The Atlantis Plague: A Thriller (The Origin Mystery, Book 2)

by A. G. Riddle

  Her partner didn’t answer.

  The silence weighed on Kate. It would be easier if he argued. The silence demanded she justify her claim.

  “We have to end this experiment now, before we make it worse for them,” her partner said, softly now.

  Kate wavered. Developing religion this early was indeed dangerous. It could be corrupted. Selfish members of the tribe could use it for their own benefit, manipulating the others. It could be used as a justification, a basis for all sorts of evil. But… used correctly, it could also be an incredibly civilizing force. A guide.

  “We can help them,” Kate insisted. “We can fix this.”

  “How?”

  “We give them the human code. We’ll embed the lessons, the ethics, in their stories.”

  “It cannot save them.”

  “It has worked before.”

  “It will only last so long. What happens when they stop believing? Stories won’t satisfy their minds forever.”

  “We will address that problem when it arises,” Kate said.

  “We can’t be here to hold their hand. We can’t solve all their problems.”

  “Why can’t we? We made them. Some of us is in them now. It’s our responsibility. And it’s not like we can do anything else. We certainly can’t go home.”

  Kate’s words brought only silence now. Her partner had relented. For now. She hated the disagreement, but she knew what she had to do.

  She held her forearm out and tapped at the controls. The ship’s computer quickly analyzed the primitives’ symbolic language. It was crude, but the computer easily fashioned a dictionary. She held her palm out, and the light shone from it onto the stone wall. The symbols she projected lined up just below the lines the tribe had written.

  The elderly alpha nodded. Two males rushed from the hovel and returned with two large green leaves filled with a thick burgundy liquid. Kate thought it was crushed berries at first, but then she realized what the leaves held: blood.

  The males began painting the gray stone walls with it, copying the symbols she projected.

  Kate opened her eyes. She was back in the helicopter with David. The door was open and the sea glistened below. The breeze filled her lungs and she realized how much they hurt. She wiped a sheet of sweat from her forehead. David’s eyes were on her.

  He pointed to the headset hanging in the middle of the space. Kate lunged for it and pulled it over her ears. He leaned forward and clicked the dial.

  “We’re on a private channel now,” he said.

  She involuntarily glanced at Chang and Janus sitting across from them.

  “What’s wrong?” David asked, focusing on her, ignoring the scientists who sat impassively.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know.” Kate wiped another layer of sweat off her face. “The memories are coming; I can’t stop them now. I’m reliving them… it’s like they’re… taking over… I think, I don’t know. I’m scared that I’m losing… some of myself.”

  David’s eyes raked over her, as if he were not sure what to say.

  Kate tried to focus. “Maybe I’m at the age when the Atlantean therapy, whatever the tube does, the memory restoration, takes over and—”

  “Nothing is taking over. You’re going to stay exactly the way you are.”

  “There’s something else. I think we’re missing something.”

  David cut his eyes to the two scientists. “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Kate closed her eyes, but no memories came this time. Only sleep.

  CHAPTER 78

  Over the Mediterranean Sea

  Kate awoke to vibrations on her thigh. The first thing she saw was David’s eyes.

  She took the vibrating phone from her pocket and glanced at the number. It was a 404 area code. Atlanta, Georgia. The CDC. Continuity. Paul Brenner. The revelations washed over the stupor of her sleep as she answered the call. She listened. Paul Brenner was panicked now. He spoke quickly, the phrases hitting her like punches. Trial failed. No alternative therapies. Euthanasia Protocol has been authorized. Can you help?

  “Hang on,” she said into the phone.

  She sat up. “It didn’t work,” she said to David, Chang, and Janus.

  “There’s more, Kate. Another piece of the genetic puzzle,” Janus said. “We need more time.”

  “We have something,” Kate said into the phone. She listened, then nodded. “Yes, okay. What? Okay, no, we’re…”

  She looked at David. “How close are we to Malta?”

  “Malta?”

  Kate nodded.

  “Two hours, maybe a little less at top speed.”

  “The Orchid Districts in Malta—they report no casualties. Something is happening there.”

  David didn’t say a word. He climbed past Chang and Janus in the seat across from her and began talking to Shaw and Kamau in the cockpit—setting a course for Malta, Kate assumed.

  Kate rubbed her head. There was something different about the way she felt. She was more… detached, clinical, numb. Almost robotic. She had full command of her mind; she just experienced the scene as if it were happening to someone else. The danger was intense—the annihilation of ninety percent of the human race… yet she felt as though she were in the middle of a science experiment, where the outcome was uncertain but would have no impact on her. What’s happening to me? Her feelings, her emotional core seemed to be slipping away.

  When David returned, he slumped back onto the bench beside Kate. “We can be in Malta within two hours.”

  Kate held the phone to her ear and began conversing with Paul. We’re going to check it out—Can you hold them off—We don’t know what’s there—Do your best, Paul—This isn’t over.

  She ended the call and focused on the group.

  Janus spoke before she had a chance. “It was here the entire time, under our noses.” He pointed to the page containing Martin’s note. “Missing Alpha Leads to Treasure of Atlantis. MALTA.”

