by A. G. Riddle
The three soldiers who had been guarding Kate collapsed to the floor. Martin lifted the children into his arms and marched quickly out of the corridor.
Kate chased after him. “Martin, we have to get out of here quickly.”
Martin’s guards brought up the rear as they raced through the darkened hallways.
“That’s quite the understatement, Kate.” Then Martin stopped. “Wait, what are you referring to?”
“A nuclear bomb is coming through, into that room, in less than two hours,” Kate said.
Martin glanced at his soldiers. “The submersible.”
The soldiers led them through a series of corridors that ended in a round room, made from metal different from that of the Atlantis structure. This section of the structure was new. And manmade. In the middle of the room, a steel ladder hung out of a large round pipe. It reminded Kate of a manhole that led out of a sewer.
“What’s going on, Martin? What’s happened to you?”
“I’ve been waiting here, hiding for almost two months, hoping you and your father would come out. We’ll talk in the submersible. Get in. Craig is probably on his way by now.”
142
Patrick stepped through the portal, into the control room. There were at least a dozen guards in the room, and at the back, behind all of them, a familiar face. For once, Patrick was actually glad to see the man who had given him a tour of the tunnels almost a hundred years ago. A man who had changed his destiny. A man who could have let the Immari die in 1978, when he was awakened, but instead chose to rebuild the monstrous organization.
Mallory Craig’s words so many years ago ran through Patrick’s head. The call. The lure. The trap. “Patrick. There’s been an accident…”
Craig nodded to a man in a white coat who was holding a syringe. “Get the sample.”
Patrick raised the pistol and pointed it at the white-coated man, stopping him in his tracks.
A small smile spread across Patrick’s face. “Mallory. I guess it’s true then. The meek shall inherit the Earth.”
Craig’s face changed. “I’m not half as meek as you think—”
“Can you withstand a nuclear blast? How about two?”
143
One by one, Kate, Martin, the children, and Martin’s men climbed the ladder into the sub. Thirty minutes later, the sub rose through the waters of the Bay of Gibraltar. It was a small vessel with no sub-compartments. When it surfaced, Martin said to the soldiers, “Head out into the Atlantic, and watch your speed, they’re patrolling the straits.” He motioned for Kate to follow him up another steel ladder that led to the oval lookout deck on top of the sub.
Kate walked to the solid steel half-wall and leaned against the rail, next to Martin. The wind was cooler now, much cooler than yesterday in Gibraltar. How long had she been in the tombs? Something else was different. Gibraltar. It was dark.
“Why aren’t there any lights in Gibraltar?” Kate asked.
Martin turned. His unshaven, unkempt appearance still mildly unnerved her. “Evacuated.”
“Why?”
“It’s a protectorate of the Immari.”
“Protectorate?”
“You’ve been gone for two months, Kate. The world has changed. And not for the better.”
Kate continued searching the coastline. Gibraltar was dark, but so was Northern Africa. All the glittering lights she’d seen on the balcony that night, the night when David had caught her…
Kate stood for a while without saying anything. Finally she did see some lights, moving at the coast. “The lights in Northern Africa…”
“There are no lights in Northern Africa.”
Kate pointed at the faint twinkling lights. “They’re right—”
“A plague barge.”
“Plague?”
“The Atlantis Plague,” Martin said. He sighed, suddenly looking even more exhausted. “We’ll get to all that.” He leaned against the rail and gazed toward Gibraltar. “I had hoped to see your father again. But this… this is an end he would have liked.” He continued before Kate could speak. “Your father was a very remorseful man. He blamed himself for your mother’s death. And for leading the Immari into the city of Atlantis. A death, to save your life, to save the Atlanteans, and to keep the Immari from accessing the portal he found—to keep them out of the structure in Antarctica… it’s fitting for him. He would want to die in Gibraltar. Your mother died in Gibraltar.”
As if on cue, a geyser of water and light rose into the air, and a sonic boom broke over the sky and echoed in her chest.
Martin put his arm around her. “We need to get below. The wave will be here soon. We have to dive.”
Kate took one last look back. Through the light of the blast, she saw the Rock of Gibraltar crumbling—but not all of it. One last shard still held on, rising just above the water line.
144
The lab tech walked into Dr. Chang’s office. “Sir, we didn’t receive any data from Gibraltar.”
“The blast interrupted it?”
“No. The transmission never began. They never got a sample from Pierce. But we’ve had another break. Craig left a letter. He wouldn’t let Pierce bury Helena Barton’s body for a reason—Craig actually kept it in case it could be useful some day. It’s in a locker in San—”
“Have you gotten a sample?”
The tech nodded. “We’re running it through the simulation with the fetus and the data from Kane now. We’re not sure if it will work since—”
Chang tossed the tablet on his desk. “How soon will we know?”
“Maybe—” the tech’s phone buzzed. “Actually, it’s in.” He looked up excitedly.
“We’ve found the Atlantis Gene.”
