by A. G. Riddle
Kamau nodded.
Then David was gone, into the darkness of the tunnel.
Kate walked to the table and picked up a handgun. She ran her finger over the words engraved into the side. SIG SAUER.
“Do you know how to use that?” Kamau’s deep voice echoed in the space.
“I’m a real quick learner.”
Adam Shaw placed another pack of explosives into the stone cutout in the tunnel. Where to go next? He should have made a map back to the museum lobby; the tunnels were never-ending. Somewhere in the distance, he heard footsteps. He clicked his lantern off.
He receded deeper into the burial chamber that lay just off the tunnel. The rubber grip of the knife made a slight sound against his fingers as he drew it from the sheath.
The approaching figure was carrying a lantern. The light grew brighter with each passing second.
Shaw crouched and waited. The burial chamber was small, a roughly six-foot by ten-foot narrow chamber, one of many hollowed out appendages off the main tunnel.
He tried to pace the footsteps in his mind, knowing he would have only a split second to time his lunge and take his prey.
Closer.
Closer.
The figure came into view.
Janus.
Shaw let him pass. He exhaled. But there were more footsteps behind Janus. Kamau?
They had been together.
Shaw froze.
David.
Chasing Janus.
Then he was gone. And Shaw was glad. In the recesses of his mind, he could admit, barely, that Vale could take him hand-to-hand, even if Adam had the element of surprise. He had read David’s file, his Clocktower personnel report, before he had begun this mission. He had been searching for a way to kill him since the second he first saw him, since David had risen out of the waters of the Mediterranean and slammed him against the floating wreckage of the plague barge—impressing upon Shaw, literally, how capable he was at hand-to-hand combat.
But Adam didn’t have to worry about David now—he was zooming deeper into the tunnel, away from Kate, the thing David valued most, leaving Shaw open to capture her, complete his mission, and get his revenge upon David.
Adam stepped from the burial chamber and turned left, following the path David had revealed, to Kate.
Janus ran as quickly as he could. Up ahead, the soft glow of lanterns illuminated the stone room.
It would be guarded—if history was any indication.
Janus took the quantum cube from his pocket and slowed his pace. He could see it now, the Ark, lying at the end of the chamber. Amazing. It was just as it had been.
Two guards pivoted from behind the stone walls, blocking his path.
Janus activated the cube, flooding the area with blinding light. He adjusted it, turning it higher.
The men collapsed, and he heard more bodies hit the stone floor inside the room.
He stepped across the threshold and surveyed the scene. Six heavily armed European soldiers and someone else—an adolescent Asian wearing a ceremonial robe.
Janus stepped to the Ark and peered down.
There he was. The first. They had kept him. Told his story. After all these years. They were a remarkable species. They had exceeded all his expectations. It still didn’t change what had to be done. He told himself that he had no choice.
He took hold of the alpha’s femur bone, lifted it, and swung it violently against the wall of the stone box.
A small metallic chip fell out, then disappeared under the rain of gray dust that covered it.
Janus reached in, brushed the dust aside, and searched for the chip.
It had taken months to find it. It was the last piece. When it was gone…
He held it up to the light, glancing at the technology he and his partner had embedded almost seventy thousand years ago. The small radiation implant had enabled them to make changes to the human genome for tens of thousands of years. Each time they programmed a new radiation regimen, it altered the genome of humans within the implant’s range, adjusting the course of humanity. The device was old now, and its power source was almost spent, reducing its range considerably. Janus had wondered if he could find it. But in the face of the current plague, it had performed as planned, running its emergency program, activating the Atlantis Gene, saving those who flocked to be near it. It was a shame so many had to die for Janus to find it. But without the device, nothing stood in the way of the final genetic transformation he had already unleashed.
At that moment, curiosity overcame Janus. He activated the implant’s memory module and watched the telemetry scroll by. The implant’s records began with the tribe they had altered. They had carried the ark out of the tropical locales, into the mountains, across the desert, and onto a ship. They sailed here, to Malta, where they remained, hoping the island’s isolation would protect them until Janus and his partner returned. But they never had, and the island’s protection had proved only temporary.
Barbarians made their way to the island and brought with them something the isolated tribe had almost forgotten: violence. The Immaru had fallen to the invaders, just as Janus’ own people had to another violent race. History had repeated itself. Had he steered them wrong? In a world too civilized to fight, the last barbarians become kings.
The barbarians who inherited Malta began to explore the megalithic temples the Immaru had left. Deep inside one of these temples, where the ark and the body of the alpha lay hidden, a group of these humans were changed by the implant’s radiation. First, it happened to the Phoenicians and then to the Greeks who ousted them from Malta. The Greek invaders took the genetic benefits back to their homeland, where the changes in brain wiring flourished for centuries.
