Landlocked (Atlas Link Series Book 2) (3 page)

The second we made it into the parking lot Trevor jogged so he was in front of me. “What the hell was that?”

I shrugged. “He annoyed me.”

“I had it.”

A smile broke on my face. “Yeah, okay Trevor.” I rolled my eyes and sidestepped him. The only thing he had was a severe case of bar-phobia.

He stepped in front of me again. “He could have hurt you.”

I leaned in close to him and whispered, “I fight Lemurians with powers on a near daily basis. What do you think some drunk idiot is really going to do to me?”

Trevor’s eyes grew hard and his jaw set. “That’s not the point and you know it. I’m just worried about you. Tonight and all.”

I walked past him, not stopping until I got to our car. “Don’t be mad because I can handle myself.”

Trevor didn’t say anything.

I needed to find a new bar.

onight was the norm for Chelsea. Maybe if she stopped embracing her misguided badass-ness thanks to her powers and stopped over-compensating for her inability to save SeaSat5, we’d actually make some progress on doing just that.

I cringed at my own words. Harsh, yes, but the truth.

She never let me step in for her during any sort of confrontation because of all that had happened during the hijacking two years ago. That’s not to say Chelsea counted on me from day one to swoop in and save her at the first sign of danger, because that’s not true. She’d made more attempts to save us and herself during the hijacking than I had. Chelsea didn’t need protecting; she needed understanding. But half the time, I didn’t understand her at all. Not anymore. Not since Lemuria had stolen SeaSat5. Maybe I never knew her. The possibility was there, given I’d only met her months before everything went to shit. And I’d spent most of that time lying to her by omission.

Still, you’d think that after two years and everything they contained, I’d have won back some of that trust. Then again, how long did she hold a grudge against that Lexi girl? Long enough that when we ran into her and Chelsea’s ex on the one-year anniversary of SeaSat5 being taken, Chelsea had made a scene. That had been a bad night all around. The “Grand Summer Shit-Show,” as Chelsea preferred to call it.

I ran a hand through my hair as I regained enough focus to work on the 3D rendering of the Waterstar map. I’d come back to my lab after the bar to work, but I wasn’t getting anything done tonight. Not on the anniversary. My lack of focus wasn’t entirely SeaSat5’s fault. This stupid system needed near-constant maintenance, between the archaeologists adding information all the time, and the technology’s young age. If the system were human, it wouldn’t even be teething yet.

But I chugged along, working on it day and night, mostly because I missed working on something,
anything
. I missed having a system to look after or a game to moderate. When Lemuria had stolen SeaSat5, they’d murdered my life’s work with it. Hummingbird had died at the hands of someone I once called a friend, and without the system, my life felt empty. Void not of meaning, but of purpose. Even focusing on finding SeaSat5 wasn’t enough some days. The goal was too vague, too up in the air. Fixing a system was within my grasp, something my fingers and brain could work through and repair.

But the 3D rendering system… I couldn’t keep up with it. The whole “be careful what you wish for” thing.

General Holt, commander of TAO, had us running through, or otherwise examining, so many Link Pieces that when I finally had time to work on the map system, I spent the time doing routine cleanings. Then add another few hours for new Link Pieces. My days were long, and my nights barely existed at all. Maybe it was a good thing I wasn’t social like Chelsea. Unlike her, I couldn’t afford to drink and party nights away, bouncing between TAO and Boston in an instant.

Story of my life, but I didn’t mind. If this database was going to keep up with our exploration and experimentation, someone had to take the hit, and it may as well be me. Chelsea could contribute her strength and abilities to the search for Captain Marks and the crew, but all I had to add were computer skills, which paled in comparison, and it frustrated me to no end. Maintaining this type of database was hard, and all Chelsea saw was a twenty-one-year-old with his face cemented to a computer screen while she was off training with Sophia.

I was no soldier, and I knew that. I’d known it all along.

Evidently, as much had changed as had stayed the same since Lemuria stole SeaSatellite5. At the moment of its taking, Chelsea and I weren’t exactly on super solid ground in our relationship. We’d just agreed to deal with things slowly. When we’d joined TAO, I thought we would eventually find our way back to how things were before the hijacking. And you know, things were generally fine until the first anniversary of SeaSat5’s theft came around, and “Grand Summer Shit-Show” happened, and then it all went to crap.

