The Atlantis Gene

Vale is skeptical that the man in the room with him is Patrick Pierce. He tries to reconstruct Pierce’s timeline to see if the years add up. After Pierce is resurrected from the hibernation tube in 1978—and assumes the name Tom Warner—historical records report his disappearance in 1985. This means he would have been living in the structure since then. As Pierce questions Vale, Vale mentions Warner and her genetics research, but Pierce is confused, thinking his daughter is still six years old. He believes he’s only been in “the tombs” for a month.

The footsteps that Warner hears in the corridor are Adi and Surya. They grab her arms and urge her to follow. “‘They’re coming’” (406), they cry. Meanwhile, Sloane rappels down into the open cavern and walks easily past the Bell and through the portal.

Pierce explains that, for the “month” he’s been in the tombs, he’s been trying to learn how to operate the control systems, although he’s been unsuccessful. He also theorizes that time “moves slower here” (408), adding that the Bell acts as both a sentry and a time displacement device. Vale counterargues that this does not account for Pierce’s youth since the Bell in the Gibraltar structure was removed long before he got there. Pierce further suspects that the Atlanteans who survived the destruction of their ship walked through a portal to another place, and that by entering this chamber he and Vale passed through the same portal. He suspects they are in a different ship, no longer in Gibraltar.

Aboard the Antarctic piece of the ship, Warner tries to question the boys, but they panic and plead with her to hide. The digital readout on the backpacks shows almost three hours remaining, even though Sloane claimed she had less than 30 minutes. As the boys drag her further through the corridor, a door slides open.

Meanwhile, Sloane, now inside the safety of the ship/structure, removes his protective suit and surveys the inside. He wonders why there is no evidence of a nuclear blast. Suddenly, he hears the sound of approaching boots. He draws his sidearm and hides.

Warner and the boys find themselves in a room filled with hibernation tubes, each containing a human subspecies: “All the missing links in humanity’s evolution” (410). As she examines the room, the doors slide open again.

As Pierce and Vale wander through the corridors, Pierce recalls the day in 1978 when he opened Helena’s hibernation tube only to find her still dead. Despondent and furious, he attacks Craig who flees the room with a young Dieter Kane. Later, Craig suggests they take new identities and leave their pasts behind. Now, in the present, Pierce regrets losing so much time with his daughter, but Vale’s glowing praise of her assuages his guilt. They pause to let Vale rest, and Pierce talks about the benefits of being in the tube. The tube has healing properties and provides immunity to the Bell— immunity granted to Vale from his blood transfusion. They approach a door when the lights go out, in a suspected power outage. Pierce manages to finagle the door open, and they enter a massive chamber filled floor to ceiling with tubes containing bodies, most of which look human; the mist inside the tubes is changing, indicating that perhaps the beings are waking up. Outside the chamber, they hear approaching footsteps.

A man in a Nazi military uniform enters the room where Warner and the boys are hiding. She recognizes him as Konrad Kane.

Gazing at the “racks” of hibernation tubes hanging from the ceiling, Pierce suspects that an Immari hypothesis may have been correct: that the structure in Gibraltar is an outpost leading to the Atlantean homeland buried in Antarctica, and the door they stepped through is a portal to that homeland. They further suspected that the Atlanteans were “hibernational superhumans” waiting to conquer the Earth. The footsteps echo louder, and Pierce and Vale retreat into the shadows to avoid discovery.

Inside the corridor, Sloane encounters a group of Nazi soldiers. He introduces himself as Dieter Kane and orders them to take him to his father. Warner, meanwhile, lies about her identity and her purpose, telling Kane she was sent to find him. Just then, a soldier enters and whispers a message to Kane who defers the conversation until later but leaves with the boys, claiming he needs their help.

The soldier brings Kane to the room where Dieter is held at gunpoint, and their reunion is “lifeless, business-like.” Kane confirms the time differential within the Atlantean structure: One year outside is a single day inside. He also reports that the Atlanteans “are not what we think they are. The truth is more bizarre than we imagined” (419). Needing time to explain his discoveries, Kane and Sloane agree to leave the boys in the tombs with Warner, and to let the backpacks detonate as planned.

As two Nazi soldiers survey the hibernation chamber, they are distracted by a fog emanating from one of the tubes. Pierce and Vale overpower them, rendering one unconscious and interrogating the other before killing him. There are ten soldiers left under Kane’s command, and Pierce and Vale must neutralize them before they can commit “genocide” on the Atlanteans.

