The Atlantis Plague (The Origin Mystery 2)

A new body. Another one.

The Atlantean stood there, watching him placidly. Dorian studied him, his face, the white shock of hair on his head. It had been him on the ship, in the dream. Or was it a dream?

The tube opened, and Dorian stepped out.

CHAPTER 27

Two Miles Below Immari Operations Base Prism

Antarctica

Dorian eyed the Atlantean for a long moment. Then he looked around and said, “All right. You have my attention.”

“You don’t disappoint, Dorian. I show you the fall of my world and the origins of your species, and that simply earns your attention?”

“I want to know what I saw.”

“Memories,” the Atlantean said.

“Whose?”

“Ours. Yours and mine. Memories from my past, memories from your future.” The Atlantean paced away from him, toward the opening to the chamber where Dorian’s and David’s dead bodies lay.

Dorian followed him, pondering what he had said. Somehow, Dorian knew it was true. The events were real—his memories. How?

The Atlantean spoke as he led Dorian down the gray-metal corridors. “You’re something different, Dorian. You’ve always known you were special, that you had a destiny.”

“I’m—”

“You’re me, Dorian. My name is Ares. I am a soldier, the last soldier my people ever had. Through a strange twist of fate, you inherited my memories. They’ve lain dormant in your mind all this time. I was only aware of them when you entered this vessel.”

Dorian squinted at the Atlantean—Ares, not sure what to say.

“Deep down, you know it’s true. In 1918, they placed a dying little seven-year-old boy in a tube in Gibraltar. When you awoke in 1978, you weren’t the same. It wasn’t the time that changed you. You were possessed with hate, driven to seek revenge, to build an army to defeat the enemy of humanity and find your father. You had a sense of your destiny—to fight for the future of your race. That’s what you came here to do. You even knew what you had to do: change the human race at the genetic level. You knew all this because I knew it. It was my desire. You have my memories. You have my strength. You have my hatred and my dreams. Dorian, there is an enemy in this universe more powerful than you can imagine. My people were the most advanced race in the known universe, and this enemy defeated us in a day and a night. They will come for you. It’s only a matter of time. But you can defeat them—if you’re willing to do what must be done.”

“Which is?”

Ares turned on Dorian and looked him in the eyes. “You must ensure that the genetic transformation of your species is completed.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

A thought seemed to echo in Dorian’s mind: to build our army.

“Precisely,” Ares said. “We’re fighting a war. In war, only the strongest survive. I’ve guided your evolution for this single purpose: survival. Without the final genetic changes, the humans here won’t survive. None of us will.”

In the recesses of Dorian’s mind, he knew it was true, had always known it was true. It all made sense now: his ambition, his blind, unreasoning desire to transform the human race, to defeat an unseen enemy. For the first time in his life, everything made sense. He was at peace. He had found the answer. He focused on the task at hand. “How? How do we build our army?”

“The case you carried out. It emits a new radiation signature that will complete the process. Not even Orchid can stop the mutated virus it will unleash. As we speak, a new wave of infection is emanating from the blast site in central Germany. Soon it will spread around the world. The final cataclysm will happen in the coming days.”

“If that’s true, what’s left to do? You clearly have the situation well in hand.”

“You must make sure no one finds a cure. We have enemies out there. Then you must free me. Together we can take control of the survivors. We can win the battle for this planet. They are our people. They are the army we will launch against our ancient enemy. We will finally win this war.”

Dorian nodded. “Free you. How?”

“The case serves two purposes. It emits radiation that renders Orchid ineffective, and it has created a portal to my location—an artificial wormhole, a bridge across space and time.” The Atlantean stopped, and Dorian realized they were in front of the door to the room that had held the case and the two suits. The door slid open, revealing an empty room, except for the last suit. “I told you it had everything you needed.”

Dorian walked into the room without a word and began putting the suit on.

“There’s something else you have to do, Dorian. You must bring the woman that was here. You must find her and take her through the portal with you.”

Dorian pulled the last boot on and looked up. “Woman?”

“Kate Warner.”

“What the hell does she have to do with this?”

The Atlantean led him out of the room and down the corridor. “Everything, Dorian. She’s the key to everything. But you must wait. At some point very soon, she will acquire a piece of information—a code. That code is the key to freeing me. You must capture her after she has the code and bring her to me.”

Dorian nodded, but his mind raced. How did the Atlantean know?

“I know because I read her thoughts—the same way I can read your thoughts. It’s how I knew you had my memories. It’s how I knew what you were.”

“Impossible.”

“It’s only impossible with your current scientific understanding. What you call the Atlantis Gene is actually a very sophisticated piece of biology and quantum technology. It utilizes principles in physics you haven’t discovered yet. It has been the guiding hand in your evolution. It has many functions, but one of them is to turn on several processes in your body that control radiation.”

“Radiation?”

“Every human body emits radiation. The Atlantis Gene turns that stream of static into an organized data feed—a continuous upload of your memories and physical changes, right down to the cellular level. It’s like an incremental backup, transmitting data to a central server every millisecond.”

They stood in the opening to the chamber that held the seemingly endless rows of tubes. “When this vessel receives a death signal and confirms there will be no further transmissions, it assembles a new body, an exact replica down to the last cell and very last memory.”