The Atlantis Gene: A Thriller (30 page)

Dorian paused and paced the stage, scanning the faces.

“Here’s what I can tell you. Immari Corporation is the descendant, the modern incarnation, of a tribe of people that left this area, we believe somewhere in India, Pakistan, or possibly even Tibet, around 12,000 years ago. We’re not sure the exact date, but we know it was some time shortly after the last ice age, when the flood waters raised sea levels hundreds of feet, destroying the world’s coastal communities. This group had one goal: to uncover the true origins and history of the human race. These were people of great faith, and we believe they created religion in their quest for answers. But as time passed and humanity progressed, a new avenue of investigation emerged: science. And science remains the core of our work today. Some of you have seen small parts of this grand operation: archaeological digs, research projects, genetic experiments. It is our great work. But what we found, we never could have imagined. I’m reaching the end of what I can tell you, but you must know this: many years ago, we discovered a clear and present danger to the human race. A threat beyond belief. We have known for almost 100 years that a day would come when we had to battle this enemy. That day has arrived. Each one of you is a soldier in the army that will stop this coming apocalypse. The next two days and what follows will be difficult. I’m not talking about a brush fire conflict in a backwater country. This will be a battle for the human race, for our very right to survive. We have one goal: humanity’s survival.”

Dorian retreated to the center of the stage, letting the audience take the speech in. There were confused looks, but there was also engagement, heads nodding.

“Questions are surfacing in your mind. Why can’t we go public? Why not enlist the help of governments around the world? I wish we could, truly. It would ease my conscience about what has to be done. Indeed, your conscience is the other enemy you will fight in the days to come. And going public would also lift the burden, the proverbial weight of the world — knowing we weren’t the last line of defense, that help was coming, that there were others battling the enemy, that we could fail. But we cannot fail, just as we cannot reveal the details of the threat. It’s the same reason I can’t tell you all the details, why I can’t sit here and justify every last thing I’m about to ask you to do, though I wish I could. If we went public, the result would be mass panic, hysteria, a meltdown of society at the very instant we must stay intact. There are seven billion people on this planet. Imagine if they knew we were facing extinction. Our goal is to save the lives we can. There won’t be a lot of them, but if we all do our part, we can ensure that the human race survives. Those are the stakes. And we aren’t just facing the great threat. There are other, smaller obstacles. Governments, media, intelligence agencies. We can’t beat them, but we can hold them at bay long enough for our plan to work. And that’s what we must set about doing, right now. The packets my men are passing out are your assignments — subgroups, responsibilities, your marching orders. The actions are drastic, but so is our situation.”

Dorian squared on the crowd. “I am a soldier. I was born into this. I’ve dedicated my life to this cause. My father gave his life for this cause. Our cause. But I know you are not a soldier. You’ve been drafted, but I won’t ask you to do what you’re not capable of doing. That would be cruel, and I am not a cruel man. Immari is not a cruel organization. If, at any point, you cannot participate in the operation that follows, you can simply inform one of the Immari Security agents in my personal unit. There’s no shame in it. We are all links in a chain. If one link breaks, the chain breaks and then disaster happens. And that’s what this is all about — preventing disaster, no matter how it may seem. I thank you, and I wish you good luck.”

An Immari Security agent greeted Dorian as he exited the stage. “Great speech, boss.”

“Don’t patronize me. You need to keep a close eye on these people. Any one of them could sink the entire operation. Where are we on the primary task force?”

“The Immari components are assembling at the Clocktower Station HQ. The Clocktower agents are in the crowd. They should arrive when we do.”

“Good. Give everyone thirty minutes to compile their intel, then convene the group. Where are we on the trains?”

“We should have the roster of live and dead within the hour.”

“Speed it up. I want to have it for the meeting.”

CHAPTER 69

Milo swung the lantern back behind him, illuminating the stone steps. “Not much farther, Dr. Kate.”

