Landlocked (Atlas Link Series Book 2) (22 page)

“So great of you to finally join us!” Mara called. Truman whistled a catcall and I rolled my eyes.

Josh clapped me on the back and handed me a bag of gear from his trunk. “Alarm failed. Besides, it’s Weyland you should be harassing.”

Weyland’s face flushed, but he reined it in fast.

Mara rolled her eyes and walked over to me. “Why don’t you come with me? We girls have to rescue each other sometimes.”

Unease spread through me. Now that I knew Mara wasn’t interested in Josh, it was easier to talk to her. Still, I’d much rather be taught how to use this gear and how to rock climb by Josh than by her. I guess it didn’t matter as long as it wasn’t Weyland. My fear of heights had almost cost him his life two years ago.

Mara brought me over to her car and took the bag from me. She already wore her gear, so she spent the next twenty minutes telling me everything I needed to know, and getting me outfitted in a harness. “The test itself is straightforward: climb the rock face to the top. However, it isn’t lost on Eric and Weyland, the puppet masters here, that not everyone has gone rock climbing before, or that not everyone is okay with heights.”

“Oh, Weyland’s acutely aware of my fear of heights,” I said.

The admission didn’t faze Mara. “Make sure you find solid hand and footholds, and you’ll be set. That’s the main physical key. From what I’ve seen, you have the strength to make it to the top, it’s the endurance and mental components that may trip you up.”

Hence it being a test. Mara tugged on something and the harness tightened measurably. Like the first time I’d put on scuba gear to swim to the Atlantean outpost all those years ago, I accepted the tightness as a measure of safety and stability.

“Let’s do this so we can go out for a beer,” I said. I’d need one—or eight—afterward, for sure.

Eric gave me one last rundown of the goals for the test. With everyone geared up, we approached the rock face. As I listened to Eric, I made the mistake of looking up at the cliff and nearly dropped to the ground in a panic attack right then and there. It was completely vertical, and while there appeared to be a variety of man-made hand and foot holds available, they were spread so far apart I doubted I’d be afforded the chance to use them. I was simply too short to hope for that.

I gulped.

“All set then, Chelsea?” Weyland asked me with a wink.

“Sure,” I said slowly. He knew damn well I wasn’t.

Eric, Weyland, and Truman started up the rock with ease, and appeared to be making good time. Josh went up next, leaving Mara as my coach. With the rest of the guys out of earshot, I started my ascent. I made it a few feet up before running into my first handhold problem. The rock shifted beneath my grip, but I grabbed onto a nearby man-made hold before I could fall. The early slip-up jarred my chest, sending my breathing into an erratic pattern that failed to keep pace with my pounding heart. I pressed my forehead against the cool rock. Then I made the mistake of looking down.

My stomach dropped.

In all reality, we weren’t that high up, but it was enough for me. My breath came quick and shallow. My hands shook wildly.
I can’t do this
.

“Take deep breaths. In through your mouth, out through your nose,” Mara said from a few feet beside me. “I’m scared of heights, too. That’s why Eric has me down here with you. You can do this, Chelsea.”

I shook my head. “I’m not so sure about that.”

“Chelsea, you’re on a rope. If you fall, you won’t get hurt. And couldn’t you probably teleport to safety if you fell? Do not worry about this.”

She wasn’t wrong. I wouldn’t die. Still, the fear of falling made me not want to chance it at all. What if I panicked and couldn’t teleport and fell? Would Josh think less of me if I couldn’t get over my stupid fear? I looked up to find him a few yards ahead of us in height. I was determined not to give him a reason to doubt my abilities or me.

I forced my lungs to take a deep, steadying breath.
Get a flippin’ grip, Danning. You can go on stage and publically shame people, but you can’t pull yourself together for this?

Jaw clenched, I moved to the next handhold. And the next, and the one after that. At the halfway mark, I stopped. With my fear of heights swallowed, all that held me back was my endurance. I could run, not climb cliffs. My arms and legs felt like they would slide off. “Mara, I need a break.”

She climbed toward me, breath not even ragged. Like she were a freaking superhero. “What’s wrong?”

I snorted. “Would it be absurd to complain like a child and say everything hurts?”

“Yes.”

Her curt answer cut like a knife. I’d meant the comment as a joke. This was my first time rock climbing, what did they expect?

I set my jaw hard and glared at the rock above me. The guys had long ago made it over the top.
I can do this. I have to.
The words struck through me like lightning on a bad summer’s day. Those were the words I’d told myself during the hijacking of SeaSat5. That I had to do whatever was necessary to survive and get the crew out alive.

