The Atlantis Plague (14 page)

The trailer was emptying quickly now. Kate’s mind grasped for a plan. She slipped the backpack off her shoulders and unzipped it. The pack had some kind of heavy lining. Fire and waterproof? Would it hide the items inside from detection by the Immari? Probably not. Kate surveyed the contents: a handgun, the laptop, a sat phone, and the thermos-like device Martin had placed the sample in. She took the gun out. She couldn’t shoot her way out of here; in fact, she wasn’t sure she could shoot the gun at all. She needed a better plan, and if she was caught with the gun… She slid it into the darkened corner. She needed to keep the other equipment—Martin had saved it; it must be essential to finding the cure.

Martin had also told her what would happen next: the Immari would sort everyone. The dying would be left to die. The survivors could either pledge or perish.

She had a choice to make.

CHAPTER 30

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Atlanta, Georgia

Dr. Paul Brenner paced in front of the screens that covered the wall. The world map they displayed was covered with red dots: one for each Orchid district. A number floated above every point: the Orchid failure rate for that district. Since the outbreak, Orchid had been ineffective for roughly 0.3% of those infected. Now the numbers were climbing. In one district in Germany, almost one percent of the inhabitants were now dying from the plague, with no way to delay the eventual outcome: genetic transformation for a few, and for most—about ninety percent of people—death.

They had seen temporary, localized Orchid failures, but that had been due to formulation issues—manufacturing. This was global. If it was another… Paul resisted even thinking the word mutation; but if it was…

“Roll it back,” Paul said. “Show Orchid failure rates one hour ago, two hours ago. Keep stepping back an hour until they stabilize.”

Paul watched the numbers gradually decrease, then level out. “Stop right there.” He glanced at the time.

He walked to his station in the large conference room and rifled through a stack of papers.
What had happened then?
Had the Immari released a mutated virus—one Orchid couldn’t stop? That was their plan, or at least that was the working theory. He focused on the memos regarding Immari activity. One caught his eye. He checked the time. It was close. He scanned it.

Eyes Only

Suspected Nuclear Explosion at Immari Corporate Research Campus outside Nuremberg, Germany

Cause (best theory): industrial accident; detonation of an experimental weapon, part of Immari Research Advanced Weapons Program

Paul knew Immari Research was working on all kinds of advanced weapons. But the timing… He glanced at the rest of the memo.

Alternative Explanations:

(1) Immari believed to have removed object from location in Antarctica for study in Germany; possibly connected.

(2) Immari could have purposefully destroyed facility to prevent Allied seizure following their invasion of southern Spain.

Paul took a deep breath. He was sure of two things: one, that Orchid was failing around the world; and two, that it had begun with an Immari act. How much time did they have? One, possibly two days? Was there anything they could do in that amount of time?

“Get the group on the line,” Paul said. It was time to throw a Hail Mary pass.

CHAPTER 31

David Vale had tried the doors and control panel more times than he could count. He had even gone and stood in the tube, hoping it might activate an escape route. The room hadn’t changed since he had awoken. He could feel himself getting weaker. He had a few hours left, maybe.

He needed to make a move. He walked to the damaged Atlantean suit that lay crumpled on the floor. Maybe if he put it on… He held it to his chest and let the legs hang down. They barely cleared his calves. David was six-foot-three and broad-shouldered. The owner had been under six feet and rather small in stature, a woman perhaps. He dropped the suit and looked over at the other suit—the Immari colonel’s uniform, crisp and new.

He sat on the bench next to it for a long while. It was the only thing he hadn’t tried.
What choice do I have?
He grudgingly slid the pants on, then the boots. He stood and held the tunic for a moment. The four oval glass tubes in the room each reflected a warped view of his figure, like angled mirrors in a carnival fun house. He was just as muscular as he had been when Dorian had first shot him, but his body was “new”—even the skin was as smooth as the day he was born. Gone were the fresh gunshot wounds in his chest and shoulder that Dorian had inflicted technically days ago. Across his chest, older scars had also been erased: burns from a falling building that had trapped him in the 9/11 explosions, a stab wound just below his ribcage he had received during an operation outside Jakarta, and a smattering of shrapnel impacts from Pakistan. He was a new man. But his eyes were the same—intense but not hard.

He ran a hand through his short blond hair, exhaled, and stared for a long second at the tunic, the last piece of the ensemble. He pulled the tunic on, and it glistened as it adjusted to the light. The tunic’s flicker swept across the tubes like a crowd doing the wave at a baseball game.

The tubes. Would he wake up in one again if he died? As if reading his mind, a small crack sprinted up the length of the first tube. Spider-like smaller cracks erupted at every angle, multiplying and expanding like cells dividing in a petri dish. The other tubes followed suit until the four clear glass tubes were so clouded with cracks they looked white. A series of soft pops rolled across the tubes and the tiny pieces of cracked glass began falling inward.

Where the four tubes had stood, a series of cone-shaped piles of glass now lay, twinkling in the sharp light like stacks of diamonds.

Guess that answers that question
, David thought. Whatever happened beyond this room, there would be no resurrection here.

The door to his right hissed as it slowly broke free from the wall and slid open. David walked to the threshold and peered out. A narrow, tight corridor spread out as far as he could see. Beady lights on the floor and ceiling barely illuminated the space.

He began down the long hallway, and the door to the tube room closed behind him. There were no doors on either side of the corridor, and it was smaller than the passages he had seen before. Was it an escape conduit or a maintenance tube? After a few minutes, the hallway ended at a larger, oval door. It opened as he approached, revealing a round room that must have been an elevator. David stepped inside and waited. It didn’t feel like he was moving, but he did have the sensation that the platform was rotating.

