“My God!” Lea said through the comms. “The whole team is on that ship!” As she spoke, pieces of the destroyed ship began to rain down a few hundred feet in the distance, leaving twisting trails of bubbles in their wake.
“But who’s attacking us?” Ryan said. “Can’t be Kruger — he wouldn’t have destroyed his own boat!”
“We have to get back!” Hawke yelled. “There might be survivors!”
“But what about Kruger?” Ryan yelled. “He still has the idol.”
“Forget him,” Hawke said. “The team needs us — besides, by the look of his boat he’s not going anywhere.”
They spun their scooters around and weaved in and out of the broken ruins on their way out of the destroyed metropolis.
“I don’t like this, guys.” Ryan said. “Maybe they’re all dead, and now we’re in the middle of the ocean without a ship.”
“At least Atlantis was unharmed,” Lea said.
Leaving the ghostly ruins of Atlantis far behind, Hawke looked over his shoulder at the ancient site and agreed with her. “We’re coming back here,” he said. “Wait a minute…”
“What is it?” Lea asked.
“Am I going insane or is Atlantis glowing?”
“Eh?” Lea and Ryan twisted around on the scooters. “Turns out you’re not going insane,” Lea said.
“It really is glowing!” Ryan said.
And then it happened.
The ruins of Atlantis began to rupture and then exploded in a massive fireball.
The blast was enormous, spewing an enormous cloud of silt and dirt into the water all around the ruins in a gargantuan sphere. It reminded Hawke of the old nuclear tests the French did in the South Pacific when they used to detonate twenty kiloton bombs in lagoons. Exactly like those tests, the water behind them was now illuminated with the brightest light he had ever seen. “Close your eyes!” he yelled.
He knew what was coming next. Behind them, whatever had detonated in the ruins had created a rapidly expanding bubble of gas that was about to generate the mother of all underwater shock waves. “Hold on to the scooters if you can!”
But as the shock wave overtook them, they were soon blasted off their scooters and sent tumbling over in the water in all directions. Hawke felt like he’d been hit by a concrete wall.
Dazed by the explosion, they swam upwards through the filthy water toward the final location of their ship and their friends. The VCSM had drifted in the storm further than Hawke thought and the massive underwater detonation of Atlantis has pushed the wreckage even further away. It felt like he’d never get there, but then the light broke through. “I can see people swimming in the water. There are survivors!”
“We have to help them!” Lea said.
The sea got murkier again, and for a long time they swam through more silt-laden gloom as they struggled to reach their friends. “Keep going!” Hawke shouted. “We have to help the survivors.”
“But where are they?” Ryan said as they emerged into the light once more. “They’ve gone!”
“Eh?” Hawke looked up and saw he was right. Where once had been the kicking legs of several survivors, now there was no movement at all. Then he broke the surface and got the answer.
There, rising and falling with the ocean wave was a Mil Mi-14.
When Ryan reached the surface he joined Hawke. “What the hell is that?”
Before Hawke could reply Lea arrived and gasped. “What the hell..?”
“It’s a Russian anti-submarine chopper,” Hawke said. “And as you can see from the nifty way it’s parked on the sea, it’s amphibious.”
The side door was open and inside he could see Reaper and the others on their knees with their hands behind their heads. Beside them were Dirk Kruger, Dragan Korać, Luk and Kamchatka in the same position.
A man in a black flying suit pointed a megaphone in their direction. “Welcome aboard.”
Hawke and the others exchanged a glance and Lea shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not staying around here that’s for freaking sure.”
Their hosts said nothing as they climbed into the chopper, struggling against the powerful downdraft of the Mil’s five mighty rotors. Inside the atmosphere was calm but oppressive and Hawke counted at least three submachine guns pointed at the prisoners.
“Please,” said the man in the flying suit. “Feel free to get on your knees and put your hands behind your head. We will be at our final destination shortly.”
Hawke had no choice but to comply, and before he had even followed the man’s instructions the door was closed and the chopper rose up out of the water, banking hard to starboard and gaining altitude sharply.
The flight seemed anything but short, and Hawke had to wait a long time until the guards began talking among themselves before he could turn to Scarlet. “What the hell’s going on?”
“They blew up our ship with a Hellfire and then repeated the courtesy for Kruger’s tuna boat. Now we’re all going on an adventure weekend together.”
“Where?”
She shrugged. “Check out the tattoos on their wrists.”
Hawke glanced at the men again and saw the strange markings: ΆΘ.
He turned to Ryan. “What the hell are they?”
“Oh sodding hell,” Ryan said.
“What?”
“It’s Greek,” he whispered. “I can’t be sure but my money’s on it symbolizing the word Athanatoi.”
“The Immortals!” Hawke said, but was interrupted by Lexi.
“Oh my God,” she said genuinely shocked. “What the hell is that?”
Hawke peered through the chopper’s tiny window and whistled with surprised admiration. “Looks like some kind of oil rig, only much bigger.”
“It’s a Seastead,” Ryan said, looking through the next porthole a few feet to their right.
“A what?” Lea asked.
“It’s like a floating city,” he replied, grinning and nodding with respect. “The mother of all tax havens.”
“It must be at least a kilometre long,” Reaper said shaking his gently with shock.
“They’re being talked about as the answer to overpopulation problems,” Ryan said casually. “But there are some issues to do with sovereignty and what laws would be in effect there. To be honest I thought they were only theoretical until about twenty seconds ago.”
“It’s pretty bloody amazing, I know that,” Lea said. “They must be residential buildings on the south side, and tennis courts? This is crazy.”
“Who the hell would build an entire floating city in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean?” Scarlet asked. “It’s not even like it’s anywhere near Atlantis — we must be hundreds of miles away from there by now.”
“Nearly a thousand miles away by my calculations,” Ryan said. “So not quite in the middle of the Atlantic, but almost.”
“It’s impressive,” Hawke said. “I’ll give them that.”
“There are three basic designs for a Seastead,” Ryan continued. “A small structure that floats on pontoons, a structure that is basically designed like a ship only immobile, and then a larger platform design which is supported by massive columns submerged into the ocean below to stabilize it in the way a keel does on a ship. It’s hard to tell from up here but my money’s on the latter because of its sheer size.”
“But why here?” Lea asked. “Why not closer to Atlantis?”
“Judging by how long we’ve been in the air we must be in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean by now, over the Mid-Atlantic ridge,” Ryan said.
“But why a thousand miles from the ruins?” Lea said.
“There must be a reason, and I think I have an idea.” Maria said, biting her lower lip with excitement.