The Secret of Atlantis (Citadel World Book #2)

by Kir Lukovkin

  Rick chuckled and walked under the arch. His eyes quickly got used to the gloom. When the group had gone a significant distance into the tunnel, the soldiers turned on their torches. Rick soon asked them to turn the lights off so that they would not attract the attention of any possible denizens of the Citadel.

  They soon found themselves in a vaulted hall with the Chorda rising up high in the center. He choked up again from his memories of Thermopolis, but he did not make a stop this time. Once he oriented himself, he determined the direction where the elevator niches were located and calmly set off there. They were under no threat here. Back when he was in his native Thermopolis, Rick learned to distinguish between different types of silence and he knew that this was the silence of abandonment.

  “Where are we going?” Gareth asked, catching up to him.

  “Towards the transport hub,” Rick explained.

  He approached a terminal, activated the screen by touching it with his palm and called an elevator. A cargo cabin appeared a minute later.

  “Are you sure that it's safe here?” Lucio kept himself at a distance from the wall, gripping Black's Ants shoulder hard with his hand.

  “Absolutely,” Rick replied nonchalantly. “Otherwise, they would have already stopped us on the terrace at the foot of the stairway.”

  Rick entered the cabin and asked, “So are you coming with me or waiting here?”

  Paul was the first to come inside and another four soldiers followed. Gareth, Lucio and Black Ant entered last. Rick touched the control keys on the panel and the cabin started to crawl upwards, accelerating gradually.

  The elevator quickly passed through the levels an entered a shaft through an opening in the barrier wall between the aeons. The cabin sunk into darkness for an instant, until one of the three lamps under the ceiling blinked and switched on. Everyone was tense, watching the outside through the clear wall. Thick girders, rows of pipelines and the grilles of a hundred ventilation shafts on the walls swam past as they sped upwards. The light in the cabin suddenly blinked again and then went out for a couple of seconds, before lighting up again. No one had the time to panic as the cabin passed the barrier and continue rising through a new aeon. Rick did not like what he saw at all. He stepped up to the control panel, typed something in with his fingers on the buttons and stopped their ascent.

  There was nothing apart from empty space above their heads.

  A huge, empty well with only a silent Chorda and the vertical rails of the elevator stretching upwards. The Citadel was empty inside — there were only bare walls with slots prepared for the installation of horizontal girders.

  “Why did we stop?” Lucio asked warily.

  Everyone looked at Rick expectantly.

  “It's empty here,” he replied, “and the Chorda is not alight.”

  “What should it have here?”

  “It should have levels, whole floors full of various equipment, residential units, warehouses, sections full of machinery...”

  “You are lying to us!” Lucio shouted, drawing his knife and putting it against Black Ant's throat. “Tell us the truth right now!”

  “It's the truth!” Rick threw his hands up in desperation. “I don't understand why a whole aeon of the citadel is empty or why there is no energy in the Chorda! My world is an exact copy of this one, with the difference that all the space inside the tower was occupied with floors that had everything needed for maintaining life.”

  “Is that even possible?” Gareth asked in surprise. “Are you trying to say that machines and a lot of things you need to maintain life can be raised to such a height? You're delirious! Why are you doing this?”

  He glanced at Paul who seemed to trust Rick more judging by the expression on his face.

  Rick did not want to waste time on pointless arguments and look for someone's support as he was worried by what he saw. He was overcome with questions but could not find the answers to them.

  “All right, let's say you're not lying,” Lucio spoke up again. “What do we do now?”

  “We have two options,” Rick finally offered. “We can go up or down.”

  “But there is nothing up there, am I right?” Gareth interrupted.

  “It's possible that all the aeons are empty,” Rick nodded.

  “That means we should have gone downwards,” Paul concluded.

  “Isn't it empty there too, with a barely glowing pillar and nothing else?” Lucio asked.

  “No,” Paul said, looking at Rick carefully. “We should go even further down.”

  “That's right,” Rick confirmed. “There is probably a sector zero down below with the maintenance floors. But there could be a command center up above. It was located inside the fifth aeon in my citadel, on the floors at the very top.”

  “I don't like the idea of climbing up there,” Gareth said, pointing the barrel of his blaster at Rick. “This scumbag is leading us into a trap.”

  They all turned to Lucio, who had to make a decision.

  “First we go up,” he finally said. “And then down.”

  Rick turned to the control panel, but Lucio stepped up to him and ordered, “You will first explain how to me how to control this thing. You will show me everything and hide nothing.”

  “All right,” Rick nodded and told Lucio about the purpose of all the keys and commands displayed on the panel.

  Lucio sent the cabin upwards by himself and seemed to be very satisfied.

  They soon rose through the aeon and found themselves in the space inside the barrier again. Following a few moments of waiting, they entered yet another empty aeon. Rick sighed in disappointment, furrowed his brow and told everyone, “There will be another three of these sections that go through the barriers.”

  No one said a word. The cabin kept rising along the dark and lifeless Chorda. Rick was carefully examining its surface, as he could not understand why the Chorda glowed below but stayed dead here.

