"If we separate the tribes," her partner said, "we can"t manage the genome."
"There is a solution," Kate said.
She held her hand up and projected symbols onto the wall.
You will not take retribution on the unworthy. You will leave this place. Your Exodus begins now.
Kate opened her eyes to see David staring at her.
"What?"
"Nothing." She wiped sweat from her forehead. The memories were changing her more quickly now. Taking over. She was becoming more of what she"d been in the distant past and less of the woman she had become, the woman who had fallen in love with David. She pulled closer to him.
What can I do? I want to stop this. I opened the door, but can I close it? It felt like someone was holding her down and pouring the memories down her throat.
Kate stood in another temple. She wore the suit, and the humans before her crowded around another altar.
Kate looked out of the opening of the temple. The landscape was lush, but not as fertile as it had been in Africa. Where were they? The Levant, perhaps?
Kate walked closer.
The stone box on the altar; she had seen it before-in the Tibetan tapestry, in the depiction of the Great Flood, when the waters rose and consumed the coast, wiping out the cities of the ancient world. The Immaru had carried this box to the highlands, she was sure of it. Was this the treasure that waited in Malta?
The members of the tribe rose from the ground and turned to face her.
In the alcoves flanking the temple"s main corridors, Kate now saw dozens of members of the tribe kneeling, meditating, seeking the stillness.
They would become the Immaru, the mountain monks who had carried the Ark into the highlands, who had kept the faith and tried to live a life of righteous observance.
Kate walked down the aisle.
"You know what must be done," her partner said.
"Yes."
At the altar, the crowd stepped aside, and she climbed the stairs and peered into the stone box.
The alpha, the tribe"s founder and chief, lay there, still, cold, finally dead. His countenance was eerily similar to how it had been on the day when Kate had first seen him, in the cave, when he brought the rotting piece of flesh to his mate, when he collapsed against the wall and lay dying. She had hoisted him up then and saved him. She couldn"t save him now.
She turned back to the ma.s.ses gathered around the altar. She could save them.
"This is dangerous."
"There is no alternative," Kate said.
"We can end this experiment, here and now."
Kate involuntarily shook her head. "We can"t. We can"t turn back now."
When she had finished the modification, she stepped off the altar. The attendants swarmed around her, rushing past the box. They brought something out-a stone top-and placed it upon the box.
She watched as they engraved a series of symbols on the side of the Ark.
Her helmet translated them: Here lies the first of our kind, who survived the darkness, who saw the light, and who followed the call of the righteous.
Kate opened her eyes.
"I know what"s in Malta, what the Immaru were protecting."
David"s eyes said, Don"t say it.
"Is it part of the cure?" Ja.n.u.s asked.
Chang leaned in.
"Maybe," Kate said. She focused on David. "How long to Malta?"
"Not long."
Dorian pulled the sat phone out of his pocket.
Heading east. Destination Malta. Where the h.e.l.l are you?
He walked back across the plague barge"s deck and climbed into the helicopter. "Let"s go."
CHAPTER 79.
Kate stood in an immense command center. Holographic displays, the likes of which she"d never seen, covered the far wall. The maps tracked the human populations on every continent on the world.
At the corner of the room, an alarm flashed to life.
Incoming vessel.
Her partner raced to a control panel and manipulated the blue cloud of light that emerged. "It"s one of ours," he said.
"How?"
Fifty thousand local years ago, Kate and her partner had received a transmission: their world, the Atlantean home world, had fallen-violently, in a day and a night. How could there be survivors? Had the home world distress call been wrong? Kate and her partner had heeded the call, had hidden their science expedition, a.s.suming they were the last of their kind, a.s.suming they were now alone in the universe, marooned, two scientists who could never go home. Had they been wrong?
"The vessel is a life raft." Her partner turned to her. "A resurrection ship."
"They can"t come here," Kate said.
"It is too late. They are already landing. They intend to bury the ship under the ice-capped continent at the southern pole." Her partner worked the control panel. He seemed to tense up. Is he nervous?
"Who"s on the ship?" Kate asked.
"General Ares."
A current of fear ran through Kate.
