The Secret of Atlantis (Citadel World Book #2)

by Kir Lukovkin

  The platoon commander raised an eyebrow and chuckled.

  “Have you even worked out where you are, son?”

  Rick did not answer.

  “This is the Division!” Lee stood up ramrod straight. “The first fully operational military organization, which was created after the Great Departure out of wild bands of scavengers who hid in the depths of the landscape. This is a new world! Do you understand? Our new world, our homeland, created through blood, sweat and tears, the hope of humanity!”

  “Then why are they making people fight like animals in the pit?” Rick could not resist bursting out. “Anything for the cause.”

  Lee looked at him for a while with his jaw hanging open, then gathered himself together and continued, in a surprisingly calm tone of voice.

  “I will give you some leeway for being young and stupid. If an experienced soldier had said something like this, then he would be hanged inside a quarter of an hour. But that's not what we're talking about now. The Division is preparing for an important expedition to the sector of the inner ring by the tower. We are collecting resources for the performance of this important task — getting inside the core of the world. We could not get inside the inner ring for many years. No one knows what happens there. The gates were open many years ago, even before the Great Departure and the citizens of this city could freely go in any direction they wished. But when the rabid ones arrived, everything changed. Our ancestors almost disappeared off the face of the earth. The remainder of those who miraculously kept their sanity spent an age hiding in the twists and turns of the quarters until it was time for us to unite. Do you understand why you're needed now?”

  “Yes, because I came from the outer limits. I managed to survive there and I am sure I will be useful here.”

  Lee nodded approvingly.

  “But doesn't the highway lead to the tower?” Rick asked. “Wouldn't it be easier to cleanse it with fire and achieve your goals?”

  “Do you think we haven't tried? The spheres are unkillable! There is no salvation from them. Haven't you seen them in action?”

  “I ran away from them in the Cluster of the fords,” Rick admitted.

  “Ran away? But...” Lee suddenly took a notepad out of his desk and quickly wrote something in it. “You ran away, so they did not touch you and you got away without consequences?” he clarified.

  “That's exactly how it was, commander. What's the matter?”

  “You're lucky,” Lee nodded. “Usually, when a sphere catches a man, they burn up like gunpowder from a spark from the smallest touch.”

  He snapped his fingers, deep in thought and made another note, shook his head and continued, “They say that the scientific corps of the Division has managed to solve the secret of the lock on the gates and will be able to unlock them. We are going to go through the quarters avoiding the highway zone. The tower is just a step away there.” His eyes glinted strangely. “Do you understand what that mean?”

  “Not exactly, commander Lee.”

  “The tower is the key to the past. The answers to every question are there. We can reanimate the ancient machines and find a cure for rabies. And that is only a small part of the power we will have.” Lee waved his hand in an uncertain direction. “As you said, you survived in the outer limits. That's the sort of people we need. This is why I will close my eyes to your lapses in discipline. Understood?”

  “Yes, commander!”

  Lee carefully looked into Rick's face and then asked, “Why did you suddenly run away from the outer circle?”

  “There was a shift.”

  Lee frowned, not understanding.

  “The movement of city segments,” Rick started to explain. “The city is divided by walls into rings, which are divided into clusters. The rings sometimes turn and the landscape inside the clusters changes. One of the segments goes underground and another rises above at certain intervals, taking up the space that opens up. These events follow a program that was assigned to the mechanisms of the city. But the program had an error and the cluster in which I was when the shift took place got flooded. I managed to escape together with Olivia, the female ford. We left through the collector which filled up with water later too. We barely survived. We found ourselves by the territory of the Division and walked until we came across the nest of a gigantic spider.

  “Are you saying that you went through the termite nests?” Lee asked in amazement. “But that's a dead zone.”

  “Yes, sir.” Rick decided to keep the fact that they had used the medallion key and rose to the surface in an elevator to himself.

  “And then you climbed the wall and slid down it along the channel.”

  “That's exactly what happened, commander.”

  “You're lying again.”

  “If you doubt me, put me into the pit with another platoon,” Rick pronounced dispassionately.

  Lee hummed and bent down over his notepad again, writing something down. Once he finished, he said, “You should understand that everything you are telling me, it's all too... too unusual. Even though we came across people from the outer limits in the past, such things never happened before. For someone to get over the barrier and the space between the outer and middle rings...” He shook his head. “There are only wild and predatory beasts out there and no normal person can survive. We though that there were no more people beyond the walls of the rings. And now you have appeared...”

  The way he looked at Rick changed and his eyes lost their military demeanor. It was only now that Rick noticed that Lee's voice was also different and that it had lost its edge of steel. What was that all about?

  “That's exactly how it is, commander,” Rick replied automatically.

  Lee acted as if he never heard him, as he thought about something and then snapped out of it.

  “All right, say we believe you. Tell me, how did you get onto the highway from the outer ring?”

  “I just went there.”

  “Aren't the passages between them closed?”

  Rick felt that he was missing some important detail, but could not understand what it was.

