Kate opened her eyes. She was in a steel room that held four standing tubes. A Neanderthal stood motionless in one. She was in Gibraltar, in the chamber her father had found in 1918. This was the last memory, the one she hadn't quite been able to reach. Seeing Dorian, his words, had triggered it.

"Did you hear me?" the voice called again.

A video appeared inside Kate's helmet. A head in a helmet just like hers: Ja.n.u.s. He was the other member of the Atlantean science team, her partner.

"Did you-"

"I heard you," Kate said. She was leaning against a table at the center of the room. She turned around to face Ja.n.u.s. She had to tell him.

"I-" she stammered. "Yes, Ares has betrayed us-"

Another blast rocked the ship.

"-But I helped him." Inside her helmet, the video feed of Ja.n.u.s disappeared, and she again stared at the mirrored reflection from his helmet. Apparently Ja.n.u.s didn't want Kate to see his reaction. "He told me he wanted to help. To make them safe. All of us," she added quickly.

"He used you-and our research. He must have the gene therapy he needs to build his army."

Kate watched Ja.n.u.s pace across the room to a control panel. He worked it quickly.

"What are you doing?" Kate asked.

"Ares will try to take the primary ship. He needs it to transport his army. I have locked it down."

Kate nodded. On her helmet display, she watched the commands scroll by. Each line seemed to bring more memories, more comprehension. The ship they stood in now was simply a local lander. They had come here on a larger science ship, capable of deep s.p.a.ce travel. Their protocol was always minimal footprint and minimal visibility. They didn't need the ship while they were conducting experiments on the planet's surface, and they didn't want it to be seen. They had hidden it on the opposite side of the planet's only moon, burying it deep. The portal doors on the lander provided instant access to the ship if they ever needed it, but Ja.n.u.s's commands were locking the ship down now-it would be closed to any remote control from Gibraltar or Antarctica. They couldn't get back to the ship now and neither could Ares, at least not through a portal door.

Ja.n.u.s continued manipulating the controls. "I'm going to set some traps as well, in case Ares does somehow make it to the ship."

Kate watched the commands scroll by. Another explosion rocked the ship, this one much more violent than the last.

Ja.n.u.s paused. "The ship is breaking up. It will be ripped apart."

Kate stood there, not sure what to do.

"Has Ares administered his therapy yet? Has he transformed them?"

Kate tried to think. "I don't know. I don't think so."

Ja.n.u.s worked the panel feverishly. Kate saw a series of DNA sequences flash by. The computer was running simulations.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"The ship is going to be destroyed. The primitives will find it. I am modifying the time-dilation devices at the perimeter to emit radiation that will roll back all our therapies. They will be as they were before we found them, before the first therapy."

That was it-the Bell was Ja.n.u.s's attempt to reverse all the Atlanteans' genetic interventions. Except, in this memory, thirteen thousand years ago, when Ja.n.u.s was programming the Bell, he was looking at the wrong genome. The primitives, as he called them, wouldn't find the ship until 1918, when Kate's father would dig it up under the Bay of Gibraltar. Ja.n.u.s wasn't counting on the time difference, the delay in finding the Bell, the genetic changes that would occur. And Kate knew there would be two very big changes-the "deltas" from Martin's chronology, the two outbreaks of plague in the sixth and thirteenth century. Yes, those must have been Ares's interventions, the administration of the therapy Kate had helped him create. Why had it come so late? Why had he waited twelve thousand years? Where had he been? And where had Ja.n.u.s been? He was alive here in the past and he had been there in the future.

The ship shuddered again, throwing Kate against the wall. Her head slammed into the helmet and her body went limp. She couldn't see anything. She heard footsteps. Ja.n.u.s's voice echoed in her helmet, but she couldn't make out the words. She felt him lift her up and carry her.

CHAPTER 91.

St. Paul's Catacombs

Rabat, Malta

David switched on a lantern and focused on Ja.n.u.s. "Answers. I want to know what we're dealing with here."

Ja.n.u.s glanced at the rounded stone tunnel the hovering cube was slowly carving.

"Very well. We have a bit of time. Submit your first question."

Where do I start? David thought. "You saved me. How and why?"

"The how is beyond your scientific grasp-"

"Well dumb it down for my primitive hominin brain, which apparently seventy thousand years of Atlantean intervention hasn't perfected."

