by A. G. Riddle
“Then all our hopes rest on her.”
53
When the needle punctured David’s neck, the room on the Serpentine ship faded. He found himself at the bottom of a dirt pit. This is an illusion. The thought brought a downpour of rain, flooding into the earth pit, soaking the ground, which grew soft, swallowing his legs, pulling him into the mud. The water was gathering, forming a pool that rose by the second.
David waded to the wall, straining to pull his feet from the heavy, black mud. This isn’t real.
He dug his hand into the wall. It was dry. Dry enough. His hand held, and he climbed, one hand after the other, ascending to the surface. He climbed for hours, how long he didn’t know. A faint sun peeked through the clouds. Slowly, it crept across the pit until it was out of sight, the shadows of its rays its only remnants. Still David climbed. The pit must have been a hundred feet deep, but he pushed himself, a deep well of energy powering him.
The rain never stopped, but neither did he. The sides he dug his hands into were growing soggy. It was taking him longer to make his hand-holds. He threw hand after hand of mud into the pit until he struck solid dirt, then he climbed. The water was coming, but he was climbing faster. Hand over hand, he dug and climbed. He had almost reached the surface when the sides began to slide. Globs of mud dripped, rolled, and dropped onto him, and then the mudslide consumed him, covering him, pulling him down into the water. He was completely coated in black mud, and he struggled under the water, the added weight pulling him into the abyss. He worked his arms, brushing the mud from his body, trying to free himself. His arms and legs burned, and then his lungs burned. He was drowning.
He fought, punching and kicking. Finally he broke the surface of the water, just long enough to take a breath before sinking again. He felt that if he allowed himself to sink, that if he gave up, allowed his will to break, the ring would have him, his soul, and every person he knew and loved. Kate. The thought gave him a new burst of energy, and his head breached the surface again. He sucked air in, waving his arms violently. The mud flew off, but the rain kept coming.
He put his arms and legs straight out, and he floated to the surface, the rain falling on his face.
He understood now. He couldn’t escape. Submission was the only way to survive. But he wouldn’t. They would have to drown him.
Dorian opened his eyes. The curve of glass and the view of the cavernous chamber in the resurrection ark greeted him.
The resurrection had restored him physically, but he was still sick, Dorian felt it at his core. How long do I have? A few hours?
Directly across from him, Ares stared out of another tube, his eyes cold.
Their tubes opened at the same time, and they walked out and stood across from each other, neither flinching. The echoes of their footsteps carried deep into the cavern, brushing past the miles of tubes stacked from the floor to the ceiling. When the last sound faded, Ares spoke, his voice hard.
“That was a very stupid thing to do, Dorian.”
“Killing you? I actually think it’s the smartest thing I’ve done in a very long time.”
“You haven’t thought this through. Take a look around you. You can’t kill me here.”
“Sure I can.” Dorian rushed forward and struck Ares, killing him in one blow. The Atlantean hadn’t expected it, and Dorian fought like a feral animal with nothing to lose. Ares’ limp body fell to the black metallic floor, blood oozing out.
Dorian backed away and into the tube. It would reset the clock, correcting all his ailments except for resurrection syndrome, the only affliction the resurrection tubes couldn’t fix.
He watched the white clouds fill the tube across the way. Time passed, how much he didn’t know, but when the clouds cleared, a new Ares stood in the tube.
It opened, and Dorian rushed forward, killing Ares again.
The cycle repeated twelve times, and twelve dead bodies, all Ares, lay before the tube. Dorian fought like a man with nothing to lose, and he instinctively knew Ares’ every move—thanks to the memories that would soon take Dorian’s life.
On the thirteenth resurrection, Ares stepped out, kneeled and held his hands up.
Dorian stopped.
“I can fix you, Dorian.” Ares looked up. When he realized Dorian had halted, he rose and continued. “You’re suffering from resurrection syndrome—memories your mind can’t process.” He pointed into the chamber, at the thousands of tubes. “So are they. Fixing them is my goal. It’s why I’ve sacrificed so much. You’ve seen those sacrifices, and the memories made you sick. I’ll fix you, Dorian. You’re like my son, the closest thing I have. I’ve waited thousands of years for someone to prove himself to me the way you have. You can kill me, or we can both live—together.”
In the area just beyond the stack of dead bodies, a hologram rose. A space battle raged; thousands, perhaps millions of spheres zoomed into the breach, tearing through triangular ships.
“Our sentinels are battling the Exiles, Dorian. They will win. I’ve been preparing for this war for a very long time. When the Exiles are gone, we will inherit this universe. It will be over in a single day. My revenge. Our revenge. We can share it.”
Dorian paced to the hologram. The spheres were winning. They consumed fleet after fleet of the triangular Exile ships, each time jumping away to a new fleet.
“How would you fix me?” Dorian asked, his voice soft.
“You go back into the tube. I need time to find a cure. But I will fix you.”
“What about Earth?”
“That’s the past, Dorian. Earth is but a pebble in our sea.”
“Show me. Show me my world.”
“It’s not your world anymore.”
Dorian rushed forward and again killed Ares.
