by A. G. Riddle
“What do you want from me?”
“I want to give you a chance, Isis. A chance to redeem yourself.”
When Isis said nothing, Ares continued. “We have an opportunity to right all the wrongs, to bring our people back together and save these humans.”
“How?”
“We can guide their evolution. We can create something that will end this war.”
Isis wanted desperately to resist, to run out of the room and never return, but the lure of righting the wrongs she had committed was irresistible. She decided that she would hear Ares out. There was no harm in that. Quietly, she said, “I’m listening.”
“I’ve taken genetic samples, but I don’t have the skill to engineer the species I need. You can. And I have the knowledge you need—information about how the sentinels target DNA and the Serpentine virus, information that I’ve kept from our people since the Exodus.” On the screen at the other end of the room, a DNA sequence appeared. “This is the Serpentine virus that was used on the Atlantean expeditionary fleet before the Exodus. It’s the key. With my information, and your knowledge of genetic engineering, we can change the course of the universe.” Ares stepped closer to her. “The species we create will restore our people. If you refuse, you truly have killed us all.”
Ares seemed to know where every one of her buttons was, and he played them like a musical instrument. He held the one thing Isis would do anything for: redemption. A chance to reunify their people and make the Exiles safe again. Isis told herself that to do good things, sometimes it was necessary to work with bad people. But in the back of her mind, she wondered if she was rationalizing.
In the years that followed, Isis worked with Ares in secret, again keeping her work from Janus, who Ares rightly predicted would have objected. Isis knew that Ares was withholding information, giving her just enough to complete the experiments that he needed. His mantra was always that the sentinel and Serpentine information was need-to-know, that revealing the full details to Isis would compromise the safety of countless worlds.
Isis knew she was a pawn, but she felt she had no way out, no alternatives. As the years went on, she couldn’t bring herself to come clean with Janus. She couldn’t betray him again.
Cycle after cycle, she retreated to her hibernation chamber, hoping that Ares would honor his word, that at the next awakening, Ares would announce that subspecies 8472 was ready, and that Atlantean reunification was at hand.
She instead awoke to an alarm. As the screen outside the hibernation chamber lit up with population alerts, Isis grasped the magnitude of Ares’ betrayal. Around the globe, human subspecies were dying out—three of them at once, all but subspecies 8472, his weapon.
If Janus realized the truth, he refused to say it. He did what Isis expected: rushed to save the species he could, subspecies 8470, which would later be called Neanderthals. The Alpha Lander touched down just off the coast of an area that would later be called Gibraltar, and Janus and Isis suited up, disembarked, and carried back the last living Neanderthal.
As they reached the ship, explosions rocked it, tearing the vessel in half, tossing Janus and Isis about wildly. They placed the Neanderthal in a hibernation tube and made their way to the bridge.
“Ares betrayed us,” Janus finally said.
Isis couldn’t bring herself to speak. As the seconds ticked by, she thought Janus realized the full truth, but he didn’t say a word to her. He focused on the control panel. He locked down the lander, then activated the intrusion protocols on their space vessel, ensuring that Ares would be trapped if he tried to use it. Another blast rocked the lander, throwing Isis into the wall. She looked up, semi-conscious. Janus moved across the room and knelt over her, staring into her face. Through his transparent visor, she could see the faintest hint of emotion. Pain. Hurt. Betrayal. Isis desperately wanted to confess, to tell him everything, to ask for his forgiveness. But no words came. He lifted her up, his suit’s exoskeleton easily supporting her weight. He raced through the lander’s corridors and charged through the portal, exiting into the ark. Isis’ last memory was seeing Ares fire a shot at her, a blast that killed her as she slipped from Janus’ arms.
