Landlocked (Atlas Link Series Book 2) (8 page)

ermay and two of her attendants sat Trevor and I at a machine she called the Altern Device. It looked like one of those two-way mirror exhibits the children’s science museums had when I was a kid—only with glass instead of a mirror separating me from Trevor. The clear panel sat perpendicularly to a touch screen table in front of me. On either side was a single seat, one for me and one for Trevor. The whole set-up looked super sci-fi, with glowing screens and lit up displays.

We sat without prompting and looked at each other through the clear glass separator. I had half a mind to start touching the buttons on the screen in front of me. Would one act as a light switch, and if flipped on, would Trevor disappear from sight? The touch screen on the desktop lit up. It was blank, waiting to be given input.

“Please remain still as my assistants calibrate the machine to the two of you,” Germay said.

I opened my mouth to respond when one of her
assistants
came up next to me and grabbed my head. She attached a square electrode to my right temple before I could react. An electrical current passed into me from it and I cussed something awful and inappropriate as it stung my temple. This was stupid, and that we had no other option until my powers returned made it all that much worse. I didn’t trust Germay or her people. Yet here we were, plugged into a machine with no way out and no weapons to make a stand.

Across the way, Trevor also recoiled from the current. “What the hell was that?”

His eyes locked with mine, but before I could say anything, the screen below me came to life. The faint blue glow from Trevor’s screen highlighted the contours of his cheekbones, the way his laptop screen used to back on SeaSat5. It courted my focus, and soon I was staring, drawn to the allure of Trevor’s face as if I were seeing him for the first time.

My screen brightened even more, snapping me back to reality. I hadn’t studied Trevor so closely, drawn in by every detail of him, in months. Butterflies rushed around my stomach as if I were nothing more than a silly schoolgirl—or like I was back outside the Franklin when he’d saved me. When he became the beacon of light I’d so desperately needed.

The machine beeped and a square with indents and ridges appeared on my touch screen. A puzzle piece.

“It’s a puzzle game?” Trevor and I asked at exactly the same time.

Our eyes met, and the night at the Franklin exploded across my vision in vivid detail. Me, on the phone with Logan, cursing Ray’s name to high heaven and beyond. The call had lost service, and I’d hung up. I’d punched a hole clear into the wall. Dave, who I didn’t know at the time, had attacked me. I had thought he was a mugger, out to steal my phone and cash. Or worse.

Trevor, who’d wandered out the back exit not knowing anything. Trevor, who’d startled Dave and given me the chance to kick him away. Me, launching Dave clear across the alleyway in a manner I wouldn’t have been able to do without my superhuman strength.

Trevor, asking me if I was okay. Trevor, making sure I got back inside the Franklin safely.

Trevor, my light. The man who introduced himself as “Boncore, Trevor Boncore” like he were James Bond.
My
Mr. Bond.

Trevor. All Trevor.

But then there were bits of me, too. Memories I couldn’t possibly have. Me, looking fierce and ready to take down Trevor, too. Me, swallowing scared tears. Me, onstage before being mugged. A feeling of attraction, of surety, swooped across my mind and lower belly, a chilled zap like lightning. A feeling that couldn’t be mine, of freedom. Of hope.

“Are you guys okay?” Dr. Hill asked from the far side of the room. He and the others could only watch, only see what was on the display screens. They didn’t feel any of this.

“Yeah, it’s just confusing,” I said. That didn’t come remotely close to describing what was happening.

“What you are experiencing right now is the machine calibrating to the two of you,” Germay’s words filled the room. “In a few moments you will be given a puzzle to solve on the screens in front of you. It will take both of you to solve it, and it will require the mental connection now present between you two in order to do it.”

“Mental connection?” Pike asked, sounding skeptical.

“The devices on their temples,” Germay explained. “They allow thoughts to pass between two persons, filling in the space in their otherwise already strong connection.”

“It’s weird,” Trevor said, but I also heard it in my head, too.

I hear you, too
, came Trevor’s thoughts.

I let a small grin form around my mouth.
Like you ever had issues reading me
.

Trevor laughed once from the other side of the glass, and shrugged like he had no idea what I was talking about.

Smug-ass punk
, I thought.

He smirked.

I didn’t know why, but it was like the flooding of old memories somehow whisked away the tension that had grown in our relationship. When I looked at him it was like those first few weeks all over again, with giddy smiles and awkward first kisses.

