He stepped forward and placed his first foot on the bottom rung.
Damn it.
The drive.
Keene ran to the computer and ripped it out of the front port. No time to initiate a system wipe. He pocketed it and dashed back to the ladder.
When he placed his foot on the first rung, he heard from the hall, “Stand back.”
They were coming in.
Now.
He scrambled upwards, noting that as easy as his two companions had made it seem, scaling the rungs was actually a rather disagreeable experience. The ladder warped and groaned beneath his weight, reminding him with every step that it could buckle and send him crashing to the floor.
But Keene made it to the top step and reached out to grab the lip of the ceiling, feeling rotten wood and crusty plaster. A wave of relief spread through his chest.
No explosions or shooting.
Everything was okay.
His second arm joining his first, he heard the shouted words, “Blow the door.”
Right before Kip Keene was going to push himself into the ceiling alcove, an ear-splitting blast filled the room. A massive explosion sent the door hurtling inward, knocking over the ladder and choking the office with thick plumes of smoke.
Keene’s feet dangled, searching for footing. His fingers slipped, sweat pouring from his hands.
“Find Rabbit,” a flat, raspy voice said below in the haze, “and kill everyone else.”
Synchronized footsteps pounded against the floor.
Keene’s right hand caught an exposed nail, forcing him to release those fingers. A strained cry erupted from his lungs as his left arm slipped closer to the edge and certain demise.
“Hang on,” Strike said, right before a chorus of gunfire burst through the room.
A wave of bullets perforated the plaster near Keene’s head. He would’ve jerked, or dove, but any movement at all seemed to loosen his already precarious hold.
If he wasn’t going to plummet twenty feet to his death, then he was going to be shot.
Or, worse, tortured.
His fingernails dug deeper into the wood, but the surge of adrenaline only delayed the inevitable. The fingers of his left hand continued to slip and slide towards the edge, and no angelic arms were coming to hoist him to safety.
Another burst of gunfire cut through the smoke, the mercenaries blind-firing into the thick haze.
A bullet cut through the wood near his hand, and a chunk of the ceiling gave way.
Gravity took hold of Keene, his hand grasping only air and a fist of loose plaster as he began to plummet downwards through the haze.
7 | Escape
As Keene fell into nothingness, he felt two pairs of hands grip his forearm and yank him skyward, violently reversing his descent. The gunfire continued, chewing through the ceiling and kicking up plaster dust that mingled with the smoke.
“You could help, you know,” Strike said, and Keene, his head now in the hole, placed his free arm inside and strained to push himself up. He tumbled into the ceiling alcove, sending Strike and Rabbit stumbling backwards.
Rabbit recovered first, and slammed the hatch shut.
The mercenaries’ rate of fire increased, creating a thunderous, echoing din.
“Cutting it close,” Keene said, screaming to be heard above the melee below. “Where to now?”
A shrill whistle brought an end to the blind spattering of gunshots.
“Room’s clear!” Footsteps below. “It’s a ladder. They’re in the ceiling!”
A hail of bullets shot up through the attic’s floorboards. Trails of light glowed through the holes, wisps of smoke trickling up, casting a prism of gray light over the dim attic. Keene cradled his head in his hands—as if that would offer protection from automatic arms fire.
He’d had enough gunplay. His ears hurt, and his arm was covered in enough splinters to be mistaken for a porcupine.
“Run.” Strike pointed at a rusted iron fire escape situated outside the room’s lone, tiny window.
“No respect for fire code,” Keene said. The group darted over, covering their ears as bullets spit through the floor. The rounds didn’t come close to hitting true, but their close proximity proved unnerving.
Strike threw her shoulder into the jammed window, stuck shut from years of disuse. The glass shattered, crinkling as it hit the pavement below. A bitter cold whipped through the open pane, sweeping through the stale room.
She went through, leaving behind traces of blood where the glass tore at her arms. Rabbit tucked and ran, diving through with the grace of a gymnast.
Keene hesitated, seeing if there would be a great crash as the entire fire escape fell into a big heap.
“Maybe I’ll just wait—” A loud, rolling yell from below that sounded like something produced by a magnum or freight train caused Keene to cut himself short. He brushed some of the glass away with the back of his palm and ducked through.
The sharp edges of the broken window tugged at his skin, ripping the flesh open.
The whipping winter frost buffeting his face, Keene followed his companions down the winding steps and bone-chillingly cold ladder. He dropped the dozen or so feet down to solid earth, where the ladder had long-ago rusted away, landing in a pile of trash bags as a cushion.
Keene craned his neck around the dumpster to find that Strike and Rabbit had already reached the end of the alley. They were rounding the corner, in a hurry to get somewhere.
Dodging broken bottles of malt liquor and stray cats, Keene rushed to keep up.
Like hell he was going to be left out.
Things were just getting interesting.
8 | Incentives
“Do you require a sit-rep, sir?” Hawk leaned up against the desk, her rifle slung over her shoulder with a casual ease. “They got away.”
“Oh? Is that so?”
“Through the attic.”