  A while later, they passed another aeon, where the situation as similar. The darkness hid the distance from then and no one could orient themselves in the space, as they could not even imagine the unbelievable height they were at. However, once the cabin reached the cold and open platform at the top that was buffeted by the ice cold wind under the shining sun, everyone held on to the railings and did not want to get out.

  Only Rick, Paul and Gareth stepped outside, shivering from the cold that pierced them down to their very bones, brought upon them by the freezing wind.

  Rick looked back when he heard a sob behind him. Gareth had vomited, which was no wonder at this height, as this world was alien for people from the surface. Paul held himself together rather well, apart from being as pale as the snow which gusted into their face when the wind picked up pace.

  The platform they saw around them was empty. There was only a thin metallic rod protruding in the center at the top of the Chorda, as well as a few vertical rails that stuck out from sealed elevator openings. That was all.

  Rick walked towards the edge of the platform, which had no railing. He stopped a pair of paces away, looking out into the space below. There was an incredibly simple and understandable picture around the tower stretching out below — three concentric rings of city buildings separated from each other with tall and dark walls. He could clearly see the main highway and the branching roads that led to it. The fine details of the segments were impossible to make out, but Rick got a general impression of the city.

  He shifted his gaze to the east and gasped with surprise. An endless and calm ocean rippled with its dark waters in the distance. There was a glittering strip of sunlight that stretched towards the horizon, as the shore gently undulated as it followed the edge of the water.

  “Look at that!” Paul's excited voice rang out behind Rick's back.

  Gareth and Rick hurried over to him.

  Paul was standing on all fours in dangerous proximity to the edge and pointing to the city. A weak and drawn out rumble came from below as the outer ring slowly turne
d together with the city buildings.

  “Unbelievable!” Paul exclaimed. “Can you see that?”

  Rick nodded and glanced over at the elevator cabin where Lucio still stood holding onto Black Ant's shoulder together with the other soldiers who were afraid to get out onto the platform.

  The outer ring turned slowly and resolutely together with the segments that filled it. The buildings and the channels of the roads, the translucent domes, the threads of the pipelines and the black boxes of the hangars were all moving. Rick carefully observed the city, forgetting the height and the cold wind and a picture gradually started to come together inside his head. The city was rebuilding itself in such a way that the programmed mechanisms grouped the structures along the wide highways that met the supports by the base of the citadel that had the gigantic stabilizer fins of the future spaceship hanging over them.

  Rick closed his eyes, trying to remember the scientific chapter which he had studied back when he was still in Thermopolis, but unfortunately his memory refused to provide him with information.

  Could this be a mistake? Were things different to the way he just imagined them? He backed away from the edge as his head started spinning and looked upwards, where a dot that slowly moved towards the horizon glittered in the dark sky. The rumble below became louder and Rick looked back at the city, noticing the middle ring start to move.

  “What is going on over there?” Lucio shouted from the elevator cabin.

  No one answered him. Rick was staring at what was going on below, hoping that his guess was correct.

  “Hey!” he heard from behind. “Look out!”

  Rick did not react immediately as it was Paul who moved first, surprisingly. It first seemed that he had thrown himself at him but then there was a shadow that moved by his side. Paul knocked Rick off his feet before Gareth struck Paul on the back with the stock of his blaster, falling down to the floor as well.

  Rick had to push Paul to the side and waste valuable time. Gareth raised his blaster to strike again, his face twisted and his eyes shining as he bared his teeth. Rick barely managed to move to the side and got hit by stock on the shoulder.

  Gareth howled and it was unclear whether it was anger or disappointment. He threw away his blaster and rushed at Rick, grabbing him around the neck.

  Lucio and the soldiers shouted at Gareth to stop and threatening to shoot from the elevator cabin, but they did not see that Gareth had gone insane and did not understand anything, so they hesitated to open fire.

  Rick managed to hit Gareth around the ear, punch him in the ribs and pull him under himself. Both men rolled along the platform. The madman still did not loosen his grip as he hissed and shouted, squeezing Rick's neck tighter.

  “Look out for the edge!” Lucio shouted.

  It was too late when Rick realized where they were rolling and punched Gareth with all his strength. Gareth shuddered for a moment and seemed to come to his senses, as his eyes flashed in panic and recognition. He was still carried to the side by inertia and he dragged Rick after him until they both fell onto the edge of the platform.

  Gareth screamed as a current of air immediately blew him away. Rick managed to gather his legs to him, but then he spread his arms and realized that he is falling right onto the inclined stabilizing fin. He moved his hands to change the position of his body again. An instant later, his back touched the sloping surface.

  His eyes teared up from the air streaming into his face. Rick could not see anything as it all merged into a huge white spot. He slid along the stabilizer on his back, praying to Mother Darkness that he would not hit some projection.

  He slowed down soon after, but his speed was still great enough for him to be crushed if he hit a hard object or tear his back apart if there was a rough surface.

  Through the mist in his eyes he somehow made out the highway nearby, where men in gray clothing were moving around and it seemed that he heard gunshots and shouting. He did not manage to understand what was going on though, as the fin ended abruptly and Rick found himself flying through the air again and waving his arms, screaming...

