City Beneath the Sea: The Quest for Atlantis, #1

PROLOGUE

20 Miles East of Bimini Road

On the morning of August 10, 2014, a marine earthquake with a magnitude of 5.3 struck off the Straits of Florida. The seafloor shifted as plates converged on one another, which caused displacements of large volumes of water to form tubes of massive waves that spread from the epicenter.

Approximately 20 miles east of the Bimini Islands, an old fishing vessel and its crew of five stood upon its deck watching the tsunami curl of water come at them with fury.

My God, the Captain whispered to himself.

Everyone stopped what they were doing because they were being held back by paralytic terror. Then the boat’s captain galvanized them with orders laced with a string of profanities, his crew moving quickly. Since boats were designed to take on waves from the front, the team angled the vessel to ride up the surge. But this swell was huge and climbing with the wave barreling down on them with incredible speed and force.

And then the bow began to nose upward as it first took on a 45-degree slant and rising still until the angle became acute. Traps not tied down slid along the deck with some of the deckhands getting clipped along the way, the traps now pinning them against the storage holds by the transom. And still, the bow rose higher with the point of the hull nearing eighty degrees, and then ninety, the ship now at a right angle. Then a canopy of water hung over them as though suspended by the slowness of a nightmare, a simple tease that waited to come down on them with a force capable of smashing wood into splinters.

And then the deck started to creak with the wood stressing, and then cracking. Fissures raced across the area of the deck, the ship now splitting and dividing and separating. The bow eventually detached from the boat’s rear, the vessel now in two separate pieces.

As soon as the stern was swept underneath, three hands were lost. The captain and the remaining deckhand, however, were able to cling to the vessel as the mammoth tube finally smashed down on them with such an impact, that it had driven the entire half of the vessel beneath the sea. But the separated bow popped to the surface like a cork and bobbed for a moment before the boat eventually settled upon its portside.

The captain climbed the vessel while it continued to ride the high swells of the waves. His mate, however, was lost, his body never surfacing.

The captain was miles from the shoreline, and he knew that the bow wouldn’t float much longer. Worse, all the lifejackets were in a locker by the transom, which was now beneath the surface of the sea.

He looked east. The waves were still coming in but not as bad. Then he looked west toward the islands of Bimini. All he could see was the lethal tidal moving away, its caps white with froth. And then the air became a vacuum that seemed to pull and weigh him down.

About fifty feet to his left, water began to churn and spiral into a vortex, the surface spinning like a pinwheel until its center collapsed downward like a funnel, the area becoming a whirlpool that claimed what was left of the flotsam. The captain’s makeshift raft was beginning to draw closer to the spinning maw, with the vessel circling faster and faster along the funnel’s edges with every turn and revolution.

Then his world began to rotate just while seeing nothing but Caribbean blue and white until he was completely sucked under. His eyes flared with the surprise of his mortality as he watched the last of his air bubbles expel from his lungs. Then as he floated dreamily to the bottom with his arms held out to his side in mock crucifixion, Captain Billy Trickett drifted slowly through a sinkhole that had been created in the sea’s floor by the shockwave, with that floor having once served as a ceiling to a great cavern that had been hidden underneath it for centuries.

As the body of Captain Trickett settled lazily along the floor with plumes of sand eddying around him, pyramids larger than Giza and Eden stood along the cavern’s floor not too far from where he lay. Great structures and stone statues close to the size of the famed Colossus of Rhodes stood tall. Pillars and Grecian-styled columns continued to brace the ceilings of Acropolis-like buildings, whereas other supports had fallen in ruins centuries ago. And at the end of what could have been a cobble-paved road stood a coliseum that was much grander than Rome’s.

What the earthquake uncovered but couldn’t destroy, what Captain Trickett had posthumously discovered, was a city beneath the sea . . .

. . . And the terrible truths and horrors that would come with it.

CHAPTER ONE

The Archeological Institute of Ancient Antiquities (The AIAA)

New York City, New York

One Week Ago

Four months to the day after Alyssa Moore was nearly killed when the last temple of Eden collapsed around her, she had lost her baby, the child dying during the first month of its second trimester.

She had never felt so empty or hollow. The feeling of not being able to keep her child had left her utterly unfulfilled, no matter how deeply she tried to lose herself in her work. There just didn’t seem to be enough room to run away from the pain, because her pain had no problem in tracking her down. In time, her spirited nature atrophied to a skinny range of emotions, flat and muted with her responses often resonating with the cold fortitude of a machine.

Her partner, John Savage, was becoming increasingly concerned about her welfare. She was losing weight and the color of her skin—once vibrant with the color of tanned leather—was beginning to wash into a sickly shade that appeared as colorless as the underbelly of a fish. Laces of red stitching crossed extensively across the whites of her eyes, giving them a rheumy look. Even under the effects of complete exhaustion, Alyssa would push herself into the early morning hours to slave and pour over documents. And though time was said to be eternal, she never seemed to have enough of it.

John entered her office that located on the first floor of their residence while in his pajamas. She, however, wasn’t; a sign that she hadn’t gone to bed at all.

Again.

Honey, John appeared troubled and distressed.

But she gave him a neutral look that refused to betray her emotions. I know, she stated evenly. You’re going to ask me why I didn’t go to bed. And the answer is the same as always, John: I’m busy.

You’re going to make yourself sick, he told her. You know that, don’t you? He sat in a winged-back chair opposite her desk. Somewhere, a wall-clock ticked off the moments.

She looked at John knowing that she loved him with all her heart. But what pained her most was her callous attitude of pushing him away with little regret of doing so. Wasn’t the baby just as much a part of him as it was mine? Didn’t he suffer just as much as I did?

