“To give us the Atlantis Gene.”
“Yes. She did it without my knowledge or consent. She claimed it was an experiment, to provide you with the survival gene, to see how you would fare. It was already done, and I went along.
“Approximately twenty thousand years after she administered the Atlantis Gene, another vessel from our world arrived. It landed in Antarctica, where it has remained under the ice since. The vessel contains the last of our people.”
“What is it?”
“A tomb—you were right about that. But it is much more. It is a resurrection ship. On our world, every person is allowed a life of a hundred years. There are exceptions, such as for deep-space explorers such as myself. We have mastered medical science, but accidents happen. In those events, our citizens resurrect in these vessels.”
“That’s what they are?” David asked. “Dead Atlanteans?”
“Yes. Massacred when our home world was attacked. All except for one. Occasionally, our people vote to have a citizen to be archived. Someone of great achievement. It is a cultural honor. The person archived in that vessel was General Ares. He is a relic of our past, something we have moved on from. He was saved as a reminder. He is our most famous soldier. During the attack, somehow he got the ship off our home world. He brought it here.”
“The others in the vessel in Antarctica… they can’t wake up? Exit the tubes?”
“They can. However, we are now a non-violent species. The attack on our world, the brutality, the carnage… the tubes can only heal physical wounds. The people in Antarctica can awaken, but they retain their memories, down to the last agonizing second they died. It would be too cruel to awaken them. Their minds are wired a bit differently from yours. Psychologically, the trauma they endured is too great. They cannot escape the memories of what happened to them. They exist in a constant state of purgatory, unable to die permanently, unable to rise again.”
David wouldn’t have believed it, but he had experienced it—death and resurrection in the tube. Dorian had shot and killed him; and he had awoken, in a new body, an exact replica. “That’s what happened to me, how I awoke in the tube after Dorian killed me. It was just like the people from your home world.”
“Yes.”
“How does it work? Resurrection?”
“The science is rather complex—”
“Dumb it down for me. I want to understand.” David glanced at the cube, which still wasn’t quite out of sight. “We have time.”
“Very well. The piece of genetic technology you call the Atlantis Gene actually performs several functions. The most relevant, in this instance, is organizing radiation from the body into a data stream. Every human body emits radiation. The Atlantis Gene turns those isotopes into a cellular blueprint, a download of your body, including the cells in your brain, which contain your memories, up to the second you died.”
“The second time Dorian killed me, I awoke in the Gibraltar ship. How?”
“That is where our stories intersect, Mr. Vale. When the resurrection ship arrived, forty thousand years ago, we had already given humans the Atlantis Gene. Ares was keenly interested. He saw in humans an opportunity, a chance to build a new army, to fight back against our enemy. He insisted that the Atlantis Gene put you in danger, made you a target for our adversary. He convinced my partner. She colluded with him behind my back, modifying the therapy, looking for a way to increase your survival abilities. I observed the changes and was suspicious. I knew your species was advancing far too rapidly, but of course we had never tampered with another species in this way. I didn’t know what to expect. And I never imagined she had betrayed me. But I know why she did it: guilt, for something she did on our home world, an act that led to our demise.”
“What—”
“That is a story for another time. Here on Earth, Ares had what he needed: the final gene therapy to create his army. He tried to destroy the lander, and us with it—that was what happened off the coast of Gibraltar. The ship was split into pieces. We assumed his next move would be to commandeer our space vessel. He needs it to transport his army. I locked it down, preventing anyone from either the lander or Antarctica from reaching it. I also set a series of alarms and countermeasures. But our lander off the coast of Gibraltar was coming apart quickly. My partner was knocked out. I picked her up and carried her to the only place I could go.”
“Antarctica.”
“Yes. And Ares was waiting on me. He shot and killed her. Of course he had disabled resurrection for both of us in Antarctica. That was his plan. He shot me too, in the chest, but I stumbled back through the portal. I emerged in a different part of the lander in Gibraltar.”
David’s mind raced. Yes. In the room where he had resurrected the second time, there was a damaged suit. “The suit on the floor.”
Janus nodded. “It was mine. When I escaped to that section, my first move was to seal the lander off from Antarctica, to protect myself. Then I managed to reach the tube—one of the ones you resurrected in. After I was healed, I took stock. My situation was dire. The shard of the ship I found myself in was now deep underwater and far away from the coast. If I exited, I would drown long before I reached the surface, and I had no way to replicate anything with an oxygen tank.” He glanced at David. “The Immari colonel’s uniform I replicated for you was much more simple.”
