The Atlantis Gene (The Origin Mystery 1)

The children had stopped in the middle of the crowd. All the adults tried to look up.

His eyes adjusted, and Jin could just make out a marking etched into the side of the machine. It looked like the Nazi symbol, the—. He couldn’t remember the name. He felt so sleepy.

The machine was dark, but Jin thought he could hear a faint throbbing sound, like someone rhythmically beating on a solid door — boom-boom-boom. Or maybe the sound of the picture machine. Was it a different picture machine? A group picture? The boom-boom-boom grew louder with each passing second, and a light emerged from the top of the giant pawn — its head apparently had short windows. The yellow-orange light flickered with each pulse of the boom, giving it almost the effect of a lighthouse.

Jin was so entranced by the machine’s sound and light pulses, he didn’t notice the people falling around him. Something was happening. And it was happening to him too. His legs felt heavier. He heard a sound like bending metal — the machine was pulling against the cables at each side; it was trying to lift.

The pull of the floor got stronger with each passing second. Jin looked around but couldn’t see the children. Jin felt someone grab his shoulder. He turned to find a man holding on to him. His face had deep wrinkles, and blood ran from his nose. Jin realized that the skin from the man’s hands was coming off on Jin’s clothes. It wasn’t just skin. The man’s blood began to spread over Jin’s shirt. The man fell forward onto him, and they both collapsed to the ground. Jin heard the boom-boom-boom of the machine blend into one constant drone of sound and solid light as he felt blood flow from his nose down his face. Then the light and sound suddenly stopped.

In the control room, Dr. Shen Chang and his team stood and watched as the test subjects collapsed into a pile of wrinkled, bloody bodies.

Chang slumped into his chair. “Okay, that’s it, shut it off.” He took his glasses off and tossed them on the table. He pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled. “I have to report this to the director.” The man would not be happy.

Chang rose and walked toward the door. “And start the clean-up, don’t bother with autopsies.” The result had been the same as the last twenty-five tests.

The two-man cleanup crew swung back-forth-back-forth and released the body, hurling it into the rolling plastic bin. The bin held around ten bodies, give or take. Today would probably mean three trips to the incinerator, maybe two if they could stack them on top.

They had cleaned up a lot worse; at least these bodies were intact. It took forever when they were in pieces.

It was hard to work in the hazmat suits, but it was better than the alternative.

They lifted another body and swung forward, then—

Something was moving in the pile.

Two children were struggling under the bodies, fighting to crawl out. They were covered in blood.

One man began clearing bodies. The other turned to the cameras and waved his arms. “Hey! We’ve got two live ones!”

CHAPTER 12

Brig

Clocktower Station HQ

Jakarta, Indonesia

“Josh, can you hear me?”

Josh Cohen tried to open his eyes but the light was too bright. His head was throbbing.

“Here, give me another one.”

Josh could barely make out a blurry figure sitting by him on a hard bed. Where was he? It looked like one of the station’s holding cells. The man brought a pellet to Josh’s nose and cracked it open with a loud pop. Josh inhaled the worst smell of his entire life — a sharp, overwhelming ammonia smell that coursed through his airways, inflated his lungs, and sent him reeling backwards, hitting his head against the wall. The constant throbbing turned to a sharp pain. He closed his eyes tight and rubbed his head.

“Ok, ok, take it easy.” It was the station chief, David Vale.

“What’s going on?” Josh asked.

He could open his eyes now, and he realized that David was in full body armor and there were two other field operatives with him, standing by the door to the cell.

Josh sat up. “Someone must have planted a bug—”

“Relax, this isn’t about a bug. Can you stand up?” David said.

“I think so.” Josh struggled to his feet. He was still groggy from the gas that had knocked him out in the elevator.

“Good, follow me.”

Josh followed David and the two operatives out of the room with the holding cells and down a long hallway that led to the server room. At the server room door, David turned to the other two soldiers. “Wait here. Radio me if anyone enters the corridor.”

Inside the server room, David resumed his brisk pace, and Josh had to almost jog to keep up. The Station Chief was just over six feet tall and muscular, not quite as beefy as some of the linebacker-esque ops guys, but big enough to give any drunken bar-brawler pause.

They snaked their way through the crowded server room, dodging tower after tower of metal cabinets with green, yellow, and red blinking lights. The room was cool, and the constant hum of the machines was slightly disorienting. The three-person IT group was constantly working on the servers, adding, removing, and replacing hardware. The place was a pigsty. Josh tripped over a cord, but before he hit the ground, David turned, caught him, and pushed him back to his feet.

“You alright?”

Josh nodded. “Yeah. This place is a mess.”

David said nothing but walked a bit slower the rest of the way to a metal closet at the back of the server room. David pushed the closet aside, revealing a silver door and a panel beside it. The red light of a palm scan flashed over his hand, and another panel opened and performed a facial and retinal scan. When it finished, the wall parted, revealing an iron door that looked like something from a battleship.

David opened the iron door with a second palm scan and led Josh into a room probably half the size of a gymnasium. The cavern had concrete walls and their footsteps echoed loudly as they approached the center of the room, where a small glass box, about twelve feet by twelve feet, hung from thick twisted metal cords. The glass box was softly lit, and Josh couldn’t see inside it, but he already knew what it was.

Josh had suspected the cell had such a room, but he’d never seen it in person. It was a quiet room. The entire Jakarta station headquarters was a kind of quiet room — it was shielded from every manner of listening device. There was no need for further precautions within the station — unless you didn’t want another member of the cell to hear you.

There were certainly protocols that required it. He suspected the Chief talked with other station chiefs via phone and video in this room. Maybe even with Central.