra for being a lying bastard.
It was your plan. Was it? Why would I agree to something that’d end so badly? That’d let everyone’s memories be altered? “Someone start at the beginning, please,” I said.
“I should really fix your memories first,” Valerie said, reaching for my head.
I swatted her hand away. “No. Do not touch me until I have an explanation or so help me, Valerie.”
She drew back her hands and rolled her eyes. “Okay, then. Deal with listening to this and not believing instead of just letting me fix you a whole lot quicker.”
“I’m not broken,” I said. Not anymore, if Trevor had never actually died. That had broken me through and through, and maybe that was why I didn’t want to have Valerie give me back my memories. It felt too easy to justify what I’d done if I knew it never really happened. And I was absolutely glad he’d never actually died.
But the thing was, if the same situation had presented itself for real, if it were the only way to stop something world-ending from happening, I’d kill him again. Without hesitation. Without regret.
I knew that wasn’t Chelsea Danning speaking. That was the super soldier the Atlanteans had bred into me, and slipping into the role of her, letting that half of me guide myself the last few months, had been the only thing that’d gotten me through.
“Okay,” Trevor said. “This goes back pretty far. Right after we had that first briefing about Atlas, we decided we needed to stop the Navy before they did something stupid.”
“Like build a time-travel-capable ship right after we locked Atlantis up for time-traveling too much?” I offered.
He nodded, his eyes wide in exasperation. I got the feeling I’d used that line a lot and didn’t remember. “Exactly that, yeah. At first, we hadn’t known what to do about it, so, as you remember, we let it be and helped them put the ship together.”
“I came to Trevor separately not long after, when I met you guys at the top of the trail and interrupted your lunch date,” Valerie said.
I nodded. “I remember that.”
“That’s when Valerie told me you were still in trouble,” Trevor said. “You had the Waterstar map in your head because you’d taken it out of mine. The Lemurians had known way back then that the Lifestone had been taken, and that General Allen’s ultimate plan was to use it to make himself immortal and then use the Waterstar map in your head, the one you had full, constant access to, to rule over time itself.”
“Like the crazy, sociopath powermonger he is,” I added.
“Who said she needed memory fixing?” Charlie asked, laughing. “She remembers more than she thinks.”
“How does that link up with you taking my powers and the map, though?” I asked. “I can see the logical progression of doing that to keep me out of the General’s eyes—and hiding the map in someone else is definitely something I’d suggest if we trusted that person. Well, you. But I’m missing something big, aren’t I?”
Valerie and Trevor exchanged a look that churned my stomach. Valerie said, “Turns out Trevor isn’t so powerless after all. He has Lemurian blood magic.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
TREVOR
Valerie paused, letting the truth sink in for a long moment before adding, “He’s malleable.”
“Um, what?” Chelsea asked. She reached across the table and poked me. “Seems pretty solidly human to me.”
“His magic is,” Valerie said. “That’s what it does—it allows him to do things most people can’t.”
“Like house the Waterstar map for so long without a ton of ill effects,” I said. “I was able to keep it like you did, Chelsea, because my mind had already been exposed to Atlantean magic.”
“Because of the Altern Device linking us?” she asked.
I nodded. “Exactly. I… I never knew I had magic because I long assumed—wrongly�
�that Lemurian magic was this intense, powerful force induced by rage and ferocity and nothing but activity. It’s not like Atlantean powers, which are fluid and can be both passive and active.”
“Dr. Gordon’s visions versus your telekinesis,” Valerie said.
“My first power was incredibly fast self-healing,” Charlie said. “I’m not invincible or anything, and I couldn’t heal others, but it was like all those superhero movies. Trevor’s magic has been like that his entire life.”
“Magic,” Chelsea echoed.
I sensed her unspoken question. We’d never called anyone’s abilities that before. “Because it’s natural. Atlanteans’ have organic abilities, too, but they’re nowhere near as powerful. Lemuria must have been a source itself because from everything we’ve found out, every single person on the continent had powers of some sort, an innate magic running through their veins.”
