The Atlantis Allegiance

by S. A. Beck

  And that was exactly what happened. Like their first lesson, Marquis showed her some moves and asked her to try them on him. Most of the time she screwed up, barely even managing to touch him. The only time she could do it right was when he slowed down and let her win.

  Jaxon felt her anger and frustration rise. All this crap she had to deal with in her life, and now she had to fight the Untouchable Man while her foster mother watched from the doorway with an amused smile. Why couldn’t people just leave her alone?

  She found herself thrown to the mat again. That always happened when she let her thoughts wander for an instant with this guy.

  “You’re not paying attention to your lesson,” Marquis chided her. “That can be fatal in a real fight.”

  “Like I’m going to get in a real fight,” Jaxon grumbled as she got up. “It’s not like some psycho killer is going to attack me in math class.”

  “The world is a dangerous place. Get up and face me,” her instructor ordered.

  Jaxon sighed. “I’m sick of this. I can’t beat you.”

  “You will if you pay attention and keep trying. Now try to hit me and avoid my counterattack.”

  Jaxon shook her head. What Marquis really meant was “keep missing me by a mile until I humiliate you by throwing you on the mat again.” What was the point?

  “Come on. You’re just standing there,” Marquis said.

  Jaxon grumbled and threw a punch. Marquis dodged it easily. Why were they wasting her time with this? She threw another punch and missed again. It was so totally pointless. Another punch, another miss. No family, a pathetic fake birthday coming up—what was the point of any of it?

  Jaxon missed again as Marquis danced around her. Aaargh, this is so frustrating!

  Marquis grabbed her wrist and was about to throw her when she swore and lashed out. Her fist flew with lightning speed and landed square on Marquis’s chest. He grunted and flew backward, tumbling over himself and rolling right off the mat. From her spot in the doorway, Isadore let out a cruel laugh.

  Jaxon brought her hands to her mouth. “Oh my God, I’m sorry! Did I hurt you?”

  Marquis lay curled up on the floor, clutching his chest. Suddenly his head whipped up and he snarled at her, hatred sparking in his eyes. Jaxon went cold and stepped back.

  An instant later the look was gone, replaced with a serene smile. Marquis clambered awkwardly to his feet and nodded. “Good job, Jaxon, you’re learning.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Jaxon hurried to say. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah, I slipped. Let’s continue with the lesson, shall we?”

  Jaxon and Marquis went through several more moves, practicing flips and blocks, but it all seemed a blur. The only things she could think of were Isadore’s barking, predatory laugh and Marquis’s hateful, murderous glare.

  Chapter 15

  JUNE 9, 2016, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO

  9:45 AM

  “Is he ready?” General Meade asked, leaning over the examination table where Zion Wilson lay unconscious.

  “Almost. I’m giving him a range of drugs to bring him out of his medically induced coma. I’m also giving him that special drug you shared with me from the Pentagon. It’s amazing such a thing exists!” Dr. Jones said, filling a hypodermic needle and sticking it into Wilson’s arm.

  General Meade shrugged. The drug Jones was referring to was a memory suppressor. It had been developed during the Cold War to create sleeper agents in enemy nations. One injection would suppress all memory for up to three months. Special psychologists would then instill new memories into the subject, turning an American accountant into a Russian munitions factory worker or a US Marine into a Chinese soldier. That made them the perfect long-term spies because they themselves believed their roles. Even under torture, they couldn’t reveal their true identities because they were convinced their cover story was true.

  Giving them a new injection every three months was vital, however, or the old memories would start coming back and their artificial identity would fall apart. Part of their new identity was that they were diabetic. The “insulin” the Pentagon provided was actually harmless saline solution, except for one dose every three months that would be the memory suppressor.