"Clearly. The how is somewhat related to the why. I shall start there. I will also need to give you a bit of background. I said before that you did not actually see me in Antarctica. You saw my avatar. Have you surmised why?"

"You were in Gibraltar."

"Yes. Very good, Mr. Vale. Your Dr. Grey actually figured out a great deal of the Atlantean history on this planet. It was shocking for me to read his chronology. It was quite accurate, despite the gaps in his knowledge, things he could not know."

"Such as?"

"What he described as 'A$ falls'-the fall of Atlantis, the destruction of our ship off the coast of Gibraltar. It was an attack. As you know, there were two of us. Scientists who had traveled the galaxies studying human evolution on countless human worlds."

"Incredible," David mumbled.

"This world, your species, is what is incredible. Our species is old. Long ago, we turned our focus to other worlds, and in particular, to any world that harbored human life. It became our obsession. One question in particular dominated our expeditions, the greatest question of all: where did we come from?"

"Evolution-"

"Is only the biological process. There is much more to the story; your science will reveal that one day. You already know that the universe supports the emergence of human life. In fact, the universe is strictly programmed for it. If any of the constants were even slightly different-gravity, the strength of electromagnetism, the dimensions in s.p.a.ce-time-any of them, there would no human life. There are only two possibilities: either human life emerged because the laws of the universe support it by random chance; or the alternative: the universe was created to foster human life."

David considered Ja.n.u.s's statement.

"Our first a.s.sumption was that it was merely chance; that we existed because we were simply one of an infinite number of biological possibilities in an infinite number of universes that exist in the multiverse. Our theory was that we exist, because mathematically we must exist in some universe, given that there are infinite possible universes and we are a finite possible outcome. We exist in this universe because it is the only one our brains are capable of being aware of."

"Yeah." David had no idea what else to say to that.

"Then we made a discovery that altered our understanding, made us question our a.s.sumptions. We discovered a quantum ent.i.ty, a subatomic substance pervading the universe. It was the greatest discovery in our existence. The accepted consensus was that this quantum ent.i.ty was simply another universal constant, something that must exist in our universe to give rise to human life. But a group of us began to delve deeper into the mystery. Through thousands of years of practice, we learned to access this quantum ent.i.ty, but we hit a wall-"

David held his hand up. "Okay, you got me. I give. I have no idea what a quantum ent.i.ty is."

"Are you familiar with quantum entanglement?"

"Uh, no."

"Very well. Let me just say that we discovered that all humans are linked through the quantum ent.i.ty. Some members of our society with an especially strong connection can even use the link to communicate over distances."

David's mind flashed to the dreams he'd shared with Kate.

"You find this hard to believe, Mr. Vale?"

"No. Actually, I do believe it. Go on."

"We call this quantum ent.i.ty that links all humans the Origin Ent.i.ty. Investigating its creation, our creation, is our great work. We call it 'The Origin Mystery.' We believe the Origin Ent.i.ty exerts influence over the entire universe, that it is both the origin point and the final destination for human consciousness."

Milo nodded. "This is the creation story you gave us."

"Yes," Ja.n.u.s said. "Your minds had advanced so far, so quickly. You craved answers, in particular about your existence. We gave you the only answers we had, though we modified them so that you might understand them. And we gave you our code-a moral blueprint: practices that we have found bring us closer to the Origin Ent.i.ty, practices we have found enhance the link, tying humans closer to each other and the harmony the Origin Ent.i.ty offers. We also emphasized that every human life is valuable; every human is connected to the Origin Ent.i.ty and could reveal more about the mystery." Ja.n.u.s paused. "Much of our message has been lost over the ages, however."

"Some still believe," Milo said.

