The Secret of Atlantis (Citadel World Book #2)

by Kir Lukovkin

  He was soon in his room and quickly told Black Ant about everything was happened. Rocky, who had escorted him, paid no attention and waited by the entrance. They did not have anything with them anyway, so they decided to immediately set off for the hangar to be closer to the others. Their attempts to start a conversation with Rocky were unsuccessful as the pilot was probably no fan of newcomers. As soon as they returned to the hangar, Rocky immediately gave the outsiders to the people from Hans' circle and went over to the maintenance crew to help them prepare the arrows for the journey. An hour later everyone was gathered in front of a massive pair of extremely tall gates, or external locks, as the maintenance crews referred to them.

  A low rumbling noise came from somewhere above and the floor vibrated. Rick and Black Ant started to look around nervously, but everyone stood there waiting silently. The gates shuddered and started to spread apart so a strip of bright sunlight poured into the hangar.

  The silver arrows were the first to go through the opening and sped away along the flyover towards the wall that ringed the tower nearby. The people walked on foot after them, with the technicians rolling along charge batteries for the cars in electric carts and the women carrying some basic supplies in bags and leading children by the hands.

  Rick and Black Ant kept looking around, trying to work out where they were and what was going on. It seemed that the movement of the clan into an emergency hideout was nothing new. The people looked ready for this turn of events and acted without any undue haste, without looking particularly nervous and silently following Margaret, who was accompanied by Hans striding along by her side.

  Surprisingly, Rick did not notice Klaus among the technicians. Why didn't he leave with the pilots? Rick pointed at Klaus and whispered to Black Ant, “Keep away from him. I feel that we will have problems with him yet.”

  The boy nodded.

  “Do you still have the medallion that you showed me in the room?” Rick asked quietly.

  Another nod.

  “When you see signs like those on the medallion, or a door with similar symbols, tell me.”

  Black Ant made an affirmative sound and they continued on their way in silence.

  There was a light layer of snow dusting the gray slabs under their feet and it was cold. The vague outline of the sun shone with a pale light before their eyes. Rick noticed a giant letter F which had almost completely faded on the wall, labeling the cluster where they were. “ATTENTION! Sector border. When the shift occurs, keep behind the line of the canal,” was inscribed alongside the letter. Rick whispered to Black Ant, drawing his attention to this and asking whether he understood what line they were talking about, but the boy only shrugged in response.

  Margaret led the people along the flyover towards the barrier wall that had the Citadel towering behind it. Rick kept turning his head, getting the lay of the land and soon noticed a straight canal that stretched along to the side of the flyover. It was not deep, but it was wide and it diagonally crossed their way ahead of them.

  Perhaps this was the canal referred to by the inscription? He slowed down, looking at the canal cutting through the open space. Black Ant also held back, standing by him. The slabs under their feet suddenly shuddered violently and some people cried out in fear. Hans turned around and shouted at them all to hurry up.

  Rick was about to suggest to Black Ant to go faster, when the slabs shook again and the world split in half.

  Just a moment ago, the slabs where the technicians rolled along their electric carts were lying flat. A break suddenly appeared, with a dark, rusted section of wall rising out of it with a screech, covered in riveted metal squares with fresh blood spattered on them. Margaret, Hans and several other people had probably been crushed by the underground mechanisms in an instant. Rick was not sure of that, but that was what he thought, for some reason.

  By accident, a woman and a child ended up at the edge of this section and both were screaming. Screams came from all around, from those who had fallen into the crack, to those that ended up on the other side of the section and everyone who was ahead because they did not know what to do. More and more new wall fragments rose out of the crack, fencing off a new city segment.

  This was when Rick finally understood what the inscription on the wall had meant, so he grabbed Black Ant by the hand and pulled him forwards, towards the place where the barrier had not risen yet and where it was still possible to get to the other side.

  They ran up to the crack and stopped because it was impossible to jump over it as the distance was too great. Then Rick shouted to Black Ant that they will run along over the edge of a rising section of the wall, but it needed to be done fast and without pause upon his order. Rick told him to get ready and when the fragment appeared from the crack commanded, “Run!”

  Black Ant threw himself towards the other side. Rick hesitated for a moment as he felt someone's presence behind his back and almost fell in the opening between the slabs and the growing wall when someone's strong hands gripped him by the shoulders and pulled him back. Rick tried to turn around, but he did not manage to do it in time as he was hit on the back of his head and on his legs and thrown to the side. He barely managed to put up his hands so that he would not fall on the floor face first, drew his legs up to roll to the side and he was right on time. Klaus stamped down hard on the place where he had just been.

  “Why?” Rick bounded up and clenched his feet.

  Klaus made no reply — his face was twisted and insanity was in his eyes. He tried to attack Rick again, who managed to dodge out of the way and start running away from the crack so that he could get to the other side where the wall had not risen yet. He only managed to go for a few paces, when he was struck on the legs and rolled along the slabs. Klaus caught up with him and fell on top of him, grabbing hold of his neck and started to strangle him.

