The Atlantis Gene

by S. A. Beck

  Otto shouted something that would have gotten him a demerit at the group home. Dr. Yamazaki was saying the same thing, in fact a whole string of incredibly creative swear words, including a couple Otto wasn’t sure he knew the meanings to. He reminded himself to ask her about them if they survived.

  That depended on Yuhle’s driving. He swerved off the road, missed a mesquite tree by inches, took a sharp turn to avoid a boulder, and then got back on the road just as the two men who had tried to form a roadblock turned and fired again. One bullet added another hole in the rear window. The other smashed through a taillight.

  The two men scrambled to get in their Range Rover. The other Range Rover swerved around them and continued the chase. Otto grabbed a grenade, pulled the pin, and threw it. As soon as he did, he realized that in his panic, he hadn’t checked what kind it was.

  A blossom of flame erupted in the road. Otto’s eyes went wide. He hadn’t realized the incendiary bomb would be so powerful. The pursuing vehicle rolled right through it then emerged cocooned in fire.

  To his amazement, the flames didn’t blow out with the speed of the Range Rover. They clung to it, peeling back the paint and buckling the windshield. Even the tires were on fire, flames spinning like Fourth of July fireworks.

  The Range Rover screeched to a halt behind them. Doors on both sides opened, and the occupants leaped out before rolling on the ground to douse the flames on their clothes and then sprinting away from their vehicle.

  A moment later, Otto understood why they ran. The gas tank lit, and once again there was a giant explosion. The third vehicle, which had been trying to pass the explosion, had to careen out of the way and got stuck in a ditch.

  Otto stared, leaning far out the window. Someone was saying something, but he didn’t hear. The wind whipped through his hair and roared in his ears, but he barely noticed. The flaming car was so beautiful, a halo of fire crowned by a blackening cloud rising high above it, all of it backlit by the original explosion of his firebomb, which still burned brilliantly in the road a couple of hundred yards behind. He had never seen a flame so big in his life. It was even grander than the barn he had burned down.

  A strong hand grabbed his shoulder and yanked him into the car. Vivian.

  She gave him a disgusted look, and suddenly he felt like a schoolkid caught looking at dirty websites. Vivian stared at him for a full minute, but he couldn’t look her in the eye.

  At last she turned around to face forward.

  “My mistake,” she whispered with her back to him. “I didn’t realize what I was giving you. Well, at least they won’t be chasing us anytime soon.”

  Otto hung his head.

  At least no one got killed, he added silently. At least she didn’t call me “Pyro” like Grunt and Edward do.

  Even that didn’t make him feel better.

  After a few more minutes of silence, Dr. Yamazaki spoke up. “They tried to kill me along with the rest of you. Do you trust me now?”

  “Of course,” Yuhle said.

  “We’ll see,” Vivian said. “They could have set you up and then just stabbed you in the back.”

  “They already did that when they induced a stroke in my brain,” Dr. Yamazaki said.

  Otto looked at her curiously. “So how did the Atlanteans heal you?”

  Dr. Yamazaki got a faraway look. “I’m not sure. My mind was all muddled. I remember a group of them coming into my hospital room. They all had that mixed-race look that Atlanteans have.”

  “Black skin with blue eyes and kinda Asian features?” Otto said, remembering his girlfriend, Jaxon. She felt she was ugly, but he thought she looked great. Was he ever going to see her again?

  Dr. Yamazaki nodded. “One of them put her hands on my head, and within a few minutes, my motor control improved, and my thoughts began to clear. It was hard to keep track during the chase, but the time between her laying hands on me and my ending up having to drive a car and then escape on foot couldn’t have been more than half an hour. It was probably considerably less than that.”

  “So they just rewired your brain and healed the damage with a touch? That sounds magical,” Otto said.

  The scientist shook her head. “There’s no such thing as magic. Everything has a scientific explanation.”

  “So what’s the scientific explanation for that?”

