Landlocked (Atlas Link Series Book 2) (16 page)

I caught up with Chelsea after the briefing ended. Well, more accurately I yelled her name down the hallway, and she walked faster. “Hey!”

She froze, causing me to ram into her and almost knock us both to the ground. I straightened and apologized. “What do you want?”

“What happened?” I asked. “Leaving so soon seems kinda hasty. You even called it a shady situation.”

“It’s only hasty because I have to act now if I’m going to at all. The offer was only on the table for forty-eight hours.”

“And they don’t know about TAO?” I was surprised Pike hadn’t asked.

She shook her head. “Like I said, they don’t know what they’re up against. Even Weyland’s lying to himself. I don’t think they know TAO exists.”

So she’d work for both? “That doesn’t seem like a great idea.” And Weyland. The last time he found out someone he worked with knew more than they let on—me, lying about Thompson’s danger to SeaSat5—he kind of lost it.

She waved me off. “If they’re this far into hunting what they call ‘super strong, commando mercenaries,’ but are actually going after Lemurian targets without realizing it, not only is it a good idea to bridge this gap between our organizations, it’s also a convenient way to learn more about Lemuria itself, and what they’re up to.
That
I can’t pass up. We need to find SeaSat5. Do you understand?”

Well, yeah. That made a whole lot of sense.

I had to face the fact that I could lose her to this. That’s what I feared, and hated. What I hated more was that it didn’t make a difference what I thought.

“Stop,” she uttered under her breath, as if it was only meant for her to hear.

“All I meant was that I know better than to force you into anything.”
Because I lo—

“Finish that thought, Trevor, and I’ll walk away right now.”

I swallowed any feelings threatening to rise into my thoughts. “I was going to say that this might be a good idea because then we can use the space to dissolve our telepathy. I mean, it could give us an advantage against the Lemurians, too, but clearly this telepathic bond is not working for us.”

She nodded, lips pressing into a thin line. Only a twitch in the corner of her eye gave her away, that other emotions were in play behind her mask, her high-built walls. “That was my second reason for joining up. It’s not that I want to keep things from you, Trevor…”

The way she looked at me, the way her eyes saw into me and past all the crap of the last two and a half years, I believed her.

Which might have been a mistake, because I wasn’t stupid. I knew what she meant.

“It’s time to go our separate ways for a while,” I finished for her. Hearing her say it would rip me apart. “Cover our bases.”

She smiled, small and sad. I knew it without hearing her thoughts. “Yeah.”

“Answer one thing for me before you walk away, though?” I asked despite my stomach and heart and everything else feeling as though it all fell through to the floor.

“Anything.”

Why were you thinking about chicken parmesan so much?
That’s what I wanted to ask. I tried to meet her eyes, to hold her gaze, but I couldn’t.

Her face grew redder than I’d seen it in years, and she spun on her heels to walk away. Dammit. She must have heard the thought anyway.

I grabbed her arm to stop her as my mind connected the unfortunate dots, tossed them around to mix with my guilt for even
thinking
the question to begin with.

“Space, yeah?” I asked. “For all the times you’ve outed me for lying, you couldn’t just tell me the truth?”

“Trevor, I—” She paused, sucking her bottom lip into her mouth. “It’s not a lie. I have a chance to make a difference.”

You have a chance to make another man happy
. That’s what she’d meant. That’s what she wouldn’t say.

I swallowed down my heart. It’d never done me any good. And after two years, maybe this back and forth was finally over. I had to let her go. If our communication issues were going to resolve themselves, they would have already. Maybe time apart was exactly the remedy we needed.

She didn’t say anything, although I knew she’d heard my thoughts. I forced back all emotion. This was for the best. It had to be. It would bring us closer to SeaSat5, and that’s what mattered. That’s what made everything worth it in the end.

“Just go,” I told her.

She took a deep breath like she was preparing to lay down a full speech. “Trevor…”

“I said go.” I gestured toward the elevators. “You need this. I need this. I’ll see you in a few months, okay?”

But the hand constricting my lungs made it hard to breathe, made it obvious I needed fresh air, not space between us. Or maybe I needed the fresh air from that space.

Keep it together, Boncore
.

I let the hand hold fast on my lungs. Every breath I didn’t take squashed the oxygen needed to cuss or break down in front of her—things I didn’t want to do. I didn’t even care if she heard these thoughts. I wanted her to leave, to go, to do whatever it was she wanted to do, with whomever she wanted to do it. With whoever had convinced her this was a good idea, whoever she thought was better than me, though I knew there must be thousands. To her, I was nothing but a liar. And I knew I’d never be anything else.