Guilt crushed me under the memories of how shitty a crewmate I’d been the day SeaSat5 had disappeared. I’d run, and it had cost the people I loved and cared about their lives.

My head rolled back and I looked to the sky, begging for help, for a sign that the crew of SeaSatellite5, all ninety-seven of them, were out there somewhere, safe and sound—just stranded.

I was so lost in thought that I hadn’t realized my grip on the handhold had loosened until I slipped and dropped. An embarrassing screech escaped me before I got a grip, stopping myself by madly grabbing onto the rock slipping by in front of me. Gasps and laughter filled the air.

Laughter
.

My heart flopped over inside my chest. This was all a joke to them—a joke was all I ever was. To SeaSat5 I was a lab rat. To Trevor, I was a mess. And before any of that, I was an unworthy girlfriend who’d been duped by her best friend.

“Chelsea, are you okay?” Mara called down.

“Peachy.” I’d long ago decided I wouldn’t be taken for a fool again. So what changed?

Determination came to life inside me like oxygen to a fire, renewing strength to my arms and legs. Without so much as saying a single word more to any of them, I pushed myself up the rock faster than before, passing Mara, straight to the top. With one final push of my legs, I threw myself over the edge of the cliff, rolling over onto the top. It took a few moments for me to catch my breath, but once I sat up, the sight took it away again.

We were at the top of a super high island in the lake. A small forest surrounded us on all sides. Not a plane, military or civilian, was in sight and the morning sky shone bright and blue.

This view was incredible, and in it I realized what I had done, not in trying to rescue SeaSat5, but in failing to do so. I hadn’t been running for help. Part of me had wanted to run away because it was so ridiculous. Atlanteans and Lemurians. Time-travel. Magical artifacts called Link Pieces. I was the girl from Boston whose only quirky trait was an archaeology degree.

Then everything changed. Too much. So a part of me had wanted to run. But that other part of me, the part that sometimes surfaced in the face of adversity and anxiety, that part of me was trying to fight back.

This exercise wasn’t about climbing a rock face; it demonstrated out-climbing your fears. Mastering them. And although I still feared the fantastical surrounding me, and what I did at TAO, I’d found a temporary refuge in TruGates. It was a refuge in which I could mend and rebuild myself for the final fight.

t wasn’t that I’d been avoiding seeing Abby… okay, I had. Abby, my older cousin, had been captive to a diagnosis consisting of delusions of grandeur and half a dozen other things since before I went to college. Our parents had never told her about the Atlantean-Lemurian war, never expected her to take an important seat in it like they had with Valerie and me. So when Abby ran into Atlanteans in college, she thought she was going crazy. In fact, I think she even ran into an Atlantean super soldier, not a regular descendant of the city. But I had no evidence to back that up.

Then my parents had forced me into the war. I’d sketched Hummingbird, got put through school and signed to the Navy. The icing on the cake had been meeting Chelsea in Boston, then again on SeaSat5 three months later. I’d thought myself crazy, that I was seeing the same impossible things Abby had described. When Chelsea had shown up, she’d shone light on everything I’d thought was nothing more than a fairytale. Suddenly all the stories about ancient civilizations at war were true. And then everything that happened, happened.

I feared that visiting Abby, for the first time since all this started, would break me somehow. SeaSat5’s fate rested on my shoulders, because of how I lied in an attempt to keep them safe. Visiting Abby seemed like finally accepting the war as real. As if until I saw Abby again, I could somehow set the war aside and pretend.

There was no more time for pretending.

I took the first flight to Tennessee I could find after Doctor Hanney released me from the Infirmary. I still felt like shit, but the dizziness and chills had stopped, and I’d be home soon enough if my health regressed.

The taxi let me out on the curb of the Living Well facility. Stupid name. No one here lived well, they lived blissfully unaware of the reality around them, the reality that landed them there in the first place. I knew Abby wouldn’t be an exception.

I paid the taxi driver and he left. Guess I’d have to call another to go back to the airport. I’d flown a lot today, but I had no one to visit, no reason to be here other than Abby. And maybe Valerie.

The welcome area was bright and happy. Yellow walls had been coated in summer floral decorations. A sign near the front desk advertised a summer festival being held at the facility next week. Abby must be excited. Summer always was her favorite season when I was a kid. As a teenager, Abby would babysit Valerie and I all the time while our parents were out at night.

I now knew that those “dinner parties” were really Atlantean-Lemurian war meetings.

“Can I help you, sir?” asked the woman behind the front desk. She, too, wore bright colors and a warm smile. Meredith was the best at her job. She’d been here since Abby had entered the facility, and seeing her still here warmed my heart. Abby could never be in better care.