  Dr. Yamazaki shrugged, looking completely at a loss. Otto guessed that she didn’t get that look very often.

  “Jaxon has a magical ability too,” Otto said. “She showed me when we were in the group home together. She—”

  “That’s enough, honey,” Vivian cut in from the front seat.

  “What’s wrong with telling her?” Otto asked.

  “Figure it out,” Vivian said, her voice cutting.

  Dr. Yamazaki hung her head. Yuhle gave Vivian a frown.

  Even if Dr. Yamazaki isn’t a spy, she’s dividing the Atlantis Allegiance just by showing up, Otto thought.

  Vivian got back on the phone and called Edward.

  “We’re clear,” she said. “Prepare to evacuate and meet at the rendezvous.”

  Then she tossed the phone out the window.

  She turned back and smiled at Otto. “Don’t litter. It’s bad karma, except when your phone signal can be triangulated. We don’t want them converging on us again.”

  “Why did you tell him to evacuate the base? They’ll never find us there. It’s in the middle of nowhere.”

  “We were in the middle of nowhere here, and they found us, honey,” Vivian said. “Plus they saw the direction we were going. Judging from that, they’d probably figure we’d set up somewhere in the Nevada desert. They could spread out and search for us. The desert is big, but not that big. Sooner or later, they’d find us.”

  Otto’s heart fell. Was any place safe? And how were they going to save Jaxon if they were on the run themselves? She wouldn’t be any safer with them than with her fake foster parents.

  “So what’s this rendezvous?” he asked at last.

  Yuhle answered. “An emergency meeting place we have in Arizona near the Mexican border. It’s just as remote as our old place, and Grunt has some friends there.”

  “Well, I’m not sure I’d call them friends.” Vivian chuckled.

  Yuhle shrugged and adjusted his glasses. “Friendly, in any case. And we have a shortage of people like that in our lives.”

  “So why didn’t you tell me about all this?” Otto asked.

  “The less you know, the better, honey,” Vivian said. “General Meade’s men would be happy to torture you if you ever fell into their hands.”

  “How could he do that? I’m not some terrorist, and this isn’t Guantanamo!”

  Yuhle sighed. He took a turn onto a different county road and sped up on the straightaway.

  “You need to realize that not everyone in the government is a good guy, kid,” he said. “You seem to think General Meade is some maverick. He isn’t. When I was working for the Poseidon Project, he was having a hard time convincing his superiors that researching the Atlantis gene was worth it, but the high command at the Pentagon had no problem with him doing illegal wiretaps, monitoring civilians, or kidnapping. He can do anything he wants as long as he gives the Pentagon results.”

  “Even give a citizen a stroke and turn her into a vegetable,” Dr. Yamazaki whispered.

  Otto shuddered. It had all seemed so abstract, him hanging out in the desert with a group of hackers and mercenaries playing at being revolutionaries. But then it hit home. He couldn’t rely on the law or the Constitution or even common human decency. There was a government within the government, and he and his friends were at war with it.

  He couldn’t expect mercy in war.

  Chapter 4

  JUNE 18, 2016, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

  10:30 AM

  Jaxon slumped down the hall, heading for her locker to prepare for yet another dull day of summer school. Except for a few snide looks from some of Courtney’s friends, ever
yone passing by in the hallway ignored her.

  Better than usual, Jaxon thought. At this rate, I’ll be the most popular girl in the class by 2050.

  She found her locker and grabbed the latch. Jaxon jerked her hand away as she felt something slick and greasy smear her hand.

  A burst of laughter echoed down the hall. Courtney and a gaggle of her followers stood a few yards away, mocking her. Their little plastic-surgery noses turned up at her in contempt.

  Jaxon glared at them and then looked at her locker. Once she was paying attention, she could see it was coated with a thin layer of…something.

  I definitely don’t want to know what this stuff is.

