Ancients

'Jack ... Jack--'

Everett stopped when he saw that Collins's face was blank as he held Sarah close to his chest.

'Sarah?'

'She's dead,' Jack said as he maintained his tight hold on her.

Instead of talking, Everett pulled both Jack and Sarah closer to him. Then he felt Mendenhall and Ryan helping to support the two. Carl looked into the serene face of Sarah McIntire and felt his own pain and loss return, and for a moment the specter of imminent death didn't seem so unjust. He looked from Sarah to Jack, and then he placed his arms around Will and Ryan as they were thrust under the floodgates of the broken dome.

An eruption the size of which the world had not seen for thousands of years blew out the recently formed lava mount that had taken the remains of Atlantis up with it. The volcano blowout made the eruption of Mount St. Helen's pale in comparison. Seismographs and Richter scales all around the world went crazy, casting a solid line across the numbers 18.9.

The explosion that was the final spasm of the Atlantean Wave, which had begun its devastating work over several millennia earlier. It shook the rising waters around the drowning men and they saw bubbling lava rising against the sides of the dome.

Everett knew that whatever the light was that was being cast in the dark waters around them, it wouldn't matter, because the end for them was only seconds away.

USS CHEYENNE (SSN 773)

The boat was shallowing and Burgess knew that if he didn't come to a stop he would rip the bottom out of her.

'Emergency stop! Sound the collision alarm!'

Throughout the Cheyenne, a loud squawking was heard as every man and woman reached for something substantial to hold on to. Around them they head as Cheyenne throw her engine into reverse to halt their forward momentum. The crew struggled to hang on, but many were thrown forward off their feet and onto the deck. As they tried to stand, they felt a powerful crunch from below the keel, and then suddenly the submarine rolled violently over onto her starboard beam. The lights blinked and then went out, soon to be replaced by the red-tinted emergency lighting.

'Captain, we've bottomed, but we're rising to the surface at sixty feet a second!' the first officer called out from sonar. 'We're surfacing, Captain!'

USS IWO JIMA FORTY-TWO MILES WEST OF EPICENTER

The admiral couldn't believe what he was seeing through his binoculars. As the carrier's bow sank into a giant trough, the upper section of the great dome breached the surface of the Mediterranean. The sun, though partially obscured by the massive storm clouds that had formed, allowed in enough light to reveal the most amazing sight in the history of the planet.

Atlantis was rising from the sea.

As all the leaders in the world watched the live feed provided by the American KH-11 satellites, they couldn't believe what they were seeing. The great Crystal Dome had breached the surface of the sea and was rising at a rate that was unfathomable. They saw great statues that had survived the original destruction fifteen thousand years before rise beside the protective dome. The entire broken city was coming up after its long absence from the sunlight to a world that had never believed in its myth and legend.

Several statues lost their fight with gravity and fell into the churning sea. Large buildings that had remained upright caved in after their long submergence in the Mediterranean, and a giant pyramid next to the dome crumbled as if knocked over by the foot of an angry god.

Still the rising lava bubble beneath them continued to spread and grow, now encompassing sixteen square miles. The parts of Atlantis that hadn't been protected by the great dome but had once sat close-by rose with the new island. The great pressure of the sea had caved in the sides of the structure and it was now leaking huge torrents of pressurized water two and three hundred feet out from the dome as it continued to rise.

In Washington, Niles and the president watched with fascination as the great city rose once again, this time into the light of the modern world. From its vantage point high in space, the orbiting KH-11 Blackbird picked out the great center island that had once sat in the middle of the great ringed continent just as a giant pressure wave parted the clouds and allowed bright sunshine to strike the crystal for the first time, making it seem as though a diamond were surfacing in the middle of the Mediterranean.

Both submarines were caught on the lower edges of the crust. Three hundred feet above the stranded boats the dome rose.

The Cheyenne and the Gephard were but a mile apart and both found themselves in the middle of a cracked and damaged thoroughfare that had once upon a time been used for chariots and vendors of every sort. Around them, damaged buildings fell.

Captain Burgess opened the sail hatch and stared skyward at the great city. Atlantis rose above the Cheyenne like a magical kingdom that had suddenly sprung to life and come forth to breathe air for the first time in thousands of years.

Inside the dome, Everett couldn't believe what was happening. Bright sunlight had filled the interior and the water was slowly going down.

'Jack! Jack! The damn thing was pushed out of the sea by the eruptions!'

Collins shook his head as he still held Sarah and then looked up. His instincts came back with a sudden flash.

'Get the men up through the opening, Captain. Hurry! The water is leaking out of this thing--get them out!' he said as he pulled Sarah's body toward the sunlight coming through the torn opening at the top of the dome.

Around them the water was calming but still increasing in heat. On the sides of the now-exposed dome, great chunks of ancient seabed and lava rock from the original eruption were peeling away like the scabs off an old wound, and with it they were taking large plates of the thick crystal, and the water was starting to cascade from the interior at a rate that was drawing the water farther and farther from the top.

Three SEALS reached the breach first and climbed out onto the support frame of the crystal lenses. They immediately and hurriedly started hauling marines out one and two at a time as the water was falling away from them. Luckily, one of the SEALS had managed to hang on to fifty feet of nylon rope and was using that to haul the men out. Eventually Jack tied a rope to Sarah's body and it was lifted free of the water. Then he looked around and nodded for Ryan and Mendenhall to go.

'Feel that, Jack?' Everett asked.

'Yeah. Atlantis isn't destined to stay up; she's going back down, the new seabed can't support her weight.'

Below them, large voids in the cooling lava started to explode like miniature nuclear weapons. Each one disintegrated thousands of yards of new land, the very base upon which Atlantis had risen. With a jerking reaction the new seafloor started to give way, and the City of Legend started to slip back into the sea.

Everett went up the rope that was now dangling thirty-five feet below the dome top. He hurriedly threw the rope back down for Jack, but instead of tying it around himself he tied it to the body of Major Esterbrook. Jack just couldn't leave the marine's body behind.

Far above, Everett wanted to scream at Collins, but he understood what he was doing. He was just afraid that if any more bodies floated by, Jack would try to get them, too.

Finally, the rope was lowered and Jack tied himself off. As he rose he saw another figure struggling in the falling level of the water. He couldn't believe his own eyes. William Tomlinson was fighting against the death that surrounded him as he stared up at Collins as he was pulled up. Jack felt no emotion as he was pulled out of the dome.

'I hope you can hold your breath, you bastard,' he said to no one but himself.

USS CHEYENNE (SSN 773)

Burgess was just getting ready to abandon the sail when he got a call from the conn.

'Captain, we just received a flash message from National Command Authority, direct from the president.'

'Jesus Christ, does he know we have a situation going on here?' he said into the squawk box.

'Yes, sir, they're watching it live. Sir, we have survivors being monitored from the satellite imagery; they're