The Atlantis Girl Read online

  She cleared her throat and took a sip of water, perusing the notes she’d been allowed to hastily compile from her office in Arizona before the flight. “I received a sample of material from an Egyptian mummy buried in a tomb inscribed with the Egyptian hieroglyph for Atlantis. As you may know, Plato ascribed the original story of Atlantis to the Egyptians. With this sample, I was able to pull a small amount of mitochondrial DNA, and I discovered something I’d never seen before. It wasn’t quite… human.”

  There were chortles of amusement and shaking heads. Akiko’s lips turned up in a half smile. She had come too far to turn back. She dropped her head and studied her notes again, her voice lowering as she pressed on. “I considered it a fluke until I came across a similar DNA signature in another patient years later. I was called in to consult on a case concerning a young man by the name of Lance Pierson. He suffered a rare genetic disease a colleague of mine felt might be the result of what he called the patient’s ‘unusual DNA.’ He also suffered psychiatric symptoms and delusions. Pierson believed he could transmute electromagnetic energy.”

  She would never forget the case or the young man, though the patient had disappeared back into obscurity after her part in analyzing his DNA was completed. He had claimed to have unique abilities and was branded a lunatic, but Akiko hadn’t been fully convinced he was crazy. She had seen it with her own eyes—he could do things. And that had prompted her lifelong interest in how many more people like him were out there in the world.

  “My goal,” Akiko said with renewed confidence, “is to prove the existence of the lost city by locating and studying descendants of the extinct Atlantean civilization. I believe there are more like Lance Pierson out there, more like the Egyptian mummy from the tomb with the Atlantis hieroglyphic. I believe the evidence of their existence manifests mentally and behaviorally. To test my theories, I will need a sizable sample population that I don’t have, but you seem to. What I do have is the Mother copy, and you won’t find that anywhere else in the world.”

  Now, here she was, working with the Poseidon Project at a research facility in New Mexico with the list of potential descendants. Akiko should have been happy, but she wasn’t. She felt conflicted. She couldn’t decide if what they were doing was entirely ethical. Yet in the name of science, it seemed the only way to get the answers she so desperately sought.

  The goings-on in the secret facility weren’t exactly popular in the surrounding community. Rumors of genetic experiments and things that go bump in the night made the laypeople suspicious of those they considered scientists playing God. Akiko had no interest in doing what the rumormongers accused—creating strange, new variations of human beings, genetic splicing and the like. Her only purpose at the facility was to quickly, quietly, and thoroughly go through “the list.”

  “I guess the ends justify the means,” she muttered to herself. She stood patiently waiting in the foyer beyond the building’s heavy glass doors while the security team patted her down.

  “What was that, Dr. Yamazaki?” asked the man in blue.

  “Nothing, nothing. Are we done?” It was an intrusive process, but Akiko understood the need. Some things in the tall building shouldn’t get out, and some things shouldn’t get in. Finally, the security team waved her through the scanner and allowed Akiko through the imposing columned entrance of Starke Genetics.

  The place was snazzy. The decor was ultramodern, and the ground level had walls paneled in Brazilian teak with granite flooring. The waiting area had a mix of chrome and black leather furniture tucked to one side of the lobby, and to the other side, an open corridor led deeper into the medical floor where examination rooms were located behind steel doors. On higher levels were doctors’ offices and laboratories. Akiko walked from the main lobby through the glossy corridor and headed to the elevator bay at the end of the hall. The walkway overlooked the front of the building, windows letting in light. Overhead, the ceiling was a crosshatch of wooden beams, and the floor beneath her heels was dull gray stone.

  Akiko wore a white lab coat over her black pantsuit and held nothing in her hands. She wasn’t allowed to bring anything on the grounds or to take anything away. She pushed her long black hair out of her face and peered ahead with her dark brown eyes. “Going down? Hold that, please!” she called out. She breezed into the elevator, smiling appreciatively at the lab tech traveling with her to the basement of the facility, where the department for the Poseidon Project was located.

  It felt like being a member of a secret society. Akiko had been at the facility for a month and was still no closer to knowing her coworkers, other than her personal lab assistant, James Yuhle, whom she had convinced Meade to allow to come with her.

  “Morning, Yuhle,” she greeted him as she walked into the sterile glass room.

  “We got more names on the list.” The young doctor looked up from his microscope and pushed his glasses higher, smiling at the sight of her. A shadow of a beard covered his rounded cheeks and chin, his wavy sandy-brown hair falling over his forehead. He was gangly and looked barely old enough to have a license, much less a doctorate. Akiko graced him with a warm grin before sighing and taking a seat in front of her computer to go through the list of subjects they had already tested.

  “Are we done with the last ones?” she asked. They had analyzed the results of over three hundred patients. It was time-consuming work that required an entire team dedicated to the testing—and a state-of-the-art laboratory—but they had done it. Yet as quickly as they eliminated names from the list, Meade and his trusted intelligence analyst found more people to add. It was daunting but rewarding work. Akiko hadn’t found the needle in the haystack she was searching for, but she was confident she would, at the rate they were going.