A minute passed, and the door opened with a shudder. The rush of air threw David against the back wall, but the force quickly dissipated.

The air was damp, definitely subterranean. The space beyond the door was dark as night. David crossed the threshold. The walls were rock, but they were smooth—a machine had bored this hole.
Where am I?
It was cool, but not freezing. This wasn’t Antarctica. Gibraltar?

The pathway was on an incline, maybe twenty degrees. Did it lead to the surface? There was no light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe it turned up ahead.

David spread his arms out and set off, dragging his fingers across the sides of the shaft, hoping to detect any change. None came, but the air grew warmer and dryer with every step. Still the end was dark. Then an electric wave swept over him, like a field of static electricity crackling and pricking across his skin.

The cool, dark tunnel was gone, and David stood outside in a mountainous place. It was night, and the stars above shone bright—brighter than he had ever seen them, even in Southeast Asia. If this was Europe or northern Africa, then all the light pollution was gone. And if so… In the distance, over the closest rock ridge, the sounds of gunfire and explosions echoed into the night. David rushed forward, stumbling over the uneven rock, and steadied himself at the top of the ridge.

To his left, the mountains dived into a coastline that stretched into the distance. David struggled to understand what he was seeing—it looked almost as though two worlds from different times had been thrown together.

Some kind of post-apocalyptic “fortress,” or maybe an army base from the future, lay on a peninsula with a long harbor. The peninsula jutted at least five kilometers into the sea and narrowed to perhaps only a hundred meters where it met the landmass—the perfect chokepoint to defend the base from ground attacks. A large wall rose there, towering above a burned-out wasteland beyond it. Waves of soldiers on horseback charged toward the wall, shooting and shouting. It looked almost like a medieval raid on a castle—a castle from far in the future. David stepped closer to the edge, marveling, trying to get a better view. The lead riders unleashed something.

A massive explosion erupted and a mushroom of fire rose from the wall, sending David staggering back and illuminating the area around the fortress. On the other side of the narrow sea, David caught a glimpse of a massive rock cliff jutting high above the water. The Rock of Gibraltar. He was in Northern Morocco, across the Straits of Gibraltar. The peninsula was home to Ceuta, an autonomous Spanish city. Or had been, before someone turned it into a fortress. There were still traces of the city, but—

Behind him, David heard trucks cranking. He turned just in time to see a spotlight snap on, blinding him. The light from the explosion had revealed him to someone in the mountains.

A man’s voice called down to him from above. “Don’t move!”

He jumped off the ridge as bullets raked the cliff. He stumbled back to the rock face where he had emerged and felt around desperately for the entrance. It wasn’t there. Whatever he had passed through was a one-way door, some kind of forcefield that looked and felt like rock out here.

He heard boots pounding rock behind him. He turned just as Immari soldiers poured onto the ledge and surrounded him.

CHAPTER 32

Immari Training Camp
Camelot
Cape Town, South Africa

Dorian stood at the tall window. The Immari troops that spread out below were breaking down their camps and making their way to the harbor and the ships waiting there for them.

A woman was directing a group of soldiers. She had… poise, Dorian thought, and something else; he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. “Kosta,” he said to his new assistant, who was working at the desk behind him.

The short, fat man scurried over to join Dorian at the window. “Sir?”

“Who’s that woman?”

Kosta peered down. “Which…”

Dorian pointed. “There, with the blond hair, and… striking features.”

Kosta hesitated. “I… I don’t know, sir. Is she underperforming? I can have her reassigned—”

“No, no. Just, find out who she is.”

“Yes, sir.” Kosta lingered. “The rest of the ships are almost here. We’re still trying to round up more cold weather gear—”

“We won’t need it.”

“Sir?”

“We’re not going to Antarctica. We’re sailing north. Our fight is in Europe.”

PART II:
TRUTH, LIES & TRAITORS

CHAPTER 33

Immari Fleet
Off the coast of Angola

Dorian ran his finger down the length of Johanna’s bare back, across her behind, and down her leg. Beautiful. Sublime.

When he lifted his finger from her, she rustled, then lifted her head and brushed her golden hair out of her eyes. “Was I snoring?” she asked sheepishly.

Dorian loved her accent. Dutch, he thought. Had her parents been first-generation South African settlers? Asking her would show personal interest. Weakness. He had tried to tell himself that she was dull and shallow, that she didn’t warrant his interest, that she was one of any number of girls on this ship or another in his fleet. But… there was something about her. It wasn’t the conversation. She had spent most of her time in his cabin lying there naked, flipping through old gossip magazines, sleeping, or pleasuring him.

He rolled away from her. “You wouldn’t be here if you had snored.”

Her tone changed. “You want to…”

“When I want sex, you’ll know it.”

As if on cue, a soft knock echoed from the iron door to his cabin.

“Enter,” Dorian called loudly.

The door cracked open, and Kosta stepped in. Upon seeing Dorian and the woman on the bed, he spun and made for the door.

“For God’s sake, Kosta, haven’t you ever seen two naked humans? Stop. What the hell do you want?”

“They’ll be ready for the broadcast to the Spanish captives in an hour, sir,” Kosta said, still facing away from Dorian. “The communications teams would like to review some talking points.”

Dorian stood and pulled his pants on, not bothering with underwear. The girl hopped up and found his sweater. She smiled and handed it to him, like a wife handing her husband his lunch as she saw him off to work. Dorian didn’t make eye contact with her. He threw the sweater over the chair in front of the desk.

“I write my own talking points, Kosta. Come get me when it’s time.”