“How did you—”
“I will come to it,” Janus said, holding his hand up. “I was trapped. And alone. My partner was dead, and to my surprise, my thoughts went first to her. Resurrection is a closely regulated technology. A death sequence, sent via the radiation from the Atlantis Gene, is impossible to fake, as it must be: imagine the implications of waking to find you have a double. I tried at first to force her resurrection, to trick the system into thinking she had died. The true death sequence had been sent to the ship in Antarctica, and Ares had deleted it. My entire strategy was to fake her death to the computer in my section and have her resurrect in the part of the ship closest to the shore—so that she could escape and, hopefully, stop Ares. I tried everything. I failed. However, thirteen thousand years later, I succeeded, in a way. In 1918, Patrick Pierce placed his dying wife in the tube, and Kate inside her. The computer must have executed the resurrection sequence then; but the child did not mature as a normal resurrection fetus would—it was confined by the mother’s body. Yet once removed from the mother, the child, Kate, began to grow—and, it seems that now, her memories have returned. Those memories from my partner have lain dormant in Kate’s mind all this time. Remarkable.”
“But how does Dorian have Ares’s memories?”
Janus shook his head. “As I said, I was desperate. I tried everything. I must have authorized any resurrection. Ares had joined our expedition and we had his radiation signature and memories. But… the memories would have ended thousands of—”
“Dorian also died twice in Antarctica, if the reports are true. Ares could have filled in the blanks.”
“Yes… that is possible. Ares could have easily added additional memories, even shown them to Dorian during his resurrection there. As for Kate, the memories, in the recesses of her mind, they would have exerted some influence, steered her decisions, like subconscious cues.” He paced away from David. “She became a geneticist, intent on studying abnormalities in brain wiring. Subconsciously, she was grasping for a way to stabilize the Atlantis Gene and complete her work. It is quite a story.” Janus was deep in thought, seemingly somewhere else.
“So… what happened to you?” David asked, for lack of anything else to say.
“Nothing. For thirteen thousand years, nothing happened to me. I thought my attempts at escape and resurrecting my dead companion had failed. My last option was to kill myself in my section and program my own resurrection in the other compartment. But I was unable to do it. I had seen what had become of those from my home world who had died a violent death, the people in the tubes in Antarctica, those trapped in perpetual purgatory. So I went into th
e tube, and I remained there for thirteen thousand years, waiting, hoping something would change.”
David knew instantly what “the change” was. In Antarctica, David had held off Dorian and his men, allowing Kate and her father to escape. Her father had exploded two nuclear devices in Gibraltar, shattering the piece of the lander he had unearthed. “The nuclear blasts.”
“Yes. They moved the section I was in closer to northern Africa. Morocco and Ceuta specifically. I immediately activated my link to the ship. I saw what had happened in Gibraltar, then I connected to Antarctica and watched the footage there. I knew you had sacrificed your life to save a man, a woman, and two boys. The other man, who I did not know was Dorian at the time, had been far less gallant. You observed the Human Code, our morality. You had a respect for human life. I knew Ares, and I knew what would happen next. You and Dorian were enemies. He would have you fight to the death and take the winner. I decided to download your data feed. I had to reveal my avatar, momentarily, to capture your radiation signature. The rest you know. Upon your death, you awakened in the part of the ship I had been confined to. I programmed the tubes to self-destruct—to ensure you went forward, venturing out.”
“Why? What did you think I could do?”
“Save lives. I saw what kind of man you were. I knew what you would do. And you did something else, something more: you led me to a cure.”
“You couldn’t have known,” David said.
“No. I had no idea. For the first time in thirteen thousand years, my part of the ship was near land. I could escape. The world I found horrified me, especially the Immari. I am, however, a scientist and a pragmatist. I was not aware of Continuity at this point. From what I could see, the Immari were conducting the most advanced genetic experiments. I joined them, hoping to use their knowledge, to find a cure.”
“Your cure. It’s a fake, isn’t it?”
“It is quite real.”
“What does it do?” David demanded.
Janus glanced at the stone box that lay at the edge of the soft yellow light from the cube. “It corrects a mistake, an act I failed to stop a very long time ago.”
“Speak English.”
Janus ignored David’s order. He simply stared at the box. “The alpha was the last piece I needed. I can’t believe they saved it across the ages.”
“Last piece of what?”
“A therapy that will roll back all of our genetic updates—everything, including the Atlantis Gene. The remaining humans on this planet will be as they were when we found them.”
CHAPTER 92
Somewhere off the coast of Italy
Dorian’s last jab had hit Kate in the heart, he knew it. He knew her. She was so vulnerable, so easy to manipulate. He could play her like a piano.
Her eyes were closed now, but he knew she was thinking of him.
He leaned his head back against the seat cushion, and the helicopter faded away, as if he were falling down a well. He couldn’t stop the memory.
He stood in a room with seven doors. He held a rifle.
A door opened, and someone wearing an environmental suit ran in carrying another person. Dorian fired at the limp body the runner was carrying. The blast ripped it to pieces and threw both of them back against the doors.
