Atlantis Lost: The Vanishing Paradise

by Lauren A. Johnson

you Queen of that law by now," Medusa informed Adair of the faction that was created after she was locked away.

  "Good law," Adair smiled, this was the first time she felt as though the world wasn’t crumbling in her absence.

  "Useless law, I have nothing to do with any of this," she sat down as her servants put on her shoes for her.

  "Listen to me, no one Bilal nor The First Law will allow you to live, you are dangerous, you have no choice but to join a side or they will kill you, they don’t care if you have the skull or not they’ll find Atlantis another way.” Adair tried to control her anger but she was nearly shouting.

  "I can take care of myself," Medusa hissed the angrier she became the curlier her hair became, the coils moved slightly on their own.

  Adair nodded, "Sure a few pathetic guards and a giant snake as your guard."

  Medusa snatched her foot away from her servant and flipped her head to Adair before asking, "Giant snake? What giant snake?"

  "What?!" Adair shouted before the snake leap from the wall and drove straight towards Medusa. As a precaution Damascus grabbed Adair and pulled her to the safety of the ceiling knocking her glasses from her face. The two of them hung from the nearest pole as they watched the servants scattered and run for safety while Medusa's skin turned into scales and her eyes turned a fiery red. The snake froze in place under her gaze and turned into stone.

  "Whoa," Adair caught her breath as she stared at the scene beneath her.

  Medusa stared at the creature before her while Damascus let Adair down, "It looks like someone has a sense of humor, I mean who sends a snake after the snake lady?"

  Medusa flipped around and grabbed Adair by the throat, Damascus ran up to save her but an invisible force blocked him from getting near, "You would!" she hissed while Adair struggled to get free. She shut her eyes but Medusa squeezed her throat harder. "Look at me! You think this silly trick would be enough to get me to join your side!"

  "Not a trick!" Adair managed to say through her constricted windpipe.

  "Let her go!" Damascus shouted.

  Medusa dropped Adair in a fit of pain, her eyes rolled to the back of her head as she began to convulse. The force field shattered and dispersed Adair thought the air smelled like the crisp Atlantic Ocean she and Damascus turned to source of Medusa's pain.

  Nicklar held a weapon that was attached to his hand outward; the silver device seemed to glow while Medusa growled in pain. Anger grew within Adair she began to shout, "Enough!"

  Nicklar's short cut hair looked blue in the brightly lit room, "You can't escape Adair, just tell us where Rollet's ship is and we can all go to the Outer Dimensional Agency to talk about how to proceed."

  "You are killing her!" Adair screamed.

  Nicklar rolled his eyes and released the Atlantian woman, she hacked and coughed. While the woman with the snake-like hair regained her composure Adair continued, "I made that device to take out the Bilal, she is not one of them!"

  "Then who is she? Who are you for that matter? We don't know where either one of you stand, and until you make a choice both sides will hunt you. That..." Nicklar pointed to the crumbling remains of the serpent that attacked the two Atlantian women earlier, "That's just the start, who’s to say that creature didn't follow you here?"

  "How many of my other devices have you commandeered?" Adair's mind raced she tried to remember all the weapons she's created. She tried to remember what weapons they could have improved on.

  Damascus could sense that Lo and Tobias were on their way; they were running down the hall Tobias was scolding Lo for allowing Nicklar to go ahead of them. They were supposed to each pick a point around the fortress and then wait for Tobias’ signal. Nicklar decided he couldn't wait. Tobias and Lo entered through another entrance. Nicklar was told to wait because Tobias was the only one who was powerful and fast enough to take on Adair.

  "Why are you so hell bent on getting me back? You have a different plan for me than the others do don't you?" Adair nodded to Damascus who understood what Adair wanted to do without any further notice.

  Medusa watched the conversation as she was deciding her own plan for escape, she noticed the slight exchange between Damascus and Adair. Nicklar could hear Tobias and Lo's footsteps as they became louder and louder. In that moment everyone realized that Lo and Tobias could not teleport making their get-aways that much easier.

  Adair looked into Nicklar's light brown eyes, "Come on you can tell me, it's just us rebels here..."

  "Kara is missing," Nicklar said defeated, “And it’s my fault.”

  Adair only nodded, "Oh, well, that's all I needed to know." The moment Lo and Tobias entered the room Damascus grabbed Adair and ran for the nearest window, Medusa who had been as still as a statue transformed into a snake and followed after the pair. Damascus catapulted himself out of the window with Adair in his arms and broke her fall into the moonlit garden. Medusa slithered out of the open window and into the plush fresh grass.