  Kate watched as David scanned the code. His face changed. What was that: guilt?

  She interrupted the pause. “Martin had been looking for it—whatever it is—for a long time. He thought it was in southern Spain, but he told me he had been wrong about the location. He must have added the last note—regarding the treasure and Malta, the location, after the fact.”

  “Do you know what it is?” Janus asked. “The Treasure of Atlantis?”

  Kate shook her head.

  David pulled her close to him. “We’ll know in a few hours.” The look in his eyes said something different, however: Do you remember? Kate closed her eyes and tried to focus.

  The rustle of the suit under the pressure of the decompression chamber was unmistakable.

  The voice in Kate’s helmet was crisp. “There are two settlements now.”

  “Copy.”

  “Sending coordinates of original settlement.”

  Kate’s helmet displayed a map. Their ship, the Alpha Lander, was still off the coast of Africa, where she had originally administered the Atlantis Gene.

  A floating chariot waited silently in the middle of the chamber. The doors opened slowly, revealing the scene beyond. Kate mounted the chariot and zoomed from the ship.

  The world was even more green. How much time had passed?

  At the camp, she realized exactly how much. There were at least five times as many huts as she had seen before. At least a generation had passed.

  And the nature of the camp had changed. Muscled warriors, dressed in clothes and wearing war paint, patrolled the perimeter. They turned to her and raised their spears threateningly as she floated in.

  She gripped the stun baton.

  An elderly man hobbled out to the warriors and shouted to them. Kate listened in amazement. Their language progress was stunning: they had already developed a complex linguistic structure, though the words used at this moment were a bit more “informal.”

  The warri
ors released their spears and backed away from her.

  She set the chariot down, and ventured into the camp.

  There was no bowing and groveling this time.

  Up ahead, the chief’s shanty had grown as well. The simple lean-to had morphed into a temple with stone walls, built directly into the rock cliff.

  She marched toward it.

  The villagers lined up on each side, keeping their distance, fighting to see her.

  At the threshold of the temple, the guards stepped aside, and she entered.

  In the altar at the end of the cavernous room, a body lay. A circle of the black humans knelt before it.

  Kate paced to them. They turned.

  From the corner of her eye she saw an elderly male making his way toward her. The alpha. Kate was amazed that he had survived so long. The treatment had produced remarkable results.

  Kate glanced back at the dead body, then read the symbols above the altar. Here lies the second son of our chief. Cut down in the fields by his brother’s tribe, for greed of the fruit of our lands.

  Kate quickly read the remainder of the text. It seemed that the chief’s oldest son had formed his own clan—a group of nomads that roamed the countryside, foraging.

  The chief’s younger son had taken over the fields where this tribe hunted and gathered. The younger son was seen as his father’s successor, the next chief. They had found him dead in the field, and the trees and shrubs picked clean. He was the first victim of the older brother’s raids, and they feared there would be many more. They were preparing for war.

  “We must stop this,” her partner said into Kate’s helmet.

  “And we will.”

  “War will sharpen their minds, enhance the technology. It is a cataclysm—”

  “We will prevent it.”

  “If we separate the tribes,” her partner said, “we can’t manage the genome.”

  “There is a solution,” Kate said.

  She held her hand up and projected symbols onto the wall.

  You will not take retribution on the unworthy. You will leave this place. Your Exodus begins now.

  Kate opened her eyes to see David staring at her.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” She wiped sweat from her forehead. The memories were changing her more quickly now. Taking over. She was becoming more of what she’d been in the distant past and less of the woman she had become, the woman who had fallen in love with David. She pulled closer to him.

  What can I do? I want to stop this. I opened the door, but can I close it? It felt like someone was holding her down and pouring the memories down her throat.

  Kate stood in another temple. She wore the suit, and the humans before her crowded around another altar.

  Kate looked out of the opening of the temple. The landscape was lush, but not as fertile as it had been in Africa. Where were they? The Levant, perhaps?

  Kate walked closer.

  The stone box on the altar; she had seen it before—in the Tibetan tapestry, in the depiction of the Great Flood, when the waters rose and consumed the coast, wiping out the cities of the ancient world. The Immaru had carried this box to the highlands, she was sure of it. Was this the treasure that waited in Malta?

  The members of the tribe rose from the ground and turned to face her.

  In the alcoves flanking the temple’s main corridors, Kate now saw dozens of members of the tribe kneeling, meditating, seeking the stillness.

  They would become the Immaru, the mountain monks who had carried the Ark into the highlands, who had kept the faith and tried to live a life of righteous observance.

  Kate walked down the aisle.

  “You know what must be done,” her partner said.

  “Yes.”

  At the altar, the crowd stepped aside, and she climbed the stairs and peered into the stone box.

  The alpha, the tribe’s founder and chief, lay there, still, cold, finally dead. His countenance was eerily similar to how it had been on the day when Kate had first seen him, in the cave, when he brought the rotting piece of flesh to his mate, when he collapsed against the wall and lay dying. She had hoisted him up then and saved him. She couldn’t save him now.