“So, even though you’ve never been able to teleport or have ever had unnatural strength, you still have magic,” Chelsea said.
“Yes.”
“What does… being malleable allow you to do, other than house the Waterstar map, I mean?”
“Not shapeshift,” Valerie said. “We crossed that off the list quickly. That power only belongs in fantasy, apparently.”
Chelsea pointed at me. “Wait a second—that’s not true. You looked different when you first showed up in New Hampshire.”
“Changing one’s appearance while still human wasn’t what we’d classified as true shapeshifting,” said Valerie. “He’s also not the first person I’ve run into that can do it. Though blood magic is beyond rare. It’s almost unheard of in modern day.”
“Is that how you stole my powers, then?” she asked me.
“That’s a little more complicated,” I said, looking to Valerie.
She shrugged. “You’re the only one who has a clear picture of it all. You might as well be the one to tell her.”
And so I did.
Back at Pearl, right after we’d found out about Atlas, Valerie had showed me a vial of Chelsea’s blood. She’d said I had magic, that she’d learned about blood magic from my mother, who had approached Valerie about the missing Lifestone. Putting two and two together, we’d figured that if General Allen hadn’t been the one who’d stolen it and brought it to the White City, that he’d definitely at least also be after it. Valerie had said my mother had warned her about the danger Chelsea’s possession of the Waterstar Map posed, given that she was a super soldier on top of everything else.
We’d told Chelsea of the revelations and devised a plan. That was when Ezra had shown up. We’d had him change Valerie’s memories after she’d erased Chelsea’s, so that when the attack on Pearl happened, neither of them would remember the plan we’d created. They’d all thought I’d died or deserted, and Valerie was able to play Chelsea’s ally for as long as she could. Without the memories of the truth, minds couldn’t be read or words misspoken. And, most importantly, the reactions would be totally genuine. No one would have any reason to question that something was going on.
The only reason any of it had worked until this point was that I’d convinced General Allen I was the super soldier with the map in his head. He’d sensed the map, had known I’d had it not that long ago, and figured I was a double-agent like Dave had been—a White City person hiding as a Lemurian. The General was still after Chelsea because of her connection to Atlantis. As a child, she’d created a path between the city and the then-unbuilt SeaSat5. If she did it once, she might have been able to do it again. And even though the Atlas Cache and Prince Atlas had been destroyed, the time signature there would be enough to feed General Allen for a while.
Maybe even send him home as an immortal ruler if he obtained the Lifestone.
General Allen had used me to attack Chelsea, but each and every time he’d sent me, I’d fought the brainwashing so she wouldn’t die. General Allen had eventually figured it out and purposely sent me to the White City instead of himself to retrieve the Lifestone from the priests who’d stolen it from Lemuria.
When I’d avoided killing Chelsea in the temple, I’d figured General Allen would simply find a way to remove the map from my head and kill me. Then I’d discovered that the White City priests had never actually had the Lifestone in the first place, and that General Allen and my mother had both been misinformed.
The Lifestone was missing, and this was where our original plan utterly failed. We’d banked on the White City or General Allen having the Lifestone in their possession. We’d planned to steal the Lifestone for ourselves. But it was gone.
Then General Allen had sensed the stone at TAO and realized someone must have had it there, someone who hadn’t been around with it earlier. And almost instantly I’d known what had happened. How Abby had gotten tied to this mess in the first place.
“It was the mission the Atlanteans had sent Abby on,” I said. “They took her because if given the right Link Piece, she could time-travel. They sent her to the high temple in Lemuria to steal the Lifestone, and she did. But when she traveled into the chambers beneath Atlantis, past that bioluminescent sea monster, she realized what would happen. Instead of handing the Lifestone over to Atlas, Abby fought her way out of the city and somehow found a way back to our place-time.”
“Then Abby’s family put her in a home, believing that although she’d been kidnapped and had helped Atlantis try to steal the Lifestone, that she didn’t know what else she was talking about,” Valerie said. “That’s why no one knew about the Atlas Cache until it was too late. Why no one suspected the Lifestone was gone until it really was. No one believed Abby could steal it, so they never bothered to check.”
