by Jessica Gunn
CHELSEA
Though she appeared ready for it, Valerie fell into the motion, letting Sophia get the better of her. Weyland’s reaction to the sight of Trevor and me was too easy—he must have somehow already known. But Sophia… there was no way. And I’d been on the other side of Sophia’s anger and fist too much to simply stand by and let Valerie get pummeled.
They tumbled across the floor until Weyland and I got to Sophia and ripped her off Valerie. Charlie and Trevor helped up Valerie. She wiped blood off her lip from a punch Sophia had landed.
“Okay, now that we’ve gotten that out of the way,” Valerie said dryly, “will you let me explain?” She looked up at Weyland. “Did you not tell her what’s going on? I told you to.”
“He said Trevor was still alive,” Sophia spat. “Which I know is a lie.”
Weyland grimaced. “She was a bit resistant to the idea.”
“A bit?” I echoed. “Valerie, I have to say. When you make plans you half-bake them in all the right ways.” Valerie shot me a glare, one reminding me that, on some level, all of this had been my idea. Right.
Why did I ever think this plan was a good idea? Right now, I wasn’t so sure it was. There’d been so many risks, so many what-if’s involved. And now…
“Just hold her,” she volleyed back. She approached Sophia in quick, sure steps and reached out for her temples without any hesitation at all. She either didn’t actually fear Sophia’s wrath or was a lot surer in Weyland’s and my ability to hold her back than I was.
Valerie worked her memory magic, fire strings leaving her fingers and attaching themselves to Sophia’s temples. A few short seconds—that was all it took to undo the last few months and see the truth. Mere seconds to replace weeks.
I frowned. Even with my memories returned it was hard to let it all go. Yes, letting Trevor volunteer to go to General Allen alone had initially been my idea. And yes, I’d told Valerie to change my memories and then suggested altering hers so the plan wouldn’t be jeopardized if we were captured. No one would have known the difference because neither would we.
But as much as I now saw the last five months in truthful clarity, I couldn’t get the image of shooting Trevor out of my head. Even fake, it’d haunt me forever.
Gradually, Sophia’s eyes went from rage-filled hardness to a softened, more confused look. I knew from experience that the first few minutes—hours, even—after your memories returned were groggy. It was as if waking up from a really long, super deep slumber during which you dreamed within a dream within a dream, until nothing was clear and very little make sense. But then the fog eventually cleared.
Well, I assumed it would.
I blinked back images of the shooting. Again.
“I…” Sophia said. Her body relaxed into a heap, and Weyland let go. I led her to a chair, which she accepted gratefully. “Explain. Someone. Now.”
“Most of this was the plan all along,” I started and then dove into the full explanation Trevor and Valerie had just given me, pausing to ask for clarification at the points that were still hazy.
Although Weyland remained mostly stoic throughout, his eyes narrowed at the end. I wished I could read his mind. Anything involving General Allen hurt him as much as me, and the same went for Josh, Eric, and Mara. They’d been more acutely used by him as nothing more than pawns. They’d delivered Lemurians and Atlantean super soldiers both to General Allen, to their imprisonment or deaths. Weyland was a hard man, jaded by years of military service, but he wasn’t a killer. He wasn’t evil. General Allen had turned us all into something akin to monsters.
Sophia stood and paced the room. When she finally spoke, her voice was cold. “You could have told us.”
“Should have,” Weyland added. “I’m on your side here, Sophia.”
“We didn’t tell anyone else because we couldn’t risk Trevor being found out,” I said.
“Find out what?” she asked. “He knew Trevor’s Lemurian. Valerie too.”
“And he’s got enough spies everywhere to probably know about him having the map once before, too,” Weyland added.
“He was confused by me, I’ll give him that,” Trevor said. “And even if he knew—and I guess he did, now that you point it out—he needed the full Waterstar map to use with the Lifestone. He wanted to use me as a source—or Chelsea, whoever had it.”
