Atlantis Reprise

by James Axler

‘Fireblast, wake the others,’ Ryan snapped.

  As Ryan hauled himself to his feet and shook the last remnants of sleep from his head, so Jak had moved to J.B., repeating his message. The Armorer rose from his rest faster than Ryan and woke Mildred, who lay beside him.

  While Jak moved across to wake Doc, who was already mumbling, disturbed by the noises in the room, Ryan bent over Krysty. She had been sleeping apart from him as her rest had been uneasy, turning and waking constantly.

  ‘Hey, mebbe you were right to feel shit,’ he whispered as he gently but firmly woke her. ‘Mebbe we’ve got incoming.’

  She woke instantly, her eyes burning bright, boring into him. ‘You know, lover, you could be right,’ she said huskily, feeling her sentient hair protectively crawl around her scalp and neck.

  Within thirty seconds of Jak’s initial warning, the companions were awake and mobile. Although the house in which they had been billeted boasted more than one room that could be used for bedding, they had opted to share a large room under the suggestion of Ryan. The one-eyed man had felt that things were too quiet, too easy in Memphis, exactly the kind of conditions in which fighters were caught out and chilled.

  His gut instinct had proved right once again.

  Speech had been kept to a minimum as they rose, but still Ryan raised a hand to indicate complete silence. No speech, no movement, nothing that would block outside sound.

  The Crawlers were only a few hundred yards away, and closing fast. The companions were using a ground-floor room at the front of the house, and Ryan cursed himself for not choosing somewhere that gave them a better defensive position: upstairs, or at the rear. No matter now.

  It was also plain to hear the man lumbering at back of the Crawlers. Friend or foe? Could they risk catching him in cross fire?

  Ryan gestured to J.B. and Jak to move into the hall and cover the main door. Doc and Mildred he directed to the shuttered window in the room. The shutters were closed, and were on the outside. He cursed to himself. If they had been open, they would have given a perfect view and a perfect opening shot on the enemy.

  Gesturing to Krysty, he indicated that they should move toward the stairwell in the main hall. It would be an advantage to get above their enemy as they entered, but it would risk exposure as the well was open. It was a few yards back, and would leave them out of cover as they made for it. Jak and J.B. could provide cover from their positions, but still…

  Krysty understood and joined him as he made for the hall. But then something happened that stopped them in their tracks. The sounds outside changed. The Crawlers split into two groups, one stopping short of the house. That was the only way to explain the way in which the number of footfalls seemed to decrease. Furthermore, those that continued went past the house before stopping suddenly a few yards farther on.

  J.B. turned to Ryan with a puzzled expression. Then his face cracked as realization dawned on him.

  ‘They’re not coming in the front,’ he said urgently, ‘they’re coming over the top from each side.’

  Ryan swore under his breath. If they entered the top floors of the house and came down, they would either trap the companions or force them into the open street. Furthermore, to do this they had to be entering adjoining property, as this old street was comprised of attached housing. So what were they doing to the inhabitants within? But what did that matter? A few more chilled Memphis dwellers would be a small price if they could eradicate a major threat. Ryan hadn’t known of any covert activity within the ville before, but it was obvious. Why else single out this building?

  If they got out of this alive, they had to tell Lemur he had at least one traitor in his midst. Probably the sec man running behind the Nightcrawlers. Fuck him; Ryan would personally chill him for this.

  Meantime, they had a building to defend. Leaving J.B. and Jak in the hall, Ryan beckoned to Mildred and Doc to join him and Krysty as they took the stairs. A passage leading off on either side stood at the head of the well, and the risk was in the Crawlers reaching that before them, leaving them exposed.

  Taking the lead, with Krysty close on his tail, Ryan took the stairs three at a time, SIG-Sauer in his right hand, the panga in his left. In five strides he was at the head, and he risked a look along the length of the passage. Two doors on each side of the stairs, both closed. Krysty was at his back, breathing in his ear.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Clear,’ he whispered. ‘We’ll take this side. Mildred and Doc the right,’ he added, indicating his left. ‘A door each. Attack, don’t wait for them.’

