The Atlantis Plague (13 page)

Dorian followed him, pondering what he had said. Somehow, Dorian knew it was true. The events were real—his memories. How?

The Atlantean spoke as he led Dorian down the gray-metal corridors. “You’re something different, Dorian. You’ve always known you were special, that you had a destiny.”

“I’m—”

“You’re me, Dorian. My name is Ares. I am a soldier, the last soldier my people ever had. Through a strange twist of fate, you inherited my memories. They’ve lain dormant in your mind all this time. I was only aware of them when you entered this vessel.”

Dorian squinted at the Atlantean—Ares, not sure what to say.

“Deep down, you know it’s true. In 1918, they placed a dying little seven-year-old boy in a tube in Gibraltar. When you awoke in 1978, you weren’t the same. It wasn’t the time that changed you. You were possessed with hate, driven to seek revenge, to build an army to defeat the enemy of humanity and find your father. You had a sense of your destiny—to fight for the future of your race. That’s what you came here to do. You even knew what you had to do: change the human race at the genetic level.
You
knew all this because
I
knew it. It was my desire. You have my memories. You have my strength. You have my hatred and my dreams. Dorian, there is an enemy in this universe more powerful than you can imagine. My people were the most advanced race in the known universe, and this enemy defeated us in a day and a night. They will come for you. It’s only a matter of time. But you can defeat them—if you’re willing to do what must be done.”

“Which is?”

Ares turned on Dorian and looked him in the eyes. “You must ensure that the genetic transformation of your species is completed.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

A thought seemed to echo in Dorian’s mind:
to build our army
.

“Precisely,” Ares said. “We’re fighting a war. In war, only the strongest survive. I’ve guided your evolution for this single purpose: survival. Without the final genetic changes, the humans here won’t survive. None of us will.”

In the recesses of Dorian’s mind, he knew it was true, had always known it was true. It all made sense now: his ambition, his blind, unreasoning desire to transform the human race, to defeat an unseen enemy. For the first time in his life, everything made sense. He was at peace. He had found
the
answer. He focused on the task at hand. “How? How do we build our army?”

“The case you carried out. It emits a new radiation signature that will complete the process. Not even Orchid can stop the mutated virus it will unleash. As we speak, a new wave of infection is emanating from the blast site in central Germany. Soon it will spread around the world. The final cataclysm will happen in the coming days.”

“If that’s true, what’s left to do? You clearly have the situation well in hand.”

“You must make sure no one finds a cure. We have enemies out there. Then you must free me. Together we can take control of the survivors. We can win the battle for this planet. They are our people. They are the army we will launch against our ancient enemy. We will finally win this war.”

Dorian nodded. “Free you. How?”

“The case serves two purposes. It emits radiation that renders Orchid ineffective, and it has created a portal to my location—an artificial wormhole, a bridge across space and time.” The Atlantean stopped, and Dorian realized they were in front of the door to the room that had held the case and the two suits. The door slid open, revealing an empty room, except for the last suit. “I told you it had everything you needed.”

Dorian walked into the room without a word and began putting the suit on.

“There’s something else you have to do, Dorian. You must bring the woman that was here. You must find her and take her through the portal with you.”

Dorian pulled the last boot on and looked up. “Woman?”

“Kate Warner.”

“What the hell does she have to do with this?”

The Atlantean led him out of the room and down the corridor. “Everything, Dorian. She’s the key to everything. But you must wait. At some point very soon, she will acquire a piece of information—a code. That code is the key to freeing me. You must capture her after she has the code and bring her to me.”

Dorian nodded, but his mind raced. How did the Atlantean know?

“I know because I read her thoughts—the same way I can read your thoughts. It’s how I knew you had my memories. It’s how I knew what you were.”

“Impossible.”

“It’s only impossible with
your
current scientific understanding. What you call the Atlantis Gene is actually a very sophisticated piece of biology and quantum technology. It utilizes principles in physics you haven’t discovered yet. It has been the guiding hand in your evolution. It has many functions, but one of them is to turn on several processes in your body that control radiation.”

