Atlantis Reborn

by Gloria Craw

  There was an anticlimactic moment of silence and then everyone began to file back inside. We gathered in a lounge on the top level of the yacht, where food had been laid out and soft music played in the background. Luke joined me to say I’d done well, and from across the room, where he was talking to the Calyx chiefs, Theron gave me the thumbs-up sign.

  I nearly missed it when Lillian started a determined march toward the Vasitass chiefs. Catching up, I heard her say, “I need to talk to you, Valentine.”

  “Lillian,” Helen said, with syrupy sweetness and hard eyes. “So good to see you.”

  “Stow it, Helen,” she replied. “I know you dislike me. I assure you, the feeling is mutual. I have a few things to say to Valentine, and then I’ll return him to you.”

  She gripped Valentine by the arm and forcibly led him to the side of the room. I held my breath as they awkwardly faced each other. In my mind, I could see a younger version of them. Instead of tired and worn, Lillian’s eyes were bright with hope and happiness. Instead of gazing at her with a confused scowl, Valentine smiled at her lovingly.

  In reality, they stood facing each other in uncomfortable silence. I started to worry that Lillian had frozen up, but she took a deep breath and said, “I’m happy for you, Valentine. I’m happy you likenessed, even if it wasn’t with me. I glad you’ve lived a good…full life.”

  Seemingly unsure how to respond, he blinked.

  “That’s all,” she stated and turned to leave.

  He caught her arm. “I loved you, Lillian,” he said. It would have been great had he left it there, but he added, “I wish you had found the other half of yourself, like I did.”

  The tone of his voice and his expression were full of all the sympathy Lillian left her clan to avoid. Her countenance turned icy, and my heart sank. I was sure he’d spoiled her brave effort to accept the past, but she surprised me.

  “I loved you, too,” she replied with quiet dignity.

  She started to shake as she walked my way. Theron noticed something was happening and hurried to put a supportive arm around her waist. “Help me get her back to the cabin,” I whispered.

  We settled Lillian in bed, and I pulled the covers over her shoulder. As I sat next to her, she began to cry like a child.

  She’d told me the ancient Egyptians cleaned battle wounds with salt water. I desperately hoped some of the pain from her past would be gone when her tears dried.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As the sun rose, the yacht drifted where Atlantis had once risen from the ocean floor.

  We were all a little bleary eyed after ten hours at sea, so Lillian’s red eyes didn’t occasion a second glance when we joined the other chiefs on deck. Chairs for the ceremony had been arranged to face the rising sun. I led Lillian to one of them and sat beside her. She was calm and seemed more at ease with the world than ever before. Apparently, her cry had been soul-cleansing.

  Beside me, Theron drummed his fingers on his knee. “I hate all this waiting around,” he grumbled.

  Being in a confined space, even the deck of a huge yacht, was torture for him. “We’re halfway done,” I said. “We do the bonding ritual, then this boat turns around, and we sail home.”

  His fingers twitched, and he moved a hand toward his chest. Guessing he was half a second away from reaching for the quarter he probably had stashed in his toga, I grabbed it. “You can’t start flipping coins,” I whispered. “Just take a deep breath and be still.”

  He gave a short nod and did his best to settle down.

  Like the evening before, Phoebe went first. There wasn’t much to the ritual. With her aunt and uncle, she walked the distance to the front of the deck and stood close to the railing. She held a dagger that looked a lot like mine, except it was gold-plated and had yellow diamonds in the hilt.

  Drawing a breath, she pressed her lips in a firm line and started to slice the skin of her palm. Though her face was tight with pain, she made no sound as she worked. Clearly dreading it, her aunt and uncle held their palms out, and she repeated the process on them. Then they put their hands over the railing and let drops of their blood fall into the ocean.

  If some magical transformation happened when the liquids mixed, it wasn’t obvious, but the three of them turned to face the group looking relieved and happy. Everyone clapped and cheered as the Ormolu chiefs stepped forward and wrapped their bleeding hands with long strips of gold cloth.

