The Atlantis Trilogy Box Set- The Complete Series

by A. G. Riddle

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” Dorian said as he led Dmitry farther away from any of the other staff. “They’re a liability. We certainly can’t let anyone leave, at least not until Toba is in full swing. We have another problem. There are only one hundred and nineteen human subjects on-site.”

  The man saw the implication immediately. “Not enough bodies.”

  “Not even close. I think we can solve both issues, but it won’t be easy.”

  Dmitry nodded and glanced over at the scientists milling around in the lab. “Process the staff through the Bell? I agree. It would require Chang’s team to operate the machinery… on their own people. Doable, but it could get ugly. There are at least a hundred security personnel on site. They won’t go quietly, even if we segregate them and orchestrate it as a drill.”

  “What do you need?” Dorian said.

  “Fifty, maybe sixty men. Immari Security or Clocktower field agents would be ideal. Immari Security is purging the New Delhi Clocktower station now. We might be able to task the remaining field operatives.”

  “Make it happen,” Dorian said as he stepped away.

  “Where will you be?”

  “Someone inside Immari has to be working with Reed. I’m going to find out who it is.”

  57

  Kate screamed as the security guards ripped the children from her hands and wrestled her to the ground. She scratched their faces and kicked. She couldn’t lose them again. She had to fight.

  “No, to the train,” one of the guards said. The boys tried to wiggle free.

  Kate reached out for them, but a man pinned her arms. Another man rushed to her, and she saw the butt of a rifle coming at her face.

  The room was dark and crowded. Kate was being crushed by people from every side. She elbowed people left and right, but no one responded—they were dead on their feet. They would have fallen over if they weren’t squeezed in so tight.

  Above her, Kate heard a loud boom. A huge metal device was descending from the ceiling. There were lights, flashing from the top now, with synchronized booms. She could feel the booms in her chest and in the bodies of the zombies crowded around her.

  Were the children here? She scanned the room. She couldn’t see anyone, just blank faces, half-awake. Then—Naomi. The confident woman who had rescued her looked terrified.

  The boom-boom-boom above grew deafening, the light blinding. Kate felt the flesh around her heat up. She raised a hand to brush the sweat from her face, but her hand was already so wet, covered in something thick, almost sticky—blood.

  58

  The concrete doors to the reactor hall slammed shut with a loud boom. The sound was barely audible over the rumble of the massive reactors. David walked deeper into the room, surveying the site of his last stand. Maybe Kate got out.

  He slid the magazine out of his gun. Two rounds. Should he save the last round? The drugs they used on Kate were serious. Who knew what they could do. He knew valuable intel. That was the selfless reason, but there were others. He pushed the thought from his mind. He’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

  He walked around the room—the passageway between the two towering reactors. It resembled a high school gym with a high ceiling dominated by metal scaffolding. It was shaped like an hourglass—the room was almost rectangular save for two round indentations near the center—the thick concrete walls of two reactors. There were two entrances, both of them with concrete slide up-and-down doors—one at the front, the other at the rear of the room. The tall smooth walls surrounding the doors were dotted with metal conduits and tubes that were mostly silver, with a few blue and red mixed in, giving the impression of varicose veins peeking out of a gray forehead over the mouth of the door.

  “Hello, Andrew,” a voice boomed over the loud speaker, no doubt intended for evacuation warnings. David knew that voice: someone pre-Clocktower. But he couldn’t place it.

  David needed to buy time. It was the only thing that could help Kate. “That’s not my name anymore.” He heard the reactors on each side roar to life. He wondered if the “voice” could hear him over the din.

  How long had it been? The bombs should go off soon. Cutting the power would seal his fate but could help Kate.

  “We have the girl. And we found your bombs. Not terribly creative. I would have expected more from you.”

  David looked around. Was the voice lying? Why tell him? What could he do? Shoot the reactors? Bonehead idea—massive concrete walls. Shoot one of the conduits, hope to get lucky? Unlikely. The ceiling? Useless.

