Landlocked (Atlas Link Series Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

you’ve helped TAO make.”
    “Don’t you ever think it’s all just a bit ridiculous?” she asked.
    Okay. Maybe not so dissimilar after all. I sat down beside her and took the risk of wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She laid her head against my chest. Her reaction confused me more than the risk I took to get it.
    “Those were my thoughts the other night, after we got back from the bar,” I confided.
    “Sometimes I wish we never found that cache of Link Pieces in the Sargasso Sea.” Her words were barely louder than a whisper, but said with the weight of a thousand stones. “Everything was fine until then, and you know it.”
    It wasn’t, really. Everything had started when Chelsea showed up. Valerie, my old colleague and partner in all things Lemurian back then, started threatening to bring the war to SeaSat5 the second Chelsea had teleported on board. If Chelsea hadn’t appeared out of nowhere, I would have never gotten the chance to meet her again or work beside her on SeaSat5.
    But if Chelsea hadn’t shown up, things would have still been blissfully boring, and in a few years, I would have been making video games for the masses, not rendering a map for the military.
    I didn’t say anything back. She didn’t need to know that sometimes I wish I’d never walked out the Franklin’s alleyway door at all.
    I kept quiet and pulled her closer to me, clinging onto the moment as they were few and far between these days. The smell of her shampoo lingered on me even after we met the team for Launch.



y the time Trevor and I joined Pike, Dr. Hill, and Sophia in the Transfer Room, I’d pulled myself together. No more whining, no more worrying. The stuff with the band could wait; SeaSat5 could not. Whatever was on the other side of this Link Piece couldn’t either.
    A wooden African idol stared at me with wild, sunken eyes. The visage jolted me so much my skin crawled. I
really
didn’t expect this to end well.
    I treated the idol with caution. Though I claimed my spot across from Sophia like I normally did, I watched the Piece with wary eyes. My instincts weren’t always right, but something told me to call the mission off and run as far away as possible.
    I glanced up at Sophia and saw none of my worries reflected in her eyes.
    It’s just you
.
    “All aboard!” I shouted.
    Sophia and I linked hands above the idol, each of us with one hand on the carving itself. The other three placed their hands over ours like this was some kind of team huddle.
    Within moments the Waterstar map encased my mind, my vision. Cerulean lines shot out before me, connected to objects at various points in the distance, sliding past me as the route of the idol’s connection became clear. Sophia stood next to me in the hazy blue around us. She guided our travel through time like we were a chair on a ski lift headed for the top of a mountain. Then, as quickly as it appeared, the map was gone.
    I blinked a few times to clear my head and to orient myself with our new environment. Our new place-time.
    Darkness shadowed our immediate surroundings, making it hard to see much outside of our little group huddle. Pike shifted his gun down, something he never did, even when faced with cultures who had no idea what a gun was—something that happened more times than not. Turns out the Link Piece makers liked their connections to the ancient world. Their fascination made Link Piece travel fun for Dr. Hill and me while Trevor found the lack of technology horrific. Sophia didn’t seem to care either way, except that one time we ended up in the Scottish Highlands and she refused to speak the whole time we were there.
    Trevor dropped his pistol next. Strange for him, too. I slowly looked around us.
    Soldiers in forest green tunics surrounded us, terrifying-looking guns held at the ready. Those things might actually shoot lasers or plasma instead of bullets. Hey, it was the future wasn’t it?
    I glanced up at the ceiling. A familiar drawing