  “You ever wonder why they want to find these people?” Yuhle asked softly.

  They were alone in her office, but Akiko shot him a look. “Not here,” she murmured in warning. It wasn’t wise to ask questions like that of the powers that be who were funding her research, but she did wonder. General Meade was military, working in conjunction with the National Security Agency to seek people with unique genetic material and purportedly unique special abilities. She thought again of Lance Pierson and how he had fallen off the map after his talents were discovered. It was unsettling.

  “It doesn’t matter why they want to find these people,” she said with a shake of her head. “What matters is why we want to find them. This is a rare opportunity to study the difference between their genetic material and ours.”

  “Us versus them? So, you really think they’re that much different from us?”

  Akiko grinned excitedly, nodding. She pulled up another work screen and prepared to go through the graphics from the lab results. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes, Yuhle,” she stated proudly. “They’re not like us… they’re much, much more advanced than we’ll evolve to be for probably another million years.”

  “And it all traces back to the ancient Atlanteans.”

  “That’s just a theory, a catchy headline. I have no idea of their origin. All I know is, I’ve only ever encountered the one patient. Here’s hoping he wasn’t the only one.”

  Chapter 5

  MARCH 15, 2016, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

  7:45 AM

  Jaxon had unpacked in the night, and her sparse wardrobe barely filled the new closet and dresser. It was her second day at the group home, and she dug out a white cotton shift and pulled it over her head. She surveyed her appearance in the mirror hanging from the back of her door, wanting to make a good impression on the students she’d be rubbing elbows with throughout the rest of the day.

  There she was, same as always. The same indeterminable race, with a complexion that could be African-American, or Latina, or probably biracial, which still raised the question, what racial mix? She had slightly slanted eyes and thick, lustrous black hair that was too coarse to be fine but too fine to be coarse.

  When she was younger, Jaxon had been preoccupied
with tracing her elusive roots, but the trail always stopped at a dead end. She knew that as a nine-month-old, she was abandoned in a stranger’s car in a shopping center parking lot, rescued from heatstroke by the owner of said car, and carted off to the Family Support Service. There was no paper trail to track down the name of her mother and no way to find out about her father. It was disheartening. She didn’t belong to anyone.

  Jax shook her head at her reflection, tired of wondering about herself and deciding she looked passable. It was time to get the day started. According to the weighty yellow folder jam-packed with the FW handbook and welcome materials, she had group therapy from seven to nine in the morning, but not that morning. Jaxon had a message from Dr. Hollis to meet him in his office for the rest of her testing and to get her class assignments.

  She didn’t have a backpack, and she figured she probably didn’t need one. Jax slipped her dainty feet into a pair of brown sandals and opened the bedroom door to see who else was up and about and moving around. There were voices in the hall. “Hi,” she murmured shyly to a girl heading down the stairs ahead of her.

  “Hey, yourself. You’re the new kid?”

  Jaxon shrugged. “I guess so.”

  The other girl nodded and continued down the hall to the great room. Jaxon followed because she still wasn’t quite familiar with the layout of the house. She discovered the group was held there, and she watched several other residents ignore her and duck through the archway into the room. Jax ambled back down the corridor to the foot of the stairs, remembering Dr. Hollis’s nook was through the archway at the opposite end of the hall.

  “Good morning, Jaxon,” he greeted from his desk.

  Jaxon peeked over her shoulder at the students trudging to the great room and turned back to his office, where she was safe from contact with them. “Hey.” She walked to the dining chair in front of his cluttered desk and took a seat. “So, let’s get this over with.”

  “We were going to do a few more questionnaires geared toward building a personality profile on you, but I really don’t think that will be necessary right now. That is, not unless we see you having problems adapting to the new environment. What do you think?” Dr. Hollis had made a decision overnight that he hoped he wouldn’t regret. Dr. Brady was right. He was sometimes a stickler for technicalities, and there was enough data compiled that he didn’t need to pick Jaxon’s brain to find something wrong with her.

  She shrugged, taken aback at being asked to evaluate for herself whether she needed further testing. “You’re the doctor, aren’t you?” she replied quizzically.

  Dr. Hollis smiled encouragingly, gesturing for her to give him more feedback. “Yes, yes, but this is your life experience we’re talking about here. I’m really just asking if you want to stall a little longer or if you’re ready to get your courses and get out there and meet some people. I let you go too late in the evening yesterday for you to do much mingling.”

  “Oh, no, no. I’m not in a rush. I’m kind of a loner. I don’t know if you read my history, but I, eh, don’t play well with others.” The corners of her lips turned upward in an amused smirk. She had already told him about some of the trouble she had had in her foster homes. No surprise there.

  Dr. Hollis spent the next half-hour explaining the sign-in process so when classes started, she could access her terminal and get to her platform. He used his laptop computer to show her how to get to the website. “Online courses?” she said with interest. “I thought we all had private tutors or whatever.”

  “You do. Well, actually, you don’t.” He looked skyward and tried again. “Let me explain. All of the students are assigned a personal tutor to assist where needed as they go through their weekday classes. We’ve got residents ranging in age from twelve to eighteen, so their academic levels are diverse. You, on the other hand, won’t really need that.”

