The Atlantis Plague: A Thriller (The Origin Mystery, Book 2)

  David had been turning “KBW” over in his mind since he had first seen the code. He didn’t even have a guess. “No. I’m not sure what it means.”

  “I know what it means,” Kate said. “‘KBW’ are my initials. Katherine Barton Warner. I think I’m the Omega.”

  CHAPTER 68

  Somewhere off the coast of Ceuta

  Mediterranean Sea

  Through the window of the helicopter, Dorian watched the water fly by below. The sun glistened on the black expanse like a beacon leading him to his destiny.

  He thought about the white door of light in Germany. Where would it lead? To another world? Another time?

  He activated the microphone in his helmet. “What’s our ETA?”

  “Three, maybe three and a half hours.”

  Would they beat Kate and her entourage there? It would be close.

  “Get the outpost on the line.”

  A minute later Dorian was speaking with Isla de Alborán’s commanding officer.

  The Immari lieutenant at Isla de Alborán ended the call and looked back at the four other soldiers playing cards and smoking. “Put some coffee on. We need to sober up. We’re going to have company.”

  David tried to process what Kate had said: “I’m the Omega.”

  Shaw glided into the room. “I’m putting coffee on—” He looked around. “What’s all this? You lot look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “We’re working,” David snapped.

  Kate broke the tension. “I’d love some coffee. Thank you, Adam.”

  “Sure,” Shaw said. “Dr. Chang? Dr. Janus?”

  David noticed that he hadn’t made the coffee roll call. He was fine with that.

  “Oh yes, much appreciated,” Dr. Chang murmured, still deep in thought.

  Dr. Janus stared out the window, an unreadable expression on his face. When he realized everyone was waiting on him, he quickly said, “No. Thank you though.”

  Shaw returned with the two cups of coffee, then lingered by the window, diagonally behind David. David couldn’t see him, but he knew he was there. He was less than fine with that.

  Janus was the first to speak. “I do not doubt what you’ve said, Kate. I want that clear at the outset. I would, however, like to review our key assumptions and explore several… possibilities.”

  David thought Kate tensed a little, but she simply sipped her coffee and nodded.

  Janus continued. “The first assumption: that this Tibetan tapestry was a document depicting Atlantean interaction with humans, specifically their intervention to save humans seventy thousand years ago—the introduction of the Atlantis Gene which changed human brain wiring and the fate of humanity—and then, their warning to humans before the Great Flood. The balance of the tapestry we assume to be events yet to come. I have a question about that, but I will hold it for now.

  “Our second assumption is that Martin’s note is a chronology—an attempt to decode the past, to identify the genetic turning points of humanity—to lead us to a cure for the plague.”

  “Our third and final assumption is that this chronology identifies a missing delta: a point at which Atlantean intervention in human evolution failed—sometime around the Great Flood and the fall of Atlantis. Mr. Vale’s theory is that a battle between the Atlantean factions led to that event. Having said all that, I would have postulated that the Omega—the eventuality of all the Atlantean intervention in human evolution—would have been the survivors of the Atlantis Plague. Specifically, the rapidly evolving. Are they not the outcome the Atlanteans have been pursuing? They are the most obvious choice. As a scientist, I always evaluate the simplest explanation first before exploring more… exotic possibilities.”

  To David, Janus’s argument was convincing. He started to speak, but Kate beat him to it. “Then why did Martin put my name in the chronology, above Omega?”

  “To me, that is the question,” Janus said. “I believe examining Martin’s motives reveals that. We know that everything he did, all his research, his deals, his compromises, were for one purpose: to protect you. I believe that is his motive here. If his notes were found, he wanted the reader to find you, to ensure your safety so that you could be on hand to decode them, to be close to anyone pursuing a cure.”

  David nodded involuntarily. It was convincing.

  “The pattern makes sense,” Chang said. “As I see it, there’s a problem with the timeline though. 70K YA: Adam, the introduction of the Atlantis Gene. 12.5K YA: the fall of Atlantis, the missing delta. 535 and 1257: Second Toba, the two volcanoes and subsequent outbreaks of bubonic plague, the beginning of the Dark Ages, then its end, followed by the Renaissance. Then 1918: the Bell, an Atlantean artifact that unleashed the Spanish flu. And this year, the second outbreak from the Bell. The Atlantis Plague. Martin has the dates wrong: 1918…1979. 1979 should be this year—the current outbreak creates the Omega.”

  “That would be logical,” Janus said.

  “When were you born?” David asked. “Uh, I’m inquiring for purely scientific purposes here.”

  “Cute,” Kate said. “I was born in 1979. However… I was conceived in 1918.”

  “What?” Janus and Chang said, almost in unison.

  David heard Shaw move from behind him and stand before the group, his first sign of interest in the conversation.

  “It’s true,” Kate said. “Martin was my adoptive father. My biological father was a miner and an officer in the US Army during World War I. He was hired by the Immari to excavate the Atlantis structure under Gibraltar. He did it in return for my mother’s hand in marriage. What he unearthed, the Bell, unleashed the Spanish flu epidemic. In a twist of fate, the outbreak claimed my mother’s life. But the structure he uncovered contained a room with four tubes. He discovered that they were healing and hibernation pods. He put my mother—and me inside of her—in one, where we stayed until 1979: the year I was born.”