  “I opened them,” he replied.

  “How?”

  “The same as any other door. Is there something difficult about that?”

  Lee frowned and his eyes and expression became intimidating again. He stepped towards the exit of the residential module, commanding, “Follow me, soldier.”

  Rick obeyed. They walked onto the concrete square in front of the camp and Lee stopped.

  “Look at this,” he pointed to the concrete beneath his feet.

  Rick lowered his gaze and noticed a symbol that had been pressed into the concrete — a square which was diagonally split into three equal triangles. There was a small circle where the lines crossed at the center, as if it was absorbing the crossed lines into itself.

  “Open this passage,” Lee ordered.

  Rick crouched and touched the rough surface. Was this square depression really a hatch? He touched the hollows and then pressed the point where the lines crossed with his palm but nothing happened.”

  “It's not working,” he announced, glancing at Lee.

  “What if you have a think about it?”

  “About what exactly?”

  “You're cleverer than you look.” Lee folded his hands behind his back. “But you don't know how to lie.”

  Rick stayed silent, as Lee continued, “I am not trying to terrorize you, I just want to know, will you be able to open this passage or not?”

  Rick let out a deep breath and bent over the symbol again, carefully examining the little hollows in the concrete. There were no locking mechanisms on the surface, so there was no doubt that the passage was opened using a key. Rick asked Lee for a knife and cleaned the dirt out of the special slot where the key card had to be inserted. Then he looked around — there was a transformer box near the concrete square, which was more proof that he was right.

  “No,” he said at last. “There is no way to ope
n it without a key and without energy.”

  Lee nodded in satisfaction and ordered him to go to the barracks.

  “Attention!” the duty officer shouted as soon as the commander crossed the threshold.

  “Form up,” Lee commanded.

  “Platoon! Line up in the central passage!”

  The recruits swore under their breaths as they noisily rolled off their bunks and rushed towards the exit. A minute later, they arranged themselves in a ragged line, pushing each other in their underwear.

  “Platoon!” Lee paused for effect. “I just came to wish you good night.”

  There was a deafening silence in the barracks.

  “I also wanted to report to you that I have promoted Recruit Rick to be my deputy.”

  Lee gave Rick a friendly slap on the shoulder.

  “Commander, are you serious?” Rick burst out.

  “Of course. Did you all hear? Rick is my deputy from this very moment. That means that his orders must be obeyed without question, just like mine.”

  “Commander Lee,” Rick had no intention of commanding anyone. “I refuse this appointment.”

  “It's an order,” Lee flashed a crooked smile. “And what do we say about orders, platoon?”

  “Orders are not discussed, commander Lee!” two dozen throats chorused in reply.

  “At ease!”

  Once the door closed behind the commander Rick went to his bunk quietly. He felt the tense eyes of others on his back but he did not turn around because he did not want to talk to anyone.

  But people were not going back to their bunks and they were discussing him.

  Rick could not bear it and shouted, “Orderly, issue the lights out command! And if anyone is not in their bunk in the space of a minute, they will be off to clean the latrines all night. All clear, platoon?”

  An instant later, a chorus of voices answered reluctantly, “Yes, Deputy Commander Rick.”

  M

  THE PLATOON ADVANCED along the empty streets of the dead city. The sun was at its zenith, a washed out, cold blotch shining through the cloud cover as rare snowflakes circled between the buildings, lay on the walls and the cracked concrete and immediately melted.

  The camp had been struck at the break of dawn in the early morning. By midday, the joint Division expeditionary group had passed around a dozen quarters on their way to the citadel. There were almost no incidents, but the tension of the previous day still kept its hold over them — a platoon near them had gone too far to the east of their planned route, coming right up to the main highway. The lookouts had lost visual contact with this squad, and when they realized. Rick was trying to work out, where could twenty well prepared soldiers have disappeared? It was as if they had vanished into thin air. The scouts that had been sent to find them came back empty-handed, apart from a spoon with the sigil of the unit commander that they found at the nearest crossroads. Discussion of the missing unit was forbidden under pain of execution by firing squad but Rick could see that many of the soldiers wanted to talk about it written on their faces. It was only fear that made them keep their mouths shut and push onwards. The oppressive silence and the wind howling between the blocks kept up pressure on their minds, making their hearing and eyesight especially acute. Their eyes constantly teared up from the stress and the cold and any sound coming from around them seemed to be alien and threatening. Just to add to it, commander Lee had gone back to the center of the column for an officer's meeting, leaving Rick in command.

  Another unusual even was the reason that the officers were called together. Around an hour ago, one of the soldiers in the next platoon became rabid. Rick did not see how the fit began and when he came to the location with the others, the afflicted man was running around in a circle of his fellow soldiers and desperate howled with pain as he tore his own hair out. At first, they tried to speak to him and even called a medic, but the unfortunate continued screaming. His eyes soon lost their lively gloss and glazed over, as he collapsed on the ground and started to convulse and thrash around. He eventually lay still, gathering his legs to his stomach in a fetal position.

