The first kinetic bombardment hit about a mile away from the lander. The shockwave a second later threw Paul, Mary, Milo, and Kate into the far wall. On the screen, an eruption of dust and debris, some from the ruined city, rose into the air.
Through the cloud, Paul saw a new fleet of ships arrive. They were triangular, and the second they cleared the blue and white portal, they broke apart and attacked the sentinels, thousands of triangles darting to and through the spheres, firing, shattering the black objects, sending wreckage into the atmosphere.
Even through the distortion of the dust, the battle was the most awesome thing Paul had ever seen. He almost forgot about the kinetic bombardments barreling down on them.
From the outer corridor, he heard the thunder of footsteps.
He turned to face the door, crowding Mary and Milo behind him. Kate was several feet away, unconscious.
He braced as the flood of intruders broke across the threshold of the communications bay. Soldiers, in battle armor head to toe. Helmets hid their faces, but they were humanoid. They rushed forward, injecting each person with something. Paul tried to struggle with them, but his limbs went limp. Darkness closed from the sides of his vision, then consumed him.
Paul awoke in a different place; a comfortable bed in a bright room. He surveyed it quickly: pictures of landscapes on the wall, plants, a round table with a pitcher of water, a sitting area, a desk with a wood top and metal legs. It was like a hotel suite. He got up and walked out of the bedroom and into the sitting area. A series of windows revealed a fleet of triangular ships, thousands of them, in formation.
The double doors slid open with a hiss, and a man strode in, his footfalls silent on the thin carpet. He was taller than Paul, his features chiseled, his skin smooth, his black hair close-cropped, like a military haircut. The doors closed, and the man tapped something on his forearm. Had he just locked the door?
“I’m Perseus.”
Paul was surprised: the man spoke English.
“The injection we gave you enables you to understand our language.”
“I see. I’m Paul Brenner. Thank you for rescuing us.”
“Welcome. We received your signal.”
“I didn’t send it.”
Perseus’ demeanor changed. “You didn’t?”
“Well, I didn’t. The woman I was with, the sick one, did.”
Perseus nodded. “We’re working on her. There was some debate about whether the signal was another trap, another false distress call. That’s what took us so long.”
“I understand.” Paul had no idea what he was talking about. The fact that he was talking to an alien on an alien space vessel was just starting to dawn on him. His nervousness grew by the second. He tried to sound casual. “The woman’s name is Dr. Kate Warner. She can help you.”
“How?”
“She’s a scientist, and she’s seen the memories of an Atlantean scientist. Isis. She can make you safe from the sentinels.”
Skepticism spread across Perseus’ face. “Impossible.”
“It’s true. She’s designed a gene therapy that will make the sentinels ignore you. This therapy will save you.”
Perseus smiled, but there was no warmth. “A scientist told the Exiles that once before, a long time ago. And we were much better off then. The timing is also very curious. A few hours ago, a new fleet of sentinels attacked our ships. We live in space now. We’ve tried to settle dozens of worlds, but the sentinels always find us. We’ve become nomads, constantly running. The new fleet of sentinels that appeared today is relentless, and their numbers seem limitless. They know how to fight us. It’s as if they were built to fight us, not the Serpentine Army. They’ve defeated us at every battle. We believe this is the final offensive that will annihilate us. You can understand my suspicion. A scientist offers a genetic therapy that can save us? On the day of our demise?”
Paul swallowed hard. “I can’t prove anything I’ve said. I can’t keep you from killing me, but what I’ve said is true. You can trust me, and we can all have a chance at surviving, or you can turn away, and we’ll all die. Either way, there’s another woman in my group. She’s not sick. She and I… I’d like to see her before I die.”
Perseus studied him for a moment. “You’re either a great liar or superb agent. Follow me.”
Paul followed the man through the corridors, which were the utter opposite of the Atlantean ships. They were well-lit and teaming with people scurrying from one door to another. Some carried pads they studied, others talked hurriedly. To Paul, the feeling was of the CDC on an outbreak day. A crisis situation.