They had descended the spiral stone staircase for what felt like an hour. Kate thought they must be at the center of the mountain or a mile below the monastery by now. Milo skipped down the stairs, carrying the lantern like a kid carrying a candy bag on Halloween night, never tiring, never stopping to rest. Kate’s legs burned. She hadn’t yet recovered from yesterday’s exertion. She dreaded the return trip up the stairs.

Up ahead, Milo had stopped again, waiting for her, but this time he stood on level ground — a large round opening at the base of the stairs. Finally. He stepped back and held the lantern out, illuminating a wooden tombstone-shaped door with a rounded top.

Kate waited for a moment, wondering if he was simply waiting on her again.

“Please go in, Dr. Kate. He’s waiting on you.”

Kate nodded and opened the door, revealing a cramped circular room. The walls were covered in maps and shelves that held glass bottles, figurines, and metal artifacts. The room was… medieval, like the ancient lab in the tower of a castle where someone with a name like Merlin or Archimedes might work. And there was a sorcerer in the room, or at least he looked like one. An old man sat at a shabby wooden desk, reading. He turned his neck slowly as if it pained him. He was Asian; his hair was long since gone, and his face was more wrinkled than any Kate had ever seen. He must have been more than 100 years old.

“Dr. Warner.” His voice was a whisper. He stood and ambled toward Kate, leaning heavily on his wooden cane.

“Mister…”

“There are no misters here, my dear girl.” He paused. Walking and talking were too taxing for him. He stared patiently at the stone floor while he gathered his breath. “Call me Qian. I have something for you. Something I’ve waited 75 years to give you. But first, I have something to show you. Could you help me with the door?” He motioned to a small wooden door Kate hadn’t seen before. It was no more than four feet tall. Kate opened the door and was relieved to see that the passage beyond was taller than the doorway. She waited at the door as Qian paced past her, stopping every few feet. How long had it taken him to get down here?

Kate looked into the corridor and was surprised to find that it was illuminated by modern LED lights. And it was short — no more than fifteen feet long. It seemed to dead end into a stone wall. It took Qian several minutes to reach the door, and when he did, he gestured toward a wooden button on the wall.

Kate pressed the button, and the stone wall began to rise up, like a false wall in an Indiana Jones movie. Kate felt air blowing past her feet, rushing into the room. It must have been sealed.

She followed Qian into the room, which was square, approximately forty feet by forty feet. It was empty except for a large rug laying in the center of the room, which must have been at least thirty feet by thirty feet. Kate glanced to the ceiling and saw a thin linen cloth that covered the entire area of the room. Above the cloth, she could see another identical cloth, and beyond that, another as far as she could see, like layers of mosquito net reaching to the top of the mountain. A method to wick away moisture? Possibly, but Kate saw something else — tiny pieces of dirt and rock, caught in the cloth.

Qian nodded toward the rug. “This is the treasure we protect here. Our heritage. We have paid a dear price for it.” He cleared his throat and continued speaking slowly. “When I was young, men came to my village. They wore military uniforms. I didn’t know it at the time, but they were Nazi uniforms. These men sought a group of monks who lived in the mountains beyond my village. No one would talk about these monks. I didn’t know any better. The men paid me and some other children to take them there. The monks were not afraid of these men, but they should have been. The men who had been kind in our village turned ruthless in the mountains. They searched the monastery, tortured the men, and finally set fire to the mountain.”

Qian paused again, gathering his breath. “My friends were dead, and they were searching the monastery for me. And then they found me. One of the soldiers took me in his arms and carried me through the monastery into a tunnel. Three monks were waiting there. The man told them that I was the only survivor. He handed me a journal and said that I had to keep it safe until the time was right. The three monks left that night with only the clothes on their backs and this tapestry.” Qian settled his gaze on the massive work of art — some sort of biblical story with gods, heroes, monsters, heavens, light, blood, fire, and water.

Kate stood silently. In the back of her mind, she wondered what this had to do with her. She suppressed the urge to say, “Looks great, now can I use your computer?”

“And now you are wondering what this has to do with you.”

Kate blushed and tossed her head to the side. “No, I mean, it’s beautiful…” And it was. The colors were bold, as vivid as any fresco in a Catholic church, and the threads added depth to the depictions. “But, the man I came here with — he and I are in danger.”

