The Atlantis Gene

by S. A. Beck

  “We have to get Jaxon first!”

  Grunt nodded. “We will. I’ll help. After that, I’m out.”

  Vivian stroked his arm again. “Honey, don’t say that, I—”

  “Don’t ‘honey’ me. I said no, and you know I mean it.”

  Vivian hung her head. “Yeah, I know you mean it.”

  Otto threw his hands in the air. “But why?”

  Grunt glowered at him. “Did you miss the part where I said it was none of your damn business?”

  Otto felt something harden inside his chest. He glared back at Grunt. “It’s my damn business if you’re going to endanger the Atlantis Allegiance and my girlfriend. We need you.”

  Grunt’s face got even redder than it was before, and for a moment, Otto thought he might lash out. After a few seconds, Grunt visibly controlled himself and replied, “I’ve been to Morocco before, back when I was living life way differently than I am now. I’ve been all over North Africa, in fact, doing things I ain’t proud of. I’m not going back to the scene of the crime.”

  Crime? Otto thought. He wanted to ask, but Grunt didn’t look as though he was going to say any more than he already had. He took a deep breath and said, “Look, both of you have dropped hints that you did some dirty work before you came clean. I don’t care. The past is the past. We need—”

  “What the hell do you know about it?” Grunt bellowed as Vivian restrained him. “You think the past just conveniently goes away? Tell that to the people we…”

  Grunt’s voice trailed off. He turned and stalked out of the room, muttering “dumb kid” under his breath.

  Otto was surprised to see Vivian didn’t follow. Instead she stood there, brushing at her eyes.

  “You okay?” Otto asked.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You coming with us to Morocco?”

  Vivian paused and took a deep breath. “Yes.”

  Otto looked over his shoulder in the direction where Grunt had disappeared.

  “So what’s wrong with—”

  “Don’t ask.” Vivian shook her head and walked off.

  When Otto returned to the living room, he found everyone packing up to leave. Dr. Yamazaki gave the old scientist a hug.

  “Thank you for all your help. You take care of yourself, you hear me?”

  Dr. Smith chuckled. “It looks like you’re the one who should worry.”

  Dr. Yamazaki’s face clouded. “I feel like I’ve been drafted into a war. At least I’m on the right side.”

  Dr. Smith shook his head. “It’s never as clear-cut as that, as you well know.”

  As the others started filing out of the room and to the driveway, Dr. Smith put a hand on Otto’s shoulder. He held out a gold chain and medallion. “Take my St. Christopher.”

  Otto blinked. It was the same one he had noticed hanging from Dr. Smith’s rearview mirror. “Are you sure?”

  The professor grinned. “He’s the patron saint of travelers. My mother gave it to me when I was on my first big trip, to the Pacific in 1944.”

  “Your mother gave this to you when you went off to World War Two? I can’t take this.”

  Dr. Smith chuckled, deep laugh lines creasing his face. “Sure you can. You’ll be traveling more than I will.”

  Otto put it around his neck, feeling a bit embarrassed. “Well, if you want, but I’m not really big into saints and stuff.”

  “That’s okay. They’re big into you.”

  Otto didn’t know what to say to that. Dr. Smith extended a hand. Otto shook it.

  “Good luck, and I hope you find that girlfriend of yours,” the old man said.

  “Finding her isn’t the problem, saving her is. I hope I’m man enough for that.”

  “Well, if you can live with a woman like Vivian and still think about your girlfriend, you’re a better man than me.”

  Otto rolled his eyes. The guy was old enough to be his grandfather, or even his great-grandfather.