“Radiation?”

“Every human body emits radiation. The Atlantis Gene turns that stream of static into an organized data feed—a continuous upload of your memories and physical changes, right down to the cellular level. It’s like an incremental backup, transmitting data to a central server every millisecond.”

They stood in the opening to the chamber that held the seemingly endless rows of tubes. “When this vessel receives a death signal and confirms there will be no further transmissions, it assembles a new body, an exact replica down to the last cell and very last memory.”

“This place is—”

“A resurrection ship.”

Dorian tried to wrap his head around it. “So they’re all dead?”

“They died a very long time ago. And I can’t wake them up; won’t wake them up. You saw it. They died badly, in a world that hadn’t known a violent death in too long to remember. But you and I can save them. They are the last of our people. They are counting on you, Dorian.”

Dorian took in the expanse of tubes with a new appreciation.
My people.
Were there others? “What about the ship in Gibraltar? It’s another resurrection ship?”

“No. It’s something else. A science vessel. A local explorer, incapable of deep space travel. It’s a lander—the alpha lander from the science expedition here. It has eight resurrection pods. Expeditions are dangerous work and the scientists sometimes have unfortunate accidents. As you know, the resurrection chambers also have the power to heal. Resurrection only works for Atlanteans. And it has a limited range. The nuclear blasts in Gibraltar likely destroyed the pods there. These tubes are the only ones that can resurrect you. But if you venture past a hundred kilometers from here, you won’t resurrect. The system won’t make a copy if it doesn’t have updated data—the Prometea rule. If you go out into the world, you will be mortal again. If you die, you die forever, Dorian.”

Dorian looked over at David’s body. “Why didn’t he—”

“I disabled the resurrection for him. You won’t have to worry about him.”

Dorian glanced at the corridor that led to the outside. “They captured me before. They didn’t trust me.”

“They’ve seen you die, Dorian. When you walk out of here again, risen from the dead with memories of what happened to you, no one will oppose you.”

Dorian hesitated for a second. There was one last question, but he didn’t want to ask it.

“What?” Ares asked.

“My memories… our memories…”

“They will come, in time.”

Dorian nodded. “Then I’ll see you shortly.”

CHAPTER 28

David Vale opened his eyes. He stood in another tube, but in a different place—not the vast, seemingly endless chamber below Antarctica. This room was small, no more than twenty feet by twenty feet.

His eyes adjusted, and the room came into focus. There were three other tubes—all empty. A large screen dominated the far wall, just above a high-top bar, like the control panels he had seen in the Atlantean structure in Gibraltar and Antarctica. Below it, a crumpled-up suit lay on the floor. A closed door stood at each end of the room.

What is this? What happened to me?
To David, the room seemed different from those in Antarctica; it was more like the science lab in the Gibraltar structure that Kate’s father had described in his journal. Was this a science lab?
If so, why am I here? For some kind of experiment?
And beyond that, he wondered why he kept waking up in these tubes every time Dorian Sloane shot him to death. That he had now been shot to death multiple times was also hard to wrap his head around, but he had to focus on the more pressing issue: how to get out of the tube. Had Sloane figured out some way to work the tube, or had the Atlantean released him? As if on cue, the tube hissed open and the thin clouds of gray and white fog wafted out into the room and dissipated.

David paused, assessing his surroundings, waiting for his new captor to make the next move. When nothing happened, he stepped out into the room, struggling on barely responsive legs. He steadied himself at the control station. Below him lay the environmental suit. The helmet sat against the wall, behind the control station. David could see now that the suit was damaged. He bent and rolled it over. Yes—it was the same type of suit he had seen in the holo movies in Gibraltar. The Atlanteans had worn them when they had run out of the ship and saved a Neanderthal from a ritual sacrifice near the Rock of Gibraltar.