“By hiding the map in Trevor, we kept it from the White City,” I said. “They were after me, too. Granted, it was as an extension of their hatred of the General. But still.”
“The point is that our original plan hit the bucket early on,” Valerie said, “when the Lifestone wasn’t where it was supposed to be in that temple.”
Charlie nodded. “Without it, Trevor couldn’t escape, forcing the confrontation at TAO once the General discovered Abby had had it all along. When Valerie took it out of the box, not knowing any different, she let the energy loose.”
“General Allen honed in on it and here we are months later, me alive and the General immortal.” Trevor scrubbed the side of his face with his hand. “And Abby missing.”
I leaned over and rubbed his shoulder. I couldn’t promise him that we’d find Abby—couldn’t guarantee we’d survive the next few days—but I wanted to give him some sort of comfort.
“Can we?” Weyland asked. “It’s just the six of us.”
“No. I’ve been collecting super soldiers too, remember?” Valerie said. “Charlie and I have been working on it for a while now. They’re here, training.”
“How many?” Sophia asked.
“Twenty-three in total, including us,” Charlie answered. “With Valerie’s powers that makes twenty-four fighters. Twenty-five if we can finagle some abilities for Trevor.”
He waved his hands in front of him like a ref calling safety on first base. “No way. Thank you, but Chelsea’s were enough. Fire is explosive. Destructive. I’ll pass.”
I frowned. Part of me wanted him to be happy about possibly having active abilities like the rest of us. Trevor had never thought about having powers. He’d grown up bitter about not having them, then accepted it. Hated the situation for a while with SeaSat5 being taken, sure, but in the end, I knew he’d rather not have them and fight the old-fashioned way than take another’s abilities into himself again.
I squeezed his shoulder. He laid a hand on mine, warm and reassuring, and said, “Twenty-four fighters. We can do damage with that.”
“It’s actually already twenty-five super soldiers,” Valerie said. “We just have to find the last one.”
“Right, you said I might know them,” I said. “Do you have a name?” I wasn’t sure how she and Charlie had found the others to begin with. Valerie had never stuck around long enough to explain her process to us. But if the theory about us Atlantean super soldiers being naturally drawn together were true—like Sophia, Weyland, and me ‘accidentally’ being in the same place—then that would make it easier.
Valerie and Charlie shared a look before she said, “No. All I know is they’ve been in Boston for at least the past few months. It’s a big city, Chelsea.”
I snorted. “You don’t have to tell me that.”
“Think,” said Charlie. “Is there anyone you’ve known for a very long time? Your adoptive sister maybe?”
“Logan?” Trevor asked. “I feel like he would have said something by now, though.”
I nodded. “He wouldn’t have hidden that from me. And Sarah doesn’t have powers. She’s not much younger than me. If Dr. Gordon’s hypotheses are correct, that super soldiers come into their powers a lot earlier than normal Atlanteans, then Sarah would have shown some by now.” And that pretty much concluded my list of “well-known, close friends” that Charlie suggested.
Charlie pursed her lips together, her eyes crinkling in thought around the edges. “There’s no one else that’d possibly fit? No one who might have super strength and has hidden it poorly? Those were the factors we used when we’d gotten close to finding them.”
“We ended up on a college campus once,” Valerie said. “Turns out the football team’s hot-shot kicker lands almost 70-yard field goals. He was using his super strength for a full-ride scholarship.”
Weyland’s eyes widened. “Seriously? 70 yards?”
“He probably could have kicked farther,” Valerie admitted.
Charlie’s eyes widened. She snapped her fingers. “Oh, I know! How about this: Do you know anyone with a tattoo?”
I leveled her with a look. “No. I don’t know any rockers with tattoos.”
“Okay, fair enough.” She turned around and shrugged off her jacket. “I’m talking about a specific one. My parents used it to seal my powers so they wouldn’t develop until my parents took the tattoo away. Or maybe ever, if they never told me what the mark was really for. But then General Allen captured me and cut the tattoo in half.”
