Landlocked (Atlas Link Series Book 2) (41 page)

ecrets Compromised.

TAO. Tell. Thompson.

Duress.

Killed.

Then Phoenix and Lobster closed with the song Chelsea dubbed to mean “officer killed in action.” Before Chelsea and the band left the stage, my eyes took in as much as they could. Every color meant something. Chelsea’s two-year-old instructions swarmed my brain as I processed what she’d meant.
Go. Atlantean. Lemurian.

Atlantean and Lemurian secrets compromised. Go tell TAO. Thompson. Duress. Officer killed in action
.

Her closing remarks rattled me the most. “We want to thank Juxe for inviting us to play these two shows. Seriously, thank you, even though I’ve had issues with my mic all day.” She laughed. “My bad. I promise my mics aren’t always this messed up.”

Mic.

Mike.
My fault
.

My heart crashed to a halt. Someone had died and she blamed herself for it?

So her whole message read: Atlantean and Lemurian secrets compromised. Go tell TAO. The situation was similar to what happened with Thompson. I am under duress. Officer was killed in action and it was my fault.

Phoenix and Lobster’s crowd dispersed. I surged past the swarm of people moving in the opposite direction, trying to fight my way toward the stage. Two rows of people from the front, Chelsea looked back into the crowd and me and glared. It stopped me dead in my tracks.

What?
I asked her.

She made a point of fixing her shirt, pulling it down and adjusting her bra straps. Green meant go.

My brow furrowed.
Go tell TAO. Yeah, I got that part.

She shifted her shirt again.

I ignored her and, as best I could, made my way to the door for backstage. Two security guards stood there, unmoving. I turned, looking for another path, when I noticed Sarah jogging toward me. “Hey!”

“Trevor, you need to go,” she said.

“But—”

“Get the
hell
out of here, you asshole!”

Her tone was desperate and didn’t match her actions. Purposely so. The two guards stepped away from their post and came up to me.

“You need to leave,” one said, cross his arms at his chest. “Now.”

I ignored them and looked to Sarah. “Is she okay?” She nodded the slightest bit. The second guard nudged me. “Okay, all right. I’m leaving.” So green meant get the hell out of dodge, not tell TAO.

Still, I wasn’t letting this go.

I paced my hotel room until I couldn’t stand. Damn the Waterstar map and damn me for forgetting Butch’s medicine at TAO headquarters. Call me crazy, but I didn’t want to get closed out of Juxe for what appeared to be a blunt. Sophia would be by soon to pick me up.

I waited all of an hour before I couldn’t hold off calling Chelsea any longer. Shaky fingers made dialing her number hard.

The call connected. “Trevor.”

“Are you okay? Wait—obviously not if you played that song.”

“I’m deep in it.”

Silence encompassed us. I thought she’d say more. “Come to me so we can talk. I actually really need to talk to you about something,” I said.

It sounded like she shifted the phone from one ear to the other. In the process of doing so, loud background noises pierced my ears. I held the phone from me until they died down again.

“I can’t,” she said.

Frustration flashed through me, hot and unpredictable. “You asked
me
for help.”

“Oh God, he’s here, too.”

“Who, Chelsea?”

“Shit,” she said, quick and low. “Trevor, I got to go. Stay safe, okay? I’ll call you again soon.”

Before I could tell her about Valerie, she hung up. I wasn’t bound to sleep for days. First Valerie and my mother come out of the woodwork, and now Chelsea’s side-mission was involved, too?

Every time he hurts me
. My fists clenched. No one would hurt her again. The next time she called, I’d find out where she was and make Valerie take me to her. I’d protect her, or at least find Josh’s damn number and make
him
protect her.

Blue lights filled the room, a rippling waterfall, as Sophia appeared. “Are you ready to come back?”

I nodded. “More than you know.”

I am lost in a swirling vortex, a gyre housing the Waterstar map. I don’t know what I’m standing on, but it’s solid and moves with the maelstrom. Whizzing and screeching fills my ears and I find myself immediately disoriented. I rub my eyes. I know this must be a dream, because awake, I never see this much of the map. Awake, I am not this confused.

I’m thrown to one side, hard against stone. I land on my wrist. Pain throbs around the joint. Invisible wind pushes my hair and clothes in every direction, and standing up is impossible. When I do finally stand, I come face to face with the very perpetrator of my condition: the statue that carried the plague from the future. I jump back from the statue as it shimmers in blue light. Blue, not red. I will not let it plague me again, not even in my dreams. Only this felt less like a dream and more like a hallucinated reality.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” His voice is loud, almost shouting in order to be heard over the vortex around us.

I turn to find Dave standing as nonchalantly as humanly possible. As Lemurianly possible. Why was I dreaming about Dave, the guy who’d pretended to be everyone’s friend on SeaSat5, but had sold us out in the end? Who handed SeaSat5 over to the Lemurians, himself on board? He was taken by them, too.

He shakes his head. “You aren’t dreaming, kid. I’m delivering a message to you.”

A loud bass noise fills the scene, knocking me back onto my ass. Dave walks to me and offers his hand. I brush it away and stand on my own.

“I am not the enemy,” he says. “But it’s time you learned who is.”

He waves his hand and all of a sudden we are standing before SeaSatellite5. It is berthed at a futuristic-looking dock inside a large stone room with a domed ceiling that soars up at least twenty stories high. Beneath it, people stand around, some with clipboards and some with weapons slung across their chests.

I strain closer to see what the people with clipboards are writing. I can’t read it, but I recognize the language. “Atlantis?”

Dave waves his hand again and we’re standing in front of the plague statue once more. “You contracting the plague was a mistake. It was meant for Chelsea.”

“I know that,” I said. “TruGates is hunting Lemurians. Someone is hunting super soldiers.”

Dave’s eyes grow dark. “It’s more than that. The Waterstar map in your head wasn’t meant for you, either.”

Suddenly I’m disgusted by talking to him. “You sold us out.”

He nods. “Yes, I did. But I was wrong and I know that now. Trevor, you have to believe me.”

I don’t. I don’t believe a single word he says. But something in his eyes is absolutely remorseful.

“Atlantis is the enemy. Thompson was after Link Pieces, yes, and Lemuria does want to destroy Atlantis. But that’s because the city is a danger to us all, in far more ways than you can understand,” he says. “Rescue us from Atlantis’s clutches, and I will tell you everything. When you find the station, Chelsea will see it for herself.”

“Why lead us on instead of just killing us?” I blurt out before I can stop myself. I shake my head. “How do we rescue SeaSat5? Why is everyone so fixated on the station itself?”

Dave disappears before answering any of the questions. The swarming gyre returns, invisible wind pushing me in every direction possible.

sharp intake of breath shattered my sleep and I bolted upright, clutching at the blankets on either side of me. My throat burned, like I’d been screaming in my sleep after the day-long Juxe show. Every inch of me felt damp and heavy. I pressed a hand over my heart as it beat in irregular stutters, and ran my fingers through my hair.