He turned and walked toward the door at the rear of the bridge.
David braced. But Janus couldn’t see him. Can Kate?
Kate fell in behind Janus but stopped and stared at David. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“What is this, Kate? Something is happening to you outside. You’re dying.”
Kate took two more long steps toward the exit. “I can’t protect you here.”
“Protect me from what?”
She took another step. “Don’t follow me.” She lunged through the exit.
David charged after her.
He stood outside. On the planet. He spun, trying—
Kate. She was ahead of him, in an EVA suit, bounding for the crumbling city. Behind them, a small black ship sat on the red rocky terrain.
“Kate!” David called, running toward her.
She stopped.
The ground shook once, then again, throwing David off his feet. The sky opened, and a red object poured through, blinding David and smothering him with its heat. He felt as though an asteroid-sized fire poker were barreling toward him.
He tried to stand, but the shaking ground pulled him down again.
He crawled, feeling the heat from above and the sizzling rocks below melting him.
Kate seemed to float over the shaking ground. She loped forward, timing her landings to the quakes that shot her up and forward, toward David.
She covered him, and David wished he could see her face through the mirrored suit visor.
He felt himself falling. His feet touched a cold floor, and his head slammed into the glass. The vat. The research lab.
The glass swiveled open, and Milo rushed forward, his eyebrows high, his mouth open. “Mr. David…”
David looked down. His body wasn’t burned, but sweat covered him. Blood flowed from his nose.
Kate.
David’s muscles shook as he pushed himself up and staggered to her vat. The glass opened, and she fell straight down, like a contestant in a dunking booth.
David caught her, but he wasn’t strong enough to stand. They spilled onto the cold floor, her landing on his chest.
David grabbed her neck. The pulse was faint—but there.
“Alpha! Can you help her?”
“Unknown.”
“Unknown why?” David shouted.
“I have no current diagnosis.”
“What the hell’s it going to take to get one?”
A round panel opened, and a flat table extended into the room.
“A full diagnostic scan.”
Milo rushed to pick up Kate’s feet, and David gripped under her armpits, straining with every last ounce of strength to lift her onto the table.
David thought the table took its sweet time gliding back into the wall. A dark piece of glass covered the round hole, and he peered inside at a line of blue light that moved from Kate’s feet to her head.
The screen on the wall flickered to life, its only message:
DIAGNOSTIC SCAN IN PROGRESS…
“What happened?” Milo asked.
“I… We…” David shook his head. “I have no idea.”
The screen changed.
Primary Diagnosis:
Neurodegeneration due to Resurrection Syndrome
Prognosis:
Terminal
Predicted Survival:
4–7 local days
Immediate Concerns:
Subarachnoid hemorrhage
Cerebral thrombosis
Recommended action:
Surgical intervention
Estimated Surgical Success Rate:
39%
With each word David read, more of the room disappeared. Feeling faded. He felt his hand reach out and brace the glass vat. He stared at the screen.
Alpha’s words beat down upon him, smothering him like the heat from the fire poker on the ruined planet. “Perform recommended surgery?”
David heard himself say yes, and vaguely, he was aware of Milo putting his arm around him, though it barely reached the top of his shoulder.
CHAPTER 4
Two Miles Below the Surface of Antarctica
The screams served as Dorian’s only guide through the ship’s dark corridors. For days, he had searched for their source. They always stopped as he drew near, and Ares would appear, forcing Dorian to leave the Atlantean structure that covered two hundred fifty square miles under the ice cap of Antarctica, making him return to the surface, back to the preparations for the final assault—grunt work that was beneath him.
If Ares was here, spending every waking hour in the room with the screams, that’s where the action was. Dorian was sure of it.
The screams stopped. Dorian halted.
Another wail erupted, and he turned a corner, then another. They were coming from behind the double doors directly ahead.
Dorian leaned against the wall and waited. Answers. Ares had promised him answers, the truth about his past. Like Kate Warner, Dorian had been conceived in another time—before the First World War, saved from the Spanish flu by an Atlantean tube, and awoken in 1978 with the memories of an Atlantean.
Dorian had Ares’ memories, and those repressed recollections had driven his entire life. Dorian had seen only glimpses: battles on land, sea, air, and the largest battles of all, in space. Dorian longed to know what had happened to Ares, his history, Dorian’s past, his origins. Most of all, he longed to understand himself, the why behind his entire life.
Dorian wiped away another bit of blood from his nose. The nose bleeds were more frequent now, as were the headaches and nightmares. Something was happening to him. He pushed that out of his mind.
The doors opened, and Ares strode out, unsurprised to see Dorian.
Dorian strained to see inside the chamber. A man hung from the wall, blood running from the straps cutting into his outstretched arms and the wounds on his chest and legs. The doors closed, and Ares stopped in the corridor. “You disappoint me, Dorian.”
“Likewise. You promised me answers.”
“You’ll have them.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
Dorian closed the distance to Ares. “Now.”
Ares brought his straightened hand across, striking Dorian in the throat, sending him to the ground, gasping for air.
“You will give me exactly one more order in your life, Dorian. Do you understand? If you were anyone else, I wouldn’t even tolerate what you just did. But you are me. More so than you know. And I know you better than you know yourself. I haven’t told you about our past because it would cloud your judgment. We have work to do. Knowing the full truth would put you at risk. I’m depending on you, Dorian. In a few short days, we will control this planet. The survivors, the remainder of the human race—a race, I remind you, that I helped create, helped save from extinction—will be the founding members of our army.”
“Who are we fighting?”
“An enemy of unimaginable strength.”
Dorian got to his feet but kept his distance. “I have quite an imagination.”
Ares resumed his brisk pace, Dorian following at a distance. “They defeated us in a night and a day, Dorian. Imagine that. We were the most advanced race in the known universe—even more advanced than the lost civilizations we had found.”
They reached the crossroads where an enormous set of doors opened onto the miles of glass tubes that held the Atlantean survivors. “They’re all that’s left.”
“I thought you said they can never awaken, that their trauma from the attacks was too great for them to overcome.”
“It is.”
“You got someone out. Who is he?”
“He’s not one of them. Of us. He’s not your concern. Your concern is the war ahead.”
“The war ahead,” Dorian muttered. “We don’t have the numbers.”
“Stay the course, Dorian. Believe. In a few short days, we will have this world. Then we will embark on the great campaign, a war to save all the human worlds. This enemy is your enemy too. Humans share our DNA. This enemy will come for you too, sooner or later. You cannot hide. But together, we can fight. If we don’t raise our army now, while the window exists, we lose everything. The fate of a thousand worlds rests in your hands.”
“Right. A thousand worlds. I’d like to point out what I see as a few key challenges. Personnel. There are maybe a few billion humans left on earth. They’re weak, sick, and starving. That’s our army pool—assuming we can even take the planet, and I’m not even sure of that. So a few billion, not necessarily strong, in our ‘army.’ And I use that term loosely. Up against a power that rules the galaxy… Sorry, but I don’t like our chances.”
“You’re smarter than that, Dorian. You think this war will resemble your primitive ideas about space warfare? Metal and plastic ships floating through space shooting lasers and explosives at each other? Please. You think I haven’t considered our situation? Numbers aren’t our key to victory. I made this plan forty thousand years ago. You’ve been on the case three months. Have faith, Dorian.”
“Give