I tried my best to stow away those misplaced feelings as puzzle pieces began appearing on our touch screens. We went to work matching the pieces together. As I started lining up the tablet tiles, some of the pieces I turned over shared glimpses of events from Trevor’s point of view. Some of these tiles showed things I couldn’t possibly remember, like when we’d first emerged on the outpost. Our first kiss, among… other stuff, all from his viewpoint. Including Trevor scrambling around outside the Bridge as Thompson’s crew took over.

The Altern Device had read my memories—
our
memories— and was rebuilding pieces of our past into this puzzle. But why?

Three pieces came together to form Thompson’s face. More merged to show images of the hijacking. My pulse raced, my breaths speeding to the rhythm of a jackhammer. Heat flashed across my cheeks and neck.

No
. I couldn’t. Seeing his face again snapped me out of the thrill of puzzle-solving. The outcome of this game wasn’t worth reliving that monster ruining my life.

My hesitation to swipe another piece wasn’t unnoticed by Trevor. The pieces had formed the puzzle picture so far: half a Bridge console and the rest of Captain Marks’s face. Trevor filled in the gap from his own memory. I looked through the screen to the other side, eyeing him down, begging him not to finish. Major Pike, Sophia, and Hill, they knew the gist of what happened. But not all of it. Not that I killed Thompson. And I sure as hell didn’t need a visual reminder.

Trevor continued to build the scene, so sucked in by this “game” that he hadn’t noticed the strangeness of it at all. I flipped another piece that clearly didn’t match the puzzle we were working on. Instead of scenes from SeaSat5, this tile had blue lines jutting out, with dates and artifacts flying off into the distance. A map.
The Waterstar map
.

“Trevor, stop.”

They were going to use me, use
us
, to build the map in front of them. To steal the map. To use it and the Piece they had for God knew what. But why us? Why…

My eyes snapped up to Trevor. It wasn’t our connection to each other they were after, it was our connection to the outpost. To the Link Piece cache.

“We’re almost done.” Trevor didn’t look up from his table. His fingers flew another piece from his touch-pad to the screen.

Trevor, stop
, I tried in my thoughts. “They’re using us to build the map.”
The Waterstar map. Trevor, they’re after the cache.

Building the map from my head was step one. Step two would be raiding the cache, assuming it still existed in their place-time. Unless they had planned to go back to
ours
and steal it from there.

No one, not even Trevor, moved to stop the “game.”

“She said to stop,” Pike said, firm and commanding. On a soldier, it may have worked, but Germay kept plucking away at her end of the machine.

I looked away from the pieces and Trevor. The electrodes burned as I stood and ripped them from my temples. Something buzzed near my ear and Trevor’s thoughts exploded across my mind as he continued building the hijacking scene with his own memories.

No! Don’t shoot her! Chelsea, NOO!

Oh my God, oh my God—is she dead?

She’s dead. She’s dead.

Dead, dead, dead.

I collapsed forward, bracing against the console for support against Trevor’s memory. My head rested against the glass and my breath puffed clouds onto the clear surface. Sweat coated my palms and slicked down my neck and back, paving the way for anxiety to rip through me without resistance.

I was there again. On the Bridge. Gun in hand. Someone pointed my hand holding the gun on Captain Marks. I was forced to choose. Marks. Trevor. Myself. Marks. Trevor. Myself.

I adjusted my aim at Thompson. Pulled the trigger. Bullets flew, five at Thompson, one at me. It’s all Thompson had time to get off.

My abdomen ripped open, blood hazing my vision.

“TREVOR, STOP!”
The thought reverberated through our linked minds as I said it aloud.

I can’t. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.
Not there, not again.

Trevor stopped at my shriek and stood, also prying the electrodes from his temple, and within seconds our memories wrapped tightly around each other. The electrodes fizzed out with a final spark and fell to the touch-pad of the Altern Device.

My eyes shot to Trevor. “You had to go there, didn’t you?” My veins lit on fire beneath the Lemurian seal burned into my skin. A phantom pain tugged at my side, right under the scar from the bullet.

Pain twisted with aggravation at having to relive that day, and I couldn’t stand to look at Trevor anymore. The earlier, pleasant memories slammed together with these dark, painful ones, and nothing made sense. I couldn’t focus beyond one single thought: the Link Piece wasn’t worth this bullshit. We’d just have to wait it out until my and Sophia’s powers came back in order to get home.

I fired Trevor a glare and marched past Dr. Hill and the others to the entrance of the room.

I needed space.

I needed peace.

The guards escorted us back to our cell.