She was standing in a giant T-intersection. Which way to go? Before she could decide, she heard something moving toward her. Footsteps.
CHAPTER 124
David tried to make sense of what the man had said. His head was a haze from the nano-paste that was repairing the wounds in his shoulder, chest, and leg and racking his nostrils with a foul odor.
The man claimed to be Patrick Pierce — the author of the journal: an American soldier who had dug the tunnels for the Immari in exchange for one of the Immari leader’s blessing to marry his daughter. But he couldn’t be — the time line was wrong. David tried to piece it together:
> 1917-1918: Patrick Pierce recovers from WWI wounds and discovers the Atlantis structure under Gibraltar, uncovering the Bell and unleashing a deadly epidemic, sold to the world as Spanish Flu. Between 50-100 million people die. Up to a billion are infected on every continent.
> 1918: Pierce puts his wife, Helena, and his unborn child inside a tube.
> 1918-1938: Pierce becomes an unwilling member of the Immari Leadership in order to protect his wife and unborn child. He finishes his excavation at Gibraltar, but he, too, is placed in a tube when Konrad Kane embarks on his expedition — first to Tibet to recover artifacts and massacre the Immaru, then to Antarctica to find what he believes is the Atlantis capital city. Kane never returns.
> 1978: After 40 years, Mallory Craig, Patrick Pierce, and Dieter Kane are awakened from the tubes. Pierce’s wife is still dead, but the child is born. Pierce names her Katherine Warner. The others take new names: Patrick Pierce becomes Tom Warner, Mallory Craig becomes Howard Keegan, and Dieter Kane becomes Dorian Sloane.
> 1985: Tom Warner (Patrick Pierce) goes missing — possibly killed in a research experiment
Could it be true? Could Pierce have been down here since 1985?
Assuming Pierce was in his mid 20s during WWI, as the journal said, he would have been in his mid 40s in 1938 when he went into the tube… That would make him around 52 in 1985 and… 80 today. The man before him was much younger, possibly no more than 50.
David was already feeling better from the paste. He stood, and the man raised the gun. “Stay where you are. You don’t believe me, do you?”
It was hard to argue when you’re wounded and your captor had a gun. David shrugged and looked sheepish. “I believe you.”
“Don’t be cute. And stop lying to me.”
“Look, I’m just trying to put it together, the journal was… 1918 to 1936—”
“I know the journal dates; you’ll recall that I wrote it. Now tell me exactly how you got down here.”
David sat back on the bed. “I was lured into a trap. By Mallory Craig, Director of Clock—”
“I know what he directs. What was the lure?” The man spoke quickly, trying to corner David, hoping he would make a mistake and reveal himself to be a liar.
“Kate Warner. He told me she had gone into the tombs. I went to find her. They took two children from her lab in Jakarta about a week ago; they were treated with a new autism therapy—”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m not sure, she won’t tell me—”
“Kate Warner is a six-year-old girl. She doesn’t have a lab in Jakarta or anywhere else.”
David appraised the man. He believed what he was saying. “Kate Warner is a genetics researcher. And she’s definitely not six years old.”
The man lowered the gun and looked down and away. “Impossible,” he mumbled.
“Why?”
“I’ve only been down here for a month.”
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.
CHAPTER 130
Kate stood and peered into the room.
The were a dozen glass tubes, standing on end like the ones Patrick Pierce — her father — had described in the journal. And like those tubes, each of these tubes contained an ape, or a human, or something in between. Kate ventured into the room, marveling at the tubes. It was incredible — a hall of forgotten ancestors. All the missing links in humanity’s evolution, neatly collected and cataloged in this oval room, two miles below the ice in Antarctica, like a child might collect butterflies in a mason jar. A few of the specimens were shorter than Kate, no more than four feet tall; most were about her height, and a few were a good bit taller. They were all colors, some black, some brown, others pale white. Scientists could spend lifetimes in this room; many had already spent lifetimes digging up bones, desperately trying to find pieces of the intact humans floating there, suspended in the twelve or so glass tubes.
The boys followed her into the room, and the double doors shut behind them.
Kate scanned the room. Besides the tubes, there wasn’t much else except a chest-high bar with a glass top. Kate walked toward it, but stopped short as the doors to the room began to open again.
CHAPTER 131
Patrick Pierce kept his hand on the pistol as he watched the man who called himself David Vale. He had let the younger man lead. His story was believable, but Patrick still didn’t trust him.
They walked down one long corridor after another, and Patrick’s mind drifted to Helena, to that day seven years ago when the glass tube had hissed open.
The white clouds parted, and he reached out to touch her. He thought his hand would turn to sand, crumble, and blow away like ashes in the wind when he felt her cold skin. He fell to his knees, and the tears ran down his face. Mallory Craig wrapped an arm around him, and Patrick threw the man to the ground, then slugged him twice, three times, four times in the face, before two Immari security guards pulled him off of Craig. Craig — the devil’s right hand, the man who had lured him into a trap meant to kill him. A frightened boy — Deiter Kane — cowered in the corner. Craig got to his feet, tried to wipe the blood that kept coming from his face, then collected Dieter and fled from the room.