“This is the second fleet flagship. We’re coordinating the civilian fleet defense.”
Perseus led Paul into what he thought was a clinic or a research lab. Through a wide glass window, he saw Kate, lying on a table, several robotic arms hovering around her cranial area.
“She has resurrection syndrome,” Perseus said.
“Yes. She risked her life to see the Atlantean scientist’s memories. That’s how she found out about your people and the gene therapy.” Paul stepped forward and peered through the window. “Can you save her?”
“We don’t know. We’ve been studying resurrection syndrome for tens of thousands of years, since the siege of our homeworld. When we attacked, we assumed that anyone we killed would simply resurrect after the battle. Our goal was to find the sentinel control station, disable the sentinels, then help rebuild our former world with the citizens returning from the resurrection tubes. During the invasion, we learned that resurrection syndrome was occurring for one hundred percent of those we killed. None of them could come back. With the sentinels battling us, we couldn’t rescue anyone on our homeworld. We left empty-handed, but we’ve been studying resurrection syndrome ever since. Our hope has been that we could one day rejoin our fellow citizens and heal them. We’ve been working on a therapy based on the data we downloaded during the siege and our computer models. We have no idea if it will work.” He nodded to the window and Kate on the operating table beyond. “She’s the alpha for our therapy.”
“Then all our hopes rest on her.”
CHAPTER 53
When the needle punctured David’s neck, the room on the Serpentine ship faded. He found himself at the bottom of a dirt pit. This is an illusion. The thought brought a downpour of rain, flooding into the earth pit, soaking the ground, which grew soft, swallowing his legs, pulling him into the mud. The water was gathering, forming a pool that rose by the second.
David waded to the wall, straining to pull his feet from the heavy, black mud. This isn’t real.
He dug his hand into the wall. It was dry. Dry enough. His hand held, and he climbed, one hand after the other, ascending to the surface. He climbed for hours, how long he didn’t know. A faint sun peeked through the clouds. Slowly, it crept across the pit until it was out of sight, the shadows of its rays its only remnants. Still David climbed. The pit must have been a hundred feet deep, but he pushed himself, a deep well of energy powering him.
The rain never stopped, but neither did he. The sides he dug his hands into were growing soggy. It was taking him longer to make his hand-holds. He threw hand after hand of mud into the pit until he struck solid dirt, then he climbed. The water was coming, but he was climbing faster. Hand over hand, he dug and climbed. He had almost reached the surface when the sides began to slide. Globs of mud dripped, rolled, and dropped onto him, and then the mudslide consumed him, covering him, pulling him down into the water. He was completely coated in black mud, and he struggled under the water, the added weight pulling him into the abyss. He worked his arms, brushing the mud from his body, trying to free himself. His arms and legs burned, and then his lungs burned. He was drowning.
He fought, punching and kicking. Finally he broke the surface of the water, just long enough to take a breath before sinking again. He felt that if he allowed himself to sink, that if he gave up, allowed his will to break, the ring would have him, his soul, and every
person he knew and loved. Kate. The thought gave him a new burst of energy, and his head breached the surface again. He sucked air in, waving his arms violently. The mud flew off, but the rain kept coming.
He put his arms and legs straight out, and he floated to the surface, the rain falling on his face.
He understood now. He couldn’t escape. Submission was the only way to survive. But he wouldn’t. They would have to drown him.
Dorian opened his eyes. The curve of glass and the view of the cavernous chamber in the resurrection ark greeted him.
The resurrection had restored him physically, but he was still sick, Dorian felt it at his core. How long do I have? A few hours?
Directly across from him, Ares stared out of another tube, his eyes cold.
Their tubes opened at the same time, and they walked out and stood across from each other, neither flinching. The echoes of their footsteps carried deep into the cavern, brushing past the miles of tubes stacked from the floor to the ceiling. When the last sound faded, Ares spoke, his voice hard.