  Dr. Arthur Janus sat back on the couch. This could change everything.

  Kate’s words shocked Dr. Shen Chang, even though he had already known about the Bell and the hibernation—that part was no surprise.

  In 1979, Shen had been a researcher on a project funded by Immari International. He had gotten a call one morning from Howard Keegan, a man he had never met before. Keegan told him that he was the new head of the Immari organization and that he needed Shen’s help, that Shen would be handsomely rewarded, would never have to worry about research funding again, and would do incredible work—work that could save the world but that he would never be able to tell anyone about.

  Shen had agreed. Keegan led him into a room with four tubes. One held a young boy, the man he came to know as Dorian Sloane. The other held Patrick Pierce, the man who Keegan said had found the tubes. The last tube held a pregnant woman.

  “We will release her last, and you will do everything you can to save her, but your first priority is the child.”

  Shen had never been so afraid in his entire life. What happened next was permanently burned into his memory. He remembered holding the child, her eyes… the same eyes Kate Warner now stared at him with. Incredible.

  Adam Shaw marveled at Kate’s story. There’s more to this than I thought; more to her than I thought. But I will deliver her safely, no matter what.

  Kate was tired of waiting. “Will someone please say something?”

  “Yes,” Janus began. “I would like to revise my earlier assertions. I now believe you are the Omega. And… it changes some things. My understanding of Martin’s work, for one. I no longer think his note is just a chronology. That is only the half of it. Martin’s code is much more than that. It is a roadmap to fix the human genome—to correct the problems with the Atlantis Gene, to create a viable Human-Atlantean hybrid, a new species, of which you are the first. Martin’s sequence starts with the introduction of the Atlantis Gene—with Adam—then tracks the interferences, the missed correction at the time of the Flood, the Dark Ages that followed… and ends with you, Kate, someone
with a stable, functioning Atlantis Gene, thanks to the tube that saved your life and your extraordinary birth. But… the real question, the practical matter becomes: what do we do now? We have our research, we understand Martin’s notes. We need to find a lab—”

  Kate interrupted. “There’s one last thing I haven’t told you all. Martin was one of the founders of a consortium called Continuity. It’s a group of researchers from around the world. They’ve been running experiments for years, looking for a cure. In Marbella, Martin had a research site.” A thought occurred to her. “I worked in a lead-encased building. I did a series of experiments, and Martin periodically took DNA samples from me.”

  “Do you think he was experimenting on you, or on the subjects?” Dr. Chang asked.

  Kate was sure of it now. “Both. Martin told me that he believed I was the key to everything. Seeing the code, Omega… yes, I know it. Continuity has all his results. I’ve been in contact with them.”

  Shock spread across David’s face.

  “What?” Kate asked him.

  “Nothing.” He shook his head.

  She focused on Chang and Janus. “I think we should send Continuity our research and discuss our theories with them.”

  Dr. Janus took the memory stick out of his pocket. “I agree.”

  Chang nodded.

  CHAPTER 69

  Somewhere near Isla de Alborán

  Mediterranean Sea

  The call with Continuity had been intriguing.

  Kate felt like she finally understood the experiments she had been a part of in Marbella.

  For years, Continuity had developed an algorithm called the Genome Symphony. The principle was that whenever a gene therapy or retrovirus introduced a genetic change into a given genome, the Symphony algorithm could predict gene expression. Those predictions, when combined with knowledge about where the Atlantean endogenous retroviruses were buried in the genome, could predict a person’s response to the Atlantis Plague and a given therapy.

  Chang and Janus’s research, which isolated the genome changes from the two plague outbreaks at the beginning and end of the Middle Ages, was the missing piece—or so Continuity hoped.

  Kate watched Dr. Janus manipulate the computer, loading the research into Symphony. He was a genius. Kate had never seen anyone his age with that sort of computer aptitude.

  Kate spoke into the sat phone, which was in speaker mode. “What happens now?”

  “Now we wait,” Dr. Brenner said. “The algorithms will run and come up with possible therapies. Then we test them and hope to get lucky. If we find an effective therapy, we can deploy it quickly. Did Martin describe our gene implants?”

  “I am not familiar,” Dr. Janus said.

  “Essentially we implant a biotech device subdermally that allows us to deliver a customized therapy to each person. The implants are connected wirelessly to a server inside each Orchid District.”

  The revelation shocked Kate. “I thought the implants were for tracking. And doesn’t Orchid deliver the therapy?”

  Brenner spoke quickly. “Well, yes and no. The implants do provide an inventory control—I mean, tracking apparatus, which is vitally important. But, since the human genome is so diverse, we found that each therapy needs to be customized a bit, tweaked.”

  Kate nodded her head. It was extremely cutting-edge—an implanted biotech device delivering a genomically tailored therapy to every person. It was decades ahead of anything in use. It was a shame that it had taken the Immari threat and the plague to reach such a breakthrough.

  “Yes, but if the implant delivers the true therapy, then why still give everyone Orchid?” Dr. Janus asked.

