“Wow, what a loss, that is a shame.”
Althaea looked at him and saw that he wasn’t joking.
“It’s true. There were a lot of benefits from the unions of humans and Atlanteans before in those times. Artificial genetic unions, of course. The Atlantean technology still worked and Tzedek was an enthusiast about trying to recover the species. Many of the stories in Greek mythology had a basis in reality. Tzedek must have created hundreds of various hybrids, who mixed with the human population and prospered as well as dozens of pure Atlanteans. Lamentably, in that case, only a few were able to survive.”
“Why?”
“A disease...that affected Atlantean births. Tzedek tried to improve them, but most of the experiments ended up badly in the end. I do regret having imposed this transformation on you, well, on both of you.”
“I’m more than happy,” Sofía interrupted.
“Me, too, Althaea,” Juan Carlos assured her.
“Luckily, my father agreed to give it to you.”
“So, I don’t have to worry about Tzedek throwing a lightning bolt at me?”
Althaea laughed, catching the reference.
“No, but I’d hold back on demonstrations of affection in front of him. Knowing they’re there isn’t the same as seeing it in person.”
“I understand perfectly,” said Juan Carlos, looking at Sofía, who was holding hands with Damaris and turned red. “And from what I’m seeing, only an Atlantean would apologize for granting immortality to another being.”
Just then, Tzedek came in.
THEORIES
Rho, November 27, 2027. 6:40 p.m.
“You’re not going to believe this,” exclaimed Tzedek, directing his comments to Althaea. “That guy is a hitman from Marsan.”
“How can that be? Why would Marsan want to kill us? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Nogah and I were saying the same thing.”
“Um...” Juan Carlos cleared his throat.
They all looked at him.
“Excuse me, but didn’t Tzedek say all this was for that other species that came from space to colonize you? What did you call them, the Anunnakis?”
“That’s what we heard they called themselves, but it could have been false information. What does that have to do with Marsan and what’s going on now?”
“Good question. Are you sure there’s no connection? Maybe those beings are behind what Marsan did.”
Several voices protested all at once.
“The invaders left.”
“We expelled them thousands of years ago.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
Juan Carlos lifted his hands with palms out.
“Althaea said that you destroyed their portal, but how do you know that they all left? How do you know that there weren’t already a lot of them disbursed around our planet?”
“How could they have stayed hidden all this time?” asked Althaea with her hands on her hips.
“How did you?” shrugged Juan Carlos. “How many people know that the Greek gods are real and exist today? On the other hand, there are a lot of stories about extraterrestrials behind governments and pulling the strings of humanity.”
“We aren’t gods,” Damaris affirmed.
“There are?” Tzedek asked in amazement at the same time.
Juan Carlos put his hand to his head.
“Apparently you all don’t worry yourselves with reading conspiracy theories that the nutcases publish, hmm, published on the internet. Except now I think that maybe they weren’t insane at all. Maybe the invaders didn’t dominate the world, either, but if some survived it’s very possible that their objective is still the same as when they came—eliminate you and take possession of the planet.”
Tzedek got thoughtful.
“Althaea told me that Marsan was a traitor and was looking for revenge. What if it wasn’t just his own folly, but he collaborated or somehow was forced, or convinced, or fooled or whatever by one of those beings? I assume that you also don’t know much about what kind of technology or techniques of persuasion they might have. After all, if you didn’t even consider that they might exist for thousands of years...but for me it would explain everything.”
“It’s true that once we assumed they weren’t here any longer, we didn’t look for them anymore,” Tzedek mused thoughtfully.
Tzedek and Althaea looked at each other.
“Maybe you’re right. Anyway, with or without Anunnakis, as far as we know, the intellectual author of everything was Marsan. The issue is, what do we do now?” Althaea asked.
“Let’s think about it. If those beings exist, and they’re behind this...let’s think like them. What would they want? The planet, but you were in the way. And later, the same humans that they’d created...” reasoned Juan Carlos. “But if they were behind this, they’d also know about the retrovirus...if somehow, Marsan was with them, then...”
“...then they’d also have the vaccine. And they’d have used it...” continued Tzedek.
“...to protect the humans they wanted to conserve and to recruit the humans necessary to finish their work of destroying you all.”
“By Gea,” exclaimed Althaea. “There could be thousands of humans out there who know about us and are ready to kill us.”
“We know there was one here. We don’t know if there are more. We also know that there were some in high positions in the United States. Someone was in charge of putting our cities on the list of nuclear objectives, and that wouldn’t be done by one lone person,” said Tzedek.
“The question is...what do we do now?” Althaea asked again.
“Whatever you do, make sure you aren’t doing exactly what the Anunnakis planned you would do,” suggested Juan Carlos.
Althaea looked at Tzedek, who said:
“Juan Carlos, we have to think this out, and I appreciate your advice. You could be right, or it could all be Marsan’s madness and nothing else. We’ve already gone through a lot today, so everyone go rest for a few hours and then I’d like for us to meet and discuss our next steps.”
“I’d like to go with Damaris,” Sofía asked.
