Read The Atlantis World (The Origin Mystery, Book 3) for Free Online Page A

soon.”
    “Thank you. I’ve contacted the members of my staff—what’s left. Once they’re here, I’ll start making calls to my foreign counterparts.”
    “Excellent. I know they’re having similar conversations right now. So, first thing’s first. We need to get your root-level access code to the Continuity control program.”
    Paul squinted. “My access code?”
    North took out a pen and nodded casually. “Uh huh.”
    “Why?”
    “I was told only your codes could push a new therapy out to the Orchid implants.”
    “That’s true,” Paul said, alarm bells ringing in his mind.
    “It’s for security, Paul. You’re a point of failure. If you die, those codes are lost with you—and for all intents and purposes, Continuity with it. The whole system is worthless if we can’t administer a new therapy. We need redundancy.”
    “We have redundancy. Two people have the access codes: someone on the team—someone I select—and me. No one knows that person’s identity. For security purposes. Imagine if the Immari were to learn the Continuity access codes. They could wipe us out in hours.”
    “And who is that other person?”
    Paul rose and paced away from North, whose expression had now changed. The other code keeper was dead. He had died with many of the other staff in the final hours of the plague. Paul had intended to select a new code keeper when the remaining staff arrived, but now he wasn’t so sure. “That’s all I can say regarding the code. But you have my word that we won’t lose access to Continuity.”
    North stood as well. “We never finished our conversation at the Orchid District. We’re officially at war. We’re working on ways to communicate with our naval fleets, but they have standing orders to launch an attack if they lose contact with the Pentagon for an extended period of time. The bombs should begin falling on the Immari central headquarters in Antarctica soon. They’ve evacuated their facilities in Cape Town, Buenos Aires, and others, but they will be hunted. Fighting the Immari head-on isn’t what we’re worried about. It’s the coming war here at home. We estimate Immari strength here in the US at forty thousand, maybe a little more, possibly less. It was enough to take our food chain and cripple the power grid, but they can’t do much else.”
    “Exactly.”
    “I read your file, Paul. You’re a smart guy. A good scientist. I was a good soldier. It took me years to get up to speed on politics. It’s a different game. But you know that. You were upper management here at CDC. You’ve played the game. You can see where this is going.”
    “Obviously I’m not as smart as you think.”
    “They cut the power and food to the Orchid Districts to make us empty them. When we do, the Immari will start converting the tired, hungry masses that flow out. Their message will appeal to the millions of people we release. We’ll be fighting a propaganda war. Their ideology against ours. We aren’t fighting the Immari Army. We’re fighting their message. It boils down to the elimination of the welfare state. The Immari want a global state built with people who can fend for themselves, people who don’t rely on the government to live. A lot of people like that idea. They don’t want to go back to the way things were. And there’s the simple reality from our end: we can’t fend off the militia and care for those too weak to fight anyway. The US has about a ten-day supply of insulin left. Antibiotics are practically gone; we only use them in extreme cases now. We’ve been burning the dead outside the Orchid Districts, but we can’t keep up. With the close quarters, a new antibiotic-resistant superbug is likely already loose in an Orchid District somewhere.”
    “We can handle superbugs. That’s why Continuity exists.”
    “It’s only a fraction of what we face. Even without the Immari threat, we’re looking at a humanitarian crisis on a global scale. We have to rebuild the