“You and Andrew are not the only ones.”

Before Kate could speak, Qian continued with an unexpected strength in his voice. “Your enemy is the same group that burned that monastery 75 years ago and the same that will unleash an unthinkable evil very soon. That is what the tapestry depicts. Understanding it and the journal are the keys to stopping them. I have clung to life for 75 years, waiting, hoping the day would come when I would fulfill my destiny; and yesterday, when I learned what had happened in China, I knew it had come.” Qian reached inside his robe, and with a frail hand, offered Kate a small leather-bound book.

He motioned toward the tapestry. “What do you see, my child?”

Kate studied the richly colored images. Angels, gods, fire, water, blood, light, sun. “Some sort of religious depiction?”

“Religion is our desperate attempt to understand our world. And our past. We live in darkness, surrounded by mysteries. Where did we come from? What is our purpose? What will happen to us after we die? Religion also gives us something more: a code of conduct, a blueprint of right and wrong, a guide to human decency. Just like any other tool, it can be misused. But this document was created long before man found solace in his religions.”

“How?”

“We believe it was created from oral traditions.”

“A legend?”

“Perhaps. But we believe it is a document of both history and prophecy. A depiction of events before man’s awakening and tragedies yet to come. We call it the epic of the four floods.” Qian pointed to the upper right-hand corner of the tapestry.

Kate followed his finger and studied the image — naked beasts, no humans, in a sparse forest or an African savanna. The people are running, fleeing a darkness descending from the sky — a blanket of ashes that suffocates them and kills the plant life. Just below that, they are alone in a barren, dead wilderness. Then a light emerges, leads them out, and a protector is talking to the savages, giving them a cup with blood in it.

Qian clears his throat. “The savior knows that he cannot always be there to save them. He shares a cup with his own blood to protect them. The first scene is the Flood of Fire. A flood that almost destroyed the world, almost buried man in ashes and tore all the food from the world.”

“A creation myth.” Kate whispered. All major religions had some form of creation myth, a history of how God created man in his image.

“This is no myth. This is a historical document.” Qian’s tone was gentle, like a teacher or a parent. “Notice that man already existed before the flood of fire, living as beasts in the forest. The flood would have killed them, but the savior merely protected them. But he cannot always be there to save them. And so he gives them the greatest gift of all: his blood; a gift that will keep them safe.”

In the back of Kate’s mind, she thought: The Toba Catastrophe and The Great Leap Forward. Blood. A genetic mutation — a change in brain wiring — that gave humanity a survival advantage, helping them brave the sea of ashes falling from the Toba Super Volcano 70,000 years ago. The Flood of Fire. Could it be?

Kate skipped down the tapestry. The scene was strange. The men from the forest seemed to have transformed into ninjas, or spirits. They wore clothes, and they had begun slaughtering beasts. The scene grew bloody, the horrors growing with every inch of tapestry. Slavery, murder, war.

“This gift made man smart, and strong, and safe from extinction, but he paid a great price. For the first time, he saw the world as it truly was, and he saw dangers all around him — in the beasts of the forest and in his fellow man. As a beast, he had lived in a world of bliss, acting on his instincts, thinking only when he had to, never seeing himself for what he was, never worrying about his mortality, never trying to cheat death. But now his thoughts and fears ruled him. He knew evil for the first time. Your Sigmund Freud came very close to describing these concepts with his id and ego. Man transformed into a Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde. He struggled with his beast-mind, his animal instincts. Passion, rage — no matter how much we evolve, man can’t escape these instincts — our heritage as beasts. We can only hope to control the beast inside us. Man also longed to understand his waking mind, with its fears, dreams, and questions of where he came from and what his destiny was. And most of all, he dreamed of cheating death. He built communities on the coast and committed untold atrocities to ensure his own safety and seek immortality, in his deeds or through some magic or alchemy. The coast is the natural place for man; it’s how we survived the flood of fire; sea life was our food source when the land was scorched. But his reign was short-lived.”