Juan Carlos was surprised, but heard Althaea’s voice in his head:
“Let her, she really wants to be with Damaris...and I want to be with you. Come with me.”
“No way. Sofía is fourteen years old and she’s not going with anyone but me,” dictated Juan Carlos, looking at Althaea and trying to hide his embarrassment.
Tzedek sighed with weariness, looking at Althaea, who lowered her gaze.
“Try to rest a little. I suspect that tomorrow will be an exhausting day. Althaea, give them your flat to spend the night in, and you go with Damaris. I’ll continue on with this.”
They all left Central Control. The buildings were all still closed.
“When will you open the buildings?” asked Juan Carlos.
“When the level of electromagnetic radiation is stable. The network is still diverting energy from the atmosphere to the ground, otherwise they would have been lifted,” Althaea replied.
Juan Carlos looked at Sofía and Althaea took him by the hand.
“Let’s go to our flats,” Althaea suggested.
They went down a couple of floors and stopped for a moment.
“Papa...” Sofía began, looking at Juan Carlos with doe eyes.
“No.”
Sofía bit her lips, but kept quiet. They got to Althaea’s home and went in. Damaris went to hers and Juan Carlos heard her tell Althaea to come over when she was ready. Juan Carlos and Sofía admired Althaea’s apartment. It was large with a lot of windows. She must have a good view, but now it was all blocked to protect the city. As they entered, she saw a small salon with a table and some chairs, a sofa and a small kitchen.
“I never use the kitchen, really,” commented Althaea, “I always go eat with the others in the building dining room. Come on,” she indicated, showing them the rest of the house. There was a large bathroom, with bathtub
, and the bedroom had a double bed in the middle, nightstands, large closets, and a large screen on the wall at the foot of the bed.
“I think I’ll sleep on the couch,” Sofía said.
“If you want. In that case, I get the bed,” said Juan Carlos.
“It’s a big bed to sleep in alone, I can bring in another sofa if you want company,” Juan Carlos heard in his head from Althaea, who slowly came closer to him, and brushed his cheek with her hand. Juan Carlos felt the heat of her magnificent body near his, but he moved away a little.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, I appreciate you lending us your house. We’ll try not to mess it up.”
“Don’t worry about that. In those drawers, there are bed linens for Sofía. See you tomorrow.” She said good-bye, looking down, disappointed. She took some garments from some drawers and quietly left.
ESCAPE
Alpha, November 27, 2027. 7:30 p.m. (1:30 Rho time)
It took Musa several hours to travel the path to the Control Center bunker. Several times she ran into collapsed hallways and had to take long detours to get to the city center. As she moved forward, she passed the entrances of many shelters, but her priority now was to find Halius and Nikaia.
After what seemed like an eternity, she got to the entrance of the central bunker. She followed the manual procedures to open it, since the energy was cut and none of the computerized mechanisms worked. After a substantial amount of work, she was able to get to the main chamber.
She gasped in horror when she saw Nikaia and Halius lying on the floor, with traces of a reddish golden liquid around them. She ran towards them and saw that they were both alive but they had been hit by an electromagnetic pulse. A soft one, no doubt, or they’d be dead, but it had been enough to destroy most of their nanites. And they were comatose. She measured the area with the Geiger counter. The radiation was high but not fatal for at least eight hours. She took off the helmet.
First, she had to help them regenerate their nanites. If they’d all been destroyed, they’d be dead, so they still had some. That being the case, they could reproduce. She looked at the supplies. Water. No, juice would be better. She got two bottles of sugared juice. She went to Nakaia first, resting her head on her lap and carefully made her drink a bottle of juice. She repeated this with Halius but she barely got him to drink anything.
Half an hour later, Nikaia opened her eyes and looked at her. At first she didn’t react, but then smiled when she recognized her: “Musa.”
Musa got another bottle of juice and gave it to her to keep drinking. Nikaia was visibly getting better, but Halius wasn’t waking up. Musa looked at Nikaia worriedly, who murmured:
“I’m afraid Halius was in bad shape even before the impact of the bomb. They fired at him several times at pointblank range. I think the last one created a contusion, and I couldn’t do anything more than drag him here, we barely got here. I think the inside door hadn’t closed all the way when the missile hit. We got a dose of a little bit of everything.”
“We’ll give him a couple of hours and then we’ll have to think about leaving. The radiation here is high. We’re under the center of the explosion,” Musa motioned. “Keep giving him juice, that will accelerate his recovery.”
Nikaia continued attending to Halius, taking turns with Musa, until he finally heavily opened his eyes. He saw Nikaia, then Musa, and closed his eyes. A couple of minutes later, he opened them again.
“Are we in the bunker?”
Nikaia hugged him and rubbed his head.
“Yes, we’re safe for now.”
“Ugh. The last thing I remember is a human shooting several times close up. Damn, I thought my time had come.”
“You remember there was a revolt?”
Halius nodded.
“Well, with the distraction of the revolt, we didn’t see that there had been multiple nuclear missile launches. They activated our defenses from other cities, but one of the missiles came directly at our city. Among other things, our defense cannon was sabotaged and didn’t work.”