Kate was drenched in sweat. Every breath felt as though she were drowning. She had seen all the memories now—the ones she was born with and those Janus had tried to hide from her. And she knew the rest. Ares had shot Janus that day in the resurrection ark, but he hadn’t killed him. Janus had made it back though the portal to the Alpha Lander that lay buried, wrecked off the coast of Gibraltar. Janus had been trapped in a section close to Morocco. He had desperately tried to resurrect his partner in the other section of the Alpha Lander, but without her death signal, the ship wouldn’t comply. He had tried for years, testing countless methods on the stasis chambers.
When he had finally given up, he programmed the ship’s time dilation device to emit radiation that would roll back Ares’ and Isis’ genetic changes, hoping to revert humanity to a genome that would be safe from the sentinels, Exiles, and Ares.
Then Janus had waited. The lander had lain buried for thirteen thousand years, until a group called Immari International began excavating the area under the Bay of Gibraltar, hoping to find Plato’s fabled city of Atlantis. They hired a miner named Patrick Pierce, who had been wounded during the First World War. When his team reached the time dilation device, which they would later call the Bell, it unleashed a pandemic, the Spanish flu, killing millions. Pierce had placed his dying wife in one of the tubes he had found, and the fetus inside her was born in 1978. He named her Kate Warner, and for thirty-five years, until the final outbreak of the Atlantis Plague, she had harbored some of Isis’ memories. The fragments in her subconscious had driven her entire life. She had become a geneticist focused on brain wiring, dedicating her life to creating a therapy that addressed cognitive differences. For her entire life, Kate had been trying to fix the Atlantis Gene, trying to complete Isis’ work and fulfill her desire to correct her mistake. Now Kate finally had the knowledge she needed to do that.
She opened her eyes.
She felt the cold floor of the bottom of the vat on her back and Milo’s arms around her shoulders. Blood dripped from her nose into the pool below.
“You’re hurt, Dr. Kate.”
“It’s okay. I know what we have to do.”
49
Dorian felt his life slipping away. He lay on his back in the conference booth, staring at the ceiling. In his mind, he rifled through the memories and what he knew, hoping for a clue about Ares’ next move.
Ares had killed Isis the day he had attacked the Alpha Lander, but he had failed to kill Janus. For years, Janus had tried to resurrect Isis, and in his desperation, he had sent all the resurrection data except his own to the tubes in the section off the coast of Gibraltar. When the Bell attached to the Alpha Lander had unleashed the Spanish flu, Dorian’s father, a leading member of the Immari, had placed him inside one of the tubes, where he had remained until 1978. Dorian had awoken changed, unaware that Ares’ memories lay buried in his subconscious, driving him. All Ares’ hate, his resentment of Isis, was there, deep within Dorian’s mind. All his life, Dorian had feared an unseen enemy, a great threat he believed the human race was genetically unprepared to face. Now he knew it was true. The Serpentine Army, the Exiles, the sentinels—they were all threats. And so was Ares. He wanted to use humanity for his own ends; they were the key to his plan, which still wasn’t clear to Dorian.
After Ares’ attack on the ship in Gibraltar, he had deployed the retrovirus Isis had helped him develop, using a supervolcano in Indonesia as his delivery vehicle. Then he had ported to the scientists’ ship, but Janus’ countermeasures had trapped him there. Ares had used his link to the ark buried under Antarctica to appear as an avatar, making contact with Dorian when he had finally entered over thirty years after his rebirth in the tubes and thirteen thousand years after Ares’ attack on the science team. Dorian had carried a case out of the resurrection ark in An
tarctica. Its radiation had completed humanity’s genetic transformation in the final days of the Atlantis Plague, and the portal the case had formed led Dorian to the scientists’ primary ship, where he had rescued Ares.
In the weeks that followed, Ares had wrecked the planet, flooding it, collapsing nations into civil wars. Dorian was sure of one thing: it was no way to build an army. Ares was weakening humanity. But why? As bait of some sort? Or was the plan longer range? It didn’t make sense.
