The Atlantis Trilogy Box Set- The Complete Series

by A. G. Riddle

  She interrupted the pause. “Martin had been looking for it—whatever it is—for a long time. He thought it was in southern Spain, but he told me he had been wrong about the location. He must have added the last note regarding Malta, after the fact.”

  “Do you know what it is?” Janus asked. “The Treasure of Atlantis?”

  Kate shook her head.

  David pulled her close to him. “We’ll know in a few hours.” However, the look in his eyes said something different: Do you remember? Kate closed her eyes and tried to focus.

  The rustle of the suit under the pressure of the decompression chamber was unmistakable.

  The voice in Kate’s helmet was crisp. “There are two settlements now.”

  “Copy.”

  “Sending coordinates of original settlement.”

  Kate’s helmet displayed a map. Their ship, the Alpha Lander, was still off the coast of Africa, where she had originally administered the Atlantis Gene.

  A floating chariot waited silently in the middle of the chamber. The doors opened slowly, revealing the scene beyond. Kate mounted the chariot and zoomed from the ship.

  The world was even more green. How much time had passed?

  At the camp, she realized exactly how much. There were at least five times as many huts as she had seen before. At least a generation had passed.

  And the nature of the camp had changed. Muscled warriors, dressed in clothes and wearing war paint, patrolled the perimeter. They turned to her and raised their spears threateningly as she floated in.

  She gripped the stun baton.

  An elderly man hobbled out to the warriors and shouted to them. Kate listened in amazement. Their language progress was stunning: they had already developed a complex linguistic structure, though the words used at this moment were a bit more “informal.”

  The warriors lowered their spears and backed away from her.

  She set the chariot down and ventured into the camp.

  There was no bowing and groveling this time.

  Up ahead, the chief’s shanty had grown as well. The simple lean-to had morphed into a temple with stone walls, built directly into the rock cliff.

  She marched toward it.

  The villagers lined up on each side, keeping their distance, fighting to see her.

  At the threshold of the temple, the guards stepped aside, and she entered.

  In the altar at the end of the cavernous room, a body lay. A circle of the black humans knelt before it.

  Kate paced to them. They turned.

  From the corner of her eye, she saw an elderly male making his way toward her. The alpha. Kate was amazed that he had survived so long. The treatment had produced remarkable results.

  Kate glanced back at the dead body, then read the symbols above the altar. Here lies the second son of our chief. Cut down in the fields by his brother’s tribe, for greed of the fruit of our lands.

  Kate quickly read the remainder of the text. It seemed that the chief’s oldest son had formed his own clan—a group of nomads that roamed the countryside, foraging.

  The chief’s younger son had taken over the fields where this tribe hunted and gathered. The younger son was seen as his father’s successor, the next chief. They had found him dead in the field, and the trees and shrubs picked clean. He was the first victim of the older brother’s raids, and they feared there would be many more. They were preparing for war.

  “We must stop this,” her partner said into Kate’s helmet.

  “And we will.”

  “War will sharpen their minds, enhance their technology. It is a cataclysm—”

  “We will prevent it.”

  “If we move one of the tribes,” her partner said, “we can’t manage the genome.”

  “There is a solution,” Kate said.

  She held her hand up and projected symbols onto the wall.

  You will not take retribution on the unworthy. You will leave this place. Your Exodus begins now.

  Kate opened her eyes to see David staring at her.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” She wiped sweat from her forehead. The memories were changing her more quickly now. Taking over. She was becoming more of what she’d been in the distant past and less of the woman she had become, the woman who had fallen in love with David. She pulled closer to him.

  What can I do? I want to stop this. I opened the door, but can I close it? It felt as if someone was holding her down and pouring the memories down her throat.

  Kate stood in another temple. She wore the suit, and the humans before her crowded around another altar.

  Kate looked out of the opening of the temple. The landscape was lush, but not as fertile as it had been in Africa. Where were they? The Levant, perhaps?

  Kate walked closer.

  The stone box on the altar; she had seen it before—in the Tibetan tapestry, in the depiction of the Great Flood, when the waters rose and consumed the coast, wiping out the cities of the ancient world. The Immaru had carried this box to the highlands, she was sure of it. Was this the treasure that waited in Malta?

  The members of the tribe rose from the ground and turned to face her.

  In the alcoves flanking the temple’s main corridors, Kate now saw dozens of members of the tribe kneeling, meditating, seeking the stillness.

  They would become the Immaru, the mountain monks who had carried the Ark into the highlands, who had kept the faith and tried to live a life of righteous observance.

  Kate walked down the aisle.

  “You know what must be done,” her partner said.

  “Yes.”

  At the altar, the crowd stepped aside, and she climbed the stairs and peered into the stone box.

  The alpha, the tribe’s founder and chief, lay there, still, cold, finally dead. His countenance was eerily similar to how it had been on the day when Kate had first seen him, in the cave, when he brought the rotting piece of flesh to his mate, when he collapsed against the wall and lay dying. She had hoisted him up then and saved him. She couldn’t save him now.