  Rick's vision swam as he tried to loosen Klaus' grip but he was not strong enough. Then he tried to knee Klaus in the back and push him off himself, but he failed again.

  Suddenly, the grip on his neck weakened. Rick twisted to the side, wheezing and coughing. He saw two silhouettes through the mist in front of his eyes — one was dark and lying on the slabs in torn clothing and the other silhouette in a light jumpsuit kicking the one on the ground.

  Rick managed to get up and lean on one knee, as his eyes finally focused on the figure and growled in fury when he realized that the insane Klaus was beating Black Ant.

  “Over here!” Rick grunted with difficulty. “Come to me!”

  Klaus turned to the sound of his voice and walked towards Rick clumsily, his limbs machine-like as he moved them. His face had become even more twisted, his eyes staring wide as he let out a scream of pain. Before he reached Rick he swung his fist through the air and then did it again and again.

  Rick straightened out as he waited, watching how Klaus, who had lost the last dregs of his sanity and sense of space swung his fists at an invisible opponent and how he started to foam at the mouth, his screams merging into an incomprehensible howl. His movements became jerky and twitchy. He fell to his knees, clawing at his bald head with his fingernail.

  The rumbling around them started to quieten down as the last section of the wall rose at the line where the crack touched the walls of the neighboring cluster. The slabs under their feet shuddered, as if there was a gigantic monster moving around below and everything went quiet.

  Rick felt incredibly tired and empty and he could barely stand up on his feet. Klaus stopped tearing off the head on his head, fell down face first onto the floor and did not move anymore.

  “Are you all right?” Rick called out to Black Ant, who had stood up on his feet.

  He only grunted, nodding in agreement as he spat out a piece of his tooth and smiled.

  “Why did you come back?” Rick asked, even though he understood anyway — they became close friends with the boy of late. He would also have come back for Black Ant if something similar happened to him.

  Bl
ack Ant only shrugged and glanced over his shoulder. The wall had cut them off from the others forever. They needed to find another way. People were scrabbling around, crying and arguing nearby. Around fifteen of them were left by the walls, some elders, a pair of grown men, women and children.

  One of the women noticed them looking at her, turned around and exclaimed, “Look, they have left us behind!”

  “They left!” another lamented.

  “It's all your fault!” a third one shouted.

  She was supported by an elder. The two men stepped forward resolutely, raising their fists.

  Rick shook his head unhappily. The world never changed.

  “Hey, relax,” he replied firmly.

  Something in his eyes, voice or appearance stopped them.

  “Anyone who will try and accuse me and my friend of their problems again will die.”

  “You're lying!” the elder said as he stepped forward.

  “Want to try me, like Klaus did?” he nodded at the body lying motionless in front of him.

  The old man immediately stepped back behind the other men.

  “Have you calmed down?” Rick looked into the unfamiliar faces carefully. “Now listen to me, because many things depend on your answers. Did the slabs that we are on now ever move before?”

  “No,” the first woman replied confidently. “Nothing of the sort ever happened before.”

  “Yes, this is the first time,” answered another.

  “They say that this is the sign of the end of the world,” the third one added immediately. “Hans and Margaret promised to save us. They lied!”

  She sniffed and burst into tears.

  “Enough of that!” Rick told her off. “Give me quick answers without any of your speculations when I ask questions. Is that clear?”

  Everyone looked at each other for a while and then an uneven chorus of voices made an affirmative sound.

  “Hans and Margaret are no longer,” Rick declared. “There is also no direct path to the emergency hideout. This is why I am going towards the core. If you want, you can follow me.”

  People waited for him to continue, but then Rick turned around and set off towards the eastern wall of the segment. Black Ant fell in alongside.

  “There's no way out over there!” someone shouted after him.

  “I know, but I will find it!” Rick replied without turning around.

  “No, that's the wrong way!” a hoarse voice sounded.

  The women gasped with fear. Rick and Black Ant turned around.

  “It's the wrong direction,” Klaus wheezed as he rose to his feet.

  Klaus looked terrible. There were bloody welts on his head, his left eye twitched visibly and his nose and jaw looked broken. It seems that he received these wounds when he fell on the slabs. The main thing was that there was sanity and fear in his eyes.

  “It's as if I was enshrouded in mist,” Klaus muttered guiltily as he wiped his mouth. Everything went blank in my head. I remember how I heard the noise and then how I was lying on the ground as this wall...”

  “A shambler!” one of the people standing off to the side exclaimed. “Klaus has become a shambler!”

  Rick did not think so. He glanced at Black Ant and they both approached Klaus.

  “Does your head hurt?” Rick asked.

  “I have a splitting headache.”

  That was bad. Rick suffered from such fits himself, but it never got as bad as this.

  “We are looking for a way through,” Rick told him, without wasting time on explanations. “I must get to the core. Do you know how to get in there?”

  “I know who can help us.”

  “Speak straight.”

  “Here,” Klaus stumbled as he went into his jumpsuit pocket. Rick held him up by his elbow. “This is the key.”

