CHAPTER 125
Kate could barely believe her eyes. Adi and Surya ran around the corner, and upon seeing Kate, ran even faster toward her. Kate bent to hug them, but the boys barely stopped.
They tugged at her arms, urging her to follow them. “Come on, Kate, we have to go. They’re coming.”
CHAPTER 126
Dorian unlatched the orange harness and dropped the remaining three feet to the ice below. The lights on his helmet revealed the mangled basket sticking halfway out of the snow like a crab trap on the bottom of the ocean. Beside it, a massive wad of steel cable lay in a sloppy stack. It had fallen on top of and beside Kate, but the basket had shielded her. A shame.
Dorian stood erect and marched to the portal. He stopped right below the Bell that hung far above, at the top of the dome. The lights from his helmet raked over it several times, and he smiled. It sat there silent, still. The wicked device that had killed his brother instantly and his mother with the plague it unleashed on the survivors… silenced.
The portal opened, as if recognizing that his moment of destiny had arrived. He walked through it.
CHAPTER 127
David’s mind raced. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you. The year is 2013.”
“Like hell.” The man held the pistol on David as he walked to a cabinet, reached inside, and withdrew a shiny clump of gold. He threw it to David.
It was a watch. David turned it over and read the date and time. Sept 19th 1985. “Yeah. Huh. I actually don’t have a gold watch with the wrong date, but…” He reached for his pocket.
The man held the pistol up.
David froze. “Relax. I have my own time capsule. A picture in my pocket. Reach in; take a look.”
The man stepped forward and drew the glossy photo out of David’s pocket. He studied the picture of the iceberg with the sub sticking out.
“I’m guessing the Immari weren’t taking satellite photos of icebergs in 1985.”
The man shook his head and looked away as if he were still putting the pieces together. “It’s Kane’s U-Boat, isn’t it?”
David nodded. “We think they found it a few weeks ago. Listen, I’m just as confused as you are. Let’s just talk to each other, try to figure this out. How did you get here?”
“I was working in the hidden chamber. I had figured out how to work their machines.”
“You put the videos on repeat?”
“Videos? Oh yes, I did, in case I didn’t come back and someone found the chamber.” He sat on the cot, looking at his feet, seeming to search his thoughts. “I also put the spear in the door, I can’t even remember why I had it down here. I was testing different artifacts from the Immari vault, hoping something would bring more of the machines to life.”
“The computers?”
“What?”
“The machines in the room, with the videos — the computers,” David said.
“If you like. I managed to get the door open, but I was stuck; there was nothing else I could discover in the chamber. I assumed there was another control station in the next room, so I went through. I tried to hold the door open with the spear. I wish it had worked. I haven’t been able to get back through the door. The machines here are different somehow. Most are turned off. There are a few other mysteries… but I haven’t gotten very far in the last month, that is, until you showed up. It seems like the entire place is waking up, more machines are working and doors open that previously wouldn’t move. I was exploring when I heard the door open and found you.”
“Let’s go back to the time difference. I know you’re not Patrick Pierce or, what was it, Tom Warner. He would be like 80. Just tell me who you are—”
“I am Patrick Pierce.” The man leaned forward. “Time moves slower here. It must be… A day here to every year outside.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. But I think it has something to do with the Bell. It could have two functions. It’s a sentry device, to keep non-Atlanteans out, but that’s just the half of it. When we first began studying the device, we thought it was a time machine. It created a field around it, a sort of time dilation bubble. Time moved slower near the Bell. We knew it had something to do with gravitational displacement — folding and warping the spacetime around it. We thought it might even be a wormhole generator”
“A what?”
“Forget the jargon. The theories were based on Einstein’s General Relativity. I’m sure that’s been updated or even thrown out by now. Suffice it to say that in the years after we extracted the Bell in Gibraltar, we noticed that it seemed to slow down time in the space around it. We believed it generated power this way. We were able to essentially reverse the device, by supplying power to it and minimizing its gravitational effects.”
“That’s interesting, but there’s just one problem. The Bell in Gibraltar was removed almost 100 years ago.”
“I know. I removed it. I have another theory. I think when the ship in Gibraltar exploded, the Atlanteans were trapped in the section that broke off. I think the door they went through wasn’t a passage to another room in that ship. I think it was a portal to another ship. I don’t think we’re in Gibraltar.”
CHAPTER 128
Around the next corner, Kate finally got the boys to stop.
“Tell me what’s going on,” she pleaded.
“We have to hide, Kate,” Adi said.
“From whom?”
“There’s no time,” Surya said.
Time — the word echoed through Kate’s mind and another fear gripped her. She spun the boys around and searched for the digital readout.
03:23:51. Almost three and a half hours left. Martin had said there was less than 30 minutes before detonation. How? It didn’t matter — the clock was still ticking. She had to think.
The boys were pulling at her again, and behind them, a set of double doors opened.
CHAPTER 129
Dorian slipped the last of the space suit off and surveyed the room — some kind of decontamination chamber. He walked toward the smaller door. His steps echoed loudly in the high-ceilinged iron chamber. The door opened as he approached, and he stepped out into a corridor. Just like Gibraltar. It was all true. This was another Atlantean city.
Lights flashed to life at the top and bottom of the corridor. The place looked pristine, untouched. It certainly hadn’t endured a nuclear blast — two of them. Why not? Had the children made it farther into the Tombs? Had the Atlanteans caught them? Disabled the bombs?
Up ahead, Dorian heard footfalls — boots marching, striking the iron floor in unison. He drew his side arm and moved to the side of the corridor, in the shadow of an iron beam.