“That was a very stupid thing to do, Dorian.”
“Killing you? I actually think it’s the smartest thing I’ve done in a very long time.”
“You haven’t thought this through. Take a look around you. You can’t kill me here.”
“Sure I can.” Dorian rushed forward and struck Ares, killing him in one blow. The Atlantean hadn’t expected it, and Dorian fought like a feral animal with nothing to lose. Ares’ limp body fell to the black metallic floor, blood oozing out.
Dorian backed away and into the tube. It would reset the clock, correcting all his ailments except for resurrection syndrome, the only affliction the resurrection tubes couldn’t fix.
He watched the white clouds fill the tube across the way. Time passed, how much he didn’t know, but when the clouds cleared, a new Ares stood in the tube.
It opened, and Dorian rushed forward, killing Ares again.
The cycle repeated twelve times, and twelve dead bodies, all Ares, lay before the tube. Dorian fought like a man with nothing to lose, and he instinctively knew Ares’ every move—thanks to the memories that would soon take Dorian’s life.
On the thirteenth resurrection, Ares stepped out, kneeled and held his hands up.
Dorian stopped.
“I can fix you, Dorian.” Ares looked up. When he realized Dorian had halted, he rose and continued. “You’re suffering from resurrection syndrome—memories your mind can’t process.” He pointed into the chamber, at the thousands of tubes. “So are they. Fixing them is my goal. It’s why I’ve sacrificed so much. You’ve seen those sacrifices, and the memories made you sick. I’ll fix you, Dorian. You’re like my son, the closest thing I have. I’ve waited thousands of years for someone to prove himself to me the way you have. You can kill me, or we can both live—together.”
In the area just beyond the stack of dead bodies, a hologram rose. A space battle raged; thousands, perhaps millions of spheres zoomed into the breach, tearing through triangular ships.
“Our sentinels are battling the Exiles, Dorian. They will win. I’ve been preparing for this war for a very long time. When the Exiles are gone, we will inherit this universe. It will be over in a single day. My revenge. Our revenge. We can share it.”
Dorian paced to the hologram. The spheres were winning. They consumed fleet after fleet of the triangular Exile ships, each time jumping away to a new fleet.
“How would you fix me?” Dorian asked, his voice soft.
“You go back into the tube. I need time to find a cure. But I will fix you.”
“What about Earth?”
“That’s the past, Dorian. Earth is but a pebble in our sea.”
“Show me. Show me my world.”
“It’s not your world anymore.”
Dorian rushed forward and again killed Ares.
When the Atlantean emerged from the tube the fourteenth time, he instantly activated a hologram that showed Earth surrounded by Serpentine ships. Triangular ships fought a battle with them, but they were losing.
“The Exiles are fighting the Serpentine Army?” Dorian asked.
“Yes. Fools. They fight for all the human worlds. The ring has poured through, as I knew they would when I withdrew the sentinel line. This is part of my plan, Dorian.”
“We’re a weapon.”
“Yes. The scientist you saw, Isis. I shared the Serpentine genetic information with her. She created a sort of anti-virus. That’s what the Atlantis Gene that humanity received really is. It’s the most sophisticated survival technology the universe has ever known. Look at what it has done to your world. No civilization has ever advanced so quickly. I combined what Isis created, what she gave to the Exiles, with the Serpentine virus. That’s the Atlantis Gene you know. That’s what you are. Your desire to assimilate, your drive to create a single unified society marching to a common goal, accessing some universal power. It’s your fatal flaw and the salvation of our people. When the serpent bites, your people will poison it.”
“What does that mean?”
“They assimilate, Dorian. They assimilated my wife, all of my people before the fall of our world and our exodus. Someone will resist, and when they do, the serpent will bore deep, trying to access their link to the Origin Entity. They will offer the fruit, something the person desperately desires. Then they will engulf them in fire, filling them with fear. At each point, they offer a false salvation. If the person can resist, the serpent will initiate a forced assimilation. Their DNA will flow into the serpent, destroying it from the inside out. It only takes one.”
