The Atlantis Plague (The Origin Mystery 2)

Kate noticed blue flags hanging from the guard towers on each side of the gate. At first she thought it was the UN flag—it was light blue with a white design in the middle. But the white design in the center wasn’t a white globe surrounded by olive branches. It was an orchid. The white petals were symmetrical, but the red pattern that spread out from the center was uneven, like rays of sunlight peeking out from behind a darkened moon during a solar eclipse.

The trucks pulled to a stop just beyond the gate and soldiers began dragging people out—men, women, and even a few children. Each person’s hands were bound, and many struggled with the guards, shouting in Spanish.

“They’re rounding up survivors,” Martin whispered, as if they could hear him from this distance. “It’s illegal to be caught outside.”

“Why?” Another thought struck Kate. “There are survivors—who aren’t taking Orchid?”

“Yes. But… they aren’t what we expected. You’ll see.” He led her the rest of the way to the restaurant, and after a few words with the guard, they passed inside—into a plastic-lined decontamination chamber. Sprinkler nozzles at the top and sides opened and sprayed them down with a mist that stung slightly. For the second time, Kate was glad to have the hat. In the corner of the plastic chamber, the red miniature traffic light changed from red to green, and Martin pushed through the flaps. He paused just outside the threshold. “You won’t need the hat. Everyone here knows who you are.”

As Kate pulled the hat from her head, she got her first full view of the large room—what had been the dining room. She could barely believe the scene that spread out before her. “What is this?”

Martin spoke softly. “The world isn’t what they describe on the radio. This is the true shape of the Atlantis Plague.”

CHAPTER 4

Two Miles Below Immari Operations Base Prism

Antarctica

David Vale couldn’t stop looking at his dead body. It lay there in the corridor, in a pool of his blood, his eyes still open, staring at the ceiling above. Another body lay across him—that of his killer, Dorian Sloane. Sloane’s body was a mangled mess—David’s final bullets had hit Sloane at close range. Occasionally a piece of the carnage would peel off the ceiling, like a slowly disintegrating piñata.

David looked away from the scene. The glass tube that held him was less than three feet wide, and the thick wisps of white fog that floated through it made it feel even smaller. He glanced down the length of the giant chamber, at the miles of other tubes, stacked from the floor to a ceiling so high he couldn’t see the end. The fog was thicker in those tubes, hiding the inhabitants. The only person he could see stood in the tube across from him. Sloane. Unlike David, he never looked around. Sloane simply stared straight at David, hate in his eyes, his only movement the occasional flexing of his jaw muscles.

David briefly looked into his killer’s glaring eyes, then resumed studying his tube for the hundredth time. His CIA training didn’t cover anything like this: how to escape from a hibernation tube in a two-million-year-old structure two miles below the surface of Antarctica. There was that class on escaping from tubes in one-million-year-old structures, but he had missed that day. David smiled at his own lame joke. Whatever he was, he hadn’t lost his memories—or his sense of humor. As the thought faded, he remembered Sloane’s constant stare, and David let the smile slip away, hoping the fog had hidden it from his enemy.

David felt another pair of eyes on him. He looked up, then around, then up and down the chamber. It was empty, but David was sure there had been someone there. He tried to lean forward, straining to see deeper into the corridor with the dead bodies. Nothing. As he panned around, something alarmed him—Sloane. He wasn’t staring at David. David followed Sloane’s gaze into the vast chamber. Between their tubes, a man stood. At least, he looked like a man. Had he come from outside or inside? Was he an Atlantean? Whatever he was, he was tall, easily over six feet, and dressed in a crisp black suit that looked like a military uniform. His skin was white, almost translucent, and he was clean-shaven. His only hair was a thick stock of white atop his head—which might have been a little oversized for his body.

The man stood there for a moment, looking from David to Sloane and back again, as if he were a betting man, touring the stables, sizing up two thoroughbreds before a big race.

Then a rhythmic noise cut the silence and began echoing through the chamber: naked feet slapping the iron floor. David’s eyes followed the sound. Sloane. He was out. He hobbled as best he could toward the dead bodies—and the guns beside them. David looked back at the Atlantean just as his own tube slid open. David leapt free, stumbled on his barely responsive legs, and then trudged forward. Sloane was already halfway to the guns.

CHAPTER 5

Orchid District

Marbella, Spain

The makeshift hospital wing was divided into two sections, and Kate had trouble understanding what she saw. In the middle of the room, small beds stretched out, one after another, like an army field hospital. People lay moaning and convulsing, some dying, others drifting in and out of consciousness.

Martin began marching deeper into the room. “This plague is different from the outbreak in 1918.”

The first outbreak Martin was referring to was the Spanish flu pandemic that swept the globe in 1918, killing an estimated fifty million people and infecting one billion. Kate and David had discovered what Martin and his Immari employers had known for almost a hundred years: that the plague had been unleashed by an ancient artifact her father had helped extract from the Atlantis structure in Gibraltar.

Kate’s mind raced with questions, but as she surveyed the rows of beds and the dying, all she could manage was, “Why are they dying? I thought Orchid stopped the plague.”

“It does. But we’re seeing a collapse in efficacy. We estimate that within a month, everyone will become unresponsive to Orchid. Some of the dying volunteer for the trials. Those are the people you’ve seen.”

Kate walked closer to one of the beds, surveying the people, wondering… “What happens when Orchid fails?”

“Without Orchid, almost ninety percent of those infected die within seventy-two hours.”

Kate couldn’t believe it. The numbers had to be wrong. “Impossible. The mortality rate in 1918—”

“Was much lower, true. This plague is different. We only realized how different when we began seeing the survivors.” Martin stopped and nodded toward a series of semi-enclosed cells along the dining-room wall. To Kate, the people inside seemed healthy, but most huddled together, not looking out. There was something very wrong with them, but she couldn’t quite place it. She took a step toward them.