Countercurrent Read online

  Countercurrent

  Atlas Link Series Book Four

  Jessica Gunn

  Contents

  About Countercurrent

  Part I

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Part II

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Also by Jessica Gunn

  The Hunted

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2018 Jessica Gunn

  All rights reserved.

  Cover Art by Eugene Teplitsky

  http://eugeneteplitsky.deviantart.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  ABOUT COUNTERCURRENT

  Atlantis has been defeated, but countercurrents still remain…

  With Atlantis now out of the picture, TAO and the Navy have created a vessel capable of Link Piece travel: the Atlas. But their aim to freely explore time to better understand the Atlantean and Lemurian war ignores the bigger threat that the Atlantean Prince had warned them: the White City.

  Though Chelsea has given her opposition to the military’s plans, her disagreements have fallen on deaf ears. Instead she works to ensure the Atlas is as secure as possible and hopes for the best, an optimism that’s brought her and Trevor closer than ever.

  But countercurrents run in their midst, and when Pearl Harbor is attacked, nearly destroying the Atlas in the process, Chelsea discovers that people she’s trusted most since joining SeaSatellite5 years ago have not only betrayed her in all the deepest ways…

  They’ve never been on her side at all.

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  Part I

  Chapter One

  TREVOR

  My hands shook, but for the first time in a long time it was not because of the Waterstar map. Chelsea had been staring out at the beautiful water surrounding Hawaii for a few long moments now, each one standing between us and what I was going to do.

  My chest swelled, warmth circling around. Chelsea’s blonde hair curved around her face. Sunlight caught the flecks of green in her eyes, shards of emerald that shone, looking like a creature of the sea from myth.

  I gulped. That was exactly what she was.

  Chelsea pulled in a breath and straightened her back, pulling her knees to her chest. “It’s so nice here.”

  My eyes slid down her sun-kissed form. “Yeah, it is.”

  “I don’t want to leave. Even if I hate why we’re here.”

  I swallowed hard. Neither of us were excited about Atlas. It was a beautiful ship, to be sure. The height of submersible technology. But Atlas… what it could do… You’d think we hadn’t just learned what too much Link Piece travel could cause. That we hadn’t seen not three months ago what the Atlanteans had almost done. Rips in space-time. Tears in the fabric of the universe itself.

  Time-travel was risky business. I’d always believed that.

  “At least the war’s over,” I said, wrapping an arm around her. Now all we had to worry about was the White City and what General Allen had planned. But with the Lemurian win over Atlantis, what did it matter if Atlantean super soldiers still wandered around? “Sort of, anyway.”

  Chelsea snorted a chuckle. “Yeah. Sort of.” She nuzzled her head under my chin and squeezed my middle. “I love you and your supremely cautious optimism, you know that, right?”

  “I’ve been told it’s one of my better features.”

  She laughed. “By who?”

  I kissed her forehead. “I love you, too.”

  Chelsea smiled, bright as the sun. I loved her smile. It’d been the only thing so many times over that was capable of drawing me out of the darkness of the war and everything that came with it. She’d become my everything.

  My hands shook again with the thought of what I was about to do right here. Right now. There wasn’t a point in waiting anymore.

  Chelsea shifted before I could move to act, reaching for my backpack. “You bring any food?”

  Ah, shit. I darted a hand out to stop her. “I got it.” The last thing I needed was her looking in there. Too freaking close.

  Chelsea backed off. “Jeeze. Keeper of the Cheetos much?”

  I scoffed, a hand on my chest. “I don’t keep anything.” I unzipped the backpack as best I could without allowing her to sneak a peek inside and tugged out the snacks we’d packed earlier this morning. The sun’s rays now hit with the full force of 1:00 p.m. Bright and hot and about to burn my skin. Luckily, the trek back into town and to Atlas’s berth was mostly forest-covered.

  “Thanks!” she said as she hopped off the boulder we’d climbed up onto and began stretching. “I can’t wait to be back in the water. I’m glad Weyland got this post and that they’re expanding Link Piece research, but I don’t understand why we had to be assigned to Atlas when it wasn’t close to being finished.” She paused, her gaze meeting mine. “I take that back. I don’t know why I got assigned to it.”

  I laughed. Commander Tessa Marks had assigned Chelsea for reasons amounting to equal parts keeping us together, keeping Chelsea around to protect Atlas before it had a shield to protect it, and because as soon as the ship had the Link Piece traveling capabilities turned on, Chelsea would be manning it. Simple as that. “Maybe they’re planning on testing the time-travel systems?”

  She rolled her eyes and shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. I have a half a mind to pretend it doesn’t work. Not like anyone but Weyland will be able to counter it anyway.”