  The voice wanted something from him: why else question him? Maybe the voice was lying. Kate could be waiting on him at the train. Maybe he didn’t have her. “What do you want?” David yelled.

  “Who sent you here?” the voice boomed.

  “Let her go, and I’ll tell you.”

  The voice laughed. “Sure, it’s a deal.”

  “Sounds good, come on down here, and I’ll make a formal statement. Even draw you a picture. I’ve got his email address too.”

  “If I have to come in there, I’m going to beat it out of you. I’m on a tight schedule. No time for drugs.”

  The reactors roared louder. Should it sound like that?

  The voice continued, “You don’t have any options here, Andrew. We both know it. But you still hang on. That’s your problem—your weakness. You’re the ultimate sucker for a lost cause. It appeals to your rescue fantasy. Pakistani villagers, Jakartan children, you always go for it. Because you sympathize, you feel like a victim—that’s your mentality. You think if you can get even with the people who wronged you, you’ll be whole. But you won’t. It’s over. You know it’s true. Listen to my voice. You know who I am. I keep my promises. I’ll give the girl a quick death, I promise. That’s the best you can do here. Tell me who it was. It’s your last play.”

  Standard interrogation: break down your subject, assert superiority, and convince them that talking is the only option. Actually it was pretty convincing at this point. David knew they could simply gas him, toss a grenade in, or storm him with a few guards. He had no options. But now he had figured out who the man behind the microphone was: Dorian Sloane, the Immari field commander in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He should have assumed Sloane would run the entire region for Immari Security at this point. He was ruthless, capable… and vain. Could David use that? His best option was to play for time, on the off chance that something would happen. Or that Sloane was lying and Kate was getting away.

  “I gotta tell ya, Sloane, I think you missed your calling. The psychoanalysis… just amazing. You’ve really got me questioning my whole life here. Can I have a little time to contemplate the deeper issues you touched on? I mean—”

  “Stop wasting time, Andrew. It won’t matter for you or her. You hear those reactors coming to life? That’s the sound of power flowing to a machine that’s killing Kate right now. It’s just you, now. And Clocktower fell a few hours ago. Now tell me—”

  “In that case, you’re the one wasting time. I’ve got nothing to say.” David gritted his teeth and tossed his gun on the floor. It slid all the way to the far door. “You want to try to beat it out of me, come on down here and take your best shot. I’m unarmed. You might have half a chance.” He stood in the middle of the hourglass-shaped room, looking from door-to-door, wondering which one would open first… and if he could make it when it did.

  The reactor screamed even louder, and David felt heat radiating off of it. Was it malfunctioning? Behind him, a concrete door rumbled to life, lifting up from the two-foot indentation in the floor. The gun lay at the opposite door.

  David ran for the opening door. Forty feet away. Thirty feet away. It was his only option: to slide under and fight hand-to-hand, then try to break out of the perimeter they’d set up. Twenty feet.

  Sloane ducked under the door and popped up, a gun in his right hand leading the way. He fired three quick shots. The first caught David in his shoulder, cutting him down instantly and sen
ding him sprawling onto the concrete floor. Blood spread out below him as he rolled back and forth, fighting to get to his feet, but Sloane was on him, kicking David’s legs out from under him.

  “Who told you about this place?”

  David could barely hear him over the reactors. His shoulder throbbed. The wound didn’t feel like a wound; it felt like a piece of him had been blown off. He couldn’t even feel his left arm.

  Sloane pointed the gun at David’s left leg. “At least die with some dignity, Andrew. Tell me, and I’ll end this.”

  David tried to think. I need to buy some time. “I don’t have a name.”

  Sloane moved the gun closer to David’s leg.

  “But—I do have an IP address. It’s how I communicated with him.”

  Sloane drew back, considering.

  David sucked a few more breaths in. “It’s in my left pocket; you’ll have to get it.” He motioned to his arm.