The environment in Greece cultivated minds in ways that had never occurred before. A few enlightened individuals were able to access something: a shared memory buried deep within the subconscious. The shared memory emerged in the form of a myth—a story about an advanced city called Atlantis that sank off the coast of Gibraltar. Janus saw it now: the implant had added the shared memory, hoping a civilized society would find the ship and come to Janus and his partner’s rescue. In some sense, the implant and the Atlantis myth it had conveyed had saved him as well. The Greeks were the first to realize the Atlantis story, to record it and spread the word, but the story of Atlantis would come to reside in the recesses of all human minds in the centuries after.
Janus watched as the Greeks met the same fate as the Phoenicians before them. The Greeks grew ever more civilized and in the process, became unable to fend off a vast army beyond their walls—the Romans.
In the years after the Romans absorbed Greece and arrived on Malta, their empire surged and civilization with it. The Romans built roads, established laws, and created a calendar still in use. Humanity was at its height. Rome’s expansion seemed to have no end, but each time it extended its borders, those borders grew harder to defend. In time, Rome too declined and fell to the barbarian tribes who slipped past its poorly defended borders, settled in its lands, and eventually laid siege to its grand cities.
As Rome fell, fire and ash rose from a supervolcano near the equator in present-day Indonesia. The falling ash brought with it the greatest pandemic in recorded history, what would become known as the Plague of Justinian, and a new wave of genetic changes. Trade ground to a halt and with it, the flow of people across Malta. The implant’s radiation couldn’t reach enough survivors to turn the tide. The world receded back to a more primitive existence and waited for hope and deliverance.
Darkness followed. For almost a thousand years, there were no great civilizations. Malta and the entire human race around it grasped for direction. Against this backdrop, another volcano erupted, and the Black Death descended.
Refugees landed on Malta, and the implant unleashed a new wave of radiation and genetic changes. Those survivors sailed home from Malta, preventing Ares’ final transformation of humanity and ushering in the Renaissance.
&n
bsp; The implant had lain dormant after that—until the Atlantis Plague. The global failure of Orchid had finally reactivated it, revealing its location and allowing Janus to find it.
Janus could grasp it all now: the entire march of history after the fall of Atlantis. The tiny implant inside the ark and the humans it protected had waged a war against the darkness and the genetic changes that Ares rained down in the ash and plagues that came in the sixth and fourteenth centuries and then finally from the Atlantis Plague.
Across the millennia, the humans had clung to life. How they had fought. The resilience of species 8472 was remarkable. Now their history would come to an end. But they would be safe. He was sure of that.
He tossed the chip into the box and crushed it.
Behind him, he heard footsteps stop abruptly. Janus turned to find David standing in the opening of the chamber, holding one of the primitive weapons that shot hardened elemental projectiles.
Janus reached for the quantum cube.
“Don’t, Janus. I swear I will shoot you.”
“Now, Mr. Vale. That’s no way to treat someone who saved your life.”
87
CDC
Atlanta, Georgia
Paul Brenner walked to the Symphony control room. The feeling around the room was jubilation. Two flashing words on the center screen read:
ONE RESULT
They had a new gene therapy for the Atlantis Plague. A new hope.
“Do it,” Paul said. “Deploy it across all the districts. Upload the data to all our affiliates.”
He raced down the hall and burst into his nephew’s hospital room.
The boy lay still. He didn’t turn to face Paul. He was only semi-conscious.
But there was still time, Paul thought.
At the lobby that led to the Catacombs of St. Paul, Kate leaned back from the table, wondering what else she could do.
The figure that flew out of the tunnel was a blur. Kate spun, but it was too fast. It bowled Kamau out of the chair. The assault rifle clanged to the ground as the two figures rolled across the floor, into one of the museum’s glass display cases. Kamau struck the figure, but Kate could see that he was disoriented, blind, bewildered. He would never make it.
Kate staggered forward and raised the handgun.
They writhed violently on the ground. Kate tried to get a lock on the other figure. Some part of her knew it was Shaw, but she didn’t want it to be true. She’d suffered betrayal by someone she’d trusted once before; she’d sworn she wouldn’t let that happen again. Shaw had saved her in Marbella. But…
The figure rose from Kamau, a knife in his hand. Blood flowed out onto the white marble floor. Kamau twitched a few times, then came to rest.
The figure turned to face Kate.
Shaw.
Kate wanted to squeeze the trigger, but she simply froze. She couldn’t do it.
Shaw snatched the gun out of her hand.
“It’s not in you, Kate. Be glad of that.”
The door across from the lobby opened, and Dorian Sloane strolled in. The four men who followed him fanned out, taking up positions around the lobby, two flanking the entrance to the tunnel.
“Where the hell have you been?” Shaw demanded.
“Relax,” Dorian said casually. “Car trouble.” He scanned the room. “Vale?”
“In the tunnels,” Shaw said.
Dorian nodded to the soldiers flanking the entrance.
“No,” Shaw said. “There’s only one way out.” He took a small box from his pocket and clicked a button. Eruptions echoed from the tunnels, like rolling thunder growing closer. He looked up at Dorian. “Make that no way out.”
Dorian smiled. “It’s good to see you, little brother.”