"Yes, clearly. Ultimately, our mission here has failed, but it began with such promise. In all the years of our investigations of the Origin Mystery, we had never seen a species like yours. We monitor all the human worlds. As a historian, you will appreciate this, Mr. Vale. On this planet, a relatively minor geological event three and a half million years ago caused a cataclysm that directly led to the emergence of humanity. Three and a half million years ago, the collision of two tectonic plates elevated the seafloor of what is now the western Caribbean, forming the Isthmus of Panama. For the first time, the Atlantic and Pacific were separated, preventing the large-scale mixing of their waters. This set off a chain reaction that led to an ice age on this planet, which it's still in. In West Africa, the jungles began to shrink. A number of species of higher-order primates lived in the trees there during this period. In the following years, savannas gradually replaced the lush jungles, driving those primates down from the trees and onto the gra.s.slands. The sources of their vegetarian diet were largely gone. Many perished, but a small group took another path: they adapted. They ventured out onto the vast plains and began hunting new sources of food. For the first time, they ate meat, and it changed their brains. So did hunting. These primates, these prehistoric survivalists, grew smarter than any primates before them. They eventually made primitive stone tools and hunted in packs. This pattern-of climate disruption, of near-extinction in a rapidly changing environment, and then rebound, of adapting-would come to be the hallmark pattern that repeats itself over and over again during your species' march to its current state. We came here to study you when you were still in your infancy, hoping a species with such a meteoric rise, evolutionarily speaking, could reveal something new about the Origin Mystery.

"We followed all of our usual precautions. We deployed a Beacon that followed the planet's...o...b..t."

"A beacon?"

"A shroud-to keep anyone from seeing your development and to keep you from seeing any other human worlds. What you call the Fermi Paradox-the fact that human worlds must be abundant, yet you have found none-is actually a result of the Beacon. It filters the light you can see, and the light your world emits to anyone outside the shroud. We also followed all the other procedures. We buried our ship-"

"In Antarctica?" David asked.

"No. That's a different ship. I'll explain momentarily. We typically hide our deep-s.p.a.ce vessel in a local asteroid belt or, in this case, a moon-for added security, just in case a probe gets by the Beacon. The universe is a dangerous place, and we have no desire to call attention to our subjects or ourselves. We deployed our lander to the surface and remained here. Our routine remained the same after that, just as it was on other planets: we collected samples, a.n.a.lyzed our results, and hibernated, awakening only at regular intervals to repeat our process. However, one hundred thousand years ago, we were awakened early by a distress call. Our home world was under attack. Another message followed shortly after. Our world had fallen in a day and a night to an enemy of unimaginable strength. We were instructed to remain on a shrouded world for our own safety. We believed that our enemy would hunt any remaining Atlanteans to the end of the universe. Our fear was that the Armageddon would extend to all humans, across all human worlds. The next event you know well. Seventy thousand years ago, a supervolcano in present-day Indonesia erupted, spewing ash into the sky and causing a volcanic winter that brought your species to the brink of extinction. The population alarms awoke my partner and me from hibernation. It was our greatest fear. We thought that we could be the last of our species: two scientists who could never go home. And we were watching what could be the extinction of some of the last humans our enemy had not yet found. So my partner made a fateful decision."

"To give us the Atlantis Gene."

"Yes. She did it without my knowledge or consent. She claimed it was an experiment, to provide you with the survival gene, to see how you would fare. It was already done, and I went along.

"Approximately twenty thousand years after she administered the Atlantis Gene, another vessel from our world arrived. It landed in Antarctica, where it has remained under the ice since. The vessel contains the last of our people."

"What is it?"

"A tomb-you were right about that. But it is much more. It is a resurrection ship. On our world, every person is allowed a life of a hundred years. There are exceptions, such as for deep-s.p.a.ce explorers such as myself. We have mastered medical science, but accidents happen. In those events, our citizens resurrect in these vessels."

"That's what they are?" David asked. "Dead Atlanteans?"

"Yes. Ma.s.sacred when our home world was attacked. All except for one. Occasionally, our people vote to have a citizen to be archived. Someone of great achievement. It is a cultural honor. The person archived in that vessel was General Ares. He is a relic of our past, something we have moved on from. He was saved as a reminder. He is our most famous soldier. During the attack, somehow he got the ship off our home world. He brought it here."

"The others in the vessel in Antarctica... they can't wake up? Exit the tubes?"

"They can. However, we are now a non-violent species. The attack on our world, the brutality, the carnage... the tubes can only heal physical wounds. The people in Antarctica can awaken, but they retain their memories, down to the last agonizing second they died. It would be too cruel to awaken them. Their minds are wired a bit differently from yours. Psychologically, the trauma they endured is too great. They cannot escape the memories of what happened to them. They exist in a constant state of purgatory, unable to die permanently, unable to rise again."

