Landlocked (Atlas Link Series Book 2)

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© 2016
Jessica Gunn
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Cover Art by Eugene Teplitsky
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ISBN 978-1-62007-046-8 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-62007-062-8 (paperback)

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For my grandparents, always.

Landlocked:
Enclosed by land and having no navigable route to the sea.

—Oxford Dictionary

hen I was eight-years-old, tearing through the Human Origins exhibit at the National Museum of Natural History in New York, I declared my dream of being an archaeologist. But I never thought I’d one day be running from the past. Literally.

SeaSatellite5 was supposed to have been the strangest thing to ever happen to me. Then I traveled through time in an attempt to save the station from the Lemurians who had stolen it. And for the first moment since venturing through Link Pieces alongside TAO—The Ancient Operation—two years ago, I now feared for my life as I sprinted through a Roman temple to our Return Piece. Without it, we couldn’t get back to our home-time, to
our
present day.

Water trailed from my palm, still wet from my last hydra-like attack. Sophia’s footsteps thudded behind me, punctuated by Trevor’s ragged breaths. Somewhere behind us, possibly lost in the labyrinth of this ancient temple, were Dr. Hill and Major Pike. Apparently, they’d never had this type of code-red Return either. It didn’t help that our Return Piece, easily the size of a stand-up punching bag, couldn’t be moved. We were lucky to have found it to begin with. Turns out Link Piece travel wasn’t an exact science, and there was no guarantee you’d ever come back. We learned you
can
travel back and forth to the same place-time so long as you used different Link Pieces to do so. TAO had tried to make the whole system work, but the only thing they’d learned so far was that maybe time-travel wasn’t a recreational sport.

Which begged the question of why the Atlanteans and Lemurians did it so much. Personally, all time travel did was make me queasy. Or maybe it was just the memory of the first time I’d traveled through time via Link Piece—the day the Lemurians stole SeaSatellite5—that made me feel sick. I’d been mega hungover (the first of only two times), and between the station rocking side to side and the actual trip through time, my stomach couldn’t hold anything for days.

Pieces of the temple’s ceiling fell throughout the corridor, crumbling all around me. Next time, I wouldn’t leave the history research up to Dr. Hill. He was supposed to check before each recon mission that we wouldn’t travel to any world-shattering events, like D-Day or Caesar’s death. And while everyone got something wrong once in a while, landing us during a siege on Rome in 1849 wasn’t exactly a simple screw up.

I rounded a corner and caught sight of the Return Piece, standing six feet tall at the end of a darkened corridor. The marble sculpture’s smooth white edges perfectly depicted a strong, muscular man. Not a rough, unfinished edge remained. The technique was clearly ahead of its time. Probably part of the reason it ended up a Link Piece compared to the rest of the artist’s work.

The reasoning behind Link Piece creation wasn’t an exact science, either.

“Almost there!” I shouted over my shoulder as I reached the statue. The cool marble glowed in the low light bouncing off the walls, but I knew better. It wasn’t light. A hazy blue settled over the statue, dancing around it. The mirage denoted this beautiful sculpture as a Link Piece.

I tore my eyes off the sculpture and dug around in my pockets for our original Launch Piece, a Roman-era, silver necklace we had fought the Lemurians for at the Museum of Natural History. The fight had taken place in New York City in 1956, but we’d traveled there a year ago. Sophia and I had confirmed its Link Piece status shortly after returning. We’d never traveled with it until now because although it led to Rome, from which more ancient Link Pieces could have been recovered, we’d only recently discovered it might lead to SeaSat5.

I draped the Launch Piece in the crook of the sculpture’s arm and wrapped my fingers over it and the statue. Stretching out my other hand, I waited for my approaching teammates and prepared to travel through time. Well, team wasn’t exactly the right word. More like accomplices. For a U.S. Army operation, TAO was a helluva lot less organized than you’d think. Guess exploration of Atlantean time-travel did that sort of thing to the military.

Sophia and I were untrained in using the Waterstar map, since no other Atlanteans were around, so we took a risk every time we traveled. Not that you could really use the map, since it appeared as an overlay that only we saw. When I held a Link Piece, the connections surrounding the artifact—where and
when
it connected to (its time-place)—swam alongside other nearby connections. The map was the only reason these time-travel missions succeeded. We were able to, with relative accuracy, see if a Return Piece was available once we got there.

Sophia reached me first and ignored my hand. She grabbed hold of the statue and waited for the others, but kept her eyes focused intently on the sculpture in front of us. Normally, she worked the transfer through time and I acted as an anchor. Moving this many people so far in time was dangerous. But we both owned the connection; we both could work it. So I held the door open for her, kept her grounded, and Sophia ushered us on through.

The guys might as well have crawled. Precious seconds passed as the temple fell apart around us. Shards from the stone ceiling rained over my head and shoulders, but I didn’t dare let go and risk getting left behind.

Major Howard Pike made it to the sculpture first and clutched Sophia’s hand. Dr. Hill and Trevor brought up the rear, the former carrying an armful of artifacts. He used his free hand to take Major Pike’s as Trevor reached out for mine.