“That was a joke,” Owens said. He rooted around in his pocket for more pills. Rationing them was an option, but that was the weaker bet. With his abilities diminished and his mental faculties in a deteriorated state, catching Rabbit would be damn near impossible. Idiots, all of them, shooting up the place like this was the Wild West.
Apparently his instructions about her being alive had been poor. After all, there were some crossed signals. He had activated her kill-switch in order to track her.
He grabbed three of the flat tablets and placed them on his tongue.
Hawk watched, her gaze cutting through him with an eerie, uncomfortable cool.
“You need one?” Owens said.
“I’ve had my regimen for the day, sir.”
“Take another.” He tossed one of the flat pills through the dusty air. Hawk plucked it out of the air using her forefinger and thumb. Other than her arm, the rest of her body had remained static. “Impressive trick.”
“What you taught us, sir.” She swallowed without unlatching her gaze from his eyes. This level of obsession was almost discomfiting. It made Owens consider taking another dose to raise the sharpness of his mind and body to the same level.
No. That would be foolish. Side effects. He glanced down at his hand, which had displayed a noticeable tremor on the ride over. It shook like a small dog in the face of a lion.
“Yes, well.” He cleared his throat, made raspier by the irritants swirling in the air. “I believe this might be recoverable.”
Owens avoided the minefield of debris as he walked over to the bullet-ridden supercomputer. He knelt down to examine a chunk of the array.
His fingers drummed an off-rhythm beat on the cracked glass.
“It’ll take more than two hours,” Hawk said.
“Then it takes longer than two hours.” The twisted plastic under foot crunched when he turned on his heel. “I suppose someone must take responsibility
. Results, people.”
The rest of the infiltration squad turned to stare at their leader.
Owens slipped a pistol out of his suit jacket and fired, dropping the closest man with a head shot. The remaining soldiers, by instinct, brought their rifle scopes to their faces, aiming down at the threat. A thin trail of smoke came from the tip of the Berretta 3032 Tomcat.
“Stand down, gentlemen.”
“Jesus Christ, sir,” one of the soldiers said. “He’s dead.”
“This is called incentive,” Owens said, tucking the small pistol back inside the inner breast pocket of his tailored suit. He jiggled his arm slightly to display a polished stainless steel watch. “Perhaps you will follow instructions better next time. Seventy-five minutes. Where’s she headed?”
“Up 51st, cutting across the city,” Hawk said.
“We won’t catch her before she disables the chip.” Owens reached down and looked inside the computer’s bullet-riddled case, which had been buffeted across the floor by the earlier one-sided skirmish. His fingers traced over the ruined contours as he weighed his options. “And early termination is a most disagreeable option.”
Through the holes in the case, he could see something worth far more than its weight in gold, rubies or diamonds.
The hard drive was still intact.
It was time to learn a little bit more about who was helping his prized Subject.
That was where the weak points would lie.
“So, you’re against termination?” Hawk coughed to grab his attention when Owens didn’t answer. “There is no order to terminate Subject 8?”
“No.” Owens rubbed his eyes. He needed to extricate himself from this filthy, charred rat-hole. An extended stay in this dump would not be beneficial for his future recovery. The team could handle the cleanup and data retrieval.
“Does that mean—”
“I have a new plan? Yes, I believe it does.” Owens buttoned his jacket and strode towards the door. “Grab anything with data and bring it to the labs. We’ll find her yet.”
“Excuse me, sir, but why do you care about who works in this dump?”
He smirked, his back turned so none of the team could see his face.
“Incentive, my dear Hawk. Incentive.”
As he walked away, Hawk said to herself, so low that only she could hear, “I guess we’ll find out whose plan wins, then.”
9 | Two Hours
A half dozen blocks up, three streets over and one railway underpass later, Keene’s lungs burned from oxygen deprivation as he watched surgical preparations take place next to a dumpster tagged “the one percent sux cox” in neon orange paint.
Rabbit, despite not even having shoes, seemed remarkably nonplussed by the escape.
He picked splinters out of his forearms and wrists, massaging the gash in his hand. Search and retrieval. What an awful idea this had been. Even if the money was good, the attrition rate was just too damn high.
He watched as Strike doused a long blade—stolen from a nearby pawn shop—in purloined grain alcohol discovered behind the same store’s counter.
Keene’s fingers traced over the plastic drive in his pocket.
Someone wanted their information back.
Bad.
But Project Atlantis remained shrouded in murk. He mulled over Fox—the mysterious woman, dressed in the red dress with a white, flowing tail, who had crossed his life at key moments, as if by fate—and her prescient note, delivered underneath his hotel door a couple months prior.
We shall meet again at the Ruby Rattlesnake.
And now, an hour ago, this Rabbit woman showed up to tell him that they had to destroy this Ruby Rattlesnake. The or else that went along with Rabbit’s statement, though only implied, weighed down his conscious like a rusted boat anchor.
What—and where—was the Ruby Rattlesnake?
A crazy idea flitted at the edges of his mind, but he tried to push it down.