  Sloane leaned toward him and pulled the trigger, sending a bullet into David’s leg.

  David writhed wildly on the ground, screaming in pain.

  Sloane circled him. “Stop. Lying. To. Me.”

  When David said nothing, Sloane raised his boot and slammed it into David’s forehead, sending his skull into the concrete floor. David saw spots. He was certain he would pass out soon.

  Above them, the reactors had changed their tone again, a different sound. Sloane looked up. A siren went off just before an explosion rocked the room, throwing shards of concrete and metal debris everywhere. Gas spewed from the pipes and walls, blanketing the room. The other door opened and people were running through.

  David rolled over onto his belly and crawled with one arm and one leg, dragging the limp arm and the dead leg. The pain almost overwhelmed him. He had to stop, swallow, and gasp for breath. He clawed a few more feet. He tried not to inhale the dirt and dust coating the floors. He knew it was getting in the holes in his leg and shoulder, but it didn’t matter, he had to get away. He saw Sloane swatting the smoke, charging around the room.

  Another explosion.

  The other reactor?

  The smoke was too thick to see anything now.

  Talking, in the distance. “Sir, we have to evacuate, there’s a problem—”

  “Fine. Give me your gun.”

  Gunshots, everywhere. The walls, the floor. David froze. He held his head dead still against the ground as if listening, waiting for some sign. In the few inches above the floor, he saw bodies dropping here and there, Sloane’s own men falling from his last desperate attempt to put one more round in David.

  “Sir, we must—”

  “All right!”

  David heard people running around him. He tried to push up with his good arm, but he couldn’t. He was too weak. Too cold. He watched his breath blow the white dust on the ground. Every breath blew a few grains of white powder. All around him, the white was being eaten by the red. It reminded him of something, a thought or memory; what was it? Shaving. It was like the blood from a shaving cut consuming a white tissue. He watched the red crawl over the white dust toward his face as the sirens moaned.

  59

  Kate thought the masses of people in the room were falling, but she realized in horror that they were melting, or disintegrating, from the ground up. Lights flashed across the room and she caught glimpses of the waves flowing through, like violent tides delivering death, one boom at a time.

  But the booming was different now. And the light—the flashing was getting dimmer—not nearly as blinding. She could see it now—the device suspended from the walls. It was shaped like a bell, or an oversized pawn with windows in the head. She squinted to see something else. It was… dripping. Iron tears fell, draping the unlucky people below it in a molten blanket of death.

  More people were dropping, but there were survivors scattered across the room—some looking confused, as if waiting to be picked in an execution lottery; others running, some to the corners; three or four beating on the door.

  Kate looked down, seeing her body for the first time since waking up. She was covered in blood, but it wasn’t her blood. Aside from the throbbing in her head, she was unharmed. She had to help these people. She knelt down and examined the man at her feet—or what was left of him. It looked like his blood had swollen, bursting his blood vessels from the inside, causing a massive body-wide hemorrhage that tore his skin and erupted from his eyes and nails.

  The bell was changing—the light flashed on again, brighter than ever. Kate shielded her eyes with her hand and turned away from the light. Ahead, she saw Naomi, who must have waded through the bodies toward the door. Kate crawled over to her.

  The boom was now a constant low-pitched wail, like the knell of a gong that wouldn’t end. Iron stretching?

  Kate rolled Naomi’s head back and pushed the hair out of her face. Dead. Beautiful. The blood hadn’t reached her face.

  Bodies swarmed around Kate—the living. They crowded the door, beating and screaming. She tried to rise to her feet but couldn’t; they were all over her, waving arms in the air and shoving.

  The blast deafened Kate and flattened the crowd, pressing a half dozen people into her. She sucked hard for a breath, but none would come. They were crushing her, suffocating her. She punched, twisted, and heaved her head back. It was raining. No—debris was falling. And then water, a huge flood of water into the room, and she was free, floating, drifting with the massive tidal wave that swept over the crumbling walls that had sealed the death room.

