The Atlantis Plague (The Origin Mystery 2)

“What now?” Chang asked.

“We set up camp here,” David said.

As soon as the words were spoken, Kamau cleared off a table, set down his duffel bag, and began sorting their weapons: handguns, assault rifles, and body armor.

Janus rushed to Kate and held a hand out for the backpack. “May I?”

Kate handed him the backpack absently, and Janus began setting up a research station. He powered up the computer and connected it to the thermos-like device that Martin had given Kate to extract DNA samples.

Janus placed the sat phone on the table. “Should we call Continuity? Report our status?”

“No,” David said. “We only call when we have something to report. No sense in… revealing our location.”

He glanced at the phone. One member of the team had been doing just that—revealing their location. He grabbed the phone from the table and handed it to Kate. “Hang on to this.”

Shaw stood a few feet from Kamau, watching him sort the weapons and armor. David locked eyes with him and they each stared for a moment.

Shaw broke off first. He strolled nonchalantly to one of the small tables flanking the stairwell that descended into the catacombs. He picked up a folded brochure and began reading it.

“What now, David?” Shaw asked casually. “We wait for a medieval knight to come wandering out and we ask him if he’s seen an old stone box?”

Janus spoke up, trying to break the tension. “I want to point out the urgency of our situation—”

“We’re going in,” David said.

Kamau took the words as a cue. He attached his own body armor and handed another set to David.

“It’s a needle in a haystack,” Shaw said. He held up the brochure. “The network is extensive. Only a few of the catacombs are normally open to the public, but this… device could be anywhere down there. We’re talking miles of tunnels.”

David tried to read Kate’s expression. It was emotionless, almost cold. Was she having another flashback?

“I feel we should split up,” Janus said. “We can cover more ground.”

“Wouldn’t that be… dangerous?” Chang said sheepishly.

“We could go in teams of two: one soldier, one scientist in each one,” Janus said.

David considered the proposal. His other choices were leaving someone behind, here in the museum, where they could close the catacombs or acquire backup. He had no good options.

“Okay,” David said. “Shaw and Chang, lead the way.” David wanted to put his two suspects together, have them break off first, put distance between them and the rest of the group. “Kamau and Janus next. Kate and I will bring up the rear.”

“We have no bloody clue what’s down there,” Shaw half-shouted. “I’m not going down there unarmed. You can shoot me if you like, David.”

David walked to the table, picked up a tactical assault knife and threw it at Shaw, point first. Shaw caught it by the handle. His eyes flashed.

“You’re armed. You’re going first, or I will shoot you. Try me.”

Shaw paused for a moment, then turned and led the way down the stairway, followed closely by Chang and then the other four.

CHAPTER 84

St. Paul's Catacombs

Rabat, Malta

The catacombs were musty and dark. The museum lighting system wasn’t functioning, but the glow of the LED lanterns revealed a scattering of display cases and write-ups where tours would pause and read about the chambers.

After about ten minutes, the tunnel split.

“We rendezvous in the lobby in one hour, no matter what. Turn back if you don’t find anything,” David said. “Try to make a map of where you’ve been.”

“Sure thing, Mom. Back in an hour, and we’ll bring our homework,” Shaw snapped. He turned and led Chang down the darkened corridor.

Kate, David, Kamau, and Janus walked in silence after that. Five minutes later the tunnel forked again. Kamau and Janus edged toward the new path.

“Good luck, David,” Kamau said.

Janus nodded to both Kate and David.

“You too,” David said.

He and Kate walked without a word for a bit. When David thought they were out of earshot of the others, he stopped. “Tell me you know what’s going on here. What’s saving the people in Malta from the plague?”

“I don’t know. In the past, I saw the Ark, but I don’t know what happened to it. I saw the Immaru carrying it into the highlands, but I don’t know what happened after that.”

“There are megalithic stone temples here that are almost six thousand years old—the oldest known ruins in the world. There are legends of miraculous healing dating back to the Roman period, when St. Paul landed on Malta. Could the Immaru have brought the Ark here for safekeeping?”

“It’s possible,” Kate said, seeming distracted.

“How can it be healing these people?”

“I don’t know—”

“What’s inside it?”

“The body of Adam, our alpha—the first person we gave the Atlantis Gene. At this point, just his bones.”

“How could his bones be healing people?”

“I… I don’t know. We did something to him in the past. I was there, but I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t even see my partner’s face. The human genome was splintering—we were having trouble managing the experiment.”

“The… experiment.”

Kate nodded, but didn’t elaborate. “David, something is happening to me. It’s hard to concentrate. There’s something else. Dorian was there—”

“Here—”

“No. He was there in the past. I think he has the memories of another Atlantean, a soldier named Ares who came to Earth after the science expedition.”

David stood there, stunned for a moment.

“How?”

“He was on the expedition, in Gibraltar. The tubes were reprogrammed to his radiation signature. When Dorian was put in there after the Spanish flu outbreak, he must have awakened with the memories, the same way I got the scientist’s memories.”

“Incredible,” David whispered. A new kind of fear slowly surrounded him, setting in slowly. Dorian had knowledge of the past, possibly even more than Kate. That gave him a tactical advantage.

“What’s your plan, David?”

David snapped back to the moment, to the dimly lit stone tunnel. “We find whatever is down here, see if we can use it to find a cure, then get the hell out of here.”