Project Atlantis. Maybe it wasn’t a high-concept name. Maybe—
“They have not killed me yet,” Rabbit said. “So I have made further plans.”
“That’s good, right?” Keene said. He glanced at Strike. “Right?”
Rabbit shrugged and pulled down her pants halfway, exposing the bare skin of her butt to the chilly air.
Keene lost all semblance of a coherent thought process.
“Why didn’t you do this before showing up?” Keene tried not to stare at the pale skin, but it was impossible. The form was tremendous, exquisite. Without parallel. Genetic enhancement, along with whatever else the fine folks were doing at Project Atlantis, had its obvious benefits.
“The device administers a lethal shock if tampering is suspected. Difficult from this angle to attempt self-removal. Possible, but past attempts have met with mixed—”
“I get it.” Keene nodded along, assessing the problem in his mind. Yes, if he were on the run, performing precision self-surgery might prove a little challenging.
Nerves.
Adrenaline.
Other threats.
Beautiful, perfect skin with ridiculous curves and—
Snapping fingers took him back to reality.
“Hello? You there, buddy?” Strike cut into view, obscuring the wonderful vista. “I swear, you’re like a teenager.”
“You do see what I’m seeing, right? She was literally made in a lab.”
“It’s all very impressive, but we have some business to address here.”
“Okay.” Keene didn’t move.
“Be a good little boy and see if anyone’s coming.”
“Right.” Keene trotted into the center of the empty road, where the streetlights illuminated the dingy avenues leading out from the underpass. Abandoned, other than tumbleweeds of litter and the distinct odor of diesel and garbage.
He rubbed his hands together and blew on his fingers. The dark chilliness of the winter shade made him almost long to resume running. Not quite.
A staccato yelp, like a record skipping, gave him a start. He double-checked the roads before realizing that the noise had come from Rabbit.
Turning around, he found Strike wiping off the combat knife. Rabbit held a gauze pad to her backside.
“Goodbye,” she said, and flicked something small into the piles of trash and dust. Then she pulled up the elastic band of her form-fitting sweatpants and started jogging in place. A little grimace crossed her lips, then dissipated. “We are ready. Time to leave.”
Rabbit darted past, stopping at the first streetlight next to the underpass.
“Where’s she going?”
“To decrypt the drive, dummy,” Strike said as she rushed by, “We have a train to catch.”
Keene watched their forms disappear down the street.
Everything was a goddamn mystery. And there was only one path to the answers.
Follow the Rabbit.
10 | Crossroads
Keene watched the inky blackness outside the window fade into an orange cream sunrise. In the seat across from his own, Rabbit slept bolt upright, eyes three quarters shut so that a sliver of white remained visible.
He glanced at the cross-trainers and new compression tights they’d bought for her at the station’s twenty-four hour shop. Asleep against the patterned upholstery, Rabbit looked more like a soccer mom or yoga bunny returning from a late-night tryst than a marvel of military-grade engineering.
Haircut notwithstanding. That was some serious badass stuff.
Strike sat across the aisle, thumbing through the train’s onboard magazine.
“Hey,” Keene said, his voice lowered to not wake the other passengers. “What the hell is in Boston, anyway?”
Strike stared at the magazine, her eyebrows scrunching together. “Not what. Who.”
“Fine.” He yanked th
e magazine out of her hands and tossed it down the middle of the aisle. “Who are we after in Boston?”
“I was reading that.”
“Look, I’m going out on a limb here—”
“This is a big risk to your professional and personal reputations, huh?”
Keene scratched his chin and slumped back into his seat. He became aware that Rabbit was wide-eyed and looking right through him. Shifting and turning towards the window, he tried to let out a little laugh. But the noise sounded more like a strained grunt.
The city’s skyline began to convalesce on the horizon, the buildings growing in stature as the train wound its way closer to its destination.
When he looked back at Rabbit, she was still staring at him. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” she said before blinking a few times in rapid succession. After this, her eyes no longer resembled the gaping saucers of a manga character. The silver slivers still, however, contained a haunting glimmer, intense enough to give Keene a faint sense of discomfort. “Only a bad dream.”
“Must be some dream.”
“It is something.” Her eyes snapped shut, and she slipped into sleep once again.
“So about that who,” Keene said, turning his attention back to Strike. But he received no answer, for in the interim—without conversation or the distraction of a magazine to hold her attention—she, too, had succumbed to slumber’s siren call.
Keene tried to make himself comfortable in the lumpy upholstered seat, but every time he shut his eyes a new question or idea sprang to mind, each worse than the last. The swirl of thoughts made it impossible to drift away.
So he gazed out the dirt-streaked window and watched the city transform, until the train pulled into the station at 7:54 AM.
Before the brakes screeched to a final halt, Rabbit was up, Strike stumbling after her.
Keene took a final glance out the window, then followed the throng of sleepy people into Boston’s South Station.
One half-hour cab ride later, and the trio emerged in Brookline, one of Boston’s more affluent and scenic suburbs.
“Nice place,” Keene said. “Should’ve set up shop here.”
The Kip Keene Box Set: Books 1, 2 & 3 Page 19