  I had nothing to say to that. In this, Chelsea and I agreed one hundred percent. I hopped off the boulder, slapping my back pocket really quick before she could see the action. My fingers brushed the small box there. Still have it. Thank god. Imagine losing that tiny little box now…

  Chelsea would probably laugh.

  Er, no. Definitely not.

  “Let’s wait and see how they actually handle it,” I said, falling in line beside her, our gazes fixed on Atlas in the distance. Its sleek frame bobbed on the ocean surface, ballasts not filled. The cloak hadn’t been activated yet—they’d seen no reason after SeaSat5’s accidental unveiling almost three years ago now. “She’s Captain Marks’s daughter. She won’t put us in danger if she can avoid it.”

  Chelsea frowned. “It’s not her I’m worried about.”

  No. That’d be General Allen who h
ad us worried after what he’d done to Weyland and the rest of his team. Events that Josh, Eric, and Mara still hadn’t decided to let us in on. Valerie wouldn’t budge either. She’d seen what had happened when she mind-melded with Josh and glimpsed his memories—saw how someone had altered them.

  “Hey,” I said, lifting her chin. “No frowning. No more thinking about all that crap.” I gestured to the bay below us. “We’re in Hawaii. Let’s focus on that.”

  Her features eased, a smile edging her lips. She rose to her tiptoes and kissed me. “Yes, Hawaii. And the epic concert next month.”

  I grinned against her lips and deepened the kiss. Being this close to her always made me worry the Waterstar map might jump back into my head. It was hard not to react at first, since I’d been expecting that snap of pain to slice through my consciousness. But it appeared the map liked Chelsea’s head, a place closer to home than a Lemurian’s mind would ever be.

  Chelsea pulled back, smiling. “Can you always be around?”

  I shrugged, smugness creeping into my voice. “That’s the plan.”

  She cocked her head, an eyebrow rising. “Is it?”

  “Yeah, actually…” My hands shook again. I shoved them behind my back so she couldn’t see. Held them there so she wouldn’t suspect. Thank god she couldn’t read my thoughts anymore.

  Her eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”

  Wrong? “Nothing’s wrong,” I said, a little too quickly. A little too nerve-filled. Dammit, Boncore. Get a hold of yourself. It’s just Chelsea.

  As if that could calm me. Chelsea was everything to me, even when she should have been nothing. Even in the darkest times, and especially in the brightest. Falling in love with Chelsea, letting her become a part of my life, wanting her to stay a large part of it—it was the creation of the universe. Bright, violent, brilliant. Inevitable.

  “Right,” she said slowly. “Then what’s up?”

  Just do it.

  “Because I have a question for you,” I said. “One I’m afraid to ask. It’s stupid.” Shit. “My fear, not the question.”

  Chelsea’s eyebrows scrunched together. “Trevor?”

  Forcing my lungs to take a deep breath, I stepped a single foot back from her. “It’s been on my mind for longer than I’ll admit. You’ve been—I—” I swear I’d practiced this, right in front of the mirror for the past few days. I pulled in another breath and met her eyes. “You know how you always describe me, my presence, as this thing you can feel on your periphery, like a lighthouse on the shore? There, visible, a guiding light?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. What’s going on?”

  “That’s how you’ve always felt to me, too,” I said. “Ever since I first saw you on stage at the Franklin. I thought you were checking to see if I was passed out drunk against the wall, but the look you gave me, the way you saw me, it changed everything in an instant.” I licked my lips, wetting them. When had they gotten so dry, so immovable? Tugging out the ring box, I brought it between us and opened it, revealing the gold band adorned with a diamond and two diamond-shaped pieces of teal sea glass. “I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry—?”

  A sound creeped out past her lips before I could even finish the sentence. Her eyes grew wide, then she smiled, bright as the sun above us.

  “Yes!” she screeched. Loud. Excited. She threw her arms around me and jumped up and down. It was all I could do to stand still with the force of Chelsea, the super soldier Atlantean this Lemurian guy had fallen in love with.

  I leaned back and found her lips with mine, whispering, “Oh, thank god. I was so nervous.”

  “Are you serious?” she asked. “After everything? Come on. Have a little faith.”

  I grinned, said something along the lines of, “I do, I do have faith,” but the word stung my eyes, stabbed me in the gut. We’ll both need faith for this one.

  Chelsea snatched the ring from my hands and stared down at it. “Holy crap, Trevor.”

  “You like it?”