He examined the suit more closely. A large gash spread across the torso. The result of weapons fire? The material seemed to be severed, but not singed. What did it mean? In the videos he had seen, the ship in Gibraltar had exploded after a massive tsunami washed it ashore, then pulled it back out to sea. The Immari had assumed that a series of methane pockets on the sea floor had exploded, ripping the ship into several pieces.

The explosion had incapacitated one of the Atlanteans in the suits, and the other had carried him or her through a door—presumably to Antarctica.

Was this suit from one of the two Atlanteans in Gibraltar? David stood and searched the room for any other clues. On a small bench behind the control station, he could see a garment of some kind, neatly folded.

He hobbled to the bench. His legs were getting better, but they weren’t one hundred percent yet. He unraveled the bundle. It was a black military uniform. He held it up to the dim LED-like lights that shined from floor and ceiling. The suit glistened and seemed to reflect the light. It almost looked like a projection of a starry night. He moved it around and the suit changed again, matching the light and walls behind it. It was some kind of active camouflage. The entire reflective top—the tunic of the uniform—was smooth and blank except for the collar. Its right side had a square emblem: [II].

I.I. Immari International. This was an Immari Army uniform.

On the left side of the collar, a silver bird spread out—the insignia of a lieutenant colonel’s rank.

David tossed the uniform back on the bench. He was naked, and he’d rather stay that way than put the uniform on.

He walked over to the control station and waved his hand over it. Kate’s father had learned to work these Atlantean control stations. For him, a blue and green light would emanate and interact with his hand, but this control station was dark and dead. David pressed his fingers to it, but it gave no reaction.

He glanced back and forth between the doors. There was nothing like being a rat in a cage. He walked to the closest door and stood for a moment, but it didn’t slide open. He ran his hand over the panel beside it. Dead. He flattened his hands on the gray metal and pushed, but it didn’t move. It was sealed shut, like the bulkhead door in a submarine.

He tried the same routine on the opposite door but got the same result. He was trapped. How much air did he have? How long could he last before he starved to death?

He sat on the bench in silence, alone with only his thoughts. No matter how hard he tried, they always drifted to Kate. David wondered where she was at that very moment. He prayed she was safe. If not, his sacrifice would be for nothing.

He thought about their one night together in Gibraltar, how his entire world had felt complete in that moment, for the first time in twelve years. Then he had awoken to find her gone. He forgave her for that; she had been trying to save him. But he had made another mistake: letting her out of his sight again in Antarctica when he had stayed behind to hold off Dorian and his men.

David decided he wouldn’t let that happen again. If he ever got out of this room, he would find Kate, wherever she was in whatever was left of the world, and he would never let her out of his sight again.

CHAPTER 29

Marbella, Spain

Kate had awoken in the dark confines of a semi trailer filled to the brim with people, packed in like a fresh catch on the way to a fish market at the pier. Or at least, that was what it smelled like: sweat and fish. People coughed and elbowed as the trailer bounced incessantly. The truck pulling it must have been doing top speed through Marbella’s bumpy streets.

Kate wanted to find Martin, but she could barely see a few feet in front of her. She settled for sitting quietly against the wall in a less-crowded section of the trailer, near the front, far away from the double doors at the end.

The truck slowed, stopped for a few seconds, and continued on, barely creeping this time. Then it came to an abrupt halt and its air brakes squeaked loudly. The rumbling engine died a few seconds later.

A wave of panic seemed to sweep the trailer’s inhabitants. They were all on their feet and rushing the door a split second before it opened.

The light from the setting sun revealed the scene beyond. Kate stood there, taking it in, letting the people flow around her.

The two blue Orchid flags that had hung on the fence were simply charred remains. The Immari had left the remnants hanging, perhaps as a symbol, a sign of their triumph. They had placed their own black flag on each side of the camp’s entrance. Immari soldiers in black uniforms paced in the guard tower above—the one that hadn’t been completely destroyed.