Patrick had wanted to bury Helena with her family, in England, but Craig wouldn’t allow it. “We’ll need new names, Pierce. Any connection to the past must be erased…” New names. Katherine. Kate, the man — Vale — had called her.
Patrick tried to imagine what it had been like for her. He had been an absentee father, and when he was around, an awkward father at best. From the moment he had held Katherine in his arms, he had dedicated himself to dismantling the Immari threat and unraveling the mysteries of Gibraltar and the Bell — to making the world safe for her. That was the best he could do for her. And he had failed. If what Vale said was true, the Immari were stronger than ever. And Kate… he had missed her whole life; worse: she had been raised by a stranger. Not only that, she had been drawn into the Immari conspiracy. It was a nightmare. He tried to push the thoughts from his mind, but they seemed to resurface around every corner they turned, seemed to rise out of the floor of every new corridor, like a ghost that wouldn’t go away.
Patrick eyed the man hobbling in front of him. Would Vale have answers? Would they even be the truth? Patrick cleared his throat. “What’s she like?”
“Who? Oh, Kate?” David looked back and smiled. “She’s… amazing. Incredibly smart… and extremely strong willed.”
“I have no doubt of that.” Hearing the words was so surreal. But it somehow helped Patrick come to terms with the fact that his daughter had grown up without him. He felt like he should say something, but he wasn’t sure what. After a moment he said, “It’s strange to talk about, Vale. For me, it was just a few weeks ago when I said goodbye to her in West Berlin. It’s… awkward to know my own daughter grew up without a father.”
“She turned out alright, trust me.” David paused for a moment, then continued. “She’s like no one I’ve ever met. She’s beatuifu—”
“Ok, that’s uh, that’s enough. Let’s uh… let’s stay focused, Vale.” Patrick picked up the pace. Apparently there was a speed limit to revelations… of a certain type. Patrick moved in front of Vale and began leading the way. He had an arm and a leg on the man — literally, and Vale was unarmed, so he probably wasn’t much of a threat. And Vale’s last answer had convinced Patrick: the younger man was telling the truth.
David pushed to keep up. “Right,” he said.
They plowed down the iron corridors in silence, and after a while, Patrick stopped again to let David catch up. “Sorry,” he said. “I know the goo takes it out of you.” He raised his eyebrows. “Had a few accidents myself exploring in the last month.”
“I can keep up,” David said between pants.
“Sure you can. Remember who you’re talking to. I was hobbling around in these tunnels a hundred years before you. You need to take it easy.”
David looked up at him. “Speaking of, you’re walking fine now.”
“Yes. Though I would trade it to go back. The tube. I walked right out in 1918. A few days in there fixed me right up. I didn’t put it in the journal, at the time all I could think about was what was happening around me. Helena… the Spanish Flu…” Patrick stared at the wall for a minute. “I think the tubes did something else. When I came out in ‘78, I could work the machines. I think it’s why I could go through the portal in Gibraltar.” Patrick eyed David. “But I still don’t understand how you could. You’ve never been in a tube.”
“True. I admit, I don’t understand it.”
“Did the Immari treat you with something?”
“No. Or, I don’t think so. But, actua
lly, I was treated… I got blood from someone who was in the tubes — Kate. I was wounded in Tibet. I lost a lot of blood, and she… saved my life.”
Patrick nodded and paced the corridor. “That’s interesting.” He glanced over at the goo-covered wounds on David’s chest and leg. “The wounds were cleaned, but I thought they were gunshot wounds. How did you get them?”
“Dorian Sloane.”
“So he’s joined the Immari and continued the family legacy. Little devil was growing more evil by the day in 1985. He was 15 then.”
“He hasn’t slowed down. I’m ready.” David said.
Patrick led the way again, resuming a brisk, but somewhat slower pace. Up ahead, a set of double doors that had never opened before cracked and slid aside as they approached. “It’s exciting — opening passages that were closed yesterday. Listen to me, I sound like the fools who hired me during the War.”
David shook his head. “The War.”
“What?”
“It’s nothing. It’s just strange to hear ‘The War’ in reference to World War I. These days it means the war in Afghanistan.”
Patrick stopped. “The Soviets? We’re at war—”
“Oh, no, they’ve been gone since ‘89. Actually, the Soviet Union doesn’t even exist anymore.”
“Who then?”
“Al Qaeda, or actually, now it’s the Taliban, a… a radical Islamic tribe of sorts.”
“America is at war with an Afghan tribe…”
“Yeah, it’s a, uh, long story—”
The lights in the corridor flickered, then went out. Both men froze.