  Damascus ran as fast as he could while he cradled Adair who was pushing buttons on her handheld device. The device manipulated a portion of the dimension where her stolen spacecraft was hidden from anyone passing by. She was able to fold the dimension over itself effectively hiding the Tobias’ spaceship in a dimensional pocket. Damascus threw Adair to her feet in front of the space ship and flipped back to face their tag along friend.

  He hissed and growled fiercely at Medusa, he barred his fangs he wanted her to make no mistake: she was not welcome.

  "Damascus!" Adair shouted while she opened the sleek black and silver spacecraft.

  Medusa spoke telepathically with the two of them, "This is a war neither one of you will win. My power is greater than yours, I am smarter than you, but there’s something you should know…”

  The grand speech was interrupted when Tobias arrived with a similar device as Nicklar's on his hand, but his was metallic green instead of sliver. Adair grabbed her head and the Medusa Serpent fell back and writhed in pain. The large reptile screeched and cried.

  Damascus grabbed Adair once again and threw her into the open door as he closed the door he stared Tobias in the eyes. Once the door was shut Damascus turned around to tend to Adair who was already prepping the ship for takeoff. Damascus' feelings of worry and fear became feelings of curiosity and annoyance.

  "I thought you were hurt," Damascus became even more irritated at Adair's casual movements.

  "Oh no...I just wanted them to think that I was...I mean, really? Why would I make a device that could harm me? There's a built-in protocol in the science of the alchemy that prohibits any of those devices from hurting me. I do have a mild headache but I won't suffer from it," The ship was launched into dimensional space while Adair searched the computer system of all the dimensional agents, "but Medusa she'll hear that ringing for a week. If they keep hitting her with it, I'd say it may take years for her to recover, which normally would be like a nap to you or I, but everything's happening at once. Did you hear what Nicklar said?" She punched in different symbols, codes and words in several different languages.

  "Who is Kara?" Damascus asked seriously.

  "From what I've been reading in the computer system here...after I was wrongly imprisoned, the war broke out and Atlantis was lost. You know this because you were there, but what you don't know is that a group of Atlantians got together and created the Dimensional Agency, they've been grabbing people across space and time to be their agents, half of them decided to stay on as agents while the other half have gone out to look for the lost Atlantians," Adair pointed to different versions of Earth.

  Damascus looked at the map, "Why are they all on different versions of Earth?"

  Adair nodded, "You noticed that huh? Do you remember the Biblical story? The Tower of Babel? Well it's more like the Tower of Bilal, the Bilal were trying to shift the humans out of our dimension so that they could have the Earth to themselves. The entire original dimension really
- but they failed because it backfired. That's the thing about alchemy if you get just one part of the science wrong, you could end up millions of dimensions away. I learned here that Nicklar and his main honey for the past several reincarnations Kara have been a part of the recovery team, and guess who they found..."

  Two pictures appeared on the screen, one of a man and one of a woman, "Now they found Kara with a group of others awhile ago but she's missing again, they found Rollett," Damascus did his best to mask his anger at the sound of his name, "refused to come along with them to the agency."

  "So you want to go and find Rollett?" Damascus asked as if he had a bitter taste in his mouth.

  Adair noticed the tone in his voice, "Look," she slammed the console, a flurry of documents, images and videos appeared on the screen before them, "this is all the information Tobias has on the Bilal, the only thing that he knows is that they've set up shop in another dimension and that they're trapped there. But if I'm right and what I'm sensing is real, the Bilal are coming, they have conquered the dimension they're in now and they're using the creatures of that dimension as their soldiers. We need Rollett! Medusa may have the skulls but she’s not telling where they are, I’m sure since he’s the one who created them he has a back up. It’s time for you to get over it."

  “And what of the space pirate?” Damascus asked.

  “He’s a space pirate, he’s probably dead by now, one dies like every millisecond a day,” Adair put her hands on her hips, as her answer provoked no response from Damascus, “So what he has three of the six skulls, he probably doesn’t even know how to get the information. Rollett probably does. I put in the information for the computer to find him,”

  Damascus shook his head when he saw the pulsating red dot on the map, "This is a bad idea," he touched the tip of his right fang with his tongue before sucking his teeth.

  "Why?" Adair asked and Damascus nodded his head toward the screen. Adair turned see what he was referring to and she saw it. Rollett, the man who Damascus considers a traitor was in Paradise, California.

  "Crap, that's one hell of a coincidence," Adair stared at the screen.