  Her eyes found mine again. “It’s absolutely perfect. But this moment, you—you’re the important part. I love you so much.” I barely had time to slip the ring on her finger before she threw her arms around me again and squeezed tight, burying her face in my shoulder. “I didn’t think this would ever happen.”

  “I never gave up hope it might,” I let out, barely a whisper.

  A loud, screeching high-pitched sound scorched across the sky. We both jerked our heads toward the yell, seeking out the source. A low rumble started beneath my feet and vibrated up my chest.

  “What the hell?” I asked.

  Chelsea’s eyes widened so much, I thought it might be impossible for her to open them wider. Then she did, shouting, “Trevor!” Her free hand shot out toward the bay, pointing down.

  I followed in time to watch as a bright green—the same green as a White City teleport—comet-like trail blazed across the wild, blue Hawaiian sky. The closer the green comet traveled, the more the ground beneath our feet rumbled like an earthquake. Chelsea grabbed on to me, moving us away from the cliff’s edge, but neither of us dared look away from the comet. It shrieked closer and closer until finally its targets became clear.

  Atlas. Or the Navy base.

  Chelsea screamed, squeezing my arm, and I shouted, and then—and then—

  The sound of a hundred bombs going off echoed across the area as the comet made contact with the Navy base a quarter mile from Atlas’s berth. The building lit up like a firecracker, smoke and explosions spiraling upward.

  “Oh my god,” Chelsea screamed. “Oh god, oh god!” She took one step, then another toward the edge of the cliff, even as the earth continued to shift with the impact of the explosion. “Trevor!”

  “I know.” Panic surged through me, tightening my chest and sinking my heart. The urge to act, to do anything at all, even though I had no idea what to do or where to begin, set in. “Let’s go.”

  Chelsea nodded quickly once, twice, a bunch of times—none of them fast enough before another comet scorched through the horizon, right toward Atlas.

  “We can’t go in there,” I said. But we had to check for survivors.

  That was when the realization hit. Son of a—

  CRASH.

  Second contact.

  “Let’s go,” Chelsea said. “I don’t care if they’re still being attacked. We have to get who we can out of there!”

  “Agreed.”

  Chelsea reached for my hand, but I bent down at that exact moment and snatched my backpack, undoing the zipper. It was time.

  As Chelsea teleported us down to the base, I withdrew what I hadn’t wanted her to see.

  Chapter Two

  CHELSEA

  Trevor and I emerged on Atlas’s Bridge. Similarly designed to SeaSat5’s Bridge, Captain Tessa Marks stood in the center of the chaos, hands braced on the railing at the front of the command center. Around her a mix of SeaSat5 staff and newbie officers for Atlas ran chaotically, smacking commands into their keyboards and shouting out orders and the statuses of systems and the ship itself. Of the core that allowed Link Piece travel.

  “Can we get any sort of shield going?” Tessa asked of the Bridge.

  “Here, Captain.” Trevor jogged up to the command center. “I can try to work something, but a shield wasn’t high on the priority list at this stage.”

  Tessa spun around. “Get whatever you can, Mr. Boncore. Now.”

  Trevor nodded and turned to me, his eyes rounded in worry.

  “Go,” I told him. “Do what you can.”

  He nodded again and moved to the blast doors at the entrance to the Bridge. As he passed me, I grabbed his hand. Our eyes met and I squeezed his fingers. “Be safe. I love you.”

  “Love you too,” he said. “If things get bad, get out of here.”

  “Right back at you. Holler if you need me.”

  “I will.” Then he was gone.

  Tessa shouted commands at the crew, then
turned to me. “What do you think?”

  “I think the White City finally found out about Atlas.” I looked to the main screens at the front of the Bridge. One showed the carnage surrounding the Navy base a quarter mile away. “Do we know the status of anyone there?”

  “Screwed,” she said, just under her breath. No one but me heard the anger coating her words. “Cowards. Why attack from afar? Why the base?”

  Hell if I knew. It didn’t make sense. The only threat to the White City was Atlantean super soldiers, but they weren’t much good anymore—we weren’t much good anymore—since half of them had died by General Allen’s hands or were stranded in Atlantis’s home-time with the rest of the city. So why the base, indeed.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I can go there, help out.” With what, though? I wasn’t a medic. I couldn’t heal people like Weyland. The best I could do was offer a quick taxi ride to the nearest hospital, which, if the White City was targeting Navy buildings, could very well be next.

  Oh god. Had the rest of the world seen this? How long would it take the carnage to show up on the news? On the Internet? An attack in Hawaii—no matter what it looked like, we couldn’t come out and tell the world about time-travel. About the wars. About what SeaSat5 and Atlas were created for, especially since they’d apparently been tools for TAO and the Lemurians all along.