Landlocked (Atlas Link Series Book 2) (45 page)

She shook her head. “Not yet. Just know this is what I’m doing to make up for everything I did. I’m trying to sway these super soldiers to our side before Atlantis scoops them up and activates them for their side of the war. And don’t be foolish. War
is
coming. It all started with SeaSatellite5.”

Valerie downed the rest of her drink and stood from the table. “I’ve stayed too long and I don’t want to lose this place as a meeting spot. I’ll be around. You’ll hear from me again.”

I didn’t know what to think about Valerie. She seemed genuine, but I’m not sure I’d ever see her as anyone other than the woman who stood by and watched our friend die.

But she knew a lot, and maybe she knew about the last thing General Allen had threatened me with, too.

“Wait,” I said and grabbed for her hand and she walked away. “One more thing.”

“What?”

“During his interrogations, General Allen taunted me with mentions of my biological parents. He said the people who raised me aren’t them, and that my parents are out there, somewhere.”

“Biological parents? He thinks you’re adopted?” Trevor asked.

I didn’t believe it, either. It was only a taunt. It had to be. Sarah looked just like me,
thought
like me. No way in hell she wasn’t my sister, but there was also no way in hell she was also Atlantean.

Valerie’s eyes softened and she bit her lip. She knew. Of course she knew. “I do know what he’s talking about and I will gladly be the person to tell you when the time comes, Chelsea.” She shook her head a little. “This
isn’t
the time. You need to trust me. You’re risking everything to rescue SeaSatellite5. I know this sucks to hear, but for now, returning the station to our home-time is more important.”

“This is my family we’re talking about,” I said, my grip on her arm tightening. “My parents. My
sister
.”

Valerie nodded, eyes trained on where my hand held her. “I know. I’m sorry, but I won’t tell you now. After you get SeaSatellite5 back, find me. I’ll tell you then. I promise. If you fall off course now, Atlantis will take SeaSat5 and they will win the war. If they do, none of this—nothing—will matter.”

Valerie pulled her arm out of my grip and disappeared in the crowd.

Trevor reached across the table for my hand and I drew it back.

“What if I’m not me?” I asked, my voice small. If I wasn’t a Danning, if my parents, the people who raised me, weren’t Atlantean, what
was
I? Maybe Valerie was lying. Maybe Valerie didn’t know at all.

“You’re Chelsea Danning,” Trevor said. “You’re an archaeologist for the U.S. military. The lead singer of Phoenix and Lobster. An amazing, crazy, wildly loyal woman. Besides, family isn’t blood. Family is the people you surround yourself with—the ones who lift you up, who support you, who are always there. You taught me that.”

My eyes settled on his. I agreed with him.

But did I believe it?

helsea pushed open the door to my lab with her feet. Her arms balanced a load of file folders threatening to topple over. She kicked the door shut behind her and adjusted her leaning tower of paperwork so it wouldn’t fall, and set it down on my desk.

“Well then,” she said, huffing as she plopped into a chair.

“How are things with Josh and the others?”

“So much better than I thought, though I’m pretty sure a breakup is on the horizon,” she said. “I mean, really. I basically admitted to knowing exactly how his buddy died, and how I’ve known all along the real danger TruGates has been up against. You’d think he’d at least be visibly pissed.”

That sat weird with me. I’d be ticked. “He’s not fazed at all?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. He’s got that drawn look in his eyes again. I think he understands why I kept things secret, even if he’s pissed I lied. We’ve all got secrets. But the ones you and I keep end up getting people killed.”

I knew she meant her teammate from TruGates, but Michael’s face flashed across my mind. She blinked rapidly and her brows deepened.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said.

“I know.” I paused. “Wait, you saw that?”

She nodded slowly and crossed her arms at her chest. “Now I can see what you picture in your head, not just what you think. Great.”

I rubbed the scruff along my jaw line with the back of my hand. I thought hearing her thoughts was bad. “That’s an interesting development.”

“Or a horrific one,” she mused. “Let’s both keep a clamp on our thoughts, okay? Last thing I need is to
see
what you’re thinking about.”

No joke.
Especially when I fantasized about punching Josh. I hit the escape key on my computer to wake it up. “I made a model of SeaSatellite5 in the same program we use for the Waterstar map.” A few clicks later I had the rendering on-screen.