Chelsea scratched her head. “This is one hell of a story.”
“It gets more confusing,” I told her.
Since the Lifestone was now at TAO after they’d realized Abby had stolen it for the Atlanteans but had never given it to them, I’d had no choice but to follow General Allen’s attack orders, since he himself had gone this time. Ezra had known the whole plan the entire time. So when the attack on TAO had started, he’d given Valerie her memories back. Valerie had known at that point that everything had gone horrifically wrong, and she’d tried as best she could to orchestrate an ending that’d still allow me and her and Chelsea a chance to enact our plan and save the world. But she’d known that having everyone in TAO and SeaSat5 involved would get messy. This was something only a small contingent would be able to do, a group of Atlantean super soldiers and us who stood a snowflake’s chance in hell fighting General Allen’s men.
So Valerie followed Chelsea to the final showdown with me and General Allen, who had used the Lifestone to make himself immortal. Then, when I couldn’t fight against him, I’d made myself General Allen’s next target. He’d needed me for the map in my head, unless of course he’d found a way to move it into someone else’s mind. But he hadn’t wanted to, so he’d decided to put my loyalty to a test first.
I’d disagreed. And when General Allen had ordered me to kill Chelsea, Valerie had sprung into action despite being accidentally shot, and changed Chelsea’s memories first (making her believe she’d killed me), then Major Pike’s and Josh’s. Together, she and Ezra had managed to convince everyone at TAO that Chelsea had killed me against Major Pike’s direct orders, thereby allowing her to be isolated enough to break off and rejoin me, Charlie, and Valerie when the time was right.
Now here we were, free from the red tape and powerless humans who couldn’t stand up to the White City. We had a small army of surviving Atlantean super soldiers, too.
Chelsea blinked. No verbal response. She toyed with the glass phoenix I’d given her as proof of my identity and sanity. Was she questioning both again now?
“Are you okay?” I asked her. “I know it’s a lot, but—”
She lifted her gaze to Valerie and me. “What the hell?”
Valerie sighed and held her fingers to Chelsea’s temples. “Here.”
Chelsea
closed her eyes. Strings of fire left Valerie’s fingers, connecting her to Chelsea as she repaired Chelsea’s memories. After a few minutes, Valerie pulled back.
Chelsea blinked rapidly as if it’d clear a fog in her brain.
“Better?” Valerie asked her.
My gaze met Chelsea’s and she said, “Much. But we really shouldn’t be allowed to plan world rescues together. Like ever.”
Chelsea had gone back to camp using one of her own earrings as a Link Piece device. After resigning as a teacher, something it was very evident she hadn’t wanted to do, she returned to our medieval hideout.
She chucked the device back at Charlie. “That’s unnatural.”
“I agree. But it works, doesn’t it?”
A glowing cobalt blue waterfall lit up the room. The four of us tensed in unison, ready to fight despite knowing virtually no one could follow us here. Charlie’s memory of the place alone had created the Link Piece, so only someone else who’d been here before for longer than a few minutes could do the same. Theoretically.
“Who’d you give the secret password to?” Chelsea asked.
“Only one person,” Valerie said as she gathered fire in the palm of her hand. Even with Chelsea’s powers, I’d never been such a natural like Valerie. “Be ready just in case.”
When the time-shift settled, Weyland stepped out. Weyland. He didn’t know about me, that I was alive and good and not a traitor. My stomach plummeted. With everything TAO thought about Valerie, too, this wouldn’t end well. Is this who Valerie meant—did Charlie give Weyland the Link Piece?
But then someone else stepped out of the waterfall, too. Someone who looked much more confused and ruffled about being dragged through time and space. Someone whose ferocious eyes landed on me. Widened. Then they swung on Chelsea and Valerie.
Sophia’s nose flared and she pounced on Valerie like a wild tiger.
Chapter Thirty-Four
