CHAPTER 152
One by one, Kate, Martin, the children, and Martin’s men climbed the ladder into the sub. Thirty minutes later, the sub rose through the waters of the Bay of Gibraltar. It was a small sub with no sub-compartments, and when it surfaced, Martin instructed the soldiers to “head out into the Atlantic, and watch your speed, they’re patrolling the straits.” He motioned for Kate to follow him up another steel ladder that led to the oval lookout deck on top of the sub.
Kate walked to the solid steel half wall and leaned against the rail, next to Martin. The wind was cooler now, much cooler than yesterday in Gibraltar. Not yesterday. How long had she been in the tombs? Something else was different. Gibraltar. It was dark.
“Why aren’t there any lights in Gibraltar?” Kate asked.
Martin turned. His unshaven, unkempt appearance still mildly unnerved her. “Evacuated.”
“Why?”
“It’s a Protectorate of the Immari Imperium.”
“Immari Imperium?”
“You’ve been gone for two months, Kate. The world has changed. And not for the better.”
Kate continued searching the coastline. Gibraltar was dark, but so was Northern Africa. All the glittering lights she’d seen on that balcony last night, the night when David had caught her…
Kate stood for a while without saying anything. Finally she did see some lights, moving at the coast. Or was it a city? No, the lights were moving. “The lights in Northern Africa…”
“There are no lights in Northern Africa.”
Kate pointed at the faint twinkling lights. “They’re right—”
“A plague barge.”
“Plague?”
“The Atlantis Plague,” Martin said. He sighed, suddenly looking even more exhausted. “We’ll get to all that.” He leaned against the rail and gazed toward Gibraltar. “I had hoped to see your father again. But this… this is an end he would have liked.” He continued before Kate could speak. “Your father was a very remorseful man. He blamed himself for your mother’s death. And for leading the Immari into the city of Atlantis. A death, to save your life, to save the Atlanteans, and to keep the Immari from accessing the portal he found, to keep them out of the structure in Antarctica… it’s fitting for him. He would want to die in Gibraltar. Your mother died in Gibraltar.”
As if on cue, a geyser of water and light rose into the air and a sonic boom broke over the sky and echoed in her chest.
Martin put his arm around her. “We must get below. The wave will be here soon. We have to dive.”
Kate took one last look back. Through the light of the blast, she saw the Rock of Gibraltar crumbling, but not all of it. One last shard still held on, rising just above the water line.
CHAPTER 153
The lab tech walked into Dr. Shen Chang’s office. “Sir, we didn’t receive any data from Gibraltar.”
“The blast interrupted it?”
“No. The transmission never began. They never got a sample from Pierce. But we’ve had another break. Craig left a letter. He wouldn’t let Pierce bury Helena Barton’s body for a reason — Craig actually kept it in case it could be useful some day. It’s in a locker in San—”
“Have you gotten a sample?”
The tech nodded. “We’re running it through the simulation with the fetus and the data from Kane now. We’re not sure if it will work since—”
Chang tossed the tablet on his desk. “How soon will we know?”
“We’re not sure—” the tech’s phone buzzed. “Actually, it’s in.” He looked up. “We’ve found the Atlantis Gene.”