  Dr. Smith grinned. “What I mean to say is, I think you have every chance of saving her. The real fight will be after that. I’ve seen the government do a lot of bad things in my time. When the military did atomic tests in the Marshall Islands in the forties and fifties, they knew the wind would blow the radiation onto neighboring islands. They didn’t mind, because then they could study the effects on the islanders. A decade before that, they told a group of black men with syphilis that they were being given a new type of medication. It was a placebo, nothing but sugar and water. Really they just wanted to see what would happen if the patients were left untreated. The worst of their dirty tricks are reserved for minorities and foreigners, but they’ll hurt white Americans, too, if it gets them what they want. Don’t think your privileged background makes you immune. There are elements in this government that don’t care a fig about us, but mostly the people who make up this great country, even in the government, are decent folk. It’s important to remember that.”

  Otto grimaced. “I haven’t been seeing many decent folk in this country lately.”

  Dr. Smith cocked his head. “Really? You need to look harder. You’re like a fish, cursing the ocean because it contains sharks.”

  The old man took the St. Christopher out of Otto’s hand and put it around Otto’s neck. “I pray this protects you. Look for the good no matter how much bad you see, and I think you’ll be all right. Now go find that girl of yours.”

  Otto nodded, too moved to speak, and went out to join the rest of the Atlantis Allegiance.

  Chapter 14

  JUNE 29, 2016, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  6:00 PM

  “So, how are those newspaper assignments going?” Isadore asked.

  It was dinnertime, and Jaxon sat with her foster parents in their sleek, modern dining room. The walls were all spotlessly white. No pictures hung on them because, as they explained, “it distracts from the conversation.”

  In the center stood a long table of heavy, worn oak. The centerpiece was a bronze sculpture consisting of big globes attached by little rods and a couple of spikes sticking out. A shiny brass plate on the base revealed it was called “Consciousness Rising IV.”

  The only other decorations in the room were four neatly pruned potted plants, all standing in identical white pots in each corner of the room. For some reason, they reminded Jaxon of her geometry class, where Mr. Wilson always kept giving examples from chess. Jaxon felt as if she was being checkmated by ferns.

  She giggled a little as she took another bite of salad. What a weird thought. This place is driving me crazy.

  As if her life wasn’t crazy enough already. Cokehead classmates, painted grass, and then a secret life wandering the streets in the dead of night.

  It was the city, not just the house. At first she thought both were boring, but suddenly everything seemed full of possibility. Los Angeles had finally become interesting.

  She took another bite of salad. Was she forgetting something?

  “Jaxon? Hellooooooo,” Stephen said.

  Jaxon perked up. “Hmmm?”

  “Isadore asked you a question.”

  “Oh yeah!” Jaxon turned to her foster mother and nodded. “Sure. That’s fine.”

  A flicker of annoyance passed over Isadore’s face. “It wasn’t a yes or no question. I was asking how those newspaper assignments were going.”

  “Oh, fine. She’s giving them to us every week.”

  “How is it going with the dyslexia?”

  Jaxon shrugged and shoveled more food in her mouth. She didn’t want to talk about it. “It takes a bit longer to get things done.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full. It’s unladylike. I noticed you picked an interesting topic.”

  Jaxon looked up at Isadore. She had been reading her papers? It would have been nice if she’d asked first. Just because Jaxon had to write them on Isadore’s spare laptop didn’t mean that she could read anything she wanted.

  A cold wave of worry passed through her. She had been writing about t
he teenaged vigilante for the past three weeks. It seemed as though there was a new story about him almost every day. Since she’d learned the vigilante was Brett, she’d been tracking everything the press said about him. The day before, the teacher had asked for volunteers to read their papers. Though embarrassed by her dyslexia and bad reading skills, she couldn’t resist the temptation to put her hand up. Although Courtney and some of the others did their usual snickering, watching Brett squirm in the back row, trying to hide his embarrassment, had been worth it.

  But had she been too obvious about the whole thing? She’d been sneaking out most nights. What if Stephen and Isadore caught her? What if they put two and two together?

  She realized she needed to say something. Fast.

  “Yeah, well, it’s kinda interesting, you know? Growing up in so many group homes, I met a lot of problem kids, kids who had been in trouble with the law and stuff. This guy is taking that whole rebel thing and turning it around.”

  “Don’t you think it’s a bit dangerous?” Isadore asked.