  Knowing our turn had come, I stood up and led Lillian and Theron along the deck. My vision blurred as I pulled the Gladium Laurus from my dress. Sunshine lit the sapphires in the hilt, but it felt cold and heavy in my hand. I’d tried to steel myself against the revolting task ahead by going over and over the steps in my mind. Until that moment, I’d been optimistic enough to believe I had built a tolerance for it, but I found myself shaking with nausea.

  “You can do this,” Theron whispered to me.

  Fortunately, there was enough distance between us and the onlookers that they couldn’t hear him.

  I put the blade of the dagger to my skin, but my vision began to narrow. “I’m going to pass out,” I whispered back.

  “No, you’re not,” he replied.

  Angling himself so the chiefs didn’t have a clear view of us, he put his hand over mine. I winced as he pushed the blade through my skin. He worked quickly and then made the same cut in his palm.

  “Thank you,” I managed to whisper.

  He gave a small nod and replied, “I can’t do Lillian’s hand. It would be too obvious.”

  Wanting to barf, I turned to my old friend. She gave me an encouraging nod, and I did what I had to. Then moving as one, we held our throbbing palms over the railing. Like red tears, our blood fell through the air.

  As odd as it seems, I knew exactly which drops were mine. When the first of them hit the water, I felt a jolt of energy and then in rapid succession images started to flash through my mind.

  Like I was flying in a helicopter, I sped across the water toward an island rising in the distance. Then I was over it, and hills, plateaus, forests, beautiful walled cities, fortresses, theaters, and parks passed under me.

  The imagination slide show stopped as abruptly as it had begun, but I was sure I’d just glimpsed Atlantis…and it was the most beautiful place I’d ever seen.

  Lillian, Theron, and I looked at one another.

  “That was quite an experience,” Theron whispered. “Let’s never do it again.”

  Chapter Twenty

  It was late afternoon when we arrived back at the Arx. Ian was waiting for us, and he helped Lillian out of the car. She’d emotionally recovered from her talk with Valentine, but physically she seemed wilted, like a flower that had gone without water for too long.

  “I’m going to bed,” she said the moment we were inside my suite.

  Worried about her, I watched her go to her room and quietly shut the door.

  “A little rest should restore her energy,” Ian reassured me.

  “I hope so,” I replied.

  “Not that it will do much good at this point,” Theron said, “but I’ll check to see if my program broke the encryption on that video of Valentine’s.”

  He peeled off to go to his room, and I sat on the sofa.

  “I expected you to come back glowing with all the glory of a new clan chief,” Ian said, sitting next to me, “but you just look tired.”

  “I’m exhausted,” I admitted.

  He reached for my hand and examined the damage to my palm. The skin had grown together, but it was red and puckered. Had I been human, it would surely develop into a nasty scar.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked.

  “No,” I replied, leaning against his shoulder. “It just looks bad.”

  He put an arm around me, and we gazed out the window at the ocean for a while. I’d sort of zoned out when Theron’s footsteps echoed in the room.

  “The file is viewable now,” he said, laying his laptop on a footstool in front of us.

/>   He clicked the play arrow and then sat on the other side of me to watch.

  An image of two small boys came up on the screen. One was rolling a ball across the floor, the other was drawing a picture. Chills ran up my spine. From their white-blond hair to their dark eyes, they were nearly identical. It was the hybrid boy, Linton, and his twin.

  Whoever was taking the video panned to a table in the corner of the room. Different word cards had been laid out on it.

  “The boys have never seen this word pattern before,” a voice behind the camera said, “but as you’ll see, their recall is perfect.”

  More chills coursed my spine. I knew the voice. It belonged to Maxwell Truss.

  “Come here, Nathan,” Maxwell said. “I want you to look at something.”

  Linton’s twin walked over and studied the cards on the table for about five seconds. Then Maxwell’s hand swept them away. He shuffled them and handed the stack to Nathan. “Put them back the way they were,” he instructed the boy.