Awe encapsulated her face, making her eyes shine like the first time she saw Mega Rush 2 in action. My chest swelled at her reaction. No one else had ever appreciated or appraised any of my creations like she had. Her interest was like the ultimate compliment and reassurance I’d done something right with my life. Then her eyes grew dark, filling with sadness. “You made this in the twelve hours we’ve been gone?”

“I may have had this made for a while now.”

“How long is ‘a while’?” Her eyes bore down on me like my answer meant more than whatever length of time I gave her.

No point in lying about it. “About two years.”

She leaned back into her chair as what that meant set in. “You’ve been prepared for this day all along.”

“It’s got every detail I could remember. Every jammed door, every inoperable system, every broken life-support-affecting gasket is labeled. Everything.”

“Don’t suppose you’ve built a second shield device, as well?” she asked. “Tell me you have a new Hummingbird console sitting in a storage locker somewhere.”

When SeaSat5 was taken, most of the systems, including both Hummingbird’s ballast and shield systems, were destroyed or well on their way to helping us be dead in the water. “No. By the time I finished with this, the Waterstar map rendering ate up my time.”

Chelsea straightened up and stood, walking over to a whiteboard on my wall covered in old notes. She held up the eraser. “Can I?”

“Go for it.”

She erased what I’d written months ago, picked up a marker, and divided the whiteboard into three sections. “Which systems were killed when Atlantis took us?” She wrote NON-FUNCTIONING at the top of the first column.

“Communications was down by the time we landed in their time,” I said. “I sent off the last message to TAO as it was cut off.”

She wrote down COMM. “Navigations and Analytics was still working.”

“Fully, I believe.”

“Well, at least we have that.” Chelsea marked the second column as GOOD TO GO, and wrote NANA beneath it.

“Hummingbird,” I said. It didn’t need explanation. I joined Chelsea at the whiteboard and did the honor of writing HB underneath the NON-FUNCTIONING column. It may as well have read SHOT TO HELL. Then I labeled a third column as NEEDS REPAIRS. “Life support,” I said as I wrote LF in under the heading. “Shot, but repairable. It’ll take the most time to repair next to Hummingbird, if we decide to attempt that at all.”

“That’s up to you,” she said. “If you think we can get by without it, we should be okay.”

“Rotating the station may not be a problem, but we’ll need the shield. If the hull’s damaged at all, we can’t repair it. The shield can act as sort-of hull if normal docking is our only option.”

It’d also protect us against the Atlanteans from getting inside if I wanted to risk Chelsea and Sophia also not being able to use their powers. My original Hummingbird shield design used electro-magnetic field fluctuations to fool the brain, and it blocked, I thought, Atlanteans and Lemurians from using their powers. It was the same principle that EMF fluctuations could trick people into thinking they were seeing ghosts or being haunted.

“So we’ll focus our efforts on life support and the shield,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “It should work as long as we can get the Admiral to have Pearl prep both a dry dock and a vertical dock for reentry. Without being able to rotate the station, we have to have both options available, and preferably not in the ocean.” I turned and grabbed a sticky note to write that down. “I’ll tell General Holt that next chance I get.”

We planned like this for almost an hour before we had all the station’s systems set in one of three columns, with notes on the order in which we’d have to inspect them, and how many people would be needed for each task. Certain things would have to be fixed before we left the Atlanteans’s place-time, namely life support and the shield, but other things could absolutely wait.

We had just started mapping out where the crew was at the time of the attack when my body suddenly felt light, and my vision came in spurts of blurry and clear. Sometimes a pinpoint of light surrounded by darkness, and other times as bright as a summer’s day.

“We should break for lunch,” I said, barely able to keep it together. I needed Butch’s medicine. I hadn’t had it in days. And I had to get away from Chelsea. She couldn’t find out about the Waterstar map in my head. Not now, while she’d blame herself for not being there. She had enough on her plate.

She looked at me for a brief moment with concern etched in her features, but when I waved her off, she shrugged and left. As soon as the door shut behind her I fumbled through my desk drawers for Butch’s medicine. I rolled it, lit an end, and let the medicine into my lungs. Relief came immediately.

But how long would it last?