  Ryan and Mildred took the far door on each side of the stairwell, moving swiftly across the nearest while Doc and Krysty covered them. When they were in position, Doc and Krysty took up their own positions. Breathing heavily, pausing to gather themselves, they each listened for any sign of movement within the rooms.

  There was nothing. Could it be that the Crawlers hadn’t yet gained access? If so, then it would be simpler for them: secure the room and take out their targets as they tried to enter.

  On a signal from Ryan, they made their move. In unison, four doors were kicked in and they entered the rooms, fingers taut on triggers.

  Entered the rooms to find the Nightcrawlers were waiting for them. One in each room. As they entered, they found themselves face-to-face with the enemy. Each Crawler stood silent and still, the lenses removed from their eyes, the whites of which were exaggerated in the darkness of their camou-disguised faces.

  They wanted to fire. It was a simple, natural reaction that they had carried out many times before in the process of combat. Yet each of them found that their fingers were numb and unresponsive, and that their capacity to think was growing more sluggish with each second.

  Growing more sluggish as a weight seemed to descend, crushing them, forcing them down into some kind of dark pit.

  Ryan tried to lift the SIG-Sauer, which had tipped downward as his grip loosened. It felt like it was a lead weight and he fumbled with it. If he couldn’t defend himself, then he was easy meat. Yet the Nightcrawler stood there, fixing him with an unblinking stare.

  The whites of his eyes. The hazel and the jet-black pupil, boring into him…

  All he could see before it went black.

  ‘RYAN, RYAN, wake up, man. What the hell happened?’

  The voice came from a distance, the words stretching and taking forever to form, then growing in volume until they resounded around his skull. Ryan opened his eye to see Lemur standing over him, with Mark at his shoulder. Both men were grim-faced.

  He was alive? As he began to gather his thoughts, Ryan was more than a little surprised that he hadn’t bought the farm. Why had the Crawler let him live when he’d had him at his mercy? The one-eyed man sat up, groaned, then fell back before lifting himself again, this time more slowly to avoid the sickening spinning in his skull. He felt like a man who had taken too much jolt, drunk too much brew. Yet all that had happened was… What had happened?

  ‘Lemur—the others—are they…?’

  Mark answered. ‘Doc and Krysty are gone. The others are like you. Like they’d been knocked out somehow, but with no bumps, no blood, no sign of struggle. They were in and out of here with no noise. Each side, people just like you. They killed two guards to get in, and there’s a sec party out there unaccounted for, but otherwise…’

  ‘How the fuck did they do it?’ Ryan asked, tentatively shaking his head to clear it. It only succeeded in making him feel nauseous.

  ‘Why is a better question,’ Lemur answered.

  ‘No, I want to know how first,’ Ryan insisted. ‘I was facing the bastard, ready to blast him out the window, and then I couldn’t. All I could do was see his eyes.’

  ‘Specially trained Crawlers,’ Mark said coldly. ‘Got to be. Odyssey has the power to cloud minds, to make you yield to his will. There is no way on this world that he would let others have that secret, but perhaps just a little. Enough to knock you out without a fight, without making any noises that would
wake Memphis. In killing, you risk noise, risk raising the alarm. That’s why they only took out the gate sec. In here, they could pass unnoticed if they kept noise to a minimum.’

  ‘But they could have just slit my throat as I lay here,’ Ryan murmured. ‘Why not do that, erase me—all of us—from the picture?’

  ‘Why waste time when they have a specific purpose? Besides, they’re Nightcrawlers, they have every confidence that they could best you in combat any time they came up against you. You represent no threat at all to them.’

  ‘Then why take Doc and Krysty?’

  ‘That, I don’t understand,’ Mark admitted. Lemur spoke. His voice suggested that he had given the matter some thought. ‘Krysty is unusual. I know not how, but there is something that marks her apart. That would make her of interest to Odyssey. As for Doc, I know that he has been asking questions, that you have been attempting to find out more about us and about Atlantis.’