David wouldn't have believed it, but he had experienced it-death and resurrection in the tube. Dorian had shot and killed him; and he had awoken, in a new body, an exact replica. "That's what happened to me, how I awoke in the tube after Dorian killed me. It was just like the people from your home world."

"Yes."

"How does it work? Resurrection?"

"The science is rather complex-"

"Dumb it down for me. I want to understand." David glanced at the cube, which still wasn't quite out of sight. "We have time."

"Very well. The piece of genetic technology you call the Atlantis Gene actually performs several functions. The most relevant, in this instance, is organizing radiation from the body into a data stream. Every human body emits radiation. The Atlantis Gene turns those isotopes into a cellular blueprint, a download of your body, including the cells in your brain, which contain your memories, up to the second you died."

"The second time Dorian killed me, I awoke in the Gibraltar ship. How?"

"That is where our stories intersect, Mr. Vale. When the resurrection ship arrived, forty thousand years ago, we had already given humans the Atlantis Gene. Ares was keenly interested. He saw in humans an opportunity, a chance to build a new army, to fight back against our enemy. He insisted that the Atlantis Gene put you in danger, made you a target for our adversary. He convinced my partner. She colluded with him behind my back, modifying the therapy, looking for a way to increase your survival abilities. I observed the changes and was suspicious. I knew your species was advancing far too rapidly, but of course we had never tampered with another species in this way. I didn't know what to expect. And I never imagined she had betrayed me. But I know why she did it: guilt, for something she did on our home world, an act that led to our demise."

"What-"

"That is a story for another time. Here on Earth, Ares had what he needed: the final gene therapy to create his army. He tried to destroy the lander, and us with it-that was what happened off the coast of Gibraltar. The ship was split into pieces. We a.s.sumed his next move would be to commandeer our s.p.a.ce vessel. He needs it to transport his army. I locked it down, preventing anyone from either the lander or Antarctica from reaching it. I also set a series of alarms and countermeasures. But our lander off the coast of Gibraltar was coming apart quickly. My partner was knocked out. I picked her up and carried her to the only place I could go."

"Antarctica."

"Yes. And Ares was waiting on me. He shot and killed her. Of course he had disabled resurrection for both of us in Antarctica. That was his plan. He shot me too, in the chest, but I stumbled back through the portal. I emerged in a different part of the lander in Gibraltar."

David's mind raced. Yes. In the room where he had resurrected the second time, there was a damaged suit. "The suit on the floor."

Ja.n.u.s nodded. "It was mine. When I escaped to that section, my first move was to seal the lander off from Antarctica, to protect myself. Then I managed to reach the tube-one of the ones you resurrected in. After I was healed, I took stock. My situation was dire. The shard of the ship I found myself in was now deep underwater and far away from the coast. If I exited, I would drown long before I reached the surface, and I had no way to replicate anything with an oxygen tank." He glanced at David. "The Immari colonel's uniform I replicated for you was much more simple."

"How did you-"

"I will come to it," Ja.n.u.s said, holding his hand up. "I was trapped. And alone. My partner was dead, and to my surprise, my thoughts went first to her. Resurrection is a closely regulated technology. A death sequence, sent via the radiation from the Atlantis Gene, is impossible to fake, as it must be: imagine the implications of waking to find you have a double. I tried at first to force her resurrection, to trick the system into thinking she had died. The true death sequence had been sent to the ship in Antarctica, and Ares had deleted it. My entire strategy was to fake her death to the computer in my section and have her resurrect in the part of the ship closest to the sh.o.r.e-so that she could escape and, hopefully, stop Ares. I tried everything. I failed. However, thirteen thousand years later, I succeeded, in a way. In 1918, Patrick Pierce placed his dying wife in the tube, and Kate inside her. The computer must have executed the resurrection sequence then; but the child did not mature as a normal resurrection fetus would-it was confined by the mother's body. Yet once removed from the mother, the child, Kate, began to grow-and, it seems that now, her memories have returned. Those memories from my partner have lain dormant in Kate's mind all this time. Remarkable."

"But how does Dorian have Ares's memories?"

Ja.n.u.s shook his head. "As I said, I was desperate. I tried everything. I must have authorized any resurrection. Ares had joined our expedition and we had his radiation signature and memories. But... the memories would have ended thousands of-"

"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." Ja.n.u.s was deep in thought, seemingly somewhere else.