  Dr. Hollis leaned back in the busted leather chair and surveyed the pretty honey-brown girl sitting across from him. She looked uncomfortable in her own skin, and he hoped he could eventually change that. He had helped hundreds of students matriculating in and out of the group home over the course of his ten years working there. He understood that some of the greatest challenges troubled children faced were their own self-criticisms. It was his goal to be a mirror reflecting positive potential rather than just another naysayer.

  “You’re far more advanced than any of the students here.” He smiled, shaking his head, still amazed by that. He had seen her transcripts from her previous schools. She was a D-average student, barely above failing, yet she was literally a genius. “Your curriculum is a mix of advanced placement high school classes and college-level classes. You could probably take all college-level courses, but there are some of the others you have to take to get your high school diploma.”

  “But my dyslexia,” she countered. “Sure, I can do well when you call the test questions out and I answer verbally, but it all goes to shit on paper.”

  “Whoops. Swear bucket. You just got a point docked.”

  “What?” She covered her mouth.

  “Sorry about that. You’ll see the point loss reflected on your weekly email summary of your FW points. We discourage informal language such as swearing around here. It might take a little time to get used to it, but you will get used to it. Swearing isn’t allowed.” Jaxon scowled. How the hell—heck—had she already lost a point? She’d probably end up broke by the end of the week. She sighed and crossed her arms.

  “Where were we?” Dr. Hollis glanced down at his desk and patted the papers. “Ach, dyslexia! So, I’ve arranged for a colleague of mine, an educational psychologist, to work personally with you via daily hour-long sessions separate from the rest of your class time. The goal is to teach you different ways of learning to process written information. I’ve developed an individual education plan to address your needs. To be honest, I don’t think you’re going to have much of a problem.”

  Jaxon shook off her ire at losing FW points and perked up with interest at the prospect of having a specialized curriculum—complete with specialists—to help with her disability. “I’ve always felt a little slow for not being able to read like others, although I kinda knew I was smart, you know?” She stared down at her hands. When she looked up at Dr. Hollis, his dancing brown eyes matched the ever-present smile on his ruddy face, and he seemed to agree that she was smart. Jax wasn’t used to teachers or therapists having confidence in her.

  “Which just goes to show you that the concept of intelligence is complex. Certainly, understanding of language is a key component of intellectual ability, but the brain is a many-splendored thing. If I may say so, yours is a multifaceted jewel. Don’t let your hang-ups about your learning disorder affect your self-esteem. You’re a marvel, Jaxon.”

  She smiled shyly, flattered.

  “So, you’ll use your ID badge—do you have it with you? Ah, yes, you remembered it. Perfect—to access the computer lab. Teagan, one of your classmates, will be your guide today. I’ve arranged for her to break with group early to take you on a walk around the place.” He patted around the desk, searching for the slip of paper where he had written her access codes. It was tucked beneath his coffee mug, and when he pulled it free, there was a brown ring. “Yikes, sorry about that,” he muttered.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she responded, accepting the paper by the tip of her fingers. Jaxon hated disorderliness, but Dr. Hollis was all right. She could put up with his less than neat ways. “I take it I’m supposed to go to group now?”

  “Oh, and group therapy, let me explain that. Basically, every weekday morning, you and the rest of the residents in your age bracket, sixteen to eighteen, will meet up to discuss any problems you’re having. They’re really more like peer discussion sessions than group therapy. My schedule is”—he whistled—“hectic enough as it is without having to do that every morning, but! But I’m always available, should you need to talk. My door is always open. I don’t even have a door. See?”
/>   His speech was rapid, and he constantly shifted subjects. He gestured when he talked and invariably moved things around on his desk looking for something, but he had a harried quality about him, and she found him interesting to watch. He had a way of making her feel overwhelmed, as if she were late for an important meeting. Jaxon decided she liked Dr. Anthony Hollis. He was so very imperfect.

  She rested her elbows on his desk and leaned forward, smiling. “Hopefully, this will be the easiest placement I’ve ever had, and you won’t have to see me in here much.” She was doubtful. Trouble seemed to find her everywhere she went. “Hopefully,” she reiterated.

  “That’s the spirit. No trouble, no worries,” he said with a grin. “But if you do have any problems, you know where to find me.”

  Jax avoided group by sneaking off to breakfast, and when she came out of the dining hall, she noticed the classroom door. Stepping into the room after passing her access badge under the entry card reader was like walking into an office building. Located at the back of the house just beyond the dining room on the east side, the classroom was a bland break with the homey environment of the rest of Forever Welcome. The white walls and hardwood floors invited no distractions. Even the windows were covered with opaque blinds.

  The classroom consisted of workstations, twenty cubicles in total, with five workstations in each of the four rows. The rows were separated by a narrow aisle in the middle of the room. Students were assigned their seats by grade level, with younger students to the front of the class and older students to the back. Jaxon hurried to her seat, the second to last computer with the sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds. The rest of the cubicles were already filled with students who had arrived early.