The Atlantis Plague(127)

David’s mind raced. Yes. In the room where he had resurrected the second time, there was a damaged suit. “The suit on the floor.”

Janus nodded. “It was mine. When I escaped to that section, my first move was to seal the lander off from Antarctica, to protect myself. Then I managed to reach the tube—one of the ones you resurrected in. After I was healed, I took stock. My situation was dire. The shard of the ship I found myself in was now deep underwater and far away from the coast. If I exited, I would drown long before I reached the surface, and I had no way to replicate anything with an oxygen tank.” He glanced at David. “The Immari colonel’s uniform I replicated for you was much more simple.”

“How did you—”

“I will come to it,” Janus said, holding his hand up. “I was trapped. And alone. My partner was dead, and to my surprise, my thoughts went first to her. Resurrection is a closely regulated technology. A death sequence, sent via the radiation from the Atlantis Gene, is impossible to fake, as it must be: imagine the implications of waking to find you have a double. I tried at first to force her resurrection, to trick the system into thinking she had died. The true death sequence had been sent to the ship in Antarctica, and Ares had deleted it. My entire strategy was to fake her death to the computer in my section and have her resurrect in the part of the ship closest to the shore—so that she could escape and, hopefully, stop Ares. I tried everything. I failed. However, thirteen thousand years later, I succeeded, in a way. In 1918, Patrick Pierce placed his dying wife in the tube, and Kate inside her. The computer must have executed the resurrection sequence then; but the child did not mature as a normal resurrection fetus would—it was confined by the mother’s body. Yet once removed from the mother, the child, Kate, began to grow—and, it seems that now, her memories have returned. Those memories from my partner have lain dormant in Kate’s mind all this time. Remarkable.”

“But how does Dorian have Ares’s memories?”

Janus shook his head. “As I said, I was desperate. I tried everything. I must have authorized any resurrection. Ares had joined our expedition and we had his radiation signature and memories. But… the memories would have ended thousands of—”

“Dorian also died twice in Antarctica, if the reports are true. Ares could have filled in the blanks.”

“Yes… that is possible. Ares could have easily added additional memories, even shown them to Dorian during his resurrection there. As for Kate, the memories, in the recesses of her mind, they would have exerted some influence, steered her decisions, like subconscious cues.” He paced away from David. “She became a geneticist, intent on studying abnormalities in brain wiring. Subconsciously, she was grasping for a way to stabilize the Atlantis Gene and complete her work. It is quite a story.” Janus was deep in thought, seemingly somewhere else.

“So… what happened to you?” David asked, for lack of anything else to say.

“Nothing. For thirteen thousand years, nothing happened to me. I thought my attempts at escape and resurrecting my dead companion had failed. My last option was to kill myself in my section and program my own resurrection in the other compartment. But I was unable to do it. I had seen what had become of those from my home world who had died a violent death, the people in the tubes in Antarctica, those trapped in perpetual purgatory. So I went into the tube, and I remained there for thirteen thousand years, waiting, hoping something would change.”

David knew instantly what “the change” was. In Antarctica, David had held off Dorian and his men, allowing Kate and her father to escape. Her father had exploded two nuclear devices in Gibraltar, shattering the piece of the lander he had unearthed. “The nuclear blasts.”

“Yes. They moved the section I was in closer to northern Africa. Morocco and Ceuta specifically. I immediately activated my link to the ship. I saw what had happened in Gibraltar, then I connected to Antarctica and watched the footage there. I knew you had sacrificed your life to save a man, a woman, and two boys. The other man, who I did not know was Dorian at the time, had been far less gallant. You observed the Human Code, our morality. You had a respect for human life. I knew Ares, and I knew what would happen next. You and Dorian were enemies. He would have you fight to the death and take the winner. I decided to download your data feed. I had to reveal my avatar, momentarily, to capture your radiation signature. The rest you know. Upon your death, you awakened in the part of the ship I had been confined to. I programmed the tubes to self-destruct—to ensure you went forward, venturing out.”