When the Atlantean emerged from the tube the fourteenth time, he instantly activated a hologram that showed Earth surrounded by Serpentine ships. Triangular ships fought a battle with them, but they were losing.
“The Exiles are fighting the Serpentine Army?” Dorian asked.
“Yes. Fools. They fight for all the human worlds. The ring has poured through, as I knew they would when I withdrew the sentinel line. This is part of my plan, Dorian.”
“We’re a weapon.”
“Yes. The scientist you saw, Isis. I shared the Serpentine genetic information with her. She created a sort of anti-virus. That’s what the Atlantis Gene that humanity received really is. It’s the most sophisticated survival technology the universe has ever known. Look at what it has done to your world. No civilization has ever advanced so quickly. I combined what Isis created, what she gave to the Exiles, with the Serpentine virus. That’s the Atlantis Gene you know. That’s what you are. Your desire to assimilate, your drive to create a single unified society marching to a common goal, accessing some universal power. It’s your fatal flaw and the salvation of our people. When the serpent bites, your people will poison it.”
“What does that mean?”
“They assimilate, Dorian. They assimilated my wife, all of my people before the fall of our world and our exodus. Someone will resist, and when they do, the serpent will bore deep, trying to access their link to the Origin Entity. They will offer the fruit, something the person desperately desires. Then they will engulf them in fire, filling them with fear. At each point, they offer a false salvation. If the person can resist, the serpent will initiate a forced assimilation. Their DNA will flow into the serpent, destroying it from the inside out. It only takes one.”
“That’s what you were doing. Your army.”
“Yes. I was looking for a single soul with the will to resist. Adversity breeds strength. I destroyed your world in hopes of creating a single soul with the will to survive Serpentine assimilation. And I wanted to make your world look like easy prey for the Serpentine Army; a world full of souls on the brink of ruin. Defenseless. Irresistible.”
Dorian felt listless. The enormity of the situation was closing in on him.
“Go back
to your tube, Dorian. Await my next move. I will fix you, as I will every person in this chamber. Everything I’ve done has been for you and them. I will protect you. I will save you.”
Dorian desperately wanted to retreat to the tube to wait for Ares, the father he had never had, whom he had longed for, to come and rescue him, to fix him. He stepped back. The bodies lay to his left, a mound obscuring the expanse of tubes.
“Do it, Dorian. I will come back for you.”
Dorian took another step back.
Ares nodded.
Dorian stopped. “You lied to me before.” As the seconds ticked by, he felt his fear closing in on him. Paranoia. The raw wounds. Images flashed before his eyes. His father, whipping him as a young child, chastising him, leaving, returning when Dorian was sick with the Spanish flu, placing him in the tube. Dorian saw himself awakening in the tube, changed. His hatred, his longing, his quest to find the resurrection ark. He had found his father there, but again he had slipped through his hands, killed by the Atlantean device, the Bell. At every turn, Ares had betrayed him.
Ares saw his hesitation and spoke quickly. “You were uneducated before. You didn’t know the scope of what we faced. You wouldn’t have understood.”
Hatred filled Dorian. “Your greatest fear was that you would spend eternity in this tomb, never able to die, relegated to purgatory.”
Ares clenched his jaws.
“You’ve betrayed me too many times.”
Dorian rushed forward and killed his enemy again.
When the bodies reached one hundred, Dorian waited, but the tube never filled with the gray fog. Ares never reappeared.
Dorian marched down the corridors to the ship’s bridge. The panels revealed his suspicion: Ares had disabled his own resurrection. In the few seconds before his hundredth death, Ares had used his neural link with the ship to ensure he never returned, never had to face death at Dorian’s hands again. He was gone forever.
Dorian had won. For a long moment, he felt a thrill. He had bested his nemesis. He was the better man. Then reality set in. He had a few short hours. At the wide windows of the sentinel factory, he watched the last of the spheres jump away.
He had been a pawn; he had played his role. He had killed his enemy, Ares. Now he was empty. No one would come for him; no one would fix him. No one loved him. And deep within his own heart, he knew that was right. He deserved no love, had earned none. He had lived a wretched life, full of hate, and with his last enemy gone, that was all that remained. The hate was poisonous; like the bite of a snake, it coursed through him, unseen, flowing in his veins, killing him from the inside out. There was only one way to get rid of it.
He walked back into the ark. In the chamber that held the tubes, he gazed at the tall mound of bodies. At the bridge, he disabled his own resurrection, and then he trudged to the airlock. The decontamination chamber rang alert after alert: no environmental suit detected.
He disabled it.
The three triangular shards that made up the door twisted open for him, as they once had in Antarctica. Then, he had thought they were welcoming him to his destiny. He had the same thought as the vacuum of space sucked him out, and he took his last breath. His dead body floated across the empty sentinel yard.
54
David floated in the water, unmoving. The sun rose and fell. Rain came and receded, and the water level rose and dropped. Each time, when he felt the ground upon his back, he stood, walked to the wall, and climbed, hand over hand, until the rain came again and the walls turned to mud and washed him down into the pool, where he fought to free himself, struggling for every breath. But he never gave up. His body burned with agony, his muscles, his lungs, every inch of him. But he refused to relent.