  Civilian scientists had been experimenting with memory drugs for years, and the savvier among them figured the military already had something far more powerful, as it did in optics, electronics, and chemical engineering. Dr. Jones, however, was not what anyone would call savvy. He was basically an intelligent idiot who worked well enough when set on a particular task and lacked the imagination or perspective to see beyond it. He would have made a good assistant to Dr. Yamazaki. Pity she had to be put down.

  “When will he awaken?” General Meade asked.

  “In a couple of hours. Then the reeducation can start.”

  Meade nodded and laid a hand on Wilson’s bare shoulder. Strange that it felt no more muscular than a normal man’s, yet this fellow could literally tear him in half. The perfect spy, the perfect soldier.

  “You’re going to be our archetype,” General Meade said to the unconscious figure. “You’re going to be the first of a new regiment in the finest army the world has ever seen.”

  “Once we get him trained up, he’ll be the best soldier you ever had,” Dr. Jones reassured him. “But who are you going to use him against? The Islamists? The Chinese?”

  General Meade gave him a look that even Jones could figure out. The scientist wilted and got back to work.

  Leaving the scientist to do his job, Meade went over to a spare desk on the far end of the lab. He pulled a laptop out of his briefcase and put in a thumb drive that an agent had delivered that morning. It was from Stephen and Isadore Grant—most likely a progress report. Meade had given them strict instructions only to communicate face-to-face or by couriered messages delivered by trusted agents. Now that someone appeared to be stealing Atlanteans, or perhaps even the Atlanteans were banding together, security was more important than ever.

  The thumb drive contained a single .mov file. General Meade plugged in a pair of earphones, put the volume low to be on the safe side, and clicked it open.

  Stephen Grant’s rugged middle-aged face appeared on the screen. “Hello, sir. There have been some new developments in Jaxon’s progress. Following your suggestion, I allowed her into the greenhouse. I’d set up a section for her to work on her own garden and hid a miniature camera just above it—one of those new models that looks like a nail sticking out of the wood. Anyway, she took the bait. Right from the start I could see she was entranced by all the plant life. She seems to have a real affinity for them, just like Dr. Hollis said. I decided to test her ability with plants by leaving her alone and encouraging her to cultivate something. What I found was amazing. It’s best to see for yourself.”

  Stephen’s face disappeared, replaced by a shot from his hidden camera. General Meade leaned in to get a closer look.

  The shot was from above and showed the girl standing over an empty bed of soil. She handled a packet of seeds. After a moment, she opened the packet and poured the seeds into her hand. Each of them was partially sprouted, which was unusual.

  General Meade’s jaw dropped as he saw the sprouts grow within a matter of seconds.

  Jaxon appeared shocked too and tossed them onto the soil.

  Stephen’s face came back. “Did you see that? The seeds grew right in her hand. After she went to bed, I dug them up and put them under the microscope. They look like they’d been sitting for a few days in good soil with plenty of water, but all she did was hold them. And the process began even before she opened the packet! I have no scientific explanation for this. Obviously the power is coming from her, as you suggested, but I have no idea how. We’d have to dissect her to solve this riddle, and maybe even then we wouldn’t find out.”

  General Meade shook his head. Dissect her and lose a future soldier? No, you only sacrificed soldiers when it was absolutely necessary.


  “Now look what happens next,” Stephen said.

  The film went back to the hidden camera. Jaxon walked away, and there was a jump, the time stamp in the upper right-hand corner showing that Stephen had cut a couple minutes of video. Jaxon came back wearing gloves. She picked up one of the seeds. General Meade leaned in closer to the screen, squinting to see the detail. It was hard to make out, but it looked as if the sprout was growing again, although more slowly this time. Jaxon’s next action seemed to confirm this. She dropped the seed and walked away again. Another couple of minutes were cut, and she came back with a second set of gloves. She put them on over the first pair, picked up the seed a second time, and stared at it for a while. It didn’t appear to grow. Looking satisfied, Jaxon got to work on her garden.