  “Three reasons. In some early trials, we found that the implants couldn’t build a viable therapy for everyone. The implants build antivirals from the enzymes and proteins in the host’s body—it essentially does a complicated bit of snipping to create the therapy it needs. But the process with an implant alone only worked for about eighty percent of hosts. So we give the implants a sort of viral stock—a proverbial block of viral clay it can carve a therapy out of. That’s what’s in the Orchid pills—viral stock.”

  “Very interesting…” Janus seemed lost in thought.

  “The other reasons?” Kate asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Brenner said. “I get lost in the science. The second reason was speed. We knew we would need to deploy a new therapy quickly: manufacturing a new drug was out of the question, and of course this is a variable solution. We knew we could be looking at a base therapy with possibly thousands of small tweaks by the implants to make it work worldwide.”

  “And the last reason?”

  “Hope. People taking Orchid everyday… we felt we needed to give them something they could see and hold, something tangible, something they knew: a drug for a disease. And now, I hope, you’ve given us the missing piece—the formula we need to pass to the implants. Symphony is processing your data now. Assuming it finds a corrective therapy, we can deploy it globally across the Orchid Alliance within hours.”

  Around the small saloon, the scientists nodded. David and Shaw eyed each other, like two gunfighters in a bar in the Old West, each waiting for the other to draw.

  Dr. Brenner interrupted the tension. “There’s something I haven’t told you, Dr. Warner.”

  “What?” Kate asked through the speakerphone, not bothering to make the call private.

  “The Orchid leadership has ordered us to execute Euthanasia Protocol.”

  “I don’t—”

  “We had standing orders,” Brenner went on. “If either Orchid failed or the Immari ever became a viable threat, our orders were to issue cancellation commands to the implants—to let the dying die quickly. That would leave a world of Orchid survivors, a base to save the Alliance. So far, we have simply ignored those orders. We’ve focused on our research and hoped the leadership wouldn’t actually go through with the plan. But we’ve heard rumors. If we don’t execute Euthanasia Protocol, Allied troops may take control of Continuity and do it for us.”

  Kate sat back against the white couch.

  No one said a word.

  “Can you slow down Euthanasia Protocol?” Kate asked.

  “We can try. But… let’s hope your therapy works.”

  Downstairs, in their stateroom, David almost screamed at Kate, “You mean you had an open line to a global consortium this whole time?”

  “Yes. What?”

  “Call them back. Here’s what you say…”

  Kate called the Continuity number. Dr. Brenner?—No, everything is fine. I need a favor. I need you to contact British Intelligence and ask them if they have an officer named Adam Shaw. Also, could you inquire with the World Health Organization about someone named Dr. Arthur Janus?—Yes, that would be very helpful.—Fine. Call me back as soon as you know. It’s very important.

  Dr. Paul Brenner hung up the phone and glanced at the names. Shaw and Janus. What was happening on board that boat? Was Kate in danger?

  He had actually grown quite attached to her. Seeing her in the videos for weeks, then talking with her in person. It was almost as though she were some “dream girl” come to life.

  He hoped she would be all right. He picked up the phone and dialed his contacts at the WHO and British Intelligence. Each promised they would call back as soon as they had answers.

  Paul had one more call to make—he hoped—but it would have to wait on Symphony, on the results.

  He exited his office and walked down the hall of the CDC office building. The mood was dismal; everyone was overworked and burned out. Spirits were low, and for good reason: they had made no progress on a cure for the plague and had no prospects—not until the call from Kate nearly half an hour ago.

  How long would it take Symphony? If there even was a cure to find in the research Kate and her team had sent…

  The glass wall that held Orchid Ops parted, two glass pieces sliding to let him pass. Every head in the converted conference room turned
to him. The scene was like the study hall of a college dorm, where students had crammed for sixty days straight: the conference tables were arranged haphazardly, littered with laptops, stacks of papers, maps, coffee-stained reports, and half-full Styrofoam cups.

  The looks on their faces told Paul everything he needed to know.

  The four large screens that dotted the walls confirmed it. The flashing text read: One therapy identified.

  They had seen this text so many times before, and the celebration each time had been a little more muted than the previous. But the atmosphere felt different now. The team swarmed Paul, and everyone was talking excitedly about the new data and what to do next. Research sites were proposed and shot down.

  “We test it here, on our own cohort,” Paul said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “We’ve got some people that can’t wait.” He glanced at the Euthanasia Protocol countdown. Less than four hours left. There were a lot of people that couldn’t wait.

  But he wanted to be sure before they rolled it out worldwide. He had a phone call to make.

  On his way back to his office, Paul stopped by the makeshift infirmary.

  He stood at his sister’s bedside. Her breathing was shallow, but he knew she recognized him. She reached out for his hand.

  He stepped forward to take her hand. Her grip was weak.

  “I think we’ve found it, Elaine. You’re going to be just fine.”

  He felt her hand squeeze his, ever so slightly.

  Paul picked up the phone. Several minutes later, he was connected to the Situation Room in the White House.

  “Mr. President, we have a new therapy. We’re extremely optimistic. I’m asking you to delay Euthanasia Protocol.”