  ‘There was no deception,’ Ryan began, but the Memphis leader cut him off with a gesture.

  ‘That is immaterial. What matters is that Doc seems to have some understanding of our beliefs. That much has been apparent to those he has questioned. This knowledge from an outsider would be as of much interest to Odyssey as Krysty.’

  Ryan’s head was still muzzy, but he was sharp enough to figure out the implications.

  ‘You know what you’re saying, don’t you?’

  Lemur assented. ‘I am well aware.’

  Ryan continued. ‘If this was a definite plan to sneak in, snatch Doc and Krysty, and take them back for Odyssey’s use, then the bastard knew they were here, he knew what made them of interest, and he knew how to get past your sec patrol and into the ville. He knew exactly where we were. There’s only one way he could have known all that.’

  ‘Spies,’ Mark said. ‘Wretches who claim to want freedom but are nothing more than dogs.’

  ‘More than that,’ Ryan murmured. ‘Who are they? Who can you trust now? You, Mark, you trained as a Crawler and you knew nothing of spies?’

  The sec chief glared at Ryan. ‘If I thought you doubted me… No, I didn’t, whether you choose to believe me or not. I trained only briefly, at the most basic level, before making my escape. There is little to which you are privy until you climb high in Atlantis.’

  Ryan fixed him with a stare. Mark returned it, unblinking. Finally, Ryan nodded. ‘You know, I figure that I believe you. You’ve put too much in here to be a traitor. But someone is, and if they know about us, then they know about everything you do.

  ‘If we’re going to get my people back, and get this asshole off your back, then we’re going to have to move fast, before the intelligence has a chance to find its way back to Atlantis.’

  He pulled himself to his feet. ‘Are you ready for this?’

  Lemur shook his head. ‘No, but we have no choice.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  A land beyond all time and space, where everything exists at the same instant. All experiences are registered as nothing more than a rush of impulses that occur instantaneously in a moment that last less than the blink of an eye, and longer than forever. That, it is said, is what happens when you step outside of space-time as we know it—if, indeed, we can ever be said to know such a thing, and into a fourth dimension, although there are said to be an infinite number by some, and no more than three by others—where you can look down upon all human history…all history period…and see it as nothing more than a single jumbled, knotted ball of events that happens simultaneously.

  If you could detach yourself in this way, in this manner, and then come back to the entropic flow that we know as time—pastpresentfuture—what decisions would you change? At what junctions in your life would you stop, step back and choose the alternative to your initial choice? If, as some say, there are an infinite number of branching realities where at each juncture another is formed, the one through which you move, and an alternative through which there moves an alternative you, then which has made the right choices. Which would be you, and which would you choose to be if given that luxury?

  I know that I would not have left the Inuit. I would have stayed in my identity as Joseph Jordan. I felt secure. The fact that it may have been a figment of my imaginings rather than something that was real—a genuine manifestation of the phenomena of soul transmigration—is irrelevant. What matters is that I felt at home with that persona. I had purpose, I had meaning. Things that have long since been denied to Theophilus Tanner.

  Was it my destiny? In the sense of a greater purpose from a divine being guiding me, then no, perhaps not… In the sense of finding a purpose for myself, in searching out a meaning for my continuing existence, then yes. Whether I am still in a padded room, whether I am in the nineteenth, twentieth, twenty-first, or, indeed, beyond, century, it does not matter. The truth is that the notion of reality in that concrete sense has become a cat’s cradle of perhaps, maybe and possibly. I cannot say for certain. The only reality I can trust in any real sense is that which unfolds in front of me. If I stick with that, then I have a method in which to give my being a sense of purpose, a sense of worth, whether it lives in an outside, concrete reality; or whether it merely lives within the confines of my own skull, and the limitless plains of my own mind.

  Whatever happens next, I have to find my own redemption.

  If I can work out what that should be…

  DOC OPENED HIS EYES. His head was whirling with thoughts that were chasing their own tails. Momentarily he thought that he may, after all, have made the mattrans chamber and returned to the frozen wastes of the north, that the last few days were nothing more than a fevered mat-trans dream.