  She turned back to the masses gathered around the altar. She could save them.

  “This is dangerous.”

  “There is no alternative,” Kate said.

  “We can end this experiment, here and now.”

  Kate involuntarily shook her head. “We can’t. We can’t turn back now.”

  When she had finished the modification, she stepped off the altar. The attendants swarmed around her, rushing past the box. They brought something out—a stone top—and placed it upon the box.

  She watched as they engraved a series of symbols on the side of the Ark.

  Her helmet translated them:

  Here lies the first of our kind, who survived the darkness, who saw the light, and who followed the call of the righteous.

  Kate opened her eyes.

  “I know what’s in Malta, what the Immaru were protecting.”

  David’s eyes said, Don’t say it.

  “Is it part of the cure?” Janus asked.

  Chang leaned in.

  “Maybe,” Kate said. She focused on David. “How long to Malta?”

  “Not long.”

  Dorian pulled the sat phone out of his pocket and read the message.

  Heading east. Destination Malta. Where the hell are you?

  He walked back across the plague barge’s deck and climbed into the helicopter. “Let’s go.”

  78

  Kate stood in an immense command center. Holographic displays, the likes of which she’d never seen, covered the far wall. The maps tracked the human populations on every continent.

  At the corner of the room, an alarm flashed to life.

  Incoming vessel.

  Her partner raced to a control panel and manipulated the blue cloud of light that emerged. “It’s one of ours,” he said.

  “How?”

  Fifty thousand local years ago, Kate and her partner had received a transmission: their world, the Atlantean h
ome world, had fallen—violently, in a day and a night. How could there be survivors? Had the home world distress call been wrong? Kate and her partner had heeded the call, had hidden their science expedition, assuming they were the last of their kind, assuming they were now alone in the universe, marooned, two scientists who could never go home. Had they been wrong?

  “The vessel is a life raft.” Her partner turned to her. “A resurrection ship.”

  “They can’t come here,” Kate said.

  “It’s too late. They’re already landing. They intend to bury the ship under the ice-capped continent at the southern pole.” Her partner worked the control panel. He seemed to tense up. Is he nervous?

  “Who’s on the ship?” Kate asked.

  “General Ares.”

  A current of fear ran through Kate.

  The scene changed. Kate stood on another ship—not the lander. This vessel was massive. Glass tubes stretched out before her for miles.

  Footsteps echoed in the space.

  “We are the last,” came a voice from the shadows.

  “Why did you come here?” her partner called.

  “For the protection of the Beacon. And I read your research reports. The survival gene you gave the primitives. I find it… very promising.” The owner of the voice stepped into the light.

  Dorian.

  Kate almost reeled back. General Ares was Dorian. How? She focused. The man’s face wasn’t Dorian’s, but the overwhelming sense Kate got was that Dorian was inside this man. Or was it the opposite? Was Ares inside Dorian and Kate was sensing that element—seeing it in its purest form now? When Kate looked at Ares, all she saw was Dorian.

  “The inhabitants here are of no concern to you,” her partner said.

  “On the contrary. They are our future.”

  “We have no right—”

  “You had no right to alter them, but what is done is done,” Dorian said. “You endangered them the instant you gave them part of our genome. Our enemy will hunt them, as they will hunt us, to the far reaches of the universe, no matter where we go. I wish to save them, to make them safe. We will advance them, and they will be our army.”

  Kate shook her head.

  Dorian focused on her. “You should have listened to me before.”

  The endless rows of glass tubes faded, and Kate was in a different room in the same structure. There were only a dozen glass tubes here, standing on end, spread out in a semicircle before her. It was a room she had seen before—in Antarctica—where she, David, and her father had met up.

  Each tube held a different human subspecies.

  The door opened behind her.

  Dorian.

  “You… are conducting your own experiments,” Kate said.

  “Yes. But I told you I cannot do this alone. I need your help.”

  “You delude yourself.”

  “They will die without you,” Dorian said. “We all will. Their fate is our fate. The final war is inevitable. Either you give them the genetic equipment they need, or they perish. Our destiny is written. I am here for them.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “Then leave them to die. Do nothing. See what happens.” He waited. When Kate said nothing, he continued. “They need our help. Their transformation is only half complete. You must finish what you have started. There is no other way, no turning back. Help me. Help them.”

  Kate thought of her partner, his protests.

  “The other member of your little expedition is a fool. Only fools fight fate.”

  Kate’s silence was a signal—to her and to Dorian. He seemed to feed on her indecision.

  “They are already splintering. I have collected the candidates, conducted my own experiments. But I don’t have the expertise. I need you. I need your research. We can transform them.”