Chelsea took a cautious step forward and kissed me on the cheek. She may as well have kicked me in the balls. “Goodbye, Trevor. I’ll see you soon.”

“Bye.” It was barely a mumble from my lips.

I walked in the other direction, digging through my mind. I needed a distraction, a way to find SeaSat5 that I hadn’t thought of before, a new project to dive into.

It was time to find Valerie.

ara and Truman sparred to my left on another set of mats, while Weyland, Josh, and Eric watched me carefully. Talk about awkward. The fluorescents overhead needled light into my brain. Despite this room being a gym, the space didn’t smell so bad. In fact, it was overwhelmingly floral scented. Probably one of those diffuser things. I tried to keep from squinting as I landed swing after swing on the punching bag. Every time a hit connected I risked knocking it straight off the chain.

I kept my abilities semi-hidden while I assessed TruGates, this paramilitary group, and their reaction to them. Obviously Weyland was okay with it, or appeared to be, but I hadn’t had a chance to really speak with the others yet after General Allen let them in on my not-so-secret secret. I
had
been present when Weyland filled them in, though. We’d explained it as an anomaly and nothing more, but Weyland had put a weird military spin on it. Enough to suggest that maybe there was more orchestration behind my abilities than simple advanced human evolution.

It wasn’t exactly far from the genetically modified super soldier truth.

I swung hard, my fist connecting harder. The bag rocketed off its hinges and slid across the floor. I looked to Weyland in exasperation. “Can I stop now? I think I’ve proven the point.”

“There wasn’t any point,” Weyland said.

“My ass there wasn’t.”

“Maybe she should spar with one of us,” Eric, Weyland’s non-military commanding officer said. Yeah, I didn’t get this whole TruGates thing, either. And damn did all these organizations need a rename-a-thon.

I had yet to learn the ropes, or everyone’s ranks and roles, only that there were a couple of teams that operated under the TruGates mantle. Although, I supposed their once-ranks didn’t really matter. I’d been at TruGates for less than a day, and they had yet to disclose a lot of information. I knew Weyland pretty well, or at least had at one point. But today proved we didn’t know each other at all anymore. Beyond that, Mara, Truman, and Eric were a mystery.

They, however, knew more about me than I liked. Exhibit A: SeaSat5, although I wasn’t sure what had been kept secret and what Weyland had told them. They knew about Phoenix and Lobster, and apparently Mara’s younger sister was a fan. TruGates was also privy to where I went to school and approximated where I used to live before all the hoopla of the last thirty months.

This was too much knowing on their part, at least without it being reciprocated.
Sketch Brigade, it is.

“Would it be rude to assume you want me to spar with her?” Mara asked Eric.

I understood where she came from. It didn’t matter that women had been allowed in the military for years now. We still had to prove ourselves. But I didn’t want to spar with Mara, not because she was female, but because I knew I’d knock her to the ground without trying. And she seemed nice. I didn’t want to hurt her. She was slim but built, all muscle. Unmovable, unless it was me moving her.

“Why can’t I spar with the big guy?” I asked, turning to Truman, who was the youngest out of the bunch. Maybe twenty-five.

This guy was the very definition of a body builder. I wasn’t convinced he could keep pace when running with everyone else. Every bend of his body was packed with muscle. He looked like a bodyguard on steroid-induced steroids. He couldn’t have been in black ops, but then what the hell did he do that he couldn’t be reintegrated?

Mara didn’t seem the least bit offended. A wide grin spread across her angular face. “Go for it.
This
I’d love to see.”

Truman stepped onto the mat, concern twisting his features. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t,” I said to him. He
might
. He was the biggest guy I’d ever sparred with, but probably not the strongest. Thompson and his crew, the team that hijacked SeaSat5, took that title. Of all the Lemurians I’d fought since then, they were the hardest to physically take down. But I was nothing back then, a ragdoll being thrown around. I knew my own strength now, and this was a challenge I needed.

Truman’s frown deepened. “I’ll go easy on you.”

“Don’t. I won’t go easy on you.” I would at first, to give him a shot to realize what he’d gotten himself into. I could probably throw him no problem; I just couldn’t decide if I’d be throwing my arm out in the process.

Truman glanced at Eric and Weyland one last time.
He
knew how strong I was back then, had heard about my arm wrestling match with Dave. But that was years ago, and my strength had since developed.

“Will you fight already?” Josh asked from the sidelines, where he and Mara stood laughing at us. She jabbed his side with her elbow and grinned up at him.