The Atlantis Gene (The Origin Mystery 1)

Craig follows him out of the car and says to me, “Well, what do you think, Pierce?”

“It’s quite a tunnel.” I look around, seeing more of the strange room.

Rutger joins us. “Don’t play coy, Pierce. You’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I never said I had.” I direct my next words at Craig. “You’ve a methane problem.”

“Yes, a rather recent development. We only began hitting pockets in the last year. Obviously we were a bit unprepared. We had assumed that water would be the biggest danger on this dig.”

“A safe assumption.” Methane is an ever-present danger in many coal mines. I never would have expected it down here, a place with seemingly no coal, oil, or other fuel deposits.

Craig motions above us. “You’ve no doubt noticed that the mine is on a constant grade — about 9 degrees. What you should know is that the sea floor above us slopes at roughly 11 degrees. It’s only about 80 yards above us here — we believe.”

I realize the implication instantly, and I can’t hide my surprise. “You think the methane pockets are from the sea floor?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

Rutger smirks like we’re two old women, gossiping about the boogie man.

I inspect the roof of the room. Craig hands me a helmet and a small backpack. Then he clicks a switch on the side, and the helmet lights up. I stare at it a moment in wonder, then put it on, deciding to deal with the larger mystery at hand.

The rock on the ceiling is dry — a good sign. The unspoken danger is that if a methane pocket exploded, and that pocket was large enough to stretch to the seafloor, you’d get an extremely large explosion, followed by a flood of water that would collapse the entire mine almost instantly. You would either burn, drown, or be crushed to death. Maybe a combination. One spark — from a pick ax, from a falling rock, from the friction of the car wheels on the rails, could send the whole place up.

“If the gas is above, between this shaft and the sea, I don’t see another way. You’ll have to close her off and find another way,” I say.

Rutger scoffs. “I told you Mallory, he’s not up to it. We’re wasting our time with this gimp American coward.”

Craig holds a hand up. “Just a minute, Rutger. We’ve paid Mr. Pierce to be here; now let’s hear what he has to say.”

“What would you do, Mr. Pierce?”

“Nothing. I’d abandon the project. The yield can’t possibly justify the cost — human or capital.”

Rutger rolls his eyes and begins wandering around the room, ignoring Craig and me.

“I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Craig says.

“You’re looking for treasure.”

Craig clasps his hands behind his back and walks deeper into the room. “You’ve seen the size of this dig. You know we’re not treasure hunters. In 1861, we sank a ship in the Bay of Gibraltar — The Utopia. A little inside joke. We spent the next five years diving at the wreckage site, which was a cover for what we’d found below it — a structure, nearly a mile off the coast of Gibraltar. But we determined that we couldn’t access the structure from the seafloor, it was buried too deep, and our diving technology simply wasn’t advanced far enough, couldn’t be advanced far enough, quickly enough. And we were frightened of drawing attention. We had already lingered far too long at the site of a sunken merchant ship.”

“Structure?”

“Yes. A city or a temple of some sort.”

Rutger walks back to us and turns his back to me, facing Craig. “He doesn’t need to know this. He’ll want more pay if he thinks we’re digging for something valuable. Americans are almost as greedy as Jews.”

Craig raises his voice. “Be quiet, Rutger.”

It’s easy to ignore the brat. I’m intrigued. “How did you know where to sink the ship, where to dig?” I ask.

“We… had a general idea.”

“From what?”

“Some historical documents.”

“How do you know you’re under the diving site?”

“We used a compass and calculated the distance, accounting for the pitch of the tunnel. We’re right under the site. And we have proof.” Craig walked to the wall and grabbed the rock — no, a dingy black cloth, which I thought had been rock. He pulls the blanket to the floor, revealing… a passageway, like a bulkhead in a massive ship.

I move closer, shining my headlamp into the strange space. The walls are black, clearly metal, but they shimmer in a different, indescribable way, almost as if they are alive and reacting to my light, like a mirror made of water. And there are lights, twinkling at the top and bottom of the passageway. I peer around the turn and see that the tunnel leads to some sort of door or portal.

“What is this?” I whisper.

Craig leans over my shoulder. “We believe it’s Atlantis. The city Plato described. The location is right. Plato said that Atlantis came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean and that it was an island situated in front of the straits of the Pillars of Heracles—”

“Pillars of Heracles—”

“What we call the Pillars of Hercules. The Rock of Gibraltar is one of the Pillars of Hercules. Plato said that Atlantis ruled over all of Europe, Africa, and Asia and that it was the way to other continents. But it fell. In Plato’s words: ‘there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all the warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea.’”

Craig paced away from the strange structure. “This is it. We’ve found it. You see now why we can’t stop here, Mr. Pierce. We’re very, very close. Will you join us? We need you.”

Rutger laughs. “You’re wasting your time, Mallory. He’s scared to death; I can see it in his eyes.”

Craig focuses on me. “Ignore him. I know it’s dangerous. We can pay you more than $1,000 per week. You tell me what it’s worth.”

I peer into the tunnel, then inspect the ceiling again. The dry ceiling. “Let me think about it.”

CHAPTER 82

Snow Camp Alpha

Drill Site #5

East Antarctica

“What’s our depth?” Robert Hunt asked the drilling tech.

“Just passed 6,000 feet, sir. Should we stop?”

“No. Keep going. I’ll report in. Come get me at 6,500 feet.” They had hit nothing but ice for over a mile — the same as the last four drilling sites.