The Atlantis Gene (The Origin Mystery 1)

Chang began to speak, but the director cut him off again. “And don’t tell me you need more time. You’ve had time. We need results. Now tell me what it’s going to take.”

Chang slumped in his chair. “The last test was a strain on the local power grid, we exceeded our capacity onsite. We think we fixed the problem, but the regional power authority has to be suspicious about what we’re doing. The bigger issue is that we’re low on primates—”

“We’re not testing it on primates. I want a human cohort of 50 ready to test.”

Chang straightened himself and said with more force, “Setting the morality aside, which I urge you not to do, we would simply need a lot more data to begin a human trial, we would need—”

“You have it doctor. It’s all in the file. And we’re retrieving more data now. That’s not all. We have two subjects with sustained Atlantis Gene activation.”

Chang’s eyes widened, “You, two, how—”

The man pointed to the file in a quick, cobra-like motion. “The file doctor. It’s all there. And they’ll be here, soon. You better be ready. All you have to do is replicate the gene therapy.”

Chang was flipping through the pages, reading, and murmuring to himself. He looked up. “The subjects are infants?”

“Yes. Is that a problem?”

“Uh, no. Well, maybe. Or maybe not.”

“Maybe not is the right answer. Call me if you need me, doctor. Four hours. I don’t have to tell you what’s at stake.”

But Dr. Chang couldn’t hear him. He was lost in the notes of Dr. Katherine Warner.

CHAPTER 7

Clocktower Station HQ

Jakarta, Indonesia

David peered at the black pipe through the narrow window of the blast shield. Turning the cap on the pipe had taken forever with the manually operated arm. But he had to look inside. It was the weight — the pipe was too light to be a bomb. Nails, buckshot, and bee-bees would weigh a lot more.

Finally, the end fell off, and David tipped the pipe to one side. A rolled up paper slid out. A thick, glossy page. A photo.

David unrolled it. It was a satellite image of an iceberg floating in a deep blue sea. In the center of the iceberg, there was an oblong black object. A submarine, sticking out of the ice. On the back, a message read:

________________________

Toba Protocol is real.

4+12+47 = 4/5; Jones

7+22+47 = 3/8; Anderson

10+4+47 = 5/4; Ames

________________________

David slipped the photo into a thick manila folder and walked over to the surveillance room. One of the two techs turned from the bank of screens. “No sign of him yet.”

“Anything from the airports?” David asked.

The man worked the keyboard, then looked up. “Yes, he landed a few minutes ago at Soekarno-Hatta. You want us to have him detained there?”

“No. I need him here. Just make sure they can’t see him on surveillance upstairs. I’ll take it from there.”

CHAPTER 8

BBC World Report - Wire Release

Potential terror attacks in residential neighborhoods in Mar del Plata, Argentina and Cape Town, South Africa

*** Breaking News Update: additional blasts reported in Karachi, Pakistan and Jakarta, Indonesia. We will update this report as details emerge. ***

Cape Town, South Africa // The sound of automatic gun fire and grenade explosions shattered the early morning calm in Cape Town today, as a group estimated at 20 armed assailants entered an apartment building and killed 14 people.

Police have released no official information about the attack.

Eye witnesses at the scene described it as a special-operations-style attack. A BBC reporter onsite took this eyewitness statement: “Yeah I seen it, looked like a tank or something, you know, one of them armored troop carriers, rolling up on the curb and then dudes was pouring out it like ninjas or robot soldiers or something, moving all mechanical like and then it’s like the whole building exploded, glass falling all over the place, and I ran up on out of there. I mean, it’s a rough neighborhood, but man, I ain’t never seen nothing like that. I figured, at first, it was, you know, a drug raid. Whatever it was, it done gone real wrong.”

Another witness, also speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that the group had no official insignia on their vehicle or uniforms.

A reporter with Reuters who briefly gained access to the scene before police removed him, described it this way: “It looked to me like a safe house, maybe CIA or MI6. It would have to be somebody very well-funded to have that kind of technology: a situation-room with wall-to-wall computer screens and a massive server room. There were bodies everywhere. About half wore plain-clothes; the rest were dressed in black body armor similar to what witnesses say the attackers wore.”

It remains unclear if the attackers incurred any casualties and were forced to leave anyone behind or if the bodies were those of individuals defending the location.

The BBC sought a comment from both the CIA and MI6 for this report. Both declined.

The incident in Cape Town follows a similar story earlier today in Mar del Plata, Argentina, where a massive explosion in a low-income neighborhood killed 12 people at approximately 2 AM local time. Bystanders say the explosion followed a raid by a heavily armed group that no one could identify.

As with the attack in Cape Town, no one has claimed responsibility for the attack in Mar del Plata.

“It’s very concerning that we have no idea who’s involved,” said Richard Bookmeyer, a Professor at American University. “Based on the initial reports, if either the victims or the perpetrators of the attacks are part of a terrorist network… it would indicate a level of sophistication not currently thought possible by any known terror entity. It’s either a new actor or a significant evolution of an existing group. Both scenarios would require re-examining what we think we know about the global terrorism landscape.”

We will update this story as details unfold.

CHAPTER 9

Clocktower Station HQ

Jakarta, Indonesia

David was studying a map of Jakarta and Clocktower’s safe houses around the city when the surveillance tech walked in. “He’s here.”

David folded the map up. “Good.”

Josh Cohen walked toward the nondescript apartment building that housed Clocktower’s Jakarta Station Headquarters. The buildings around it were mostly abandoned — a mix of failed housing projects and dilapidated warehouses.

He entered the building, walked down a long hallway, opened a heavy steel door, and approached the shiny silver elevator doors. A panel beside the doors slid back, and he placed his hand on the reflective surface and said, “Josh Cohen. Verify my voice.”