  The last thing he saw was a snow-covered roof. He flew into a snowdrift feet first. A terrible pain pierced his foot and then his side.

  He went out like a light.

  U

  IT WAS LIGHT in the street when Rick came to and climbed out of the snowdrift. Rick decided that this meant that he must have spent the whole night in his snowy cave which saved him from freezing. His side burned with pain, but his foot was even more painful and he could barely stand on it.

  Once he got his bearings, Rick came down from the roof and limped towards the Citadel, picking up a steel rod on the way that he could conveniently lean on and use as a weapon if needed. He had no idea what was going on around him and did not know whether the soldiers managed to take the core under their control. He doubted they did, anyway. As he walked, he occasionally came across bodies in gray uniforms lying in the streets. Some lay there with their throats turned out, gripping their weapons, while the others had coagulated wounds on their bodies. Sometimes, dead bodies dressed in rags lay among them, who Rick thought were probably possessed. However, it looked like the soldiers had killed each other without help from the possessed in most cases. The question was, what made them do it?

  Rick's head rang and he constantly grimaced with pain.

  However, pain was much better than cold and death. He walked along for around a quarter, when his way to the square before the base of the Citadel was blocked by one of the possessed, who wore a torn brown jumpsuit and had long hair which had stuck together hanging down onto his face. Rick could not see his eyes, but it seemed that the madman standing in his way was carefully examining the newcomer.

  Rick took a pair of steps and said, “Get out of the way.”

  No reaction. The madman made no move. Several other possessed poured out into the street from the buildings and side-streets. They also stood still nearby, staring at Rick as if they had seen something amazing and unusual.

  “What do you want?”

  He was answered with silence. Rick set his mouth in a grim line and advanced on the hairy possessed who did not even think of moving out of the way. When Rick raised his rod to strike and crush the madman's skull, he suddenly spoke.

  “The key for the start.”

  “What?” Rick froze with his rod still raised to strike. “What did you say?”

  “The Uranus program,” he heard from the side.

  Rick turned towards the voice.

  “Could all passengers get into their places,” came from another direction.

  Then the voices came from all around him.

  “Secure all movable objects...”

  “Put on your oxygen masks...”

  “The countdown is about to begin”

  “Ten, nine. Three squared equals nine.”

  “Eight, seven. Two times tow equals four.”

  “Weight is connected to the substance of the elements so much that they always keep the same weight when they turn from one into another.”

  “Let it be necessary to find the magnetic induction module at the center of a very thin spool that has a number of coils equal to...”

  “The mass of a substance appearing on the electrode is directly proportional to the electrical charge that passes through the electrolyte...”

  “The sum of the squared lengths of the legs is equal to the square of the length of the hypotenuse...”

  Interrupting each other, the possessed spoke of genetic codes, cryogenic chambers and the colonization program, constantly mentioning the planet of Terra Nova. They reported the physical constants and parts of formulae and listed the numbers related to the necessary fuel and life support supplies. Rick shut his eyes in disbelief as to what was going on. He would have kept standing there like that and waiting for the madmen to shut their mouths, but then the loud report of a heavy military blaster interrupted their unstoppable squall of voices.

  R
ick opened his eyes when the hairy possessed was already lying on the ground, half of his skull caved in by a blaster charge.

  The possessed all turned their backs to Rick as one, growled and charged at the soldiers that appeared in the street, as if obeying someone's invisible command. They had turned into wild and starving animals in an instant.

  Rick had to quickly get out of the way so that he would not get accidentally hit by a blaster charge. He stumbled along to the wall of a building and he was about to go through the door but he stopped at the entrance, as he watched a bloodied woman crawl out.

  The woman stretched out her hand towards him, saying, “Charles the King, our great Emperor, has been in Spain for seven full years...”

  The woman was dressed in the greenish jumpsuit of the cluster of the fords and Rick suddenly recognized Olivia's face. She kept crawling towards him with her hand stretch out. Rick crouched and touched her cold fingers. Something changed in the woman's eyes and she whispered, “A Threshold. This is a Threshold. The instructions require...”

  A blaster shot rang out nearby and Olivia shuddered, stretching out on the floor as she kept her glassy eyes on Rick. Her lips were still moving when he heard a second shot. Rick turned his head and saw Landmaster Vasilevs standing before him. A dozen and a half soldiers stood behind him, blasters at the ready.

  “You?” the Landmaster exclaimed in surprise.

  “Yes, it's me.”

  “Why didn't they touch you?”

  “I have no idea...”

  “Where's everyone else?”

  Rick realized that the unit headed by Lucio did not establish communications and gave Vasilevs a brief overview of their elevator trip to the top of the tower, his fight with Gareth and his speedy descent.

  “Do you think I'll believe you?” Vasilevs asked.

  “Possibly. I'm still alive and you need me.”

  “That's right,” Vasilevs nodded and called a soldier with a medical armband. “Examine him and do everything so he can walk,” he ordered.