CHAPTER 115
Immari Tunnels
Gibraltar
David’s mind raced. He said his thoughts aloud, almost mumbling them. “Kate Warner is Patrick Pierce’s daughter? How—”
“I thought new names were in order. If anyone ever connected us to the events during and after World War I, it would have… complicated our lives. Pierce took the name Tom Warner, and Katherine for his newborn daughter. He told her that her mother had died in childbirth, which was actually the truth. Dieter became Dorian Sloane, and he became obsessed with the past and his father’s legacy. He was a hateful child. He had seen so much pain, and he was all alone in an age he didn’t understand. Imagine, a seven-year-old boy going to sleep in 1918 with the flu, when his parents and brother were alive, and waking up 60 years later, in 1978, healthy and all alone in a strange world. I tried to be a father figure to him, but he was so troubled, so isolated. Like you, he dedicated his life to striking back at the people who had taken the ones he loved, to killing the people who had changed him and ruined his life. For him, that was Tom Warner and the Atlanteans. Unfortunately for all of us, Dorian is very capable. And he had support within the Immari organization. To the Immari, he was the heir and savior returned, living proof that the plague and the Bell could be beaten, that the human race could survive. It all went to Dorian’s head. He grew into a monster. He’s planning to reduce the human race to a select few, the genetically superior, what he believes is his tribe. He’s already unleashed the plague. The apocalypse is happening now, as we speak. But we can stop him. You can kill him, then I alone will run the Immari organization, with you at my side.” Craig watched David, hoping for some indication of how his former apprentice would react to the offer. “I’ll take you in as a prisoner. I know him. He’ll want to gloat, to debrief and torture you himself. I’ll give you a means to kill him when you’re left alone with him.”
David shook his head. “That’s what you want? This whole charade? You want me to kill Sloane — to put you on the throne?”
“Don’t you want to? He was responsible for 9/11. He’s your enemy. And you can save Kate. She’s there with him now. He will hurt her. He hurt her before, in San Francisco. The baby — it was his. There’s more, but the bottom line is that you can save her. Only you can save her.” Craig let the words sink in for a long moment, then turned and paced the room. “Think about it, David. You know you can’t win. You can’t fight us. The gunfire in the tunnels, those were the sounds of my Immari Security agents killing the last of the Clocktower loyalists. They’re all dead. You’re all alone down here. You can’t defeat the Immari. No one can. The world is already fighting the plague. You can’t prevent catastrophe. But we can change things, from inside Immari. We can shape the world to come.”
David considered the offer — his own deal with the devil. Then he looked around the room, for a weapon of some kind. There was something — the wooden handle of a spear, sticking out of the wall. The wood and iron spear looked so out of place here — in a room of strange metal and glass and technology David couldn’t begin to imagine.
On the other side of the room, a hologram flickered to life, like a 3D video of some sort.
“What is—”
“We don’t know for sure,” Craig said. He walked closer to the area where the hologram was forming. “Some sort of videos, holograms, on repeat. They play every few minutes. I think they show the past, what happened here. They’re the other reason I brought you down here, to this room. They are the secrets this room holds. We think Patrick Pierce hadn’t yet uncovered them when he sent the journal in 1938. Or, this is another theory, he had found the room, but nothing worked until he came out of the tube in 1978. We’re still sorting it out, but as you’ll see, we believe he saw them at some point in the seven years after he resumed his work as Tom Warner. We don’t know what they mean yet, but he went to great lengths to keep them from us. We think they’re some kind of message.”