Not saying I wasn’t as off-kilter. It seemed pointless to dwell on the fact that they were gone when that time could be spent actually working on ways to get them back. SeaSatellite5 didn’t up and disappear. The station was out there, somewhere, in time. Hiding. Waiting. Hopefully with the crew still alive. It was impossible to know for sure, or to know if, to them, any time had passed at all.

Would Captain Marks hate me once we found them, not for Lemuria winning again, but instead for their rescue taking over two years? If we ever found the station, would Chelsea forgive herself? I missed her warm smile. It came out in spurts here and there, but she’d never been the same. When I thought about it, our entire relationship was pretty laughable.

The system beeped at me.

“Finally done with your updates?” I asked.

Another loading screen appeared, and the program continued merrily on its cleansing way. My head fell back in time with a frustrated groan escaping from my lips. I rubbed my eyes with the palms of my hands. Some days, all I could think about was how
stupid
this all really was.

“Why are you still here?” a voice said from the open doorway of my lab.

I spun my chair to face Major Howard Pike, otherwise known as Major Iron Tights for being such a hard-ass all the time. He was the kind of guy you could joke about behind his back, but if you ever said it to his face, he was as liable to laugh with you as he was to throw you against a wall and yell the skin off your face.

You could imagine, then, the fun he’d had getting acquainted with Chelsea and me, especially given Chelsea’s civilian-minded insubordination issues of the last twenty-eight months. I could count on one hand the only military officers she truly respected in that time: Captain Marks; Weyland, SeaSat5’s old Head of Security who’d been reassigned after the hijacking; and Freddy, our friend. All gone, but they were the only three that hadn’t ended up an enemy, like Dave. And after what she’d perceived as failing to save them, Chelsea hadn’t exactly been the best team player.

I couldn’t blame her, though. A lot of weight had been placed on her shoulders—part of that being my fault—and suddenly there she was, the center of an attention she wouldn’t have had if we’d never met. Our current situation started when I had left the Franklin through the same door she had on the night I’d ran to Boston to escape the military. If I had never gone through that door, none of this would have happened.
None of it.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I told Pike, who was still waiting for an answer. “And we’re behind.”

He leaned against the doorframe. “I know what day it is. Wasn’t surprised when you guys high-tailed it out of the base earlier.” He pointed to my computer. “That stuff can wait. I plan on talking to General Holt about our travel schedule first thing in the morning. Even a Link Piece every two weeks is too much.”

There were only five of us that traveled through them, to minimize damage to the time-stream and history. But that limitation had worn us thin now that we had a mission to complete: bringing SeaSat5 home.

Still, my eyebrows rose. He’d insinuated Chelsea and I were tired. More of this military, non-military bullshit. “We can keep up.”

“That’s not why,” he said. “If we explore too much, we add to the Waterstar map too quickly for you to update the 3D rendering from which we operate.”

“There are other engineers,” I said, even though we both knew I was the only one for the job.

“You guys have added more Link Pieces to our version of the map in the past two years than we’ve seen in the last five.” Pike walked over to the window in my office. He stared down at the room where the mock-up of the Waterstar map was kept. TAO had used this crude model before I came along. “I know you two were assigned to TAO because of SeaSat5.” Pike paused and sucked in a breath, like he was calculating his next words carefully. “As much of a pain in the ass as you two are sometimes, I can’t thank you enough for your hard work in filling in the blanks. You two deserve some downtime.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “this seemed like a better alternative than what the Admiral really wanted to do to me.”

Captain Marks had been quicker to forgive me for risking SeaSat5 in my delusions about Lemuria. The Admiral, now knowing the full score thanks to TAO, had been much harder to convince. My alternative to TAO was… much less cushy.

Did I know there was a possibility we’d be hijacked? Yes. But I hadn’t actually believed the probability of it happening warranted any attention. Atlantis and Lemuria were supposed to be fairytales, cities and continents lost to the gods and seas so long ago, whether they existed or not no longer mattered. And they certainly weren’t supposed to still care about Link Pieces.

“You don’t want me to comment on that,” Pike said.

I glanced back to the cleaning program on my computer screen. “No comment needed.”

Pike trusted me, I thought, but I knew he didn’t trust my so-called “shady past.” I wasn’t fully convinced he didn’t have a few skeletons himself.

“Go to sleep, kid,” he said as he turned to walk back out the door. “Today was a long day.”

I nodded. “As soon as this sweep is done.”

Major Pike left, and I brought my attention back to my computer screen.