The Atlantis World (The Origin Mystery, Book 3) (36 page)

“I would have—a few days ago. I would have leapt at the opportunity. First contact, the culmination of all my work. But I’ve realized something. I threw myself into my work after we… went our separate ways. I was obsessed with my work because it was all I had left. I’ve been looking for something, and it has nothing to do with aliens or signals on radio telescopes.”

“I know exactly what you mean. But if Kate doesn’t wake up from that vat, this is our only option for getting out of here. We’ll be trapped otherwise.”

“I know. What do you think? Talk to me, Paul. What do your instincts tell you about this?”

Paul looked away. “I know what this signal represents to you, Mary, how much you’ve sacrificed over the years for your career. If you ask me what my gut instinct is, I just don’t believe a friendly species would beam a retrovirus into space. I know we’re out of options, but I think we should wait.”

Mary smiled. She was worn out, scared out of her mind, and strangely, the happiest she had been in a very long time. “I agree. And there’s no one I would rather wait with.”

Paul’s eyes met hers. “Same here.”

“I’m sure we can find something to do while we wait.”

Paul didn’t know how long he and Mary had been in their room, and he didn’t care. He had figured out how to lock the door and turn the lights out, and that’s all that mattered.

Mary was sleeping beside him, the sheet hanging halfway off of her. He stared at the ceiling, his usually busy mind blank, a feeling of complete contentment.

A knock on the metallic door echoed in the dark, and Paul sat up. Mary was awake a few seconds later, and they dressed quickly and opened the door, where Milo stood.

“Dr. Kate. She’s awake. She’s sick.”

In the adaptive research lab, Kate again lay on the stiff table that stuck out of the oval medical pod. The screen on the adjacent wall revealed her vitals.

She didn’t have long. Paul scanned the surgical log. Milo had put her in the pod after her last session in the vat. The ship had done all it could, but it was hopeless. She had an hour at most.

“Paul…” Her voice was faint.

Paul moved to her bedside.

“The retrovirus.”

“What is it?”

“The Serpentine virus.”

Mary and Paul shared an expression that said,
That was close
.

Kate closed her eyes, and the screen changed to show the communications log. She had sent a message to a planet, apparently using her neural link with the ship. Paul wondered if she had learned the location in the memory simulations.

“The Exiles,” Kate said. “They’re our only hope. I can save them.”

Exiles?
Paul was about to ask what she was talking about, but Kate explained quickly, her voice still a whisper. She described the fracturing of the Atlantean civilization, how the scientist, Isis, had genetically altered the Exiles, making them a target for the sentinel’s anti-Serpentine programming.

“They’ll be here soon,” Kate said. “I hope. If I’m gone, you have to complete my work, Paul.”

Paul glanced at the DNA sequences on the screen, trying to catch up. “Kate, I… there’s no way. I can’t understand half of this.”

The ship shook, and the screen changed to show the scene outside. A hundred sentinel spheres hung in orbit. They were firing on the planet. On the
Beta Lander
.

C
HAPTER
52

Paul felt Mary’s hand slide inside of his. On the viewscreen in the
Beta Lander
’s adaptive research lab, they watched the falling objects burn in the atmosphere as they crashed down toward them.

The strange calm he had felt in the bedroom came again. There was nothing he could do, but there was also a feeling of utter peace, of having fixed something broken inside of him.

The first kinetic bombardment hit about a mile away from the lander. The shockwave a second later threw Paul, Mary, Milo, and Kate into the far wall. On the screen, an eruption of dust and debris, some from the ruined city, rose into the air.

Through the cloud, Paul saw a new fleet of ships arrive. They were triangular, and the second they cleared the blue and white portal, they broke apart and attacked the sentinels, thousands of triangles darting to and through the spheres, firing, shattering the black objects, sending wreckage into the atmosphere.

Even through the distortion of the dust, the battle was the most awesome thing Paul had ever seen. He almost forgot about the kinetic bombardments barreling down on them.

From the outer corridor, he heard the thunder of footsteps.

He turned to face the door, crowding Mary and Milo behind him. Kate was several feet away, unconscious.

He braced as the flood of intruders broke across the threshold of the communications bay. Soldiers, in battle armor head to toe. Helmets hid their faces, but they were humanoid. They rushed forward, injecting each person with something. Paul tried to struggle with them, but his limbs went limp. Darkness closed from the sides of his vision, then consumed him.

Paul awoke in a different place; a comfortable bed in a bright room. He surveyed it quickly: pictures of landscapes on the wall, plants, a round table with a pitcher of water, a sitting area, a desk with a wood top and metal legs. It was like a hotel suite. He got up and walked out of the bedroom and into the sitting area. A series of windows revealed a fleet of triangular ships, thousands of them, in formation.

The double doors slid open with a hiss, and a man strode in, his footfalls silent on the thin carpet. He was taller than Paul, his features chiseled, his skin smooth, his black hair close-cropped, like a military haircut. The doors closed, and the man tapped something on his forearm. Had he just locked the door?

“I’m Perseus.”

Paul was surprised: the man spoke English.

“The injection we gave you enables you to understand our language.”

“I see. I’m Paul Brenner. Thank you for rescuing us.”

“Welcome. We received your signal.”

“I didn’t send it.”

Perseus’ demeanor changed. “You didn’t?”