Dorian struggled to his feet and staggered out of the glowing white conference booth. He stopped in the open area with the tall glass windows looking out on the massive assembly line. The cylinder that produced the sentinel spheres stretched into the blackness of space with no end in sight. The line that had produced thousands of sentinels each minute had stopped, but there were more sentinels than ever. Dorian walked closer to the window. Small pops of blue and white light flickered across the sky, like thousands of fireflies blinking in the night. Wormholes opened and closed, each delivering a sentinel, which were arriving by the thousands each second. The entire sky was filling with the black objects. They blotted out almost every star, the pops of light heralding their arrival the only shred of light in sight.
Something was happening. They were gathering here, waiting.
Dorian moved to the communications bay and interfaced the sentinel positioning database. All the systems recognized him as General Ares, and no information was withheld from him. Dorian studied the map. The sentinel line that protected this region of space from the Serpentine fleet was collapsing. Large groups of sentinels were leaving the line, rallying to the factory. On the edge of the old line, where the military beacon had been, at the Serpentine battlefield, a Serpentine fleet massed, establishing a staging area. The ships were simply a swarm of dots on the screen, but Dorian felt his mouth run dry. Blood ran from his nose, and he wiped it away. He wondered how long he had left. And if he could do anything to save his world.
Natalie woke to the sound of doors slamming. She slipped out from under the quilt and crept to the window, the cabin’s cold wood floor creaking under her feet.
Three of the four Humvees cranked, their lights flashing through the window for a moment as they backed down the pine tree-lined, dirt driveway that led to the country road in the mountains of North Carolina. She glanced back at the bed. Matthew was still asleep, snuggled under the heavy quilts.
She started for the bedroom door, but her feet were freezing. She pulled on her shoes and a sweater and ventured out.
Major Thomas sat by the fire, sipping coffee, listening to the radio.
“What’s going on?”
“Supply concerns,” he said. “Coffee?”
She nodded and sat in the rustic chair across from him, facing the fire. “Are we out of supplies?”
“No. Not yet. But the government is.” He pointed to the radio, and Natalie listened for a moment while he poured her a cup of coffee.
This broadcast is a service of the United States government. All able-bodied citizens are now required to report to your closest fire station. Our government and our food supplies are under attack from insurgent militias. If you have military training, you are especially needed to defend the American homeland. Report immediately to your nearest fire station for further instructions. You will be fed, and you will help save lives…
Thomas turned the dial down on the antique radio. “The calls have gotten more urgent since last night. The fighting must be getting more intense. My guess is that the Immari militias have scored some victories.”
“You’re not going?”
“No. It’s just a matter of time before someone shows up here.”
Natalie took a deep breath, unable to speak.
“And besides, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”
On the bridge of the resurrection ark, Ares watched the last pieces of ice slip off the ancient ship, falling back to Antarctica as it lifted off.
The vessel rose through the atmosphere, and Ares surveyed the planet he had ruined. Massive storms raged, and the coastlines were toxic marshes of submerged cities.
It would be irresistible to his enemy. His time on the tiny world hadn’t gone exactly as planned, but he was back on track now. Nothing could stop him.
The ancient ark cleared the atmosphere, and Ares targeted the floating beacon. He fired a single shot, destroying it. Now the vulnerable little world would be exposed for the serpent to see. It would be here soon, and then the final war would begin.
Ares keyed his destination into the ark and opened a hyperspace tunnel. For a second, he stood on the ship’s bridge, watching the blue, white, and green waves flow by on the screen. They were like a countdown to his destiny.
Finally, he marched out of the bridge, through the dark, metal corridors to the chamber where he had spent most of his time during the last few weeks.
Lykos hung from the straps on the wall. Dried blood was caked on his face and chest. He didn’t look up at Ares.
“I want to thank you for your help.” Ares said.
Lykos stared straight forward, making no reaction.
Ares activated the wall screen and played the video he had tortured Lykos into making—a false distress signal to the Exile fleet.
Lykos lifted his head just enough to see it.
“It’s fitting,” Ares said. “You and Isis unwittingly destroyed both our civilizations. Now you’ll help me make it right. It won’t be long now.”
