The Atlantis Gene

Warner reads more of the journal:

After months of recuperating, Pierce is able to hobble with the aid of crutches and pain medication. He fears he will never be able to live without the pills, but more than that, he fears saying goodbye to Helena Barton with whom he has fallen in love. As he prepares to be discharged, he sets his affairs in order, collecting his slim savings and Army salary, and musters the courage to confess his feelings to Helena. She enters the room, and he invites her to dinner. She accepts.

From Clocktower’s Situation Room in New Delhi, Sloane orders a drone strike on a mountainside monastery. As the drone fires its missiles and the mountain erupts in flame, Sloane watches carefully for signs of a fleeing Warner.

Warner hears explosions as the drone missiles strike the nearby mountains. She decides to ignore the threat and tend to Vale. She continues reading:

Pierce and Helena walk along a dock near the Rock of Gibraltar. Later, over dinner, Barton mentions a job offer for Pierce from some of her father’s friends. He agrees to meet with them.

Vale remembers his former fiancé, an investment banker, whose firm is set to move into their new offices in the World Trade Center on the eve of the 9/11 attacks.

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) issues a press release confirming the existence of a new strain of flu virus in Northern India. They have no data on mortality rates, and they do not know whether the strain is a variation of an existing virus, or if it is something completely new.

The next morning, Warner gives Vale his medication and continues reading the journal:

As Pierce recovers, two men—a German and an Irishman—visit, offering him a job at an archaeological dig beneath the Bay of Gibraltar. The German, Kane, claims they are looking for historical artifacts, but Pierce suspects it is a treasure hunt. When he demands more money than they are willing to pay, the men leave. The next day, however, the Irishman, Mallory Craig, returns with a $5,000 check, drawn on the account of Immari Gibraltar, and an agreement to Pierce’s employment demands. Though unsure if he can handle the psychological stress of working in tunnels again, he decides to keep the $5,000 and give it a try.

Meanwhile, Sloane and his drone surveillance crew continue targeting monasteries in the Tibetan mountains.

Pierce visits the Immari Gibraltar headquarters, a rundown building with a slapdash feel. There, he meets Kane’s son, Rutger, with whom he will be working. Craig and Kane escort Pierce to the dig site, the entrance of which is hidden in a large warehouse on the dock. Pierce determines the tunnels to be very well constructed and the mine enormous, but he also notes a “methane problem,” unusual for a mine with no fuel deposits. With the danger of a lethal explosion, Pierce recommends abandoning the project. Craig argues that is not an option, adding that what they are seeking is not sunken treasure but a structure: “A city or a temple of some sort” (272). Pulling aside a large black cloth, he reveals part of a shimmering, metallic structure, believed to be part of the lost city of Atlantis. Craig then offers to pay Pierce whatever he feels it is worth to join the team.

Robert Hunt is at the project’s most recent drilling site, another dead-end block of ice. Suddenly, the drill strikes an open pocket below and begins spinning wildly. Unable to shut it down, Hunt and the drill operator run as the drill column breaks and the entire platform collapses. Hunt speculates that the drill must have hit something other than ice or rock that “had taken the bit clean off” (276). He reports the incident to his employers, and the report is passed along to Martin Grey.

Awake now, Vale orders Warner to leave the monastery before the Immari drones find them. She doesn’t want to leave him, but she finally agrees to depart the next morning, alone. Later, she brings him food and tells him about the journal. Vale wonders if it has some connection to the message Cohen decoded. Warner reads more:

Pierce tells Helena that he is considering taking the Immari job. She is upset, explaining that she cannot live in fear and doubt, wondering every day whether he will come out alive. They argue, but Helena is adamant. Pierce agrees to turn the job down.

Sloane is informed that the “packages,” the dead test subjects, have arrived in America and Europe, and that the drones have “acquired” another target.

With $500 in his pocket, Pierce shops for an appropriately modest engagement ring for Helena.

Pierce and Helena visit her family home, a grand estate in the English countryside; Pierce intends to ask Helena’s father for her hand in marriage. When he brushes off Pierce’s request with a brusque No, Pierce vows to marry her anyway, claiming the mine is of no interest to him. Helena’s father, Lord Barton—controller of the Immari treasury—offers to double his salary, but Pierce refuses, citing safety and his promise to Helena. As a final bargaining tactic, Barton agrees to give his blessing to the marriage if Pierce agrees to take the job. With no other options, Pierce agrees.

The Associated Press reports the appearance of a new flu strain in the United States and Western Europe.

After nearly four months on the job, Pierce and his crew reach an impasse. The small part of the excavated structure is a tunnel leading to a sealed door that no current technology can open. They have begun to excavate above the tunnel, into the roof of the open chamber where the methane pockets lie. The latest blast uncovers stairs. They are eager to uncover more when a messenger tells Pierce that Helena is waiting for him above. He ascends to the surface, but when he arrives at the warehouse, she is not there. After some frantic phone calls, he discovers she is at home. Rushing home to check on her—she is now pregnant—he lies about his whereabouts. Helena is under the impression he is a “shipping magnate” working on the docks.

Kate continues reading the journal, although a growing sense of dread creeps over her. Milo brings them food, and Vale reminds her that she agreed to leave first thing in the morning.

Pierce and his team’s most recent blast reveals an opening in the thick, impenetrable metal. They enter the structure and discover a large chamber containing thick, transparent tubes. One is cracked, but another is intact. Inside, rests a half-human/half-ape creature.

At Pierce and Helena’s engagement party, Pierce recalls enlisting in the Army and his father’s disapproval of his choice and of war in general. His father recalls the tale of his own father, who enlisted in the Confederate Army for a fee but never collected it because “he wore that wretched gray uniform and died in it” (302). Pierce insists this war is different and more noble, but his father argues that all wars are the same. He beseeches his son to make a better choice than his grandfather. Pierce never sees his father again.

After the party’s pleasantries, Lord Barton convenes a meeting of all relevant personnel, including Pierce, Kane, and Craig. While they discuss the progress of the excavation, Pierce posits that the structure is a single, massive ship. Barton and the scientists scoff at the idea. Pressed for a time when the dig will be finished, Pierce informs them he is resigning. Barton is outraged, but Kane calmly explains that when the ape-man and his kin frozen inside the structure wake up, “the human race is finished on this planet” (306). Therefore, Kane reasons, all humans have a stake in this fight, despite Pierce’s contention otherwise. The only reasonable course of action, he asserts, is to kill them before they exterminate humanity or turn them into slaves. Despite Kane’s brutal logic and appeal to fear, Pierce still refuses.

Vale now believes he understands the Toba Protocol. It is a mass extinction event triggering another Great Leap Forward, a genetic advancement in human evolution to create an army of “super soldiers” able to fight the beings who built the alien structure.