  “Sure, but he’s good at martial arts, so he can get away with it,” she replied, quickly adding, “That’s what the papers say, anyway.”

  Isadore shook her head. “Being good at martial arts isn’t always enough. If that young man comes up against someone with a gun, he could wind up dead.”

  Jaxon shifted in her seat. That was something she had been worried about. She and Brett had talked about it, and Brett had said that even though his dad had a pistol in the house, he didn’t want to bring it along. He was afraid having a gun would make other people quicker to use theirs, and he wasn’t sure he could shoot someone anyway.

  “Yeah, I guess he could,” Jaxon murmured.

  Stephen took a sip of wine and asked, “Do you think what he’s doing is right?”

  Jaxon hadn’t really given it much thought. “Yeah. I mean, yeah, he’s probably breaking some laws, but he’s helping people too. The police can’t be everywhere.”

  “Certainly not in LA,” Isadore grumbled. “My car has been broken into twice.”

  Stephen inclined his head. “But if doing the right thing even if it’s illegal and dangerous is morally acceptable, then where does that leave the rule of law?”

  Jaxon almost groaned out loud. She sensed another of Stephen and Isadore’s philosophical dinners coming up. Last night it had been “What’s More Important: Security Or Democracy?” The night before that, it was “Is Human Testing Justified If It Saves Lives?” Most of those discussions were more like lectures, with them doing the lecturing and her doing the listening.

  But before the lecture, she always had to give her opinion.

  “I dunno,” Jaxon said with a shrug.

  Her foster parents weren’t going to let her off that easy.

  “But what do you think?” Stephen persisted. “Is it okay to break a law if it helps society?”

  “Um, sure, I guess.”

  “But how do you decide if you’re right or wrong?” Isadore asked.

  Jaxon sighed. Couldn’t she just eat her dinner in peace?

  “I don’t know. I guess it’s obvious sometimes. Like during Civil Rights when black people marched against segregation. They broke a bad law so it would get changed. And then there are the people in the Middle East protesting against dictatorships. They’re doing the right thing.”

  “Yes, but who gets to decide?”

  Jaxon suppressed a groan. It looked as though the conversation was going to go on for a while.

  “I guess you have to decide for yourself,” Jaxon said. “And if you’re wrong, then it’s your responsibility.”

  Isadore took a sip from her wine and asked, “So everyone just gets to decide whether to follow the law or not?”

  “Doesn’t everyone make that decision anyway? Sure, most people choose to follow the law, but sometimes the law isn’t strong enough to protect people, and you have to take things into your own hands.”

  She hadn’t really thought about it much before. She had been going out at night for the excitement, but she had discovered that when she helped someone, she always felt as though she had made a difference. She’d been bullied so much, ignored and kicked around so much, that she felt good protecting someone in the same situation.

  Smacking someone who really, really deserved it was a plus too.

  Especially those guys attacking that prostitute just down the block. It still sent chills down her spine to remember that woman talking about being in a group home. She wondered how many of the girls she’d met in the system would end up like that.

  Stephen and Isadore gave each other a look and nodded. Jaxon prepared for the lecture. They would talk and talk, and her eyes would glaze over, and she would nod automatically until they stopped. It was always the same.

  Not that evening. Strangely, they returned to their meal and didn’t say a word.

  At midnight, Jaxon slipped out as usual. If Brett hadn’t been waiting for her, she wouldn’t have gone at all, because her foster parents’ conversation had made her nervous, but she had been too flustered to make up an excuse to use her cell phone. She could have always said she needed to check an assignment with another student, but she didn’t trust herself to say that without shaking and stammering.

  Once she was vaulting out of her window, she felt an extra thrill at the risk she was taking. As her fingers left the windowsill behind and she launched herself through the air, on instinct she tucked into a roll, did a somersault, and landed on her feet in the yard.

  She blinked and looked down at herself in wonder. She’d never learned to do that. It had just come naturally. Grinning from ear to ear, she sprinted through the backyard, over the fence, and into the residential area behind the Grants’ home.