  He took a familiar looking medallion out of his pocket. Only the symbols on that medallion were different to the one that Black Ant had with him.

  “Let me guess,” Rick said, “we just need to find the door which this key opens.”

  “You know a lot,” Klaus chuckled crookedly and motioned for Rick to stand away. “You need to go over there,” he pointed westwards, “there is a hidden passage.”

  “Why should I trust you?”

  “I don't know, decide for yourself.”

  “Well... All right,” Rick nodded. “Show us where to go.”

  Grimacing with pain, Klaus slowly strode off in the direction he had shown, followed by Rick and Black Ant.

  They heard voices and then the sound of steps behind them — the people had quickly made their choice. There had nowhere else to go.

  P

  THE LOUD ECHO of the boots upon the steps spread throughout the shaft. They were descending into a gigantic, dark well along a metal stairway which circled along the wall. Rick walked at the very back, but he took a quick look to the south before he slid downwards, pulling the hatch tight.

  What if his eyes had just played tricks on him? Rick stopped on the platform, watching how the torches of the people below shone on the walls and steps. Perhaps he should have checked? To do that, he would have to climb back outside and... No, it was best to just assume that the gray ones were following their tracks and that they would soon be here.

  He closed his eyes, bringing up the picture in his memory. A faraway dark wall and the immense half-open gates of the hangar with gray figures walking out of them. Yes, these were the soldiers of the division and no one else. Rick nodded to himself and activated the electronic lock panel by touching it with Klaus' medallion. He made sure that the hatch was locked, grabbed the railings and hurried down the stairs after the others. Now, he was more concerned about what awaited them below as opposed to what went on above.

  Klaus only knew the way to the shaft where he had descended with the pilots a couple of times. There was a branching network of corridors and tunnels below which the people were afraid to enter, so Rick had to choose the only correct direction so that they would not get lose their way and their valuable time. He knew how to do that — the main thing was for the markings on the walls to still be preserved, and there was no chance for the gray ones to catch up with them if he managed to reach a terminal and get information up on the monitor.

  The descent took a long time and Rick counted forty landings, with each of them as deep as one residential level in Thermopolis, by his reckoning. It was incredibly deep. At last, they reached a hangar, similar in shape to those where Klaus' clan had recently lived.

  One of the men turned out to be a technician, so he had no problem finding the instrument panel and switching on the emergency lighting. However, there were only two working lights that turned on under the ceiling. Two was not bad either, so Rick walked around the hangar, reading the inscriptions above the exits to the corridors and stopped by the three of them which had attracted his attention: “Cargo Section”, “Waiting Halls” and “Control Room.”

  “That way,” he said decisively, pointing at the last exit.

  Everyone went after him, following the tunnel to a spacious hall with rows of seats before dead black monitors. Rick tried to switch on at least one of them, but it did not work as there was no power. He asked the technician for help, but he could not do anything either as they could not find the main power supply control panel and the smaller ones they came across did not provide them with the results they needed.

  “Let's keep going,” Rick decided. “We need to start up at least one of the terminals so we get a diagram of the city by the core so we can plan our route.”

  He headed for the side exit that had a “Hangar No.1” sign above it.

  “So you want to say that these terminals store information, just like the database of our main navigation computer?” asked Klaus. He looked noticeably better overall, even though his breathing was still labored and he spoke with a hoarse edge to his voice.

  “That's right,” Rick stopped abruptly.

  Black Ant had not expected it and walked
into him from behind.

  “Sorry. Are you all right?” Rick ruffled his hair and turned back to Klaus. “Did your main navigation computer only store data about the cluster or did it also include the other territories?”

  Klaus thought for a while and then pronounced, “I am not that great with electronic machines. Margaret and Hans were the ones who understood them well, but I can tell you one thing for sure — the database contained information about all the places which we ever visited in our arrows.”

  “Would you be able to connect to the main navigation computer is we manage to start up a terminal?”

  Klaus shrugged and replied, “You need a unique access code. Only Margaret had one.”

  “An access code...” Rick repeated to himself. “All right, we will discuss this once we launch at least some kind of terminal.”

  The corridor led them to a balcony with rows of seats, but there were no lifeless monitors. There was a view into a huge hall with glass walls where the shapes of flying machines could be seen in the weak glow of mold. Rick immediately recognized them, but he could only use one of them if he knew how to raise them to the surface.

  “Do you know where we are?” Klaus asked, lowering his voice to a whisper for some reason as he looked down into the hall, completely mesmerized.

  “I have an idea,” Rick shone the torch at the signs in front of the stairways that led downwards from the balcony. “Do you see those signs? The Ancients called a place like this a transport hub. Judging by the sign, you can get to the city, the core and the outer ring from here.”

  He pointed the torch upwards and they all looked up.

  “Notices used to appear on the big information screens up here that people used to find out where they should go and when so that they get into the flying machine on time,” Rick continued.

  “How do you know?” Klaus asked.

  “There are many other interesting things in the ancient archives,” Rick chuckled. “Once we'll get inside the core, this will be the least of the things you find out. Let's head below and take a look at the machines.”