The Atlantis Gene (The Origin Mystery 1)

The doors stayed closed; maybe she was safe. Kate wandered farther into the wing. Every twenty feet or so was a large door, apparently a corridor to some other area. As far as the eye could see, it was the same, doors and symmetrical corridors. And it was quiet, an unnerving kind of quiet.

She swiped her card at the nearest door and ventured inside. It was some sort of barracks or… a college dorm — that was what came to mind. She was standing in a large common room that led to six smaller rooms, each with bunk beds. No, they weren’t quite like dorm rooms… they were too sparse, more like cells in a prison. And they were empty. Abandoned, actually. The cells were disheveled; blankets and clothes littered the floors; personal belongings were strewn across the small sinks beside the bunk beds — as if the occupants had left in a hurry.

Kate retreated from the room and resumed walking in the main corridor for a while. Her tennis shoes made a squeaking sound with every step she took. In the distance, she heard talking. She had to go toward it, but some part of her resisted. It was safe here in the empty rooms, with no people.

She turned at the next “crossroads” and walked toward the talking. She could see it now — something like a nurse’s station in a hospital: a high-top bar with files laying on it and two or three women behind it.

There was another sound, from another direction — the loud rhythmic clop of boots echoing in the empty corridor. They were getting close. She inched closer to the nurses. She heard their voices “They want them all now.”—”I know”—”That’s what I said”—”Nothing they ever do makes sense”—”They aren’t even treating”—

Kate jerked around — the boots, behind her. Six men, guards. They were running toward her, guns drawn. “Stop where you are!”

She could run and maybe make it to the nurses station. The guards were closing fast now, 20 feet away. She took a step, then another, but they were there, around here, pointing their guns at her.

Kate held up her hands.

CHAPTER 54

David raised his hands.

The guard leveled the gun at him and moved closer. “You’re not Conner Anderson.”

“No shit, man,” David said under his breath. “Put the gun down and shut the f**k up; they could be listening.”

The guard stopped moving. He looked down, confused. “What?”

“He told me I had to come in for him.”

“What?”

“Look, we had a rough night last night. He said he would get sacked if I didn’t come in,” David insisted.

“Who are you?”

“His friend. You must be his really smart friend at work.”

“What?”

The guard was as dumb as a sack of hammers. “Is that all you can say? Jesus man, put the gun up and act natural.”

“Conner isn’t scheduled today.”

“Yeah, I gathered that, yet another half-drunk brain-fart on his part. I’m going to kill him if you fools don’t kill me first.” David tipped his hands forward and nodded, silently saying, well are you or aren’t you? When the guard said nothing, David said, “Dude, shoot me, or let me go.”

The man reluctantly holstered his gun, still looking thoroughly unsatisfied. “Where are you going?”

David walked toward him. “Getting the hell out of here, what’s the quickest way?”

The man turned and pointed but didn’t get a word out. David knocked him out cold with a sharp blow to the base of his skull.

He had to move fast now. He ran deeper into the facility. There was another problem, one he’d pushed to the back of his mind, given the more pressing survival issues. But now he had to think about how to cut the power. His best idea was not to attack the nuclear reactors directly — they would be insulated and well protected, assuming he could even get close to them. And there were three of them. The power lines were his best guess. If he blew the lines, it would cut the power to the entire facility — permanently, including any power they may have stored up from the reactor. But he was out of his element. What if the lines were buried under the facility or otherwise out of reach? Or routed through a heavily guarded building outside the reactor facility? Would he even know them when he saw them? There were a lot of what-ifs…

David found another schematic on the wall and scanned through the areas. Reactor 1, Reactor 2, Reactor 3, Turbine, Control Room, Primary Circuit Room. Circuit room — that could work. It was positioned opposite the reactors, and it looked like lines from every reactor flowed into the room.

He turned from the schematic just as two guards rounded the corner and marched toward him. He nodded and made his way to the circuit room. As he approached it, he could hear the low drone of machines and the buzz of high voltage power. It seemed to come through the walls and up through the floor. The floor didn’t vibrate, but as he scanned his badge and entered the room, his body began to shake from the pulse of the massive machines.

Inside, the room was huge — and cramped. Pipes and metal conduits seemed to snake in every direction, buzzing and popping periodically. He felt like he had been shrunk and beamed inside a circuit board on a computer.

David climbed deeper into the room and placed charges on the larger conduits at the points where they entered the room. There were several metal “closets” for lack of a better word. He placed charges on them as well. He only had a few explosives left. Would they be enough? How much time? He typed 5:00 minutes in the detonator and hid it at the base of the closet. Where to put the last charges?

He heard another noise over the din of the lines. Or maybe he didn’t. He took a charge out and shoved it between two smaller lines. He held it there for a second, withdrawing his hand slowly to make sure it would stay.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw them — three guards, in the room, closing fast. He couldn’t talk his way out of this one.

CHAPTER 55

The six guards surrounded Kate.

One man said into a radio, “We have her. She was wandering around in corridor two.”

“What are you doing?” Kate protested.

“Come with us,” the man with the radio said.

Two of the guards took her by the arms and began leading her away from the voices at the nurses station.

“Stop!”

Kate turned to see a woman jogging up behind them. She was young, maybe in her twenties. She was dressed so… wrong, so provocatively, like some sort of playboy bunny. She looked very out of place.