  Sharp-tongued Gareth immediately declared that he was “done”. The platoon sergeant, who was a large, mustachioed man tried to touch the soldier on the ground. Rick and some of the other soldiers crowding around shouted at him, but it was too late — the madman jumped up and sunk his teeth into the sergeant's neck so quickly that everyone just froze in place as they watched what was going on. When blood sprayed out in a stream from the neck of the sergeant and he started to scream, Commander Lee raised his blaster and put a charge in each of them. But that did not stop the scene, as the madman put down the dead sergeant as if he did not have a hole burnt by the blaster through his chest and turned around slowly, looking over the soldiers with his dead eyes. Rick felt that the gaze stopped on him for a second, which caused an ice cold drop of terror to run down his spine, so furious were those eyes.

  The madman laughed and then this human laughter changed to a bark as there was no longer a person but some other creature in human form standing before them. However, it did change quickly — it lowered itself to the ground like an animal and musculature grew under its clothing. The creature stopped barking and let out a piercing howl like a pack leader calling for help. A moment later, it jumped on Commander Lee.

  The platoon commander was no slouch as he immediately discharged his blaster into the creature. A charred corpse fell beneath Lee’s feet.

  An hour passed but Rick still felt the vile smell of burning skin and no washing with water or attempts to breathe through a cloth could help dull the strength of these sensations. He had to walk on and bear it in silence.

  The citadel had grown larger before them as time passed, which calmed him down as it meant that their goal was closer than before. Rick walked without looking back at the platoon. Every soldier was given a charged shocker which would be enough for a pair of shots but the experienced soldiers and commanders still carried deadly blasters with them.

  The column soon entered an enormous plaza. It was surprising, but Rick had never seen so much space that was free of buildings in the city as the plaza was the size of the fords' Cluster. They decided to make temporary camp there, consume some nutritional concentrate and plan the rest of their route.

  Over the short time he had spent in the Division, Rick had learned that everything was done according to a strict timetable — they even had to go to the toilet at a particular time. That was why he had postponed his escape until better days. Even though this was an appropriate time as it was a military expedition with less attention from the commanders, it was actually traveling as part of an armed group that lessened his desire to escape. The small army was still successfully moving towards the place where Rick wanted to get to so much.

  At first, he was very surprised that the commanders had not taken any food supplies with them, but then he discovered that the concentrate was produced by synthesizers which were located in semicircular buildings at the end of each quarter. The most interesting thing was that the synthesizers, which were twin cylinders as high as two men, still worked. The taste of the concentrate was similar to the briquettes that Rick had already eaten his full of in his native Thermopolis. What amazed him though, was the fact that many of the experienced soldiers never even thought about the source of the food they consumed as it was a natural and familiar process for them.

  Rick kept waiting for them to come across a synthesizer that did not work. When it finally happened, it turned out that the Division had mechanical engineers capable of starting up a broken concentrate producing machine. This was an entirely commonplace event for many of the soldiers.

  A messenger arrived with an order from Commander Lee before they sat down to eat — they had to reconnoiter the local area. Rick received three portions of concentrate ahead of the queue and took Gareth and Diana with him. They climbed to the top of the nearest three story building, where they could see the gigantic symbol of the secto
r on the surface of the plaza — a circle with crossed lines in the middle. Rick did not know what the symbol meant and he did not want to engage in guesswork. As ordered, they looked around the surrounding area, but did not discover any dangers or anything that aroused suspicion, so he sat down on the edge of the roof to chew the concentrate they had crumbled into a pot.

  “Deputy Commander Rick,” Gareth called out behind his back.

  Rick did not react as he continued to consume the gray mass, watching the citadel which was mostly hidden by the clouds.

  “Is it true that people eat each other beyond the outer limits?” Gareth chuckled loudly.

  Diana was about to burst out laughing, but immediately went quiet, realizing that Gareth had decided to mock someone who was in command of them now.

  Rick did not reply.

  “It looks like they do,” Gareth continued. “No, I don't judge them. Life is probably hard out there. The poor wretches have to fight for survival. I also heard that there are territories where there are people with two heads or with three arms. Is that true?”

  “I never met any,” Rick replied.

  “I wonder, what is it that is beyond the outer limits of the city...” Gareth continued. “There are probably truly terrible beasts out there. They...”

  “Just shut up already!” Diana hissed.

  For a while, Rick heard their spoons scrape against the travel pots as they squashed the concentrate and the way Gareth chewed loudly as he put away the soft and tasteless mass.

  “I never liked this shit,” Gareth suddenly told them. “They prefer rats in our quarters. The meat is a bit tough, but it is real. You can also catch larvae in the summer and...”

  “By the sky gods!” Diana moved over to Rick. “Can I sit down here please?”

  “Of course. Just hurry up...” He got up and nodded at the approaching sergeant Lucio. “They are about to ask us to leave.”

  He was right. Lucio ordered them to come down and be quick about it.

  When the three of them were down on the plaza, the sergeant made an announcement.