I’m sorry, she finally said, her tone soft and fragile. John— She cut herself off.

His tone was just as soft and gentle. Alyssa, I love you so much that it’s killing me to see you like this. You’re not yourself. I know losing a baby is difficult. I’m there with you. But it’s time to move on knowing we’ll have a family someday. It’ll happen.

She resorted back to her cold resilience and to that certain stiffness in her manner. You’re saying there’s a reason for this—something we’re not supposed to understand?

He looked saddened by her sudden shift in demeanor, as she turned from something soft and open one moment, to something ice-cold and guarded the next. I want my Alyssa back, he told her. I want the spirited girl who wants to globetrot and seek the truth of our past. I want that bright girl who had the strength and courage to push mountains aside to get at the facts, despite the costs.

Her face relaxed. She had been pouring over documents all night regarding sites and antiquities, documents she had read over a thousand times before.

When the time is right, he told her sweetly. We’ll be gifted with a child.

Her eyes began to well with tears as she looked ceilingward. No, she said. Not now. Not what we know about what’s going to happen in 2026.

Alyssa, we don’t know if the calendar inside Eden was interpreted correctly. You didn’t have time to study it clearly enough.

"It’s not just the calendar, John. You saw them, she expressed sharply. You saw those things inside the third pyramid beneath the sands. It was a lab, John. And as for the calendar, it was noticeably clear to me that in the year 2026 mankind will be replaced because we screwed up as a race. And because we screwed up, we’re going to be completely erased for it . . . And I wouldn’t want to see my child suffer" ---If I had a child--- when the end comes. Then as her eyes took on a gaze of detachment, she added in a measure that was just above a whisper, Maybe it was a blessing that we didn’t have a child . . .

Then a tear slipped from the corner of her eye, a sparkling bead, and tracked down along her cheek. It was the first crack in the dam. Then it was joined by a second and a third until the dam finally burst and the wall shattered. She let it out with a sobbing burst while her chest heaved and pitched in cathartic weeping. John was beside her and held her close, the man talking to her with a soothing voice that sounded as gentle as a breeze, the tone guiding her, loving her, becoming her voice of salvation.

When John ushered her up the stairway and to the bedroom, he allowed her to sob beneath the covers of their bed knowing that fatigue would eventually take her. And while she slept, she would dream of pyramids beneath the sand.

And the horrible secrets they hid.

#

John Savage watched the woman he loved deeply sleeping with gentle repose. Then he wandered off to the AIAA office downstairs to conduct business. There were grants to pin down, funds to help promote future adventures. Hopefully, such explorations and the thrill of the hunt would bring her back to him.

He closed his eyes as he sat at her desk with sheaves of paperwork scattered haphazardly about. The mess reflected what she was feeling at the moment, in disarray. And he knew this because he was here before at one point in his life when he was in a bad place that was both dark and fathomless.

Not too long ago, he had commanded his SEAL Team to the Philippines on a rescue mission while mentally and emotionally compromised, with his lack of awareness ultimately costing him the lives of half his team, as well as the primary targets of rescue. In the subsequent months, he fell into darkness like no other, an obsidian pitch with no way out.

Then he met Alyssa, a brilliant mind and a spirited person who reached down and pulled him free from this dark mire. She was a master in interpreting archaic languages---brilliant, in fact---having learned from her father, the discoverer of Eden, which was a civilization hidden beneath the sands of Turkey.

She had coaxed him toward the Light of optimism, showing him that life would always be full of difficulties that were never too difficult to overcome. So, she had become his savior. Now it was time for him to become hers.

He looked at the clock.

The day was moving on.

Then he wondered if her healing was moving along as well.

. . . Tick . . .

. . . Tock . . .

CHAPTER TWO

Approximately One Mile East of the Bimini Sinkhole

Four Days Ago

Beneath a perfectly uniform sky with nary a renegade cloud to be seen, sits an oil rig. Though it appears to perform and behave as a station to drill and gather oil, it does anything but. It’s a facility that was developed by the Pentagon and the Department of Defense not to collect fossil fuel, but to serve as a laboratory.

Paul Scott headed the team and answered solely to the Secretary of Defense. He was tall and lanky with an olive complexion. His hairline was receding, making him look much older than his thirty-three years. And when he spoke, he did so in monotone, flat and even, which exhibited his limited range of emotions and, to some degree, appeared soulless.

He was standing along the railing with two men of military breed, both Navy, and watched the sea bubble with froth as a mini-sub began its rise. When the sub emerged, an egg-shaped pod was fastened to its deck by canvas straps. The pod was damaged, however, the glass shell having fractured ages ago, allowing saltwater to seep inside and corrupt the once-living tissue within. Even in its corrupt state, they could tell it was a type of hominid that had gathered into a fetal position, the process of birth not quite complete. It was tall, close to eight feet, with limbs as thin as broomsticks, now mostly bone, with few tags of rotting flesh that still floated dreamily from its skeletal frame.

Lieutenant Commander Stephen Percival leaned forward against the rails alongside Paul Scott and the assisting Commander and narrowed his eyes to get a better view. It looks humanoid, he commented rhetorically. Big . . . Whatever it is.

Though the fissures against the glass were hairline in nature, the pod was able to retain water without copious amounts of dripping, which made the subject inside the pod appear like a lab specimen trapped inside a jar of formaldehyde that was the color of dark urine.

After the straps from the pod were released and newly secured to lines attached to a crane and winch system, the crane operator lifted the pod from the sub, managed it so that it hovered directly over a rectangular-shaped