“Kind of like what you did to the Lemurian seal Thompson gave you,” Valerie said, filling in the blanks.
Charlie lifted her hair to show the tattoo. “It’d look like this.”
My jaw dropped immediately. The recognition was instant and carried with it bile that churned my stomach and scorched my throat. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
She spun around, dropping her hair. “You’ve seen this before?”
I glanced down at Trevor. His face was tight with thought. “So has he, actually.” It took everything within me not to make fun of him for it, too.
Finally, his eyes widened and he blushed. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Oh. And I can tell you there’s no way in hell we’re going to convince her of any of this.”
“Her?” Weyland asked. “You’re sure you know this person.”
Trevor rubbed his eyes, nodding. “She does.”
Valerie’s eyes narrowed. “Why do you know her, too?”
I chuckled, but it turned into a full-belly laugh. “Because he slept with her.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
CHELSEA
It’d been years since I’d last done this, but I put one foot in front of the other anyway. And I prayed, prayed that her parents weren’t home. That maybe she didn’t even live here anymore, four houses down from the Dannings.
Lexi’s house was a raised ranch and, like mine, the beige structure sat far back from the road. When I finally made it to the door, I let my knuckles hover over it. If I did this, if I knocked and Lexi answered and we actually had this conversation without her running away or calling the cops, if we didn’t get into a fight over it, this would change everything. Knowing Lexi had been a super soldier all along had already changed everything, even without her knowing it.
Her being a super soldier, us being drawn together, explained pretty much everything. Even that hideous tattoo that’d haunted me since the very first time I’d caught her making out with my ex-boyfriend. Her hair had been up in a bun. It’d been the second thing I saw (them making out being the first), and how I’d very quickly figured out who he’d been kissing. Ever since that night, the same night I’d first met Trevor, I’d hated that tattoo.
Only it wasn’t a tattoo. Her parents had sealed her powers inside of her, and she’d never known the difference. How had she stayed off General Allen’s radar for so long?
I knocked on her front door before I could talk myself out of it. This would be one hell of a conversation. But I had confidence I could at least get through the explanation before she called the police. We’d had this weird heart-to-heart thing at the local bar a few months back. We could do this, too.
Curtains on a nearby window moved and Lexi’s face appeared. Her eyebrows scrunched together.
“Open the door,” I said so that she’d hear me through the glass. “I come in peace.”
“I heard about what happened at Logan’s,” she said.
I rolled my eyes. “Please?”
Her eyes narrowed to slits, but she opened the heavy inside door, leaving only a screened one in between us. “What do you want?”
“What happened at Logan’s is sort of what I’m here to talk about.” Kind of. The White City explanation could come later, as could the reason for me suddenly appearing at the party and killing soldiers in front of Logan and Sarah before nearly bleeding out on his yard. “Let me in and I’ll explain everything. Please.”
She hesitated and I sensed it was less about me and more about the rumors she’d heard about Logan’s party.
“Look, that fight—those people—would have killed everyone there if I hadn’t stepped in,” I told her. “And if you’re looking for the truth about them, about me, that’s what I’m here to give you. Because the truth is that tattoo on your neck—”
Her hand flew to her neck out of instinct. To cover it? “This again? Leave my tattoo alone. I don’t pick on yours.”
I sighed. “Okay. I know you and I haven’t gotten along well for years, but I also know that we shared those drinks at Tavern and that we sort of made amends that night. So please just ignore everything you heard about Logan’s party and let me inside so I can explain what your tattoo is really about. Please, Lexi. I’ve never lied to you. Not once.” And that was the God’s honest truth.
She sighed and unlatched the lock on the screen door. “Fine. Come on in.”
“Thank you,” I said as I crossed the threshold to a house I knew as well as I had my own down the street. As kids, Lexi and I had been nearly inseparable when I hadn’t been with Logan. Oftentimes, though I’d tried to forget it over the years since Ray, she’d even join Logan and Sarah and me on our crazy adventures. Despite the veritable abyss between us and the patchy bridge stretched across it, we’d been close once. Closer than even Logan and I were now.
