The Atlantis Gene

Kate Warner is a doctor conducting autism research in Indonesia. One day, two armed and masked intruders sneak into the lab. Warner’s lab assistant, Ben Adelson, suddenly notices a flashing alarm light, but he and Warner ignore it as a false alarm. Warner becomes lost in memories of her youth. These include the death of her mother during childbirth; her sporadically present biological father; and her adoptive father, Martin Grey, taking her to the United States followed by a rotating cycle of new cities and boarding schools. Coming out of her reverie, she realizes Adelson has not returned. As she searches for him, she hears running footsteps in the corridors. Suddenly, from around a corner, Adelson grabs her arm and urges her to follow him.

David Vale, an operative with the counter-terrorism organization Clocktower, waits at the Jakarta train station for a mysterious contact who claims to have information on an impending terrorist attack. When the two men make eye contact, Vale instinctively knows there is danger afoot; he pushes his way off the train moments before a bomb explodes. Caught between wounded and dead bodies, two other operatives pull Vale from the chaos, and they speed away in a black van.

In the lab’s playroom, Warner and Adelson observe two young boys named Surya and Adi—participants in Warner’s autism study—assemble a difficult puzzle several times. Excited that their research is showing positive results, Warner reports their findings in an effort to avert any funding cuts.

As Warner and Adelson take the two boys to another part of the facility, they are met by two masked intruders, one holding a gun. They demand the children, but Warner offers herself instead. When they threaten violence if their demands aren’t met, Adelson charges the man with the gun. It goes off, Adelson is shot, and the man pins Warner to the ground.

David Vale, now in a Clocktower safe house, receives medical treatment for wounds suffered during the explosion. Vale’s superior, Howard Keegan, suggests the informant was a set-up meant to distract them while the terrorists plot the attack against Clocktower. As Keegan leaves for London, a young news vendor hands Vale a rolled-up newspaper. Something heavy is inside, and when Vale opens the paper, a pipe bomb falls out.

Indonesian police chief Eddi Kusnadi is called to the autism research facility by a neighbor reporting gunshots. He finds Warner on the floor, unconscious, and Adelson dead. Two children are missing. After checking Warner for serious injury, he orders one of his officers to “‘find out if she has any money. If so, bring her to the station. If not, dump her at the hospital’” (22). 

Inside the Immari research facility outside Burang, China, Dr. Shen Chang is ordered to push his research forward by testing on humans with “sustained Atlantis Gene activation” (23). The chosen test subjects are the two boys kidnapped from Warner’s autism study.

Back at Clocktower’s Indonesian headquarters, Vale disassembles what he thinks is a pipe bomb, but instead of nails or shrapnel, a satellite photo falls out, depicting the iceberg with the protruding submarine.

The BBC reports a terrorist attack on an apartment building in Cape Town, South Africa in which 14 people are killed. The attack mirrors a similar bombing in Argentina earlier the same day. Experts say these attacks demonstrate a level of sophistication and coordination thus far unseen on the “global terrorism landscape” (27).

Josh Cohen enters the Clocktower headquarters housed in a largely abandoned, industrial neighborhood. As “Chief of Intelligence Analysis for Jakarta Station” (29), Cohen is accustomed to secrecy within the agency, so he is shocked when he is invited to an intelligence-sharing summit meeting of all Clocktower analysts. He is further surprised by the attendance: 238 “cells,” suggesting a much larger global security presence than Cohen had expected—nearly the size of the CIA but “leaner.” As he ruminates about the benefits and hazards of his job, he realizes the elevator has stopped. His vision blurs, and he passes out.