  She turned back to the masses gathered around the altar. She could save them.

  “This is dangerous.”

  “There is no alternative,” Kate said.

  “We can end this experiment, here and now.”

  Kate involuntarily shook her head. “We can’t. We can’t turn back now.”

  When she had finished the modification, she stepped off the altar. The attendants swarmed around her, rushing past the box. They brought something out—a stone top—and placed it upon the box.

  She watched as they engraved a series of symbols on the side of the Ark.

  Her helmet translated them:

  Here lies the first of our kind, who survived the darkness, who saw the light, and who followed the call of the righteous.

  Kate opened her eyes.

  “I know what’s in Malta, what the Immaru were protecting.”

  David’s eyes said, Don’t say it.

  “Is it part of the cure?” Janus asked.

  Chang leaned in.

  “Maybe,” Kate said. She focused on David. “How long to Malta?”

  “Not long.”

  Dorian pulled the sat phone out of his pocket.

  Heading east. Destination Malta. Where the hell are you?

  He walked back across the plague barge’s deck and climbed into the helicopter. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 79

  Kate stood in an immense command center. Holographic displays, the likes of which she’d never seen, covered the far wall. The maps tracked the human populations on every continent on the world.

  At the corner of the room, an alarm flashed to life.

  Incoming vessel.

  Her partner raced to a control panel and manipulated the blue cloud of light that emerged. “It’s one of ours,” he said.

  “How?”

  Fifty thousand local years ago, Kate and her partner had received a transmission: their world, the Atlantean home world, had fallen—violently, in a day and a night. How could there be survivors? Had the home world distress call been wrong? Kate and her partner had heeded the call, had hidden their science expedition, assuming they were the last of their kind, assuming they were now alone in the universe, marooned, two scientists who could never go home. Had they been wrong?

  “The vessel is a life raft.” Her partner turned to her. “A resurrection ship.”

  “They can’t come here,” Kate said.

  “It is too late. They are already landing. They intend to bury the ship under the ice-capped continent at the southern pole.” Her partner worked the control panel. He seemed to tense up. Is he nervous?

  “Who’s on the ship?” Kate asked.

  “General Ares.”

  A current of fear ran through Kate.

  The scene changed. Kate stood on another ship—not the lander. This vessel was massive, cavernous. Glass tubes stretched out before her for miles.

  Footsteps echoed in the space.

  “We are the last,” came a voice from the shadows.

  “Why did you come here?” her partner called.

  “For the protection of the Beacon. And I read your research reports. The survival gene you gave the primitives. I find it… very promising.” The owner of the voice stepped into the light.

  Dorian.

  Kate almost reeled back. General Ares was Dorian. How? She focused. The man’s face wasn’t Dorian’s, but the overwhelming sense Kate got was that Dorian was inside this man. Or was it the opposite? Was Ares inside Dorian and Kate was sensing that element—seeing it in its purest form now? When Kate looked at Ares, all she saw was Dorian.

  “The inhabitants here are of no concern to you,” her partner said.

  “On the contrary. They are our future.”

  “We have no right—”

 
“You had no right to alter them, but what is done is done,” Dorian said. “You endangered them the instant you gave them part of our genome. Our enemy will hunt them, as they will hunt us, to the far reaches of the universe, no matter where we go. I wish to save them, to make them safe. We will advance them, and they will be our army.”

  Kate shook her head.

  Dorian focused on her. “You should have listened to me before.”

  The endless rows of glass tubes faded, and Kate was in a different room in the same structure. There were only a dozen glass tubes here, standing on end, spread out in a semicircle before her. It was a room she had seen before—in Antarctica—where she, David, and her father had met up.

  Each tube held a different human subspecies.

  The door opened behind her.

  Dorian.

  “You… are conducting your own experiments,” Kate said.

  “Yes. But I told you I cannot do this alone. I need your help.”

  “You delude yourself.”

  “They will die without you,” Dorian said. “We all will. Their fate is our fate. The final war is inevitable. Either you give them the genetic equipment they need, or they perish. Our destiny is written. I am here for them.”

  “You lie.”

  “Then leave them to die. Do nothing. See what happens.” He waited. When Kate said nothing, he continued. “They need our help. Their transformation is only half complete. You must finish what you have started. There is no other way, no turning back. Help me. Help them.”

  Kate thought of her partner, his protests.

  “The other member of your little expedition is a fool. Only fools fight fate.”

  Kate’s silence was a signal—to her and to Dorian. He seemed to feed on her indecision.

  “They are already splintering. I have collected the candidates, conducted my own experiments. But I don’t have the expertise. I need you. I need your research. We can transform them.”

  Kate crumbled. She felt herself falling under his spell. It was the same as before—her before, in San Francisco. She tried to rationalize, tried to think of a deal, but her mind drifted to her experiences in Gibraltar and then in Antarctica when he had cornered her. It was history repeating itself. The same players, playing out a different game, with the same end, on a different stage. Except this was long before, in another life, in another era.