Turns out, we were a whole lot closer than we ever could have imagined.
“Are your parents home?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Gone on a vacation for once.”
My brow furrowed. Her parents were the frugal type. Never left the state, never went out to dinner, and absolutely never went on vacation. Anywhere. “Really?”
“I’m as surprised as you are.”
“You should throw a party,” I said as we passed through the entryway to the kitchen. I leaned against the island in the center.
Lexi chuckled and tossed her blonde hair over one shoulder. “Maybe I should. So why do you hate my tattoo so much?”
“Because it’s not a tattoo,” I said frankly. “And my guess is you’ve assumed that already.”
This, surprisingly, didn’t trip her up. “I asked my parents what it was all about. When I was a kid, they’d called it a birthmark. But no one has birthmarks shaped like perfectly geometrical diamonds. They then said I was right, that I wasn’t born with it. That they’d gotten it tattooed onto me as a kid in some super sketchy place because they were into some weird hippie, wannabe something or other. We got into a huge fight about it, how they marked me permanently like that. I got kicked out of the house for a few days.”
I nodded. “I remember that.” She’d spent two days at my house when she’d been fifteen before they’d let her come home. “My parents kind of freaked out on them.”
“Yeah, well. I never asked about it again,” she said. “Now you’re telling me I was right.”
“You were. But you’re not going to like the truth, Lexi.” I wasn’t sure she’d even hear me out long enough to accept it.
She snorted. “Coming from you? Of course I won’t.”
“That’s not the point.”
She shrugged. “Just say what you came here to say, Chelsea.”
If I didn’t hold anything back, would she throw me out? Where was the best place to start? I’d only had to explain all this to people once, to Josh and the TruGates team before we’d rescued SeaSat5. But they’d all been used to the military, to thinking that maybe something greater than this life was going on. Lexi had never been open to things like that. She was about numbers and facts and living the life she wanted.
“I don’t really know whe
re to start, so I’m just going to say a bunch of true facts, okay?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said slowly, exasperated. “Shoot.”
I winced. I hated that word now. “Atlantis existed, and so did Lemuria. And before you ask, that’s a sister-myth to Atlantis. The Greeks did help destroy the City of Atlantis, but they did so on Lemuria’s order. The two civilizations were at war. When I joined SeaSatellite5, we found remnants of that war.” I paused, looking her directly in the eyes. “You and I are some of those remnants. And that tattoo isn’t a tattoo, it’s a seal locking everything you are inside of you so you don’t exhibit Atlantean qualities.”
She stared at me, deadpan. Not moving or speaking or even blinking. Had I petrified her or something?
Lexi blinked. “What the hell are you smoking? And if it’s that good, where can I get some?”
“Oh, boy,” I breathed. There was no way she’d ever believe me, possibly even if I showed her my powers. We so didn’t have time for that. I looked at her, squinting my eyes, as if it’d give me a better view of the back of her neck through her head. An idea formed. “Do you trust me?”
“After that? I don’t know. Why?” she asked
“Turn around.”
If she was a child when her ‘parents’—I didn’t know if that meant the adults I’d known growing up were Atlanteans, too, or foster parents like the Dannings had been to me—had given her the seal, she might have remembered. There was even a possibility Lexi remembered more than any of us did. We were around five or six when we’d met and become friends, that I knew for sure. But if my biological parents had altered the Dannings’ memories so much that they believed my one-year-old self was their kid, who knew what the extent of Atlantean memory-alterations could do. Valerie’s own Lemurian version had changed much of TAO and the Navy.
“Why?” she asked, even as she complied.
I rounded the island and stood behind her, sweeping her long, blonde hair onto her shoulder. The interlocking 3D diamonds were still intact. She’d never broken the seal, intentionally or otherwise. Before Lexi registered what was happening, I snagged a knife out of the knife-holder on the island and ran the tip of it lightly over the seal, breaking it as I’d done with glass on Thompson’s mark.
