CHAPTER 78
Over the Mediterranean Sea
Kate awoke to vibrations on her thigh. The first thing she saw was David’s eyes.
She took the vibrating phone from her pocket and glanced at the number. It was a 404 area code. Atlanta, Georgia. The CDC. Continuity. Paul Brenner. The revelations washed over the stupor of her sleep as she answered the call. She listened. Paul Brenner was panicked now. He spoke quickly, the phrases hitting her like punches. Trial failed. No alternative therapies. Euthanasia Protocol has been authorized. Can you help?
“Hang on,” she said into the phone.
She sat up. “It didn’t work,” she said to David, Chang, and Janus.
“There’s more, Kate. Another piece of the genetic puzzle,” Janus said. “We need more time.”
“We have something,” Kate said into the phone. She listened, then nodded. “Yes, okay. What? Okay, no, we’re…”
She looked at David. “How close are we to Malta?”
“Malta?”
Kate nodded.
“Two hours, maybe a little less at top speed.”
“The Orchid Districts in Malta—they report no casualties. Something is happening there.”
David didn’t say a word. He climbed past Chang and Janus in the seat across from her and began talking to Shaw and Kamau in the cockpit—setting a course for Malta, Kate assumed.
Kate rubbed her head. There was something different about the way she felt. She was more… detached, clinical, numb. Almost robotic. She had full command of her mind; she just experienced the scene as if it were happening to someone else. The danger was intense—the annihilation of ninety percent of the human race… yet she felt as though she were in the middle of a science experiment, where the outcome was uncertain but would have no impact on her. What’s happening to me? Her feelings, her emotional core seemed to be slipping away.
When David returned, he slumped back onto the bench beside Kate. “We can be in Malta within two hours.”
Kate held the phone to her ear and began conversing with Paul. We’re going to check it out—Can you hold them off—We don’t know what’s there—Do your best, Paul—This isn’t over.
She ended the call and focused on the group.
Janus spoke before she had a chance. “It was here the entire time, under our noses.” He pointed to the page containing Martin’s note. “Missing Alpha Leads to Treasure of Atlantis. MALTA.”
Kate watched as David scanned the code. His face changed. What was that: guilt?
She interrupted the pause. “Martin had been looking for it—whatever it is—for a long time. He thought it was in southern Spain, but he told me he had been wrong about the location. He must have added the last note—regarding the treasure and Malta, the location, after the fact.”
“Do you know what it is?” Janus asked. “The Treasure of Atlantis?”
Kate shook her head.
David pulled her close to him. “We’ll know in a few hours.” The look in his eyes said something different, however: Do you remember? Kate closed her eyes and tried to focus.
The rustle of the suit under the pressure of the decompression chamber was unmistakable.
The voice in Kate’s helmet was crisp. “There are two settlements now.”
“Copy.”
“Sending coordinates of original settlement.”
Kate’s helmet displayed a map. Their ship, the Alpha Lander, was still off the coast of Africa, where she had originally administered the Atlantis Gene.
A floating chariot waited silently in the middle of the chamber. The doors opened slowly, revealing the scene beyond. Kate mounted the chariot and zoomed from the ship.
The world was even more green. How much time had passed?
At the camp, she realized exactly how much. There were at least five times as many huts as she had seen before. At least a generation had passed.
And the nature of the camp had changed. Muscled warriors, dressed in clothes and wearing war paint, patrolled the perimeter. They turned to her and raised their spears threateningly as she floated in.
She gripped the stun baton.
An elderly man hobbled out to the warriors and shouted to them. Kate listened in amazement. Their language progress was stunning: they had already developed a complex linguistic structure, though the words used at this moment were a bit more “informal.”
The warriors released their spears and backed away from her.
She set the chariot down, and ventured into the camp.
There was no bowing and groveling this time.
Up ahead, the chief’s shanty had grown as well. The simple lean-to had morphed into a temple with stone walls, built directly into the rock cliff.
She marched toward it.
The villagers lined up on each side, keeping their distance, fighting to see her.