Epilogue
David opened his eyes. The view was distorted. A white haze. The curve of glass. He was inside a tube. His eyes were adjusting, as if he were waking up from a deep sleep. He could see his body now. He was naked. His skin was smooth—too smooth. The shoulder and leg wounds were gone. As were the scars on his arms and chest, where the burning pieces of metal and rock from the collapsing buildings had dug into him so long ago.
The white fog was clearing now, and he looked out of the tube. To his left, a light shone into the vast chamber. It was the light from the corridor… the corridor where he had retreated and Dorian had shot him. Killed him. David strained to see. There he was. His limp body, lying there in a pool of blood. There was another body lying across him.
David looked away from the scene, trying to comprehend it. To his right, as far as he could see, up and down, right and left, were tubes. They were all asleep.
Except him.
And there was one more.
One more set of eyes scanning the distance beyond. Directly across from him. He wanted to lean closer to see them, but he couldn’t move. He waited. A cloud of mist passed, and he saw the eyes and the face in the other tube.
Dorian Sloane.
The Atlantis Plague
The Origin Mystery, Book Two
Prologue
70,000 Years Ago
Near Present-Day Somalia
The scientist opened her eyes and shook her head, trying to clear it. The ship had rushed her awakening sequence. Why? The awakening process usually happened more gradually, unless… The thick fog in her tube dissipated a bit, and she saw a flashing red light on the wall—an alarm.
The tube opened, and cold air rushed in around her, biting at her skin and scattering the last wisps of white fog. The scientist stepped out onto the frigid metal floor and stumbled to the control panel. Sparkling waves of green and white light, like a water fountain made of colorful fireflies, sprang up from the panel and engulfed her hand. She wiggled her fingers, and the wall display reacted. Yes—the ten-thousand-year hibernation had ended five hundred years early. She glanced at the two empty tubes behind her, then at the last tube, which held her companion. It was already starting the awakening sequence. She worked her fingers quickly, hoping to
stop the process, but it was too late.
His tube hissed opened. “What happened?”
“I’m not sure.”
She brought up a map of the world and a series of statistics. “We have a population alert. Maybe an extinction event.”
“Source?”
She panned the map to a small island surrounded by a massive plume of black smoke. “A supervolcano near the equator. Global temperatures have plummeted.”
“Affected subspecies?” her companion asked as he stepped out of his tube and hobbled over to the control station.
“Just one. 8472. On the central continent.”
“That’s disappointing,” he said. “They were very promising.”
“Yes, they were.” The scientist pushed up from the console, now able to stand on her own. “I’d like to check it out.”
Her companion gave her a questioning look.
“Just to take some samples.”
Four hours later, the scientists had moved the massive ship halfway across the small world. In the ship’s decontamination chamber, the scientist snapped the last buckles on her suit, secured her helmet, then stood and waited for the door to open.
She activated the speaker in her helmet. “Audio check.”
“Audio confirmed,” her partner said. “Also receiving video. You’re cleared for departure.”
The doors parted, revealing a white sandy beach. Twenty feet in, the beach was covered in a thick blanket of ash that stretched to a rocky ridge.
The scientist glanced up at the darkened, ash-filled sky. The remaining ash in the atmosphere would fall eventually, and the sunlight would return, but by then, it would be too late for many of the planet’s inhabitants, including subspecies 8472.
The scientist trudged to the top of the ridge and looked back at the massive black ship, beached like an oversized mechanical whale. The world was dark and still, like many of the pre-life planets she had studied.
“Last recorded life signs are just beyond the ridge, bearing two-five degrees.”
“Copy,” the scientist said as she turned slightly and set out at a brisk pace.
Up ahead, she saw a massive cave, surrounded by a rocky area covered in more ash than the beach. She continued her march to the cave, but the going was slower. Her boots slid against the ash and rock, as if she were walking on glass covered in shredded feathers.
Just before she reached the mouth of the cave, she felt something else under her boot, neither ash nor rock. Flesh and bone. A leg. The scientist stepped back and allowed the display in her helmet to adjust.
“Are you seeing this?” she asked.
“Yes. Enhancing your display.”
The scene came into focus. There were dozens of them: bodies, stacked on top of each other all the way to the opening of the cave. The emaciated, black corpses blended seamlessly with the rock below them and the ash that had fallen upon them, forming ridges and lumps that looked more like the aboveground roots of a massive tree.
To the scientist’s surprise, the bodies were intact. “Extraordinary. No signs of cannibalism. These survivors knew each other. They could have been members of a tribe with a shared moral code. I think they marched here, to the sea, seeking shelter and food.”
Her colleague switched her display to infrared, confirming they were all dead. His unspoken message was clear: get on with it.
She bent and withdrew a small cylinder. “Collecting a sample now.” She held the cylinder to the closest body and waited for it to collect the DNA sample. When it finished, she stood and spoke in a formal tone. “Alpha Lander, Expedition Science Log, Official Entry: Preliminary observations confirm that subspecies 8472 has experienced an extinction-level event. Suspected cause is a supervolcano and subsequent volcanic winter. Species evolved approximately 130,000 local years before log date. Attempting to collect sample from last known survivor.”