  Kate crumbled. She felt herself falling under his spell. It was the same as before—her before, in San Francisco. She tried to rationalize, tried to think of a deal, but her mind drifted to her experiences in Gibraltar and then in Antarctica when he had cornered her. It was history repeating itself. The same players, playing out a different game, with the same end, on a different stage. Except this was long before, in another life, in another era.

  “If I help you,” she said, “I want to know that no harm will come to my team.”

  “You have my word. I will join your expedition—as a security adviser. There are additional steps you all need to take to cloak our presence here. And you will program your resurrection tubes to my radiation signature—just in case something… unfortunate were to happen to me.”

  Dorian leaned his head against the helicopter’s back rest and closed his eyes. It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t a memory. He was there, in the past.

  And Kate had been there, opposing him, then helping him. He had taken her research, used it, and betrayed her when he was done with her.

  Across the ages, they were playing out the same scenario, fighting to transform the human race: her advocating for them, him trying to create an army to face a superior enemy.

  Who was right?

  He sensed something more: Kate was remembering these events at the same time he was, as if they were connected to the same network, each receiving signals, memories from the past, driving them on to some destination. She would receive the code this way. That’s what Ares had planned. Had he programmed the case for this?

  Seeing Kate had energized Dorian. Her fear, her vulnerability. It was the same as before. He’d had the power then, and he would have it again. She had the research and information he needed. And soon he would have it. She just had to remember.

  But it wasn’t only what had happened. It was some piece of information—a code that she would remember. Ares had known that. Dorian was close to Kate, and she was close to remembering the rest, remembering the code he needed. He had timed it perfectly. Soon, he would take her and take the last secret, the thing she held most dear, and her defeat would be complete.

  79

  Somewhere near Malta

  Mediterranean Sea

  On the horizon, David saw the two larger islands of Malta come into view.

  In the last six hundred years, this tiny group of islands, which covered just one hundred twenty-two square miles of land, had been the most fought-over place on the entire planet.

  During the Second World War, no place on Earth saw as much bombing per square foot as Malta. The German and Italian air forces had leveled it, but the British had held strong.

  In some cities, like Rabat, the residents had retreated underground, living in stone rooms connected by miles of tunnels. The catacombs there were legendary. They had been used in Roman times to bury the dead, but they had kept countless Maltese residents alive during the carnage of the Second World War.

  Almost four hundred years before the Luftwaffe had unleashed hell on Malta, a different devil had appeared on their doorstep: the armada of the Ottoman Empire. In 1563, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent had brought his fleet of almost two hundred ships, carrying nearly fifty thousand troops—the largest fighting force in the world at the time.

  The months that followed became known as the Great Siege of Malta, and it had changed the history of the world. The siege was a clash of unimaginable brutality, one of the bloodiest battles ever fought. An estimated one hundred thirty thousand cannonballs were fired at or from the island. One in every three inhabitants of Malta was left dead. The Knights Hospitaller, along with a ragtag group of around two thousand soldiers drawn from Spain, Italy, Greece, and Sicily, held the island for four months, until the Ottoman fleet, counting its dead in the tens of thousands, turned and sailed home.

  Had the Ottomans taken Malta in 1565, many historians agree that their forces could have easily taken mainland Europe, disrupting the Renaissance to come and forever changing the fate of the world.

  The residents of Malta had fought to the death. Were they defending something besides their lives?

  David glanced at the paper. Mi
ssing Alpha Leads to Treasure of Atlantis.

  What was there on Malta? Some ancient treasure? What could it have to do with the plague ravaging the world?

  David was a historian. He believed in facts: the truth culled from multiple sources, verified by eyewitnesses, ideally with differing backgrounds and motivations.

  Treasure was the lure of fools. As were mythical objects. The Ark of the Covenant. The Holy Grail. He didn’t believe in either of them. Military history was always more reliable. Generals counted their dead. Somewhere between the sums on each side lay the truth.

  And the truth was that countless armies over the ages had fought for Malta, and rarely had it fallen.

  The memories were clearer now, and Kate felt almost as though she could control them, as though she could move backward and forward in time.

  She wore the Atlantean suit again, and the scene around her was of a one-room primitive hut. She looked out the door of the hovel. The climate seemed different. It was damp, rainy out, and the vegetation was almost tropical. Not Mediterranean. Perhaps they were in southern Asia.

  Three women sat on the ground, working feverishly on something. Kate walked to them and peered down. The Tibetan tapestry. They are creating the warning, in case we fail, she thought.

  The Atlanteans had given it to them—she had given it to them—as a backup plan.

  She knew that now.

  She walked out of the shack, into the open air of the camp. The settlement felt nomadic, as if it had been erected hastily and would be abandoned soon.

  A makeshift temple loomed at the center. She walked to it. The guards at the entrance stepped aside, and she wandered in. The stone Ark was here. Monks circled it, sitting cross-legged, heads bowed.

  At the sound of her steps, one man rose and hurried to her.

  “The floodwaters will come soon,” Kate said.