At the threshold of the temple, the guards stepped aside, and she entered.
In the altar at the end of the cavernous room, a body lay. A circle of the black humans knelt before it.
Kate paced to them. They turned.
From the corner of her eye she saw an elderly male making his way toward her. The alpha. Kate was amazed that he had survived so long. The treatment had produced remarkable results.
Kate glanced back at the dead body, then read the symbols above the altar. Here lies the second son of our chief. Cut down in the fields by his brother’s tribe, for greed of the fruit of our lands.
Kate quickly read the remainder of the text. It seemed that the chief’s oldest son had formed his own clan—a group of nomads that roamed the countryside, foraging.
The chief’s younger son had taken over the fields where this tribe hunted and gathered. The younger son was seen as his father’s successor, the next chief. They had found him dead in the field, and the trees and shrubs picked clean. He was the first victim of the older brother’s raids, and they feared there would be many more. They were preparing for war.
“We must stop this,” her partner said into Kate’s helmet.
“And we will.”
“War will sharpen their minds, enhance the technology. It is a cataclysm—”
“We will prevent it.”
“If we separate the tribes,” her partner said, “we can’t manage the genome.”
“There is a solution,” Kate said.
She held her hand up and projected symbols onto the wall.
You will not take retribution on the unworthy. You will leave this place. Your Exodus begins now.
Kate opened her eyes to see David staring at her.
“What?”
“Nothing.” She wiped sweat from her forehead. The memories were changing her more quickly now. Taking over. She was becoming more of what she’d been in the distant past and less of the woman she had become, the woman who had fallen in love with David. She pulled closer to him.
What can I do? I want to stop this. I opened the door, but can I close it? It felt like someone was holding her down and pouring the memories down her throat.
Kate stood in another temple. She wore the suit, and the humans before her crowded around another altar.
Kate looked out of the opening of the temple. The landscape was lush, but not as fertile as it had been in Africa. Where were they? The Levant, perhaps?
Kate walked closer.
The stone box on the altar; she had seen it before—in the Tibetan tapestry, in the depiction of the Great Flood, when the waters rose and consumed the coast, wiping out the cities of the ancient world. The Immaru had carried this box to the highlands, she was sure of it. Was this the treasure that waited in Malta?
The members of the tribe rose from the ground and turned to face her.
In the alcoves flanking the temple’s main corridors, Kate now saw dozens of members of the tribe kneeling, meditating, seeking the stillness.
They would become the Immaru, the mountain monks who had carried the Ark into the highlands, who had kept the faith and tried to live a life of righteous observance.
Kate walked down the aisle.
“You know what must be done,” her partner said.
“Yes.”
At the altar, the crowd stepped aside, and she climbed the stairs and peered into the stone box.
The alpha, the tribe’s founder and chief, lay there, still, cold, finally dead. His countenance was eerily similar to how it had been on the day when Kate had first seen him, in the cave, when he brought the rotting piece of flesh to his mate, when he collapsed against the wall and lay dying. She had hoisted him up then and saved him. She couldn’t save him now.
She turned back to the masses gathered around the altar. She could save them.
“This is dangerous.”
“There is no alternative,” Kate said.
“We can end this experiment, here and now.”
Kate involuntarily shook her head. “We can’t. We can’t turn back now.”
When she had finished the modification, she stepped off the altar. The attendants swarmed around her, rushing past the box. They brought something out—a stone top—and placed it upon the box.
She watched as they engraved a series of symbols on the side of the Ark.
Her helmet translated them:
Here lies the first of our kind, who survived the darkness, who saw the light, and who followed the call of the righteous.
Kate opened her eyes.
“I know what’s in Malta, what the Immaru were protecting.”
David’s eyes said, Don’t say it.
“Is it part of the cure?” Janus asked.
Chang leaned in.
“Maybe,” Kate said. She focused on David. “How long to Malta?”
“Not long.”
Dorian pulled the sat phone out of his pocket.
Heading east. Destination Malta. Where the hell are you?
He walked back across the plague barge’s deck and climbed into the helicopter. “Let’s go.”