Ares moved to the door, but Lykos stopped him. “You underestimate us.”
“No. I underestimated you once. It will be the last time. I should have annihilated you on our homeworld when your kind began killing our own citizens. That was our mistake: making peace, resettling you. We left you alone, and you repaid us by returning home and slaughtering us.”
“We had no choice. We only wanted to stop the sentinels.”
Ares changed the screen to show the hyperspace window, which disappeared a few seconds later. A massive factory in space and a fleet of sentinels took its place.
Lykos couldn’t hide his horror.
“I haven’t underestimated your people. I’ve been building a new sentinel army for forty thousand years. The new sentinels are adapted to fight your ships. And I’ve pulled everything from the sentinel line. Every sentinel in existence will soon descend on the Exile fleet. You won’t win. I just transmitted your distress signal.”
On the screen, large groups of sentinel ships jumped away.
“This will be over in a matter of hours,” Ares said.
“The Serpentine Army—”
“I’ve made plans for them. I just wanted you to know what was happening. I’ve kept you alive so you can watch. I’m going to show you the wreckage when it’s done.”
Ares walked out, ignoring Lykos’ screams. The hour he had planned for was at hand. He had anticipated an overwhelming sense of victory, of fulfillment. But he felt as dark and cold as the corridors he marched through.
In the chamber that held the tubes and the last of his people, he paused. For years, he had blamed Isis and Lykos, but Ares had killed Isis and taken his revenge on Lykos. Soon he would complete his retribution on all Lykos’ people. Yet the emptiness remained.
When the docking procedure was complete, Ares exited the ark and began moving through the ancient sentinel factory. At the observation deck, he paused, instantly alert. Someone had been here. Was here. Wrappers from Atlantean rations lay strewn across the floor. Blood stains, dry.
Ares stepped around the corner, following the blood trail. It ended at the communications bay. He opened it.
Dorian lay in the corner, his eyes half open. Blood was caked on his face just like Lykos. Ares glanced at the conference booth. Dorian had accessed the memories. Had he seen it all? It didn’t matter. He had kept Kate Warner from contacting the Serpentine Army before Ares could make his escape. He had performed his role one last time. Now he truly was useless.
“You lied to me,�
� Dorian said, his voice faint. “Betrayed me. All of us.”
“Well, what are you going to do about it, Dorian?”
Dorian opened his palm. A metallic device rolled out, stopping under the table, out of Ares’ sight. He stepped forward and realized what it was a second before it went off. A grenade.
50
The last thing David remembered was the ship with the serpent insignia arriving at the battlefield in space and it pulling in his escape pod from the military beacon. He must have passed out after that. Or they had gassed him.
He awoke in a soft bed, in a well-lit room with bare white walls. He wasn’t sure if it was a prison cell or a hospital room, but it felt somewhere in between. The room’s only feature was a small picture window that looked out onto space. The scene stopped him cold. Ring after ring of ships spread out to the horizon. It reminded him of Saturn’s rings, but these circles were made of linked ships. Serpentine ships. How many were there? Millions? Billions? He stood in the ship at the center of the rings, in the belly of the beast so to speak.
The door slid open, and to David’s surprise, someone who looked human glided in, a mild expression on his face. His hair was blond, and he wore it in a tight ponytail. His features were youthful, and David put his age at around forty.
“You’re up,” his visitor said.
“I am.” David hesitated, not sure where to start. Had they rescued him? Or captured him? He would start with a neutral question and go from there. “Where am I?”
“Inside the first ring.”
“First ring?”
“We’ll get to that. Our understanding of your communication customs is limited, but you’re probably wondering what to call me.”
“Yeah…”
“247.” The man held out his hand, and David shook it reluctantly. “Yes, it’s a weird name, but we don’t need names, so we just have to make something up when we come across someone like you. I was link number 247 in the first ring, and now it’s about all I have, uh, name-wise.”