  The camera shot turned and focused on Linton. “They’ve started to develop signatures as well as recall,” Maxwell remarked, “but their language skills are delayed. They also have trouble distinguishing between small objects.”

  His hand reached in front of the lens, and he took the ball Linton had been playing with. He put it among some toys on the floor.

  “As you can see,” Maxwell said, “There are a variety of objects here: stuffed animals, blocks, and balls. There is only one fire truck.” He picked it up and showed it to Linton. “This is a fire truck,” he said. “Do you understand?”

  When Linton nodded, he put it back on the floor and mixed the toys together. “Now, find the fire truck,” he instructed.

  Linton picked up a stuffed bear.

  “No, that’s a bear,” Maxwell corrected. “Show me the truck.”

  Linton’s small face creased in confused thought. He picked up a block.

  “No, that’s a block. Show me the truck.”

  Linton handed him a ball.

  “As I said,” Maxwell remarked. “They have difficulty distinguishing between small objects. Now, let’s check on, Nathan.”

  The camera panned back to the table where Nathan had finished lining up the cards. They were in the original order. “See the difference?” Maxwell asked. “It has to do with spatial awareness.”

  Maxwell turned the camera on himself. His jolly smile, sparkling blue eyes, and snowy-white hair and beard made him look deceptively like Santa Claus. Really, he was the devil.

  “Most dewing characteristics are expressing as they should,” he said. “I believe, I’ve isolated the reason for the spatial awareness issue, and I’m working up a corrective hypothesis. I’m close to solving the speech problem as well. Early samples of genetic material suggest hybrids won’t have the fertility issue that plague us currently. The next step is to terminate these trial subjects and move to new ones.”

  My throat tightened. Maxwell had admitted to killing Linton’s twin while he was holding me hostage. I was probably seeing Nathan in the last hours of his life.

  The video image bobbed up and down as Maxwell walked through a door into another room. When it focused again, I saw a child on a metal table. Something seemed very wrong with him. Though his eyes were open, his skin was pale and lifeless.

  “I’ve named this one Jeremy,” Maxwell said. “The body is complete. I bioengineered the bones, organs, and tissue here in the lab. The brain hasn’t been animated yet. I need to inject both human and dewing neural stem cells into it. The process works best when the human sample comes from an individual who hasn’t completed puberty yet. Age five to sixteen usually produces good results.

  “The trick is to get the titration correct. Timing and proportions mean everything. Getting the neural stem cells I need from a dewing is easy. A careful needle extraction works. Getting the neural cells from the human sample is more difficult. It requires a full extraction of the brain.”

  The camera panned to a different dissection table and a child laying on it. The top of his skull was missing.

  Bile filled my throat, and I ran for the bathroom to throw up.

  I vomited until the muscles in my stomach were too weak to heave anymore. Then I flushed the toilet, closed the seat, sat down, and buried my face in my hands.

  Ian handed me a towel, and Theron sat on the edge of the tub.

  “It’s all some kind of hoax,” Ian said in a calming voice. “It’s a sick, cruel hoax.”

  “What if it’s not?” I asked. “The chiefs will give anything for a chance to rebuild our population. Especially after Phoebe tells them about the virus.”

  “What virus?” Theron asked.

  “When we gave our clan numbers at the reporting ceremony, the Stentorian and Truss clans had a lot of deaths,” I explained. “Phoebe thinks some of them were the result of a virus.”

  “That’s impossible,” Ian said. “No virus can kill us.”

  “Making hybrids should be impossible, too,” I replied, “but it isn’t.”

  Theron whistled softly. “The bad news just keeps coming,” he remarked.

  “Regardless of what’s causing dewing in Phoebe’s clan to die,” Ian said, “the chiefs won’t agree to kill human children to make those…things.”

  “You weren’t at the reporting ceremony,” I replied. “There was a sense of desperation about it. As revolting as the process is, I’m seriously worried the chiefs will see hybrids as necessary to save us from extinction.”

  “My parents won’t agree to it,” he insisted.

  “Really?” Theron interjected. “They were willing to let you die for the greater good when you went off to fight Sebastian. I don’t think they’ll balk at cutting up a few human kids to save our race.”