  The laughter continued, along with whispers all around her. Even kids not in Courtney’s little army of cokehead followers stood there grinning. Jaxon felt like a fuse that was burning down to a keg of dynamite. She had a vision of beating up every single one of those spoiled rich kids and leaving them groaning on the floor. Her fists clenched. Jaxon took several deep breaths, trying to control herself.

  Why should I control myself?

  On impulse, she opened Courtney’s locker, which was next to hers.

  “Hey!” Courtney shouted. “Get out of there!”

  Jaxon ignored her and rummaged through the locker. What a mess. Books were tumbled in a heap, with random papers and old homework assignments and tests crumpled together. Tossing out a few Fs and Ds and sweeping aside some old makeup, she found what she was looking for—a scarf.

  A hand grabbed her shoulder and tried to spin her around. Jaxon resisted and was surprised that she actually had to put some effort in it. Courtney was stronger than she looked. Must have been the cocaine.

  “What are you doing, freak?” Courtney shouted in a shrill voice, right next to her ear.

  “Don’t give me a headache,” Jaxon replied in as calm a voice as she could, keeping her back to the bully. She held the scarf up, having to jerk to the side to keep Courtney from grabbing it. “I have to say you really do know how to accessorize. Can I borrow this?”

  Jaxon started wiping her locker clean with Courtney’s scarf. The whole hallway burst out in laughter again, but not at Jaxon that time.

  “You bitch!” Courtney yelled, and she raked her fingernails across Jaxon’s cheek.

  Jaxon flicked her hand away, the movement so fast, so automatic, that she didn’t have time to pull back on her strength.

  “Ow!” Courtney shouted, holding her hand.

  Jaxon looked at her for a moment, concerned. She hadn’t broken anything, had she? The last time she accidentally broke someone’s bones, it cost her years of trouble.

  No, Courtney’s hand was a bit red, but since it was clenched in rage and flying at her face, it couldn’t be too hurt.

  Once again, Jaxon reacted automatically, using an aikido move she’d learned from Marquis. She grabbed Courtney’s fist, deflected the blow, and used the girl’s own momentum to spin her around like a ballerina doing a pirouette.

  Courtney staggered and backed up, fear flickering across her usually arrogant features.

  Jaxon purposely turned her back on the cheap bully for a second time and finished cleaning her locker with the scarf. Then she used a dry part of the material to wipe off her fingers.

  “You’re dead,” Courtney whispered and stalked off, her blond hair flouncing as she broke through the circle of leering kids.

  Jaxon was tempted to put the greasy scarf back in Courtney’s locker, after smearing all the contents of course, but decided against it. That had gone far enough. Instead, she dropped it on the floor.

  She gathered all her books—no way she was going to risk leaving anything in her locker after that little scene—and headed for class. As she passed through the crowd, she secretly enjoyed all the approving looks she was suddenly getting. Was that all it took to be popular, being as nasty as Courtney? Maybe the school coke dealer and self-proclaimed “most beautiful girl in school” wasn’t as popular as she thought.

  Class was boring, as usual. At least it gave her a chance to calm her nerves. The teacher was droning on about American history and the Bill of Rights. Jaxon wondered if there was anything in it about the right to be left alone. A fight made her feel all wired and a bit ill, even when she won. She didn’t really care if no one liked her. She was used to that. Who cared what people like Courtney thought anyway? It was the constant harassment that got to her. It wore her down, year in and year out. When would it stop? Would she have to actually break someone’s wrist as she did with Mr. Spencer? Was violence the only way to make the wolves stop circling?

  Something the teacher said caught her attention.

  “Now let’s take turns each reading a paragraph from the Bill of Rights.”

  Oh great. Reading. She could toss grown men and hold herself up with one finger, but she read like a first grader who had been hit over the head with a Tonka truck.

  “Courtney, could you read first?”

  Jaxon let out a relieved sigh.

  Courtney began to read in a bored voice, “Amendment One: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

  Does “redress of grievances” mean I get to complain to the government about Courtney? Jaxon wondered.

  “Thank you, Courtney. Brett, could you go next, please?”

