“Dorian also died twice in Antarctica, if the reports are true. Ares could have filled in the blanks.”
“Yes… that is possible. Ares could have easily added additional memories, even shown them to Dorian during his resurrection there. As for Kate, the memories, in the recesses of her mind, they would have exerted some influence, steered her decisions, like subconscious cues.” He paced away from David. “She became a geneticist, intent on studying abnormalities in brain wiring. Subconsciously, she was grasping for a way to stabilize the Atlantis Gene and complete her work. It is quite a story.” Janus was deep in thought, seemingly somewhere else.
“So… what happened to you?” David asked, for lack of anything else to say.
“Nothing. For thirteen thousand years, nothing happened to me. I thought my attempts at escape and resurrecting my dead companion had failed. My last option was to kill myself in my section and program my own resurrection in the other compartment. But I was unable to do it. I had seen what had become of those from my home world who had died a violent death, the people in the tubes in Antarctica, those trapped in perpetual purgatory. So I went into the tube, and I remained there for thirteen thousand years, waiting, hoping something would change.”
David knew instantly what “the change” was. In Antarctica, David had held off Dorian and his men, allowing Kate and her father to escape. Her father had exploded two nuclear devices in Gibraltar, shattering the piece of the lander he had unearthed. “The nuclear blasts.”
“Yes. They moved the section I was in closer to northern Africa. Morocco and Ceuta specifically. I immediately activated my link to the ship. I saw what had happened in Gibraltar, then I connected to Antarctica and watched the footage there. I knew you had sacrificed your life to save a man, a woman, and two boys. The other man, who I did not know was Dorian at the time, had been far less gallant. You observed the Human Code, our morality. You had a respect for human life. I knew Ares, and I knew what would happen next. You and Dorian were enemies. He would have you fight to the death and take the winner. I decided to download your data feed. I had to reveal my avatar, momentarily, to capture your radiation signature. The rest you know. Upon your death, you awakened in the part of the ship I had been confined to. I programmed the tubes to self-destruct—to ensure you went forward, venturing out.”
“Why? What did you think I could do?”
“Save lives. I saw what kind of man you were. I knew what you would do. And you did something else, something more: you led me to a cure.”
“You couldn’t have known,” David said.
“No. I had no idea. For the first time in thirteen thousand years, my part of the ship was near land. I could escape. The world I found horrified me, especially the Immari. I am, however, a scientist and a pragmatist. I was not aware of Continuity at this point. From what I could see, the Immari were conducting the most advanced genetic experiments. I joined them, hoping to use their knowledge, to find a cure.”
“Your cure. It’s a fake, isn’t it?”
“It is quite real.”
“What does it do?” David demanded.
Janus glanced at the stone box that lay at the edge of the soft yellow light from the cube. “It corrects a mistake, an act I failed to stop a very long time ago.”
“Speak English.”
Janus ignored David’s order. He simply stared at the box. “The alpha was the last piece I needed. I can’t believe they saved it across the ages.”
“Last piece of what?”
“A therapy that will roll back all of our genetic updates—everything, including the Atlantis Gene. The remaining humans on this planet will be as they were when we found them.”
CHAPTER 92
Somewhere off the coast of Italy
Dorian’s last jab had hit Kate in the heart, he knew it. He knew her. She was so vulnerable, so easy to manipulate. He could play her like a piano.
Her eyes were closed now, but he knew she was thinking of him.
He leaned his head back against the seat cushion, and the helicopter faded away, as if he were falling down a well. He couldn’t stop the memory.
He stood in a room with seven doors. He held a rifle.
A door opened, and someone wearing an environmental suit ran in carrying another person. Dorian fired at the limp body the runner was carrying. The blast ripped it to pieces and threw both of them back against the doors.
The live one squirmed, struggling to hold the dead body. Dorian closed the distance and raised his rifle. The figure rose. Dorian fired, hitting the suit dead in the middle, but his target was already through another door. He had escaped.
Dorian considered pursuing. He ran back to the control panel and worked it with his fingers. No. His enemy was in a part of the ship in Gibraltar that offered no escape. Serves him right—an eternity in a tomb below the sea.
Dorian manipulated the controls, programming one of the portal doors to take him to the scientists’ deep-space vessel. He had the genetic therapy he needed to complete the transformation. Once he had the ship, he would have revenge for his people.
The control panel froze. Dorian stared at it. The scientists had locked their vessel down. Very clever. They were quite smart; but he was smarter.
He walked out of the room with the bank of doors and down the hallway. Dorian knew this hallway. He had seen it before. A door hissed open.
The same room. Three suits hung here now, and there were three cases on the small bench.
He put on a suit and took two of the cases.
He stalked out of the room, to a lab. He programmed the cases, then picked up a silver cylinder that contained the final therapy.
He donned the suit and exited the ship.
The area outside was an ice cathedral, just as he had seen before.
He set the case down and tapped a few places on his arm, on a control panel built into the suit. Slowly, the case changed. It seemed to flow together, and then the silver-white fluid that had been an alloy swirled at the ground and moved higher, swaying back and forth, like a cobra emerging from a basket. Two arms separated from the silver column, then clashed together. Tendrils reached across until the glowing door was complete. Instinctively, Dorian knew what it was: a wormhole. A gateway to the exact point he needed to reach.
Dorian stepped through.
He stood on a mountaintop. No, it was more than a mountain. A volcano. Tidal waves of liquid rock burned and churned below. A tropical paradise spread out across the islands that surrounded it.
He held the cylinder out, then dropped it into the soup of liquid rock.