  Ian lunged at Theron, knocking him backward into the tub. He got in two punches before I could grab his arm and hold it back.

  “Stop it, Ian!” I yelled. “Theron! You can’t say things like that!”

  Theron sat up, wiping blood from his bottom lip. “Why not?” he asked. “It’s true.”

  Ian would have punched him again if I hadn’t been holding him back with every ounce of strength I had. “Don’t talk about my parents like that unless you really want to get hurt,” Ian warned him.

  “Look, man,” Theron said. “Maybe I could have expressed the sentiment better, but you know I’m right. There was a moment when it didn’t seem like the worst idea to you, either. I know because I had the same moment. One look at the horror on Alison’s face, and we both realized how barbaric it would make us. She grew up thinking she was human, and we would never let something like that happen to her, so we get it. The problem is that the chiefs don’t have a weakness for her like we do. The idea will turn their stomach’s, but most of them are going to want to give hybrids a try.”

  “Unless it’s a hoax,” Ian chimed in.

  “It isn’t,” I muttered. “I met Linton, the little boy in the video. He was everything Maxwell claimed.”

  Ian looked at me, then Theron, and then back at me again. “Maxwell? You mean Maxwell Truss, who is unequivocally dead?”

  I nodded. “He must have made the video before I met him. He was going to show Linton to the Truss elders as proof he could create hybrids.”

  Ian put the pieces together quickly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because she would also have had to tell you her dead mother came through a portal to the afterlife and took Linton back with her,” Theron responded.

  Ian blinked and then gulped.

  “The expression on your face right now,” Theron continued, “is exactly why she didn’t tell you.”

  “It’s true,” I said. “All of it.”

  “Come on, man,” Theron said. “Let’s get out of here. She needs to brush her teeth, and you need to cool down.”

  Ian made a noise that sounded like a growl.

  “Just go with him,” I urged. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

 
; “I’ll go with him,” Ian replied. “All the way outside, where I’ll kick his ass.”

  “Fine,” Theron replied, his dark eyes sparking with anger. “It’ll be your ass that gets kicked, though.”

  “No one is going to kick anyone’s ass!” I yelled. Then more calmly, I continued, “Go sit in the living room. Don’t talk or look at each other until I come out. Understand?”

  Both of them nodded, and they left me to brush my teeth. I didn’t hear any fighting, so I’d assumed they’d done as I asked, but it turned out Theron left the suite instead.

  Ian was pacing in front of the living room window just like Spencer had done in their mansion back in Vegas.

  “Where’s Theron?” I asked.

  With a slight smile, Ian replied, “He left so I wouldn’t kick his ass right here.”

  “Or he left so he wouldn’t try to kick yours,” I remarked, sitting on the sofa.

  I watched Ian, knowing he was upset with me for not telling him about Linton or my mother. I’d wanted to tell him a hundred different times. It just seemed impossible that he’d believe me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I thought you’d assume I’d gone nuts.”

  “Maybe at first,” he replied. “I mean…the White Laurel, who’s been dead for fifteen years, just appears to you out of the blue and takes a hybrid kid back to the world of the dead when she leaves. It sounds insane…but I would have believed you.”

  I sighed at the realization he was right. Deep down, I wasn’t sure why I’d kept so much from him. He deserved to know all of it.

  “She didn’t just appear,” I said. “I opened a portal to the afterlife first. Then she came through it.”

  He stopped pacing and pinned me with a stare. “Explain that to me please,” he said.

  “I did it the first time when we fought Sebastian in the casino,” I said. “Brandy was dead, you were dying, and Sebastian was about to kill me. I wanted to fight him with my essence, so I pulled as much energy into myself as I could. As usual, I couldn’t push it out. It stayed burning and seething inside of me until I thought I’d burst into flames. At that very moment when I thought I was going to die, a connection formed between me and wherever dead dewing exist. All the energy of my Laurel ancestors flooded through and crushed Sebastian. That’s how I defeated him that night.”