The Atlantis Plague (The Origin Mystery 2)

Dorian loved her accent. Dutch, he thought. Had her parents been first-generation South African settlers? Asking her would show personal interest. Weakness. He had tried to tell himself that she was dull and shallow, that she didn’t warrant his interest, that she was one of any number of girls on this ship or another in his fleet. But… there was something about her. It wasn’t the conversation. She had spent most of her time in his cabin lying there naked, flipping through old gossip magazines, sleeping, or pleasuring him.

He rolled away from her. “You wouldn’t be here if you had snored.”

Her tone changed. “You want to…”

“When I want sex, you’ll know it.”

As if on cue, a soft knock echoed from the iron door to his cabin.

“Enter,” Dorian called loudly.

The door cracked open, and Kosta stepped in. Upon seeing Dorian and the woman on the bed, he spun and made for the door.

“For God’s sake, Kosta, haven’t you ever seen two naked humans? Stop. What the hell do you want?”

“They’ll be ready for the broadcast to the Spanish captives in an hour, sir,” Kosta said, still facing away from Dorian. “The communications teams would like to review some talking points.”

Dorian stood and pulled his pants on, not bothering with underwear. The girl hopped up and found his sweater. She smiled and handed it to him, like a wife handing her husband his lunch as she saw him off to work. Dorian didn’t make eye contact with her. He threw the sweater over the chair in front of the desk.

“I write my own talking points, Kosta. Come get me when it’s time.”

Dorian could hear Johanna rolling around in the bed, trying to get his attention. He ignored her. He had to focus, had to find the right message. This address was important—it would set the tone for the subsequent push into Europe, for everything that came after.

He needed to make their cause about more than survival, more than self-interest. He needed to sell the choice to join the Immari as something more—the choice to join a movement. A declaration of independence, a new beginning. Freedom—from Orchid… and what? What is the Spanish zeitgeist? The issues? What was their “plague” before the Atlantis Plague? What would the world respond to?

He scribbled on the page:

Plague = Global Capitalism: a Darwinian force that cannot be stopped; it seeps into every nation, discarding the weak, selecting the strong.

Orchid = Central Bank stimulus: easy money, a false cure that never solves the root causes, only suppresses symptoms, prolonging the agony.

Current outbreak = Like another Global Financial Crisis: uncontainable, incurable, irreversible. Inevitable.

It could work. He decided he would tone it down a bit though.

Ares is right, Dorian thought. The plague was the ultimate opportunity to remake humanity. A single human society with no classes, no friction. An army, working as one toward a common goal: safety.

Johanna threw the sheet off, exposing her spectacular body to him. “I’ve changed my mind.”

Changed your mind? Dorian thought. He was surprised that she had made it up about something in the first place. And now she had reconsidered this “thought.” He imagined what was next. Perhaps another comment about a potential breakup of “stars” Dorian had never heard of, or “do you think this dress would look good on me?” As if that dress were on sale down in the ship’s commissary.

“Fascinating…” Dorian mumbled as he turned back to his work.

“I’ve realized that I liked you better when all you did was sleep, drink, and screw me.”

Dorian exhaled and set the pen down.

He rolled her over on the bed, exposing her backside. When she glanced back at him, Dorian drew his hand back in the air. “I’m not going to lie to you, Johanna. This is going to hurt you a lot more than it’s going to hurt me.”

CHAPTER 34

Immari Sorting Camp

Marbella, Spain

Kate stood in the line, surveying the camp, thinking, trying to figure a way out. The Orchid District lay in ruin, a burned-out wreck that barely resembled the five-star seaside resort it had been before the plague, or even the shelter Martin had shown her yesterday. Fires at the guard towers and motor pool still smoldered, sending thin columns of black smoke into the sky, like a snake crawling up the white hotel towers. The setting sun burned red and orange above the Mediterranean. Kate’s column of people marched silently toward the sea like sheep to the slaughter.

The Immari soldiers were doing what Martin had predicted: sorting everyone. The sick were routed to the closest tower, where guards with guns and cattle prods herded them through the doors. Kate wondered what they would do with them. Leave them there to die? Without Orchid, those people would be dead within three days. Martin was in the group somewhere. Kate hadn’t seen him since they were captured—they had been placed on different trucks. She searched the crowd for him.

“Step forward!” a soldier called.

Maybe they had already taken Martin inside the tower, or perhaps he was behind her, Kate thought. She couldn’t take her eyes off the tower that held the sick. What would they do in a few days, when it was filled with the dead? What about when they evacuated Marbella? In her mind’s eye, Kate saw explosions rocking the bottom of the building and it collapsing to the ground. She had to get Martin out somehow. She—

“Move forward!”

Someone grabbed her arm and dragged her forward. Another man grabbed her neck, feeling her lymph nodes. He tossed her to the left and yet another man—not a soldier, a doctor, perhaps—ran a long swab inside her mouth, along the inside of her cheek. He placed the swab inside a plastic tube with a barcode. The tube was one of many lined up on a conveyor belt that flowed to a larger machine. DNA samples. They were sequencing the survivors’ genomes. Looking for what? Kate’s dyed hair and generally grimy appearance from the tunnels had given her some reassurance that the soldiers wouldn’t recognize her—she looked nothing like she had twenty-four hours ago. But if they had a DNA sample from her and could match it, they would know exactly who she was.

At that moment, a guard on the other side of her grabbed her wrist and slammed it into a small round opening in another machine. A sharp pain erupted at her wrist, but before she could cry out, it was over. The guard shoved her hard in the back, and she was face to face with another guard who took her backpack, set it on a conveyor belt that ran it through a machine, and spun her around to another guard. He ran a wand up and down her, the way an airport security guard might check someone who set the metal detector off.