Then the sun disappeared forever, and nothingness followed.
When he opened his eyes again, he lay on the metal table he had seen after 247’s charade. The straps had been released, and he sat up. Through the window, he saw the rings of ships, but they were different now. Before, they had rotated in formation. Now the links were broken. A cluster of ships floated listlessly, colliding into each other, no connection between them.
David was alone in the drab room.
He walked to the door, which stood open. The corridor was empty. He paced down the dreary hall. All the doors were open, as if some evacuation protocol had been initiated.
At the third door, he saw bodies, stacked in the corner. They were like 247: gray skin with glassy, oval, reptilian eyes. But the tiny beads that had crawled under 247’s skin were gone. The bodies were utterly without life. What happened here? And how can I escape?
Kate instantly knew she wasn’t in the Beta Lander. The robotic arms that hung before her and the lighted surgery room was very… Un-Atlantean. Somehow more human or Earth-like. Well-lit and bright.
She sat up. Behind her, several people stood behind a glass wall. “How do you feel?” a voice called over the speaker.
“Alive.” But she felt more than that. She felt cured.
The Exile scientists led her to a conference room where they debriefed her on the procedure they had performed. Their years of studying resurrection syndrome had paid off, and she hoped she could reward them.
Kate felt a new vitality, a confidence. But behind it was a certain sadness. David. She pushed him out of her mind. She had Isis’ memories; all of them. They were the key. With the Exile scientists and fleet commanders assembled in the large conference room, Kate stood before a screen that covered the far wall and presented the research—both what she had done in her own time and that which she had seen in Isis’ time. She described a gene therapy, a retrovirus that would make the Exiles invisible to the sentinel fleet.
“After the therapy, you’ll appear like Atlanteans to them,” Kate said.
“We’ve heard this before,” Perseus said.
“I know. I’ve seen. This is different. I know both sides now. I know the full truth—the genes that control the Atlantis Gene and the radiation it emits. The sentinels hone in on that radiation. If it doesn’t match the expected Atlantean norm, they attack. Isis didn’t know that. She never would have modified you if she had. She was very, very remorseful about what happened.”
The committee dismissed her, and Kate waited outside, pacing nervously. After a few minutes, Paul, Mary, and Milo rounded the corner. Milo’s hug almost squeezed the life out of Kate, but she gave no complaint. The nods from Paul and Mary told her how relieved they were that she was well again. And Kate sensed something else about the two of them, something that made her both happy for them and a little sad for herself.
“What was the vibe?” Paul asked.
“I’m not sure,” Kate said. “But I know one thing: their decision will spell their fate. And ours.”
Major Thomas handed Natalie another cup of coffee.
“I’ve switched to decaf,” he said. “I hope you don’t mind.”
“Good choice.”
They both focused on the radio. The repeating broadcast had changed. The call for soldiers to report to fire stations had been replaced by reports of fighting across America. The reports were of American military triumphs, but some places were never mentioned, and Natalie feared the worst: that some cities and states had fallen to the Immari militia.
Another report came: a caller claimed to have seen dark objects in the sky with his telescope.
The host laughed it off as a desperate attempt to distract the public from what was happening.
Kate was still pacing the corridor when Perseus peeked his head out. “We’re ready for you.”
She entered and stood at the head of the wooden conference table again.
“We’ve decided,” Perseus said, “to administer your therapy to one group of our ships—a group fighting a lost battle. It’s already underway.”
“Thank you,” Kate said. She wanted to hug him, but there was something she had to ask first. “I do have one request.”
An awkward silence greeted her.
“That you save my world.”
“We’re already trying.” The screen behind Perseus showed Earth. A hundred large Serpentine ships battled a fleet of many more triangular Exile ships. “We’re losing though.”
“I want to be there,” Kate said. “I know we’re losing but I have to be there in case there’s anything I can do.”
Perseus nodded. “A fleet of reinforcements is leaving in a few minutes. I’ll join you. And I think the science team will want to as well—in case they have questions about the sentinel therapy.”
When Earth came into view, Kate stepped closer to the viewscreen. Paul, Mary, and Milo had opted to come with her and they all stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the Exile ship’s communication bay. For almost an hour, their ship waited beyond the battle zone, watching the tide turn several times. The Exile ships had been built to battle the sentinel spheres. They were no match for the Serpentine Army.
Finally, Kate wandered back to the stateroom they had assigned her.
Even if the Exiles were able to turn the tide and save Earth from the Serpentine Army, her people would still be in trouble: the sentinel threat remained. Humanity would have to join the Exile fleet, living a nomadic life.
But if Earth fell and Kate’s therapy were successful in neutralizing the sentinel threat, Kate, Milo, Mary and Paul would still be alone among the Exiles. She realized that no matter what, she would be alone again, without David. She wondered if it was all worth it, but sitting on the edge of the bed in the darkened stateroom, she knew that it had been. She had done all she could, what she thought was right. And she was proud of that.
