Raising Atlantis by Thomas Greanias

Author:Thomas Greanias
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Published: 2012-04-05T11:24:16+00:00

Part Three

Dawn

22

Dawn Minus Fifteen Hours

INSIDEP4’S STAR CHAMBER,Conrad coughed as the whiskey stung the back of his throat. He looked up at Serena sitting next to him. Her wet hair was wiped back, her face pale.

“Jack Daniel’s?” he asked hoarsely.

“Found it in Yeats’s pack.” She reached over and touched his face. The feeling of her hand on his face brought him back to life. “You’re warm.”

“This whole place feels warm.” Conrad sat up and felt a terrific pain at the base of his skull. He groaned. “Where’s the obelisk?”

“I don’t know,” Serena said.

“It was right here.” Conrad quickly scanned the star chamber. He saw the empty altar standing in the middle of the cartouche. Something in his gut churned and he remembered a nightmare about the floor splitting open. “Where’s Yeats?” 130

“Disappeared down the floor shaft.”

Conrad looked for the shaft, but it had closed up again beneath the altar. He’s dead, thought Conrad. He felt himself shake, his heart beating rapidly.

“I’m so sorry about your father, Conrad.”

He looked into her eyes. She was indeed sorry, he thought. But there was something peculiar about the way she looked at him now. Something different.

He wouldn’t call it fear, but there was something else in her eyes that put distance between them. Surely she didn’t believe Yeats’s bizarre revelation about his origins, did she? It was obviously a psychological ploy.

“You don’t actually believe—”

“Whatever else you may be, Conrad, you’re clearly not on anybody’s ‘most worthy’ list—not God’s, not the Atlanteans’ and not mine,” she said. “You’re still going to die for your sins. Only this time it looks like you’re going to take the rest of us with you straight to hell. That’s what I believe.” Conrad could only stare at her. “You never stop, do you? You always have to have the last word.”

“Yes.”

Then Conrad saw something gleaming on the floor. He reached out to touch it.

Was it sunlight? He looked up at the ceiling and blinked his eyes. The two concealed shafts he suspected had been there all along were now wide open, and a beam of sunlight strained through the southern shaft and touched the center of the floor where the obelisk had been.

Had the ice chasm overhead collapsed? he wondered with alarm. What about Ice Base Orion? The horrific thought that P4’s geothermal vent might have melted the ice or even shifted the earth’s crust briefly drifted across his consciousness, but he quickly suppressed it. Had something so catastrophic happened, he and Serena would be dead.

“What time is it?” Conrad asked Serena.

“Three in the afternoon,” she said. “Antarctica has equal hours of daylight and darkness in September. So we only have a few hours until dusk.” Conrad craned his neck at the shafts on the sloping north and south walls of the chamber. He could crawl out one to check. It was the only way out. But the 131

angles of the shafts looked steep, and it was at least a thousand feet up to God knows what.

“I’ll need to have a look outside,” he told her.

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