David heard the explosions before he felt them at his back. The ceiling was coming down.
He could see Milo in his peripheral vision, lying there, lifeless. He dove for the boy, covering his body with his own.
The stone fell on and around him, echoing in his ear. Milo’s body felt so fragile under his. Would Milo survive?
Another stone slammed into David’s body, and he winced. And another—into his leg. The pain was complete, but he didn’t move. He remained, waiting for the end.
It came, but it was not what he expected. A dome of light, covering him, arching over, blocking the falling rock. But David still didn’t move.
Kate glared at Dorian. “I won’t help you. We already have a cure.”
Dorian’s smile grew, like someone who knew a secret. “Oh, Kate, you don’t disappoint. I couldn’t care less about a cure. I’m here for the code in your head.”
“I don’t have—”
“You will. You will remember, and then we’ll have what we need.”
One of Dorian’s men grabbed her and dragged her out of the museum lobby.
88
St. Paul’s Catacombs
Rabat, Malta
David felt a hand grip his shoulder and roll him over. The stone room was dark and quiet now. He still couldn’t see a thing.
Slowly, a yellow glow expanded out into the room.
The figure seemed to be lighting the room from the palm of his hand. He cupped something—a tiny cube that sparkled.
David stared into the face. Janus. He had shielded David from the falling stone with the cube.
“Who the hell are you?” David said, his voice hoarse.
“Language, Mr. Vale.”
“Seriously?”
Janus stood and spoke quietly. “I am one of two scientists who came here a very long time ago to study the hominins on this planet.”
David coughed. “An Atlantean.”
“What you call an Atlantean, yes.”
David studied Janus’s face. Yes, he knew it. He had seen Janus before. In Antarctica, days ago, when David had been in the tube, he had seen that face staring at him at the end of the chamber. Then the face had disappeared. “It was you—in Antarctica.”
“Yes, though not in person. What you saw in Antarctica was my avatar, a remotely controlled representation of me.”
David sat up. “You saved me. Why?”
“I’m afraid I need to be going, Mr. Vale.”
“Wait.” David stood and glanced at the rifle, considering whether to pick it up. No. Janus had incapacitated the soldiers with the cube. He could do the same to David. And Janus had saved his life—twice now. “The cure you sent to Continuity. It’s a fake, isn’t it?”
“It is quite real—”
“Does it cure the plague?”
“It cures what ails humanity.”
David didn’t like the sound of that, or Janus’s demeanor, which said: this conversation is over.
Janus focused on the cube in the palm of his hand. He stuck his other hand into the light that radiated outward from the cube and began wiggling his fingers. It was as if he was programming it.
David considered his situation. Someone had planted bombs and set them off down here; it wasn’t a bomb from above. During World War II, the Germans and Italians had dropped countless bombs on these catacombs and had not brought them down. Shaw. He closed the catacombs. And he would have Kate. Had he already delivered her to Dorian?
“Shaw has Kate,” David said.
“Yes, I imagine so.” Janus said, not looking up.
“She has your partner’s memories.”
“What?” Shock spread across Janus’s face—the first emotion David had seen him display.
“The memories started coming several days ago, first in her dreams, then when she was awake, she couldn’t stop them.”
“Impossible.”
“She said there was a third person who joined your expedition—a soldier. She colluded with him to change the genome. She said his name was Ares.”
Janus just stood there, silently.
“Dorian has Ares’s memories. He’s captured Kate—that’s what Shaw’s mission was. I’m sure of it now. There were rumors at the Immari base in Ceuta. Doria
n brought a case out of the structure in Antarctica. It created some kind of door. He’s taking Kate there. She’s in danger.”
“If what you say is true, Mr. Vale, we are all in danger. If they reach the portal, if she is delivered to Ares, every person on this planet, and many more, will likely perish.”
89
St. Paul’s Catacombs
Rabat, Malta
David stepped to within arm’s length of Janus. The soft yellow light from the cube lit both their faces from below, giving the impression of two men sitting around a campfire.
“Help me save her,” David said.
“No,” Janus replied, his tone now sharp and urgent. “You will help me save her.”
“What—”
“You have no idea what you are involved in, Mr. Vale. This is larger—”
“So tell me. Believe me, I’m ready for answers.”
“First, I require your pledge that you will follow my orders—that you will do what I say, when I say.”
David stared at him.
Janus continued, “I have observed that in high-stakes, high-stress situations, you prefer—or rather, demand—to be in charge. You have trouble taking orders and taking risks, especially when lives are on the line, particularly Kate’s. This is a liability. It is not your fault. It is perhaps a result of your past—”
“I’ll pass on the psychoanalysis, thanks. Look, if you promise you’ll do everything you can to save her, I’ll do whatever you tell me to.”
“Believe me, I will do everything in my power. But I fear our chances are not good. Seconds will count, Mr. Vale. And we start now.”
Janus stood, held out his hand, and the glowing cube flew from it, diving into the stone wall. A cloud of dust radiated out from the center.