  Jaxon looked over at Brett and saw he had nodded off.

  “Brett! Could you wake up and join the class?” the teacher snapped.

  Brett’s head jerked up. He stared at the teacher for a moment, his face slack with confusion, and then his eyes cleared, and he started reading.

  “Amendment One: Congress shall make no law respecting—”

  “Second amendment, please.” The teacher sighed.

  The class laughed again. Jaxon giggled. She couldn’t believe she had gone on a date with that guy. But at least he’d treated her nicer than everyone else. Had to watch those hands, though.

  The teacher went through each amendment, selecting a student to read each of them. They were almost through, and Jaxon was beginning to think she was going to make it when…

  “Jaxon, could you read the next one, please?”

  Jaxon tensed. Her teacher knew she was dyslexic, so why was she putting her through that? With a sigh, Jaxon tried to read.

  “Amendment Nine: The en…emulation…”

  “Enumeration,” her teacher corrected.

  “The enumeration in the Congress…”

  “Constitution.”

  Giggles started sounding around her. Jaxon felt her face going red.

  “…the Constitution, for civil rights…”

  “…of certain rights,” her teacher said. More giggles. The teacher glared around the room, but the giggles didn’t stop.

  “…still nobody constructed…”

  “…shall not be construed…”

  More giggles. The people in front of her kept glancing over their shoulders and grinning. Jaxon didn’t look at Courtney or Brett. She didn’t want to see the expressions on their faces.

  Jaxon took a deep breath and continued.

  “…to delay or dis…dis…”

  “…to deny or disparage others retained by the people,” the teacher finished for her. “Thank you, Jaxon. That will be all.”

  “Oh my God, she’s like totally useless,” Courtney whispered loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “Knock that off, whoever that was,” the teacher snapped.

  A few more giggles erupted around the room.

  Jaxon stared at her desk, burning with shame. She could hear their laughter ringing in her ears long after they had stopped.

  That night, Jaxon lay in her bed again, feeling restless. She knew she wouldn’t fall asleep for a long time. By all rights, she should feel happy in her new place. Despite the str
ict rules, she had a good thing going there—a huge house, her own plot of vegetables in the greenhouse to relax with, okay foster parents who actually seemed to give a damn. What else could she want?

  Friends and a place to belong, Jaxon thought.

  Not as if that had ever been a part of her life except for those precious few weeks in the group home with Otto. She’d always been the outsider. Shouldn’t she just get used to it?

  Why should I get used to it? Why do I have to settle for second best?

  Something Courtney had said kept coming back to haunt her, cutting into her heart like a razor blade.

  Useless. She said I was useless.

  The worst of it all was that Courtney was right. What had Jaxon ever done that was of use to anybody? She was some sort of medical miracle, some sort of superwoman, and yet all she did was go to school, get bad grades, and get rejected by a bunch of superficial idiots.

  She sat up in bed. Useless, useless, useless. Well, what could she do? She was just a kid.

  No she wasn’t, she was a superwoman with magical powers. Who else could make plants grow simply by touching them? Who else could do push-ups on one finger?

  Who else could punch through a wooden floor with their fingertip? She’d told Isadore that she’d lifted up her chair and it had slipped from her grasp, and one of the legs punched a hole in the floor. It was a bogus excuse, and Isadore didn’t look convinced, but at least she hadn’t bugged Jaxon about it. All Jaxon wanted was to be left alone.

  You sit around all your life like a blob, hoping everything will pass you by, when what you really want to do is hit back at all the meanness in the world.

  Something her yoga instructor, Juliette, had told her came back to her. It was a line from some book called The Gnostic Gospels.

  “If you let what is inside of you out of you, what is inside of you will save you. If you don’t let what is inside of you out of you, what is inside of you will kill you.”

  Jaxon sat up in bed. If she kept denying what she was, if she kept hiding all her life, all she could look forward to was another seventy years of the same. No way was she going to let that happen.