Halius opened his mouth, stunned.
“The city is destroyed, I saw it from the hills. If there’s anyone alive, it’s in the shelters.”
“You went as far as the hills?” asked Nikaia.
“Yes, underground. There are collapsed parts, but like this one, a lot of the shelters seem to be intact.”
“We’d need to see if anyone was able to shelter in them,” speculated Nikaia.
“When the revolt started and the first alarm sounded, I sheltered in the nearest one to avoid the shooting. Maybe others did the same.”
“It’s very possible... but we don’t know if those who sheltered are friends or enemies,” Halius questioned.
Nikaia went to a special panel on the wall. She pulled a device from her belt and inserted it into a slot in the panel, which lit up. She punched in a sequence of about ten numbers, and a small section of wall opened. She removed the device and the panel turned off. She opened the section of the wall by hand, and they could see a series of weapons. She took them out and began to distribute them.
“There is a sonic wave and a laser for each of us, and there are two left over. Musa and I will take one more each,” Nikaia suggested, arranging two weapons in her belt, and taking a third one in her hand.
Musa took off her suit.
“From here to the exit the radiation levels are tolerable and we’ll hurry where they’re not. I traveled through almost all the subsoil to get here.”
“There’s a way to know if they’re friends or enemies,” affirmed Nikaia, “and it’s reading the general impression of each person’s mind as soon as we get into the bunker, but that takes a lot of energy, so we’ll have to go slow and take a lot of provisions. The sugared juice is best, but let’s fill up the backpacks with bars of everything we find that’s sweet.”
They got everything ready as they’d planned, had some food and drinks, rested a little more, and left.
They took a spiral path from the center, checking the shelters one by one. The first three were empty. In the fourth, they opened the door and found that the ceiling had collapsed. There were people inside, but they were dead. Nikaia and Musa looked at each other sadly. Halius was angry.
“What a bunch of crap.”
At the next bunker, they opened the door and were surprised to find several people inside.
“Oh, finally, thank you for coming,” said the first person they saw happily. As they’d planned, they quickly scanned their minds and didn’t find any aggression. They gave them instructions to fill their backpacks with food and drink, to leave, following the ‘Evacuation’ signs and to wait for them near the exit from the underground tunnels.
At the next bunker, Nikaia had just started to open the door but Halius stopped her.
“Wait.” He’d felt something.
He took out the laser gun and the sonar, and Nikaia and Musa did the same. They started to open the door carefully, and hadn’t opened it all the way when it opened with a jerk and a man pointed a gun at them. Halius was ready, and with his right hand shot the sonic gun. The expansive wave threw the man back violently. Another man aimed at them and went to shoot, but before he could pull the trigger, both Musa and Nikaia shot him with the laser guns, each with accurate aim, with grotesque results. The man’s hand exploded and he fell to the ground screaming, holding the cauterized stump. There was one last man, who held a woman with her hands behind her back, using her as a shield, and aiming a gun at her head.
“Get out and leave me alone or she dies,” he threatened.
“If she dies, you’re next,” replied Halius, “and if you move your weapon any way except to put it down, it will be the last thing you do.”
“Please, do what he says,” the woman sobbed.
Nikaia frowned. Halius and Musa looked at her, then all three of them focused on the woman for a second.
“She’s one of them,” announced Musa.
The woman inhaled, and sudde
nly the man released her as he pointed the gun at Halius and the woman took out a weapon hidden behind her back. They hadn’t been able to fire when the three Atlanteans fired a combination of sonar and laser weapons. They were dead when they hit the floor.
The man with the amputated hand didn’t stop screaming. Halius looked at him, disgusted, aimed at his head, and when he fired, the screams suddenly stopped.
Musa sighed.
“If you don’t mind, I’d prefer to regain strength in the corridors, far from this.”
They agreed and walked several yards before sitting down to eat something.
“I think the next time we meet with an enemy force, we should try to keep someone alive. I’d like to be able to interrogate someone,” Nikaia said ironically.
“You’re right,” Halius agreed, “let’s only use the sonar weapons. They need to be enough to stop any attack without immediately killing the attackers.”
They rested awhile and then continued the rescue operation.
They went on opening the bunkers they found as they advanced. Some were empty, and in others they found civilians. Most of them had no idea what had happened. They examined them quickly and gave them instructions to get out, emphasizing that they should not waste time to reduce their exposure to radiation.
They opened each bunker with the same precautions. When they opened one of the bunkers, they found three men and a woman. Two of them were taking the woman by force, while the third man was holding a gun when he saw them enter. The sonic weapons took care of the two men in the act. Mentally, they felt that the woman was one of them, until they decided to abuse her. They decided to spend a little time there asking questions.
The interrogation didn’t add much to what they already knew, except to confirm that all of them had been chosen and instructed by Marsan. He had promised them positions of power and as the woman had unfortunately discovered, all the women they wanted. Some had criminal records and some didn’t. When they finished, Halius executed the traitorous prisoners one by one.
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