“That’s what you were doing. Your army.”
“Yes. I was looking for a single soul with the will to resist. Adversity breeds strength. I destroyed your world in hopes of creating a single soul with the will to survive Serpentine assimilation. And I wanted to make your world look like easy prey for the Serpentine Army; a world full of souls on the brink of ruin. Defenseless. Irresistible.”
Dorian felt listless. The enormity of the situation was closing in on him.
“Go back to your tube, Dorian. Await my next move. I will fix you, as I will every person in this chamber. Everything I’ve done has been for you and them. I will protect you. I will save you.”
Dorian desperately wanted to retreat to the tube to wait for Ares, the father he had never had, whom he had longed for, to come and rescue him, to fix him. He stepped back. The bodies lay to his left, a mound obscuring the expanse of tubes.
“Do it, Dorian. I will come back for you.”
Dorian took another step back.
Ares nodded.
Dorian stopped. “You lied to me before.” As the seconds ticked by, he felt his fear closing in on him. Paranoia. The raw wounds. Images flashed before his eyes. His father, whipping him as a young child, chastising him, leaving, returning when Dorian was sick with the Spanish flu, placing him in the tube. Dorian saw himself awakening in the tube, changed. His hatred, his longing, his quest to find the resurrection ark. He had found his father there, but again he had slipped through his hands, killed by the Atlantean device, the Bell. At every turn, Ares had betrayed him.
Ares saw his hesitation and spoke quickly. “You were uneducated before. You didn’t know the scope of what we faced. You wouldn’t have understood.”
Hatred filled Dorian. “Your greatest fear was that you would spend eternity in this tomb, never able to die, relegated to purgatory.”
Ares clenched his jaws.
“You’ve betrayed me too many times.”
Dorian rushed forward and killed his enemy again.
When the bodies reached one hundred, Dorian waited, but the tube never filled with the gray fog. Ares never reappeared.
Dorian marched down the corridors to the ship’s bridge. The panels revealed his suspicion: Ares had disabled his own resurrection. In the few seconds before his hundredth death, Ares had used his neural link with the ship to ensure he never returned, never had to face death at Dor
ian’s hands again. He was gone forever.
Dorian had won. For a long moment, he felt a thrill. He had bested his nemesis. He was the better man. Then reality set in. He had a few short hours. At the wide windows of the sentinel factory, he watched the last of the spheres jump away.
He had been a pawn; he had played his role. He had killed his enemy, Ares. Now he was empty. No one would come for him; no one would fix him. No one loved him. And deep within his own heart, he knew that was right. He deserved no love, had earned none. He had lived a wretched life, full of hate, and with his last enemy gone, that was all that remained. The hate was poisonous; like the bite of a snake, it coursed through him, unseen, flowing in his veins, killing him from the inside out. There was only one way to get rid of it.
He walked back into the ark. In the chamber that held the tubes, he gazed at the tall mound of bodies. At the bridge, he disabled his own resurrection, and then he trudged to the airlock. The decontamination chamber rang alert after alert: no environmental suit detected.
He disabled it.
The three triangular shards that made up the door twisted open for him, as they once had in Antarctica. Then, he had thought they were welcoming him to his destiny. He had the same thought as the vacuum of space sucked him out, and he took his last breath. His dead body floated across the empty sentinel yard.
CHAPTER 54
David floated in the water, unmoving. The sun rose and fell. Rain came and receded, and the water level rose and dropped. Each time, when he felt the ground upon his back, he stood, walked to the wall, and climbed, hand over hand, until the rain came again and the walls turned to mud and washed him down into the pool, where he fought to free himself, struggling for every breath. But he never gave up. His body burned with agony, his muscles, his lungs, every inch of him. But he refused to relent.
Then the sun disappeared forever, and nothingness followed.