  The film cut back to Stephen’s face. “After that, nothing unusual happened, sir. She wore a double set of gloves for the next three hours. None of the seeds she handled with the double gloves show any signs of unusual growth. She did it herself somehow, and she knows it. Even more, she’s learning to control it. Whatever this creature is that you had us adopt, it’s beginning to become aware of what it is. I’ll need some orders, sir, about how to proceed. I’m nervous about it being in the greenhouse with all of my biological warfare research. If it starts fiddling with the poisonous plants, who knows what might happen? What shall I do?”

  The film cut off. General Meade sat back in his chair, rubbing his jaw. After a moment’s thought, he retrieved a piece of paper from his case and wrote a short note:

  “Let her continue in the greenhouse and monitor her progress closely. Try to keep her away from the poisonous plants. That’s an experiment for another time. Keep me informed about her progress both with her special abilities as well as her education. She’s young enough to mold into what we want and old enough that we won’t have to wait for more than a couple of years for her to mature. She may be the best soldier of the lot, so take good care of her, and for God’s sake, get your wife to warm up a little. This kid needs a mother, and if we give her one, she’ll be entirely under our power.”

  Signing it, he folded the note and put it in an envelope, which he sealed then put inside another sealed envelope. He’d give that to the courier later today. In the meantime, he had to look through the latest UFO data. The activity seemed to be gaining pace, with increased sightings in the stratosphere and more low runs over sensitive military installations on all continents. He hoped they would have time to develop his new army before the invasion. If they didn’t, everything would be lost.

  Two hours later, he, Jones, and a Pentagon hypnotist sat in a windowless, soundproofed white room. Zion Wilson lay on a white recliner, his eyes fluttering in half-consciousness. Dr. Jones and the hypnotist sat behind him, and General Meade stood in front. Jones busied himself with examining Wilson’s vital statistics from a machine hooked up to the patient while the hypnotist spoke in low, soothing tones, his voice never rising above a whisper and never stopping.

  “You remember nothing. You are nothing. Your mind is a blank slate. Today you will become something new, and that will be the only thing you want to be. Your name is Orion. Orion. Orion. You are coming awake now. When you do, you will open your eyes. Standing before you is your master, General Meade. General Meade. General Meade. He is all that matters. You will obey him every day for the rest of your life. He is your life. You exist only to serve him…”

  General Meade shifted nervously while he waited for the patient to wake up. This was the final test. He needed these Atlanteans to serve him and him alone. Only then could he be sure they would be used correctly. The future of the project was far too important to let his commanders in the Pentagon have a say in it. Doing this was far beyond his orders and counted as gross insubordination. Considering the patient’s status as government property, it could even be considered theft. If the Pentagon brass heard of this, he’d be knocked down to private and be reassigned to cleaning latrines in Guantanamo until retirement.

  But there was no other way. This was too important to trust with anyone else. Only Jones and the hypnotist, Dr. Bill Ziegler, knew what was happening here. Luckily they were both under his thumb. Jones was a weakling, and Meade had dug up enough on Ziegler’s past to ensure his silence. He had told Ziegler that at the first sign of his disobedience, the world would discover that his title of “doctor” had been purchased from a fake university on the Internet. A second slipup would lead to Mrs. Ziegler getting some photos of her hypnotist husband and a certain young woman. Any further rebellion would be quashed by Marquis, who could get quite messy with an ice pick. He was even messier, and slower, with a sharpened spoon. Meade had seen the photos, and they were worse than anything he’d seen on the battlefield. Ziegler had thrown up when he saw them. The hypnotist would be no trouble at all.

  Ziegler would behave, and despite his seedy secret life and fake degree, he was quite the hypnotist. When Meade had discovered him, he had been working for the mafia. Why the mafia needed a hypnotist was something Meade had never found out and wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Mrs. Ziegler knew all about her husband’s mob connections and didn’t mind as long as the money kept rolling in.

  Civilians. No wonder this country was going down the toilet.