“Well,
I
didn’t. The woman I was with, the sick one, did.”

Perseus nodded. “We’re working on her. There was some debate about whether the signal was another trap, another false distress call. That’s what took us so long.”

“I understand.” Paul had no idea what he was talking about. The fact that he was talking to an alien on an alien space vessel was just starting to dawn on him. His nervousness grew by the second. He tried to sound casual. “The woman’s name is Dr. Kate Warner. She can help you.”

“How?”

“She’s a scientist, and she’s seen the memories of an Atlantean scientist. Isis. She can make you safe from the sentinels.”

Skepticism spread across Perseus’ face. “Impossible.”

“It’s true. She’s designed a gene therapy that will make the sentinels ignore you. This therapy will save you.”

Perseus smiled, but there was no warmth. “A scientist told the Exiles that once before, a long time ago. And we were much better off then. The timing is also very curious. A few hours ago, a new fleet of sentinels attacked our ships. We live in space now. We’ve tried to settle dozens of worlds, but the sentinels always find us. We’ve become nomads, constantly running. The new fleet of sentinels that appeared today is relentless, and their numbers seem limitless. They know how to fight us. It’s as if they were built to fight us, not the Serpentine Army. They’ve defeated us at every battle. We believe this is the final offensive that will annihilate us. You can understand my suspicion. A scientist offers a genetic therapy that can save us? On the day of our demise?”

Paul swallowed hard. “I can’t prove anything I’ve said. I can’t keep you from killing me, but what I’ve said is true. You can trust me, and we can all have a chance at surviving, or you can turn away, and we’ll all die. Either way, there’s another woman in my group. She’s not sick. She and I… I’d like to see her before I die.”

Perseus studied him for a moment. “You’re either a great liar or superb agent. Follow me.”

Paul followed the man through the corridors, which were the utter opposite of the Atlantean ships. They were well-lit and teaming with people scurrying from one door to another. Some carried pads they studied, others talked hurriedly. To Paul, the feeling was of the CDC on an outbreak day. A crisis situation.

“This is the second fleet flagship. We’re coordinating the civilian fleet defense.”

Perseus led Paul into what he thought was a clinic or a research lab. Through a wide glass window, he saw Kate, lying on a table, several robotic arms hovering around her cranial area.

“She has resurrection syndrome,” Perseus said.

“Yes. She risked her life to see the Atlantean scientist’s memories. That’s how she found out about your people and the gene therapy.” Paul stepped forward and peered through the window. “Can you save her?”

“We don’t know. We’ve been studying resurrection syndrome for tens of thousands of years, since the siege of our homeworld. When we attacked, we assumed that anyone we killed would simply resurrect after the battle. Our goal was to find the sentinel control station, disable the sentinels, then help rebuild our former world with the citizens returning from the resurrection tubes. During the invasion, we learned that resurrection syndrome was occurring for one hundred percent of those we killed. None of them could come back. With the sentinels battling us, we couldn’t rescue anyone on our homeworld. We left empty-handed, but we’ve been studying resurrection syndrome ever since. Our hope has been that we could one day rejoin our fellow citizens and heal them. We’ve been working on a therapy based on the data we downloaded during the siege and our computer models. We have no idea if it will work.” He nodded to the window and Kate on the operating table beyond. “She’s the alpha for our therapy.”

“Then all our hopes rest on her.”

C
HAPTER
53

When the needle punctured David’s neck, the room on the Serpentine ship faded. He found himself at the bottom of a dirt pit.
This is an illusion
. The thought brought a downpour of rain, flooding into the earth pit, soaking the ground, which grew soft, swallowing his legs, pulling him into the mud. The water was gathering, forming a pool that rose by the second.

David waded to the wall, straining to pull his feet from the heavy, black mud.
This isn’t real
.

He dug his hand into the wall. It was dry. Dry enough. His hand held, and he climbed, one hand after the other, ascending to the surface. He climbed for hours, how long he didn’t know. A faint sun peeked through the clouds. Slowly, it crept across the pit until it was out of sight, the shadows of its rays its only remnants. Still David climbed. The pit must have been a hundred feet deep, but he pushed himself, a deep well of energy powering him.

The rain never stopped, but neither did he. The sides he dug his hands into were growing soggy. It was taking him longer to make his hand-holds. He threw hand after hand of mud into the pit until he struck solid dirt, then he climbed. The water was coming, but he was climbing faster. Hand over hand, he dug and climbed. He had almost reached the surface when the sides began to slide. Globs of mud dripped, rolled, and dropped onto him, and then the mudslide consumed him, covering him, pulling him down into the water. He was completely coated in black mud, and he struggled under the water, the added weight pulling him into the abyss. He worked his arms, brushing the mud from his body, trying to free himself. His arms and legs burned, and then his lungs burned. He was drowning.

He fought, punching and kicking. Finally he broke the surface of the water, just long enough to take a breath before sinking again. He felt that if he allowed himself to sink, that if he gave up, allowed his will to break, the ring would have him, his soul, and every person he knew and loved. Kate. The thought gave him a new burst of energy, and his head breached the surface again. He sucked air in, waving his arms violently. The mud flew off, but the rain kept coming.

He put his arms and legs straight out, and he floated to the surface, the rain falling on his face.

He understood now. He couldn’t escape. Submission was the only way to survive. But he wouldn’t. They would have to drown him.