She turned and walked into the cave. The lights on each side of her helmet flashed on, revealing the scene inside. Bodies lay clumped together at the walls, but the infrared display showed no signs of life. The scientist wandered further into the cave. Several meters in, the bodies stopped. She glanced down. Tracks. Were they recent? She waded deeper into the cave.
On her helmet display, a faint sliver of crimson peeked out from the rock wall. Life signs. She rounded the turn, and the dark red spread into a glow of amber, orange, blues and greens. A survivor.
The scientist tapped quickly at her palm controls, switching to normal view. The survivor was female. Her ribs protruded unnaturally, stretching her black skin as if they could rip through with every shallow breath she drew. Below the ribs, the abdomen wasn’t as sunken as the scientist would have expected. She activated the infrared again and confirmed her suspicion. The female was pregnant.
The scientist reached for another sample cylinder but stopped abruptly. Behind her, she heard a sound—footsteps, heavy, like feet dragging on the rock.
She turned her head just in time to see a massive male survivor stumble into the cramped space. He was almost twenty percent taller than the average height of the other male bodies she had seen and more broad-shouldered. The tribe’s chief? His ribs protruded grotesquely, worse than the female’s. He held a forearm up, shielding his eyes from the lights that shone from the scientist’s helmet. He lurched toward the scientist. He had something in his hand. The scientist reached for her stun baton and staggered backward, away from the female, but the massive man kept coming. The scientist activated the baton, but just before the male reached her, he veered away, collapsing against the wall at the female’s side. He handed her the item in his hand—a mottled, rotten clump of flesh. She bit into it wildly, and he let his head fall back against the rock wall as his eyes closed.
The scientist fought to control her breathing.
Her partner’s voice inside her helmet was crisp, urgent. “Alpha Lander One, I’m reading abnormal vitals. Are you in danger?”
The scientist tapped hastily on her palm control, disabling the suit’s sensors and video feed. “Negative, Lander Two.” She paused. “Possible suit malfunction. Proceeding to collect samples from last known survivors of subspecies 8472.”
She withdrew a cylinder, knelt beside the large male, and placed the cylinder inside the elbow of his right arm. The second it made contact, the male lifted his other arm toward her. He placed his hand on the scientist’s forearm, gripping gently, the only embrace the dying man could manage. Beside him, the female had finished the meal of rotten flesh, likely her last, and looked on through nearly lifeless eyes.
The sample cylinder beeped full once, then again, but the scientist didn’t draw it away. She sat there, frozen. Something was happening to her. Then the male’s hand slipped off her forearm, and his head rolled back against the wall. Before the scientist knew what was happening, she had hoisted the male up, slung him over her shoulder, and placed the female on her other shoulder. The suit’s exoskeleton easily supported the weight, but once she cleared the cave, keeping her balance was more difficult on the ash-covered rocky ridge.
Ten minutes later, she crossed the beach, and the doors of the ship parted. Inside the ship, she placed the bodies on two rolling stretchers, shed her suit, and quickly moved the survivors to an operating room. She looked over her shoulder, then focused on the workstation. She ran several simulations and began adjusting the algorithms.
Behind her, a voice called out, “What are you doing?”
She whipped around, startled. She hadn’t heard the door open. Her companion stood in the doorway, surveying the room. Confusion, then alarm spread across his face. “Are you—”
“I’m…” Her mind raced. She said the only thing she could. “I’m conducting an experiment.”
Part I
Secrets
1
Orchid District
Marbella, Spain
Dr. Kate Warner watched the woman convulse and strain against the straps of the makeshift operating table. The seizures grew mor
e violent, and blood flowed from her mouth and ears.
There was nothing Kate could do for the woman, and that bothered her more than anything. Even during medical school and her residency, Kate had never gotten used to seeing a patient die. She hoped she never would.
She stepped forward, gripped the woman’s left hand, and stood there until the shaking stopped. The woman blew out her last breath as her head rolled to the side.
The room fell silent except for the pitter-patter of blood falling from the table, splattering on the plastic below. The entire room was wrapped in heavy sheet plastic. The room was the closest thing the resort had to an operating room—a massage room in the spa building. Kate used the table where wealthy tourists had been pampered three months before to conduct experiments she still didn’t understand.
Above her, the low whine of an electric motor broke the silence as the tiny video camera panned away from the woman to face Kate, prompting her, saying: file your report.
Kate jerked her mask down and gently placed the woman’s hand on her abdomen. “Atlantis Plague Trial Alpha-493: Result Negative. Subject Marbella-2918.” Kate eyed the woman, trying to think of a name. They refused to name the subjects, but Kate made up a name for every one of them. It wasn’t like they could punish her for it. Maybe they thought withholding the names would make her job easier. It didn’t. No one deserved to be a number or to die without a name.