Pierce and Vale shoot their way toward Kane and Warner. They eventually coming to another hibernation room with tubes filled with ape-men. Warner steps out from hiding, and she is reunited with her father. The reunion is brief, however, as they must rescue the boys and prevent the nuclear detonation. Vale reasons the boys are likely headed to the large hibernation chamber. He wants to leave Warner behind to keep her safe, but she refuses to stay, grabbing a machine gun from one of the dead soldiers. With no valid counterargument, he finally agrees, handing her a Luger pistol instead.

Ahead, Sloane sees dead guards. As he pushes the boys into the hibernation chamber, a shot rings out, hitting his father in the arm. Desperate to save him, Sloane fires a burst of machine gun fire as cover while his father escapes.

Vale keeps Sloane and his men occupied while Pierce and Warner pursue the boys. When they catch up to them in the hibernation chamber, the timers on their backpacks read 30 minutes until detonation. Pierce claims he has a plan to disable the warheads. As Pierce pulls her toward the children, Warner hears the sound of gunfire, knowing that Vale is facing Sloane and his men alone.

Vale kills the remaining soldiers, leaving only Sloane, though he is nowhere in sight. After waiting a few moments, Vale emerges from cover and sprints down the corridor after Pierce, Warner, and the boys. Bullets tear into his back, knocking him to the ground. He feels himself being rolled over, a gloating Sloane towering over him, but Vale pulls out his pistol and shoots him through the face.

Konrad Kane dons a protective suit and steps out of the structure into the icy cavern outside. He activated the Bell when he entered the structure years earlier, but it had been deactivated accidentally when he tried to master the system controls. Now, however, it is active again, and he knows he must get clear of it quickly or suffer its deadly effects. As he crosses the threshold, the Bell erupts to life, and Kane dashes for the inverted basket that carried Warner into the tunnel.

As Pierce and Warner pull the backpacks off the boys’ backs, Pierce instructs her to take the boys back through the portal to the Gibraltar structure. Although it is a one-way portal for humans, it will allow her to pass through since she possesses Atlantean blood. Once there, she must leave the portal open for Pierce to follow her. Once he comes through, she and the boys will have six hours to get as far away as possible. They embrace as she prepares to go through the portal with the boys.

As Kane wobbles across the ice, a visual communication channel opens in his helmet with Keegan/Craig on the other end. Kane, feeling the effects of the Bell, asks to be pulled out of the hole, but Keegan tells him his only option is to inject himself with a syringe located in the basket. Out of options, Kane does as he is told, only to learn that Keegan is abandoning him to die in the icy, underground chamber. Before Kane dies, Keegan notes that Warner and Sloane’s daughter exhibits full Atlantis Gene activation. Just then, an aide rushes into the office to inform Keegan that something is happening in Gibraltar.

As Warner and the boys emerge from the portal into the Gibraltar outpost, a guard is waiting for them. He confiscates her pistol and takes them into custody.

An Immari agent reports to Keegan that Chang is analyzing the “biometric data” from Kane’s suit, but he also needs the body. Warner and the boys are in custody as well, but there is no sign of Pierce or Vale. After hastily writing a note and giving it to the agent to deliver, he orders Warner interrogated.

As the guards escort Warner and the boys through the exit corridor, they are met by Grey—looking “wild and unkempt” (434)—accompanied by two guards of his own. When Warner’s guards refuse to release her, Grey shields the boys as his guards shoot Warner’s. When Warner tells him about Pierce and the warheads coming through the portal, he rushes them through another corridor to a “submersible” docked somewhere in the bay.

When Pierce emerges from the portal, Keegan is waiting for him with soldiers and a lab technician ready to take a blood sample. Pierce stops him with a drawn pistol, explaining that he is carrying two warheads set to detonate.

Grey, Warner, the boys, and Grey’s men pilot the small submarine out into the bay heading toward the Atlantic. Sailing at surface level, Grey and Warner stand on the observation deck and catch up. During Warner’s brief time in the Atlantean structure, two months have passed in the outside world, and in that time, “‘The world has changed. And not for the better’” (437). The “Atlantis Plague” has spread, putting Gibraltar and Northern Africa under quarantine. Just then, they see a blinding light followed by a massive boom, and the Rock of Gibraltar crumbles. Grey advises they submerge immediately before the wave hits.

A lab technician informs Dr. Chang that genetic data from Helena Barton’s body—which was never buried and stored in a lab—coupled with the data recovered from Kane has allowed them to isolate the Atlantis Gene.

Vale wakes up in a hibernation tube, his body regenerated and with no sign of past scars or injuries. Out into the corridor beyond, he can see two bodies, one atop the other: his and Sloane’s. As he scans the vast chamber and the fog begins to clear, he sees another body in another tube, awake and alert: Dorian Sloane.