  Ziegler’s voice purred on. “You will awaken soon, Orion. The first person you see will be General Meade, your master. Your life is his. You live to serve him. Now I will count backward to zero, and you will awaken. Ten… nine… eight…”

  General Meade stood at attention in front of the recliner. This was the moment of truth. Of all the things he had done, this was the act that would finally mark his break with the armed forces. From now on, the country he’d sworn to protect could quite rightly consider him a maverick and a traitor, even though his actions were all guided by a sense of duty to his nation.

  “Seven… six… five…”

  More than four decades of service. Three public wars and a dozen secret ones. How many people had he killed to protect America? How many cities had he bombed? How many foreign politicians and scientists had he assassinated? It all seemed such a waste. He didn’t feel any sympathy for America’s enemies, but mankind should be united in the face of a far greater enemy. Race? Religion? Nationality? All meant nothing if an enemy was coming from the stars.

  “Four… three… two…”

  He’d done so many things out of necessity. Killed, maimed, burned, imprisoned, but he had never enslaved. Killing was natural, normal. Slavery, though, that was a sin. He had fought all his life to preserve freedom and felt there was no more terrible thing than to take it away from an innocent person. And that was exactly what he was about to do here.

  “One…”

  There was no other way, General Meade kept telling himself. Enslave a few in order to save the rest. It was a terrible, necessary sacrifice.

  “Awaken!”

  General Meade tensed as Orion opened his eyes and looked right at him.

  Stiffly, Orion got off the recliner and knelt before Meade. Though his voice croaked from lack of use, he said, “I am yours, General.”

  Meade slumped. Yes, a necessary sacrifice, but why was it always him forcing someone else to make the sacrifice?

  Chapter 16

  JUNE 18, 2016, PRESBYTERIAN HOSPITAL, ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO

  11:35 AM

  Dr. Akiko Yamazaki lay in her hospital bed, struggling to understand. It was so difficult. The world felt muted, distant. Her thoughts were disorganized, and half the time, she couldn’t remember basic things.

  She knew she had suffered a stroke, and she knew it had happened in some strange circumstance. There was something menacing about her illness, as if it hadn’t happened in the usual way, but she couldn’t remember what. It was just a feeling. Her feelings also told her it had something to do with her job. She was a geneticist, one of the best in the world, and she had been studying… something.

  Trying to organize her thoughts was exhausting, like trying to drink
when the nurse came to feed her.

  She slept.

  Sometime later, she awoke with a new determination to come back to life. She struggled to move her arms and managed to move the right one an inch or so. At least she thought she had. She couldn’t move her head to check.

  So difficult. Maybe she should sleep again.

  No. She had to keep trying.

  She opened her eyes and stared at the white hospital ceiling. How long had she been here? Where had her assistant gone? He hadn’t visited her in a while.

  What was his name again? Yale? Yin?

  Yuhle. That was it.

  He was an astronomer like her.

  No, wait, she was a geneticist. That meant Yuhle was an astronomer too.

  No, a geneticist!

  Dr. Yamazaki moaned. What horror. She had been brilliant once. Vaguely she remembered awards and conference invitations and papers in top journals. Now look at her, a mindless shell in a hospital bed.

  Where was Yuhle? He had told her something important the last time he was there. What was it? Something about their project.

  They were archaeologists, right? Something like that. And they were uncovering a lost civilization.

  No, damn it. That was only half right. They were geneticists uncovering a lost civilization. Her boss’s name was Ying. No, her assistant’s name was Yuhle. They were geneticists, and they were uncovering a lost civilization.

  How would a geneticist do that? She couldn’t remember.

  Tears welled out of her eyes. She’d never be the same again. If only Ying would come visit again. He could explain the archaeology project to her, and she’d understand.

  Dr. Yamazaki sensed movement in the room. She blinked her tears away and looked toward the door. They had positioned her bed so she could see the door without having to move her head. That was kind. They were kind to the dead here.