  As she strolled down the dimly lit sidewalk, passing little patches of front lawn, she let the quiet of the night envelop her. It was so peaceful out there. It was strange, because she shouldn’t feel at peace at all. She was a teenage girl walking alone in the middle of the night along an empty street. She was inviting trouble. In fact, she actually wanted to find it. So why should that be the most relaxing part of her day?

  Because everything was clear. There she didn’t have to fit into anyone’s mold. She didn’t have to take anyone’s trash talking. All she had to do was deal with dangerous people, people who wanted to hurt her or someone else. Bad guys versus good girl, with no rules and no one watching. That made things a lot simpler.

  Jaxon shook her head as she looked at all the brown patches of dead grass in front of the homes. California’s drought had gotten so bad no one was allowed to water their lawns anymore, and the people who lived in that neighborhood couldn’t afford to paint their grass green.

  Then she had an idea. She checked her watch. It was a bit early to meet Brett. She had some time to kill.

  Jaxon stopped and took a step to the edge of the nearest lawn. Peering at the darkened house a moment to make sure no one was watching, she crouched down and placed her hand on the dry, crackly grass.

  She felt a tingling in her palm and all her fingers. She relaxed, focusing on her hand and imagining life coming back to the grass. After a moment, she pulled away her hand and gasped.

  It had worked. The brown grass was marked by a green patch in the shape of her hand. She touched it and found it smooth and lush.

  For a minute, she did nothing but stare, her mind empty of thoughts.

  She walked down the street for a little while, her mind filled with wonder. It was a miracle she was witnessing, and she had performed it. On impulse, she went to another lawn and tried again.

  Again she left a handprint of green grass where all the other grass was brown and dead.

  Wait, dead? Jaxon wondered. Was she actually bringing plants back to life? That sounded impossible, but then again, what she was already doing was impossible. Perhaps the grass wasn’t really dead, just in hibernation until more rain fell? She didn’t know enough about plants to say. She’d have to ask
Stephen.

  By the time she made it to the rendezvous with Brett, a dozen green handprints decorated the lawns of the neighborhood between her house and the highway.

  Brett was waiting in his Porsche on an access road to the highway. He waved as she came into the beams of his headlights, and he opened the door for her.

  “Aha! The superhero welcomes his sidekick,” he said in a voice that sounded as though it belonged on some cartoon.

  “I’m not your sidekick.”

  “I was just kidding. I would never call my girlfriend my sidekick. I’m a feminist, you know.”

  “Yeah, sure you are. Reality check: I’m not your girlfriend.”

  “Oh, come on! I’ve put in the time.”

  Jaxon rolled her eyes. “Are we going to go fight evil, or am I going to have to smack you?”

  Brett revved the car and peeled out onto the access ramp.

  “This car Daddy bought you isn’t going to change my mind,” Jaxon said, buckling her seat belt. She didn’t trust Brett’s driving.

  “Maybe not, but it’s going to get us to a crappy neighborhood where we can have some fun and get into the papers again. Hey, did you read the late edition?”

  “No.”

  “We’re in it for that carjacker we grabbed down on Florence. Look it up. The headline is ‘Mystery Teen Superhero gets Female Sidekick.’”

  “Great, the newspaper reporter is as sexist as you are,” Jaxon grumbled. Then she grew nervous. “Aren’t you worried about getting caught?”

  Brett shrugged. “Not before that girl live-streamed us.”

  “Did she get me too?” Jaxon asked, anxious.

  “I’m not sure. I hope her phone didn’t pick up you saying my name.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “It’s okay. You couldn’t have known what she was doing.”

  “Damn, we really could be in trouble,” Jaxon said. She chewed on her knuckle.

  Brett grinned. “Nah, don’t worry about it! They’ll never connect us to that video or to the newspaper reports. It’s not like reporters are watching beatingthebums.com. And the homeless guy isn’t going to say anything. Who would listen to him?”