The Atlantis Gene

Now in a helicopter hovering over the facility, Sloane watches a series of explosions rock the research wing and the reactor. When radiation begins to leak from the building, Sloane refuses to quarantine the personnel, instead ordering his security chief to evacuate everyone to the trains—the beginning of the Toba Protocol. When the site is cleared, he tells him to “blow the facility” (209).

Through a haze of delirium, Vale feels his body being carried out of the reactor wing and dumped on the grass outside. A doctor performs triage and declares him a lost cause, ordering his men to find other survivors and load them on the train. The train car is only 20 feet away, but he cannot move.

As the train pulls away, Warner runs after it, but she is too late. As it recedes into the dense forest, she considers her options. She knows the children are on the train. She needs to evade Immari security, and her only option is to return to the damaged research facility.

On the other side of the medical building, she sees soldiers loading bodies onto a freight train. Amid the dead and wounded, she sees Vale, lying on the ground. As she inspects his wounds, three security guards wrestle her to the ground, but she grabs one of their sidearms and fires it into the air. Holding the guards at gunpoint, she orders them to load Vale onto the train. They obey, and as Warner searches through a pile of medical supplies, another explosion tears through the facility. The guards rush back to the building, leaving Warner alone. Gathering as many supplies as she can carry, she hops aboard departing train with Vale.

A semi-conscious Vale has a flashback to the 9/11 terror attacks. He imagines himself pulled from the wreckage of the World Trade Center by the New York Fire Department. Inside the train, Warner binds Vale’s leg wound, but she fears he has already lost too much blood. Trying to keep him warm, she drags him away from the open car door and holds him close.

From his helicopter, Sloane surveys the damage to Immari’s research facility. He orders his security team to stop the trains and to “catalogue everyone” onboard.

Warner notices the train stopping in the middle of the forest. On the opposite tracks, she sees another train, also stopped, with soldiers standing on top of it in the shadows. Suddenly, the soldiers leap into the car, grab her and Vale, and take them to the other train. She begs the soldiers for medical attention for Vale, but they ignore her. As she searches the car for anything that might help, another soldier appears with a medical kit. He leaves it with Warner and flees the car. She finds a tube and hypodermic needles, and within moments she is giving Vale a blood transfusion. The loss of blood makes Warner sleepy, and she soon falls asleep.

Warner wakes up in a bed. She vaguely remembers being carried up flights of stairs into a large monastery. A young Tibetan monk, Milo, ushers her into a room where Vale lies, barely conscious. He needs antibiotics, without which he may die from infection. Milo shows her to a cabinet of medical supplies, and she doses Vale with antibiotics and painkillers. Warner asks if Milo has computer access. Yes, he responds, “that’s how we found you…Cryptic email” (222); but the first order of business, he tells her, is to take her to see Qian.

Sloane convenes a meeting of analysts and security personnel from several Immari subsidiaries whose help he will need initiating the Toba Protocol. He tells them about the history of Immari, the “modern incarnation” of a 12,000-year-old tribe which left present-day India and Pakistan after the last ice age seeking the true origin of the human species. As religious belief morphed into science, Immari’s mission became research and excavation. Sloane claims that their research has unearthed a dire threat to humanity, and the chosen few in the room must become soldiers in this battle. Further, secrecy is vital to avoid mass hysteria. Each member of the team is vital to its success, and a single weak link could jeopardize the whole operation. As the meeting ends, Sloane tells a security operative to “keep a close eye on these people” (225).

Milo leads Warner deep below the monastery to a small, “medieval” room crammed with maps and metal artifacts. There, an old man awaits her named Qian. Qian recounts a story of his youth when Nazi soldiers came to his village inquiring about a nearby monastery. When he and some friends render assistance, the soldiers ransack the monastery, torture the monks, and torch the mountain. Qian is the only survivor, and a soldier takes him to a tunnel where three monks are waiting. He hands the boy a journal for safekeeping “until the time was right” (228). The monks leave the mountain, taking only Qian and a large tapestry that now dominates the large room. Qian hands Warner the journal he has guarded for 75 years which holds the secret to stopping Immari and the Toba Protocol.

Drawing her attention to the tapestry, Qian describes it as “a document of both history and prophecy” (229). In a scene of fire and destruction, the tapestry displays a creation myth and a historical record of the Toba Catastrophe. The tapestry also shows a god-like figure granting salvation to humanity by giving them his own blood. This is a reference, Warner believes, to the Great Leap Forward, the genetic mutation in human cognition that allowed it to survive the mass extinction event. Along with superior cognition, however, came heightened self-awareness of one’s mortality, brutality, fear, and evil. As humans settled along coasts, they became vulnerable to rising sea levels—the Great Flood—after which small communities relocated to the mountains.

The tapestry shows one of these small groups bearing a chest, or “Ark,” containing secrets even Qian cannot identify. This isolated tribe dedicated itself to seeking the “pre-diluvian” truth of human existence before the flood destroyed most of civilization. Some, the “Immaru,” became mountain-dwelling monks, seeking truth through quiet meditation, but over time, some of the Immaru turned to science and, in doing so, lost their moral guidance. Finally, the tapestry portrays a great battle, a wasteland, and a field of blood on which a hero destroys a monster, eventually unleashing a “Flood of Light” (232). Qian takes his leave, urging Warner to read the journal.

At a joint Clocktower-Immari meeting, Sloane demands to know how Warner survived the Bell, and Chang offers a few theories: Either she treated herself with the same therapy she gave the children, or perhaps she has an active Atlantis Gene. When his security chief notes that she and Vale were not found on the train, Sloane tells his staff to release footage of Warner and Vale sabotaging the Immari complex to brand them as terrorists. Sloane believes the Immaru pulled Vale and Warner from the train, and he orders his security chief to search the mountains.

Warner finds a note in the journal dated 1938. Addressed to the Immaru, the writer identifies himself as Patrick Pierce, a “servant” of the Immari who is horrified by their plans and hopes his journal will help prevent the “Immari Armageddon.” The journal recounts Pierce’s recovery from injuries suffered in World War I and his nightmarish experiences in a Gibraltar field hospital: He recalls the screams of the wounded, rescuing a nurse from a sexual assault despite a badly injured leg, and his addiction to laudanum. Two days later, he wakes in a cottage, his leg heavily bandaged. The attending nurse removes the laudanum from his bedside to avoid further dependency.

Sloane and his security chief discuss dispersion of the infected bodies and how best to ensure optimal transmission.

Warner gives Vale more antibiotics and continues reading the journal:

Pierce recounts exploring a tunnel with troops under his command when the tunnel collapses and enemy soldiers pour in. A firefight ensues and both tunnels collapse burying Pierce alive. He wakes up in his bed, the memory a dream of the past, but the pain in his leg is intense. The nurse, Helena Barton, allows him two shots of an “opium-infused concoction” (244). Gradually, his ration is reduced to one shot daily.