  No. That couldn’t be the case. First, he didn’t feel as though his body had been bolted back together on the wrong order. He had no headache and no nausea. These were so much a part of a jump that he almost didn’t notice that they weren’t there; the assumption was so strong. But they weren’t. He felt clear-headed, his stomach settled. In point of fact, he felt better than he had for some time, as though he had been able to rest more fully than at any time in the past few years.

  Blinking, he also noted that wherever he may have landed, it was no mat-trans chamber. There were no wisps of fading mist, no faintly pulsing disks in the floor, and no armaglass walls of any opaque color you cared to mention—he had seen them all, over the years.

  Instead of the hard floor he had expected beneath him, he found that he was reclining on a chaise covered with a red brocade and plush wrap that extended the length of the piece of furniture. As he was more than six feet, and lay full-length without either legs or head dangling from the side, he judged that it had to be closer to seven feet than six in length. With a medium-hard cushion beneath his head, to support it, no less.

  Someone had taken great care to make sure that he would be comfortable. Doc raised himself up into a sitting position, carefully at first lest the initial impression be deceptive and he found his head spinning with sudden movement. But no, he was fine.

  The room was lit by oil lamps and tallow candles. Soft and muted, but bright enough for the surrounding room to be clearly visible into every corner. Which took some doing, as it was quite a large room. Stone: walls, ceiling and floor, although there were patches of plasterwork that had been simply decorated with the kind of pictogram he had seen in Memphis.

  Was it day or night? He couldn’t tell, as there were no windows. Hence the array of lamps and candles, for all hours. A cell, then? He doubted if a cell would have such lighting or such decoration and furniture. For the rest of the room was sparse, but had pieces that bespoke of quality. There was a table and three straight wooden chairs that were carved with grace and simplicity. A stunted tree stood in an earthenware pot in the corner of the room. Hangings on the wall in red, black and white carried hieroglyph messages and stories.

  Black. Not Memphis then. His eye traveled past the hangings until he noticed this. Dragging his vision back, looking closer, he could see all d
ecoration in the room carried black as well as the white and red he associated with Memphis.

  This had to be Atlantis.

  But why?

  There was another chaise in the room, its raised back to him. Only one. Assuming it had an occupant, that would mean that either the rest of the companions had been taken elsewhere or that a maximum of two had been snatched.

  Doc stood and flexed his limbs. It was truly remarkable how fit he felt. And not just in his body, which seemed to have a whole new surge of energy flowing through it. He felt sharper in the mind, as though a whole weight of doubt, fear and confusion had been lifted from him.

  Time to see who—if anyone—was on the chaise. He strode across the room with renewed vigor and peered over the raised back. He was—surprised? No, perhaps just bemused, to see Krysty laying there. As he loomed over her, he saw her eyelids flicker as she began to rise to the surface of consciousness.

  ‘Good… Well, I cannot say if it is morning or evening. Or indeed afternoon, for I do not know. But welcome back to the land of the living.’

  ‘You sure about that, Doc?’ Krysty asked sleepily, rubbing at her eyes. ‘I feel like someone in one of those old fables Mother Sonja used to tell me when I was a child. Some woman who slept for a hundred years.’

  ‘Rip Van Winkle slept for a hundred years, although he was not, as far as I am aware, a woman. Perhaps your guardian was speaking of Sleeping Beauty. It’s heartening to know that stories such as that survived even the rigors of skydark. Nonetheless, I feel I should point out that in all probability it is far more likely to be merely a few hours that we have rested.’

  ‘Yeah, but what a rest,’ she replied as she hauled herself upright. ‘I feel great.’

  ‘Refreshed, full of vigor? Greater strength and clearness of mind than for some considerable time?’ Doc queried.

  ‘You, too, eh? Remind me to thank whoever took us and imprisoned us for such a beneficial method of capture.’

  Doc smiled, despite the circumstances. ‘How pleasant to know that your renewed energy has only sharpened your tongue. You may yet attain the heights of the sainted Dr. Wyeth.’