  Kate inhaled sharply. The breath hurt, but it was a relief. At that moment, she had two thoughts:

  I’m alive.

  David must have saved me.

  60

  Dorian Sloane motioned for Dr. Chang to put on one of the helicopter’s headsets.

  Below them, another explosion rocked the complex, causing the helicopter to shudder, then bank slightly away from it.

  The second that Chang’s headphones covered his ears, Dorian started in. “What the hell happened?”

  “The Bell, some kind of problem.”

  “Sabotaged?”

  “No, or, I don’t think so. Everything was normal: power, radiation output. But it… malfunctioned.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Look, we still don’t completely understand how it works, and it’s, you know, old, over one hundred thousand years old, and we’ve been using it nonstop for about eighty years—”

  “This is not a warranty issue, Doctor. You need to figure out what happened—”

  Another man broke onto the line. “Sir, there’s a call from the facility. The security chief, he says it’s urgent.”

  Dorian tore off his headset and grabbed the sat phone. “What?”

  “Mr. Sloane, we have another problem.”

  “Don’t call me and tell me we have a problem. It’s quite apparent we have problems. Tell me what the problem is and quit wasting my time.”

  “Oh course, I’m sorry—”

  “What? Tell me!”

  “The Bell room. It exploded. We think radiation could have escaped.”

  Dorian’s mind raced. If the bodies—or even radiation—had escaped from the Bell room, he could still salvage Toba Protocol. He just had to sell it to the people on the ground.

  “Sir?” the security chief said tentatively. “I’m initiating a quarantine per our SOPs, I just wanted to confirm—”

  “No. We’re not establishing a quarantine—”

  “But my orders—”

  “Have changed. As has the situation. We need to rescue our people, Chief. I want you to devote all your resources to getting everyone onto the trains and away from the facilities. And put the bodies on the trains too. Their families deserve the right to bury them.”

  “But won’t there be an outbreak—”

  “You worry about getting those people on the trains. I’ll take care of the rest. There are factors you’re not aware of. Call me when the last train is away. Immari is a family. We don’t l
eave anyone behind. You understand me?”

  “Yes, sir, we won’t leave a single soul behind—”

  Dorian disconnected the line and put his headset back on. He turned to Dmitry Kozlov, the Immari Security officer sitting across from him. “Did Chase get out with the nukes and children?”

  “Yes, they’re on their way to the coast.”

  “Good.” Dorian thought for a moment. They would still get bodies from the Bell—that was the good news. But the explosions at the facility would draw attention. If the world found out what was at the site… Five thousand years of their work, of well-kept secrets, would all be lost, as would the Immari. “Launch drones from Afghanistan. As soon as the last train leaves, blow the facility.”

  61

  David felt them lift him up and carry him like a rag doll. Around him, he saw a war zone: sirens blared, white dust floated through the air like snow, fires belched black smoke, and voices shouted in Chinese. He watched it all through half-closed eyes as if it were a dream.

  Over the loudspeaker, a recording repeated, “Reactor core breach. Evacuate. Evacuer. Evakuieren…” The voice faded, and David felt sunlight on his face. The men tossed him about as they carried him over the rough ground.

  “Stop! Let me take a look.” A man was in his face. Someone with a white coat. Blond, around forty. British. He grabbed David’s face and pulled at his eyelids, then looked him up and down, inspecting the wounds. “No, he won’t make it.” The man pointed to the ground and drew a hand across his throat. “Put him down. Get someone else.” He motioned to the building. The Chinese workers dropped him like a sack of rotten potatoes and ran back toward the building.

  From the ground, David watched the man run over to another group holding a body pulled from the rubble. The man perused it briefly. “Yes, she’ll make it.” He gestured toward the train, and the men carried the woman the remaining twenty feet, tossing her into a car where other workers dragged her in.