The scene changed. Kate stood on another ship-not the lander. This vessel was ma.s.sive, cavernous. Gla.s.s tubes stretched out before her for miles.
Footsteps echoed in the s.p.a.ce.
"We are the last," came a voice from the shadows.
"Why did you come here?" her partner called.
"For the protection of the Beacon. And I read your research reports. The survival gene you gave the primitives. I find it... very promising." The owner of the voice stepped into the light.
Dorian.
Kate almost reeled back. General Ares was Dorian. How? She focused. The man"s face wasn"t Dorian"s, but the overwhelming sense Kate got was that Dorian was inside this man. Or was it the opposite? Was Ares inside Dorian and Kate was sensing that element-seeing it in its purest form now? When Kate looked at Ares, all she saw was Dorian.
"The inhabitants here are of no concern to you," her partner said.
"On the contrary. They are our future."
"We have no right-"
"You had no right to alter them, but what is done is done," Dorian said. "You endangered them the instant you gave them part of our genome. Our enemy will hunt them, as they will hunt us, to the far reaches of the universe, no matter where we go. I wish to save them, to make them safe. We will advance them, and they will be our army."
Kate shook her head.
Dorian focused on her. "You should have listened to me before."
The endless rows of gla.s.s tubes faded, and Kate was in a different room in the same structure. There were only a dozen gla.s.s tubes here, standing on end, spread out in a semicircle before her. It was a room she had seen before-in Antarctica-where she, David, and her father had met up.
Each tube held a different human subspecies.
The door opened behind her.
Dorian.
"You... are conducting your own experiments," Kate said.
"Yes. But I told you I cannot do this alone. I need your help."
"You delude yourself."
"They will die without you," Dorian said. "We all will. Their fate is our fate. The final war is inevitable. Either you give them the genetic equipment they need, or they perish. Our destiny is written. I am here for them."
"You lie."
"Then leave them to die. Do nothing. See what happens." He waited. When Kate said nothing, he continued. "They need our help. Their transformation is only half complete. You must finish what you have started. There is no other way, no turning back. Help me. Help them."
Kate thought of her partner, his protests.
"The other member of your little expedition is a fool. Only fools fight fate."
Kate"s silence was a signal-to her and to Dorian. He seemed to feed on her indecision.
"They are already splintering. I have collected the candidates, conducted my own experiments. But I don"t have the expertise. I need you. I need your research. We can transform them."
Kate crumbled. She felt herself falling under his spell. It was the same as before-her before, in San Francisco. She tried to rationalize, tried to think of a deal, but her mind drifted to her experiences in Gibraltar and then in Antarctica when he had cornered her. It was history repeating itself. The same players, playing out a different game, with the same end, on a different stage. Except this was long before, in another life, in another era.
"If I help you," she said, "I want to know that no harm will come to my team."
"You have my word. I will join your expedition-as a security adviser. There are additional steps you all need to take to cloak our presence here. And you will program your resurrection tubes to my radiation signature-just in case something... unfortunate were to happen to me."
Dorian leaned his head against the helicopter"s back rest and closed his eyes. It wasn"t a dream. It wasn"t a memory. He was there, in the past.
And Kate had been there, opposing him, then helping him. He had taken her research, used it, and betrayed her when he was done with her.
Across the ages, they were playing out the same scenario, fighting to transform the human race: her advocating for them, him trying to create an army to face a superior enemy.
Who was right?
He sensed something more: Kate was remembering these events at the same time he was, like they were connected to the same network, each receiving signals, memories from the past, driving them on to some destination. She would receive the code this way. That"s what Ares had planned. Had he programmed the case for this?
Seeing Kate had energized Dorian. Her fear, her vulnerability. It was the same as before. He"d had the power then, and he would have it again. She had the research and information he needed. And soon he would have it. She just had to remember.
But it wasn"t only what had happened. It was some piece of information-a code that she would remember. Ares had known that. Dorian was close to Kate and she was close to remembering the rest, remembering the code he needed. He had timed it perfectly. Soon, he would take her, and take the last secret, the thing she held most dear, and her defeat would be complete.
CHAPTER 80.
Somewhere near Malta