The live one squirmed, struggling to hold the dead body. Dorian closed the distance and raised his rifle. The figure rose. Dorian fired, hitting the suit dead in the middle, but his target was already through another door. He had escaped.
Dorian considered pursuing. He ran back to the control panel and worked it with his fingers. No. His enemy was in a part of the ship in Gibraltar that offered no escape. Serves him right—an eternity in a tomb below the sea.
Dorian manipulated the controls, programming one of the portal doors to take him to the scientists’ deep-space vessel. He had the genetic therapy he needed to complete the transformation. Once he had the ship, he would have revenge for his people.
The control panel froze. Dorian stared at it. The scientists had locked their vessel down. Very clever. They were quite smart; but he was smarter.
He walked out of the room with the bank of doors and down the hallway. Dorian knew this hallway. He had seen it before. A door hissed open.
The same room. Three suits hung here now, and there were three cases on the small bench.
He put on a suit and took two of the cases.
He stalked out of the room, to a lab. He programmed the cases, then picked up a silver cylinder that contained the final therapy.
He donned the suit and exited the ship.
The area outside was an ice cathedral, just as he had seen before.
He set the case down and tapped a few places on his arm, on a control panel built into the suit. Slowly, the case changed. It seemed to flow together, and then the silver-white fluid that had been an alloy swirled at the ground and moved higher, swaying back and forth, like a cobra emerging from a basket. Two arms separated from the silver column, then clashed together. Tendrils reached across until the glowing door was complete. Instinctively, Dorian knew what it was: a wormhole. A gateway to the exact point he needed to reach.
Dorian stepped through.
He stood on a mountaintop. No, it was more than a mountain. A volcano. Tidal waves of liquid rock burned and churned below. A tropical paradise spread out across the islands that surrounded it.
He held the cylinder out, then dropped it into the soup of liquid rock.
What was this?
His mind seemed to answer. A backup plan. If I fail—if I’m trapped on the scientists’ vessel—the genetic transformation will still go forward. It would only be a matter of time before the volcano erupted, shooting the therapy into the air and then raining it down around the world.
He set the other case down and it formed another door. He stepped through it.
He emerged on the bridge of the scientists’ vessel. It was buried of course, but he could quickly remedy that.
He accessed the controls, turning the ship’s systems on one by one. He turned his head.
Did he feel…
The air… it was draining. Yes, he could feel it now.
Dorian had known that it was a risk—that the scientist could try to trap or kill him, but he had no choice but to take the risk. Waiting would have served no purpose. He tried to focus on the crisis at hand.
How long did he have?
He raced out of the bridge. His mind combed through the options.
The shuttle bay. No. He had nowhere to go. The ship was at least two hundred meters below the surface, maybe more. What was protocol?
Did they have any portal-making technology on board? Were they allowed to carry it? Even if they did, he would never find it.
EVA suits. Yes, a suit would have oxygen.
He could feel the air growing thinner by the second. He stopped and pressed his hand against the wall, activating a ship map. EVA suits. Where would they be? Near an airlock.
His breath grew raspy.
He swallowed, but he couldn’t quite get it down.
He worked the map. He needed another option. Medical. It was close.
He stumbled down the hall. The doors parted, and he collapsed inside.
A bank of six shimmering glass tubes spread out before him.
He crawled.
How fitting, he thought. To spend eternity in a tube, far below the surface. That is my fate. I cannot escape it. I will never greet death, never fulfill my destiny. My army will never rise, and I will never rest.
The tube opened.
He crawled inside.
Dorian was again in the helicopter. The wind blew across his face, and the roar of the rotor blades thumped in his ears.
For the first time, it all made sense. The pieces fit together; the entire picture was clear.
The portal in Germany. It led to the ship, to Ares. Brilliant.
Kate. She had the Atlantean scientist’s memories. She could unlock the ship and free Ares. Together,
Ares and Dorian could complete their work on Earth and transport their army to the final war. Victory would come soon after.
Dorian stared at Kate. She sat across from him, her eyes closed.
Ares’ words echoed in his mind. She’s the key to everything. But you must wait. At some point very soon, she will acquire a piece of information—a code. That code is the key to freeing me. You must capture her after she has the code and bring her to me.
Dorian marveled at Ares’ genius. The realization, the full appreciation of the Atlantean’s plan struck him. He felt… awe. Dorian finally felt as though he had an equal. No, a superior. But Ares was something more. Dorian knew it now: Ares had designed the entire process partly for him—for Dorian’s own growth. The charade in Antarctica, his challenge to find Kate Warner. It was as though Ares was… mentoring Dorian. But it was even more than that. Ares was more than a mentor to him. Dorian had a part of Ares inside of him, his memories and more—his desires, his unrealized dreams.
The Atlantis Plague: A Thriller (The Origin Mystery, Book 2) Page 35
