The Kip Keene Box Set: Books 1, 2 & 3

by Nicholas Erik

  Strike snorted and shook her head. “No way. The rent’s insane.”

  He looked around at the frost covered landscape. Even with a couple inches of snow on the ground, the place looked immaculate. Clean. Well-maintained.

  Everything their old digs weren’t.

  Keene trod through the snow and slush until they stopped before a tall Victorian-style house with a large series of marble steps leading up to the gigantic door.

  “So, who’s in here?” Keene said, hanging back by the iron-wrought gate, his thumb testing the sharpness of the ornamental spikes adorning the top. “I mean, you can tell me now, right?”

  He pressed down hard on the tip, puncturing the skin. Another wound to add to a growing list of small and irritating scratches, more mental than physical.

  Being left out of the loop like this was grating. Demeaning.

  “You might not have come if I told you.”

  Keene raised an eyebrow, brushing the blood from his finger on to his jeans. “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “I believe you and this young man have what is called ‘history,’” Rabbit said.

  Then she took the burnished brass knocker and slammed it against the sturdy door, so hard that the echoes bounced about the quiet street. Keene threw a glance over his shoulder to see if anyone was spying on them from behind curtained windows, ready to call the cops.

  Nothing moved, aside from a gentle breeze rattling the spindly naked branches as it passed through. The door swung open and Keene’s teeth ground shut so fast that he almost bit off his own tongue.

  “Hell no. No. No way.” Keene backed away. “I’d rather die.”

  “What’s up, douche nozzles?” The lanky young man in the doorway smiled wide. A massive flat-brimmed hat stood perched atop his greasy hair. “I knew we would be getting it on again sometime, Keeney.”

  “Hello, Wade,” Strike said, with remarkable restraint. “You’re the only one I could think to call.”

  She stepped past him, Rabbit following behind with a cursory nod in the boy’s direction. That left Keene staring up at this abomination of a human being, who crowed over him from the top step like some sort of infantile ill-dressed wizard of bullshit.

  “You coming, man? I made Hot Pockets. You didn’t tell me your friends were hot. I mean, like, if I was hanging with chicks like those, I’d be tapping that—”

  “You wouldn’t be tapping shit, Linus, because you’re a bastard, and no one likes bastards.”

  “Aw, come on, man,” the kid said with a toothy grin. “That was like, forever ago.”

  “Eight months.”

  “Water under the bridge, amigo. Mi casa su casa, comprende?”

  “Your Spanish still blows.”

  The young man shrugged and winked. “But you know what doesn’t?”

  “Nothing associated with you, I’m sure.”

  “My crib, baby.”

  Keene watched as the kid disappeared into the massive house, no doubt to hit on Strike and Rabbit with his ridiculous behavior.

  That was if Wade Linus didn’t cook up some way to screw them all over in the meantime.

  11 | Hacked

  Keene slid inside as the thick door came swinging shut, the heavy oak almost catching him in the head.

  So much for hospitality.

  “Strike,” he said, keeping his voice low. “Samantha.”

  The figure down the hall stopped. “What’d you call me?”

  “Come here.”

  Strike hung back, allowing Rabbit and Linus to continue down the hall.

  “What?”

  “You seriously called this jackass?” Keene said, checking down the corridor to make sure the kid wasn’t listening. “Seriously?”

  “When Freddy wouldn’t return my calls, I figured we needed a computer guy, so…” She gave him a little shrug and a sheepish grin, like she couldn’t explain. “So I went through everyone I knew, everyone you knew. And you mentioned him once or twice, that he was good with computers, so…”

  “But he screwed me.”

  “Not like we have options here.”

  “And you decided on this Brutus moment when?”

  “Well, we were kind of far out in front on that getaway run, bud.” Strike gave him a wink.

  “So not only do you make me run, but you also call up Linus?”

  “Wade’s not a bad guy.”

  “That’s because you don’t know him at all.”

  “I’ve talked with him on the phone.”

  “He didn’t leave you stranded in the middle of the Mexican desert ass naked.” Strike smiled, bringing her hand up to her mouth in a weak attempt at covering up her amusement. “Don’t laugh—hey, it’s not funny.”

  “It’s kind of funny,” Strike said.

  “How’d you get in contact him anyway?”

  “Remember when we cleaned out your old apartment, after we got back? I might’ve gone through your stuff.” Strike stared at the ground with her lips pursed together. “Okay, I definitely went through your stuff and put your contact list into my phone. In case of emergencies.”

  Keene wanted to scream, but instead he said in a calm tone, “Great. So you just called him.”

  “Well, I already asked for his opinion on the supercomputer array a little while ago—”

  “Wait, what? You two have been friends since we escaped the ruins?”

  “Friends might be a little strong. Associates?”

  “Today keeps getting better and better,” Keene said. He slumped down the wall and stared at the twelve-foot high ceilings. Then his head drooped into his hands. “I can’t believe this.”

  On the lam, totally outgunned, and their best option to figure out who was chasing them happened to be a twenty year old idiot wearing his flat-brimmed Red Sox hat to the side. The same kid who had hosed Keene on his first mission here on Earth.

  Come to think of it, Keene had a real knack for picking partners.

  He dragged himself to his feet, glancing over his shoulder to the foyer. The entranceway was unfurnished, an aesthetic that carried over through the rest of the first floor. Except for a large room in the back attached to the kitchen, which Keene discovered upon following his associates’ trail.

  Whereas the rest of the house was blasé—chestnut hardwood, white walls and a few chandeliers and light fixtures from the turn of the century—this particular section of the residence had been customized to Linus’ hideous tastes.

  The walls had been painted over with graffiti artwork of revered computer hackers and the kid’s favorite movies, music and comics, the windowless room lit entirely by neon lights embedded in the floor and ceiling. Every minute, the colors shifted. First pink, then blue, then an electric yellow.

  The centerpiece of the room, however, was a computer array that made Strike and Keene’s expensive system look like a relic from the sixties. A rack of servers and other hardware took up half the back wall, to the right of which stood a block of thirty-two inch monitors sitting four wide by five high on a desk fashioned from gleaming chrome.

  An extensive control system of keyboards, mice, trackballs and joysticks lined the table in front of the monitors. In the top corners of the room hung massive speakers that looked far too heavy to be mounted to the wall.

  “Nice digs. Good feng shui,” Keene said.

  “Thanks,” Linus said. He leaned up against the wall, high-top sneaker against the graffiti, arms crossed. “Pretty dope, huh?”

  “Nope. It sucks.”

  Linus looked crestfallen.

  Keene smirked, following Rabbit into a kitchen where numerous stainless steel appliances—but no cutlery or cookware—stood gleaming in immaculate suburban disuse.

  “I must clean up,” Rabbit said. “We have one hour. Perhaps less.”

  “Su
re. I’ll just bake myself a soufflé while we wait,” Keene said. “What’s this about one hour?”

  “They will be looking for us.”

  “Here?” Keene threw a look into Linus’ elaborate rave-cave. “It’s not like we’re friends.” Even the thought of being friends with Linus made his neck spasm.

  “They will find us, one way or another. Explore the drive.” Rabbit left the room, shedding her clothes as she trotted away.

  “Whoa, total babe,” Linus said. He had appeared in the doorway, seemingly sensing that a naked woman had appeared. “You see those hips? Man, they’re—”

  “She’ll kill you.”

  “Oh, I’d let her. If you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t get it,” Keene said.

  “I mean I’d let her do me—”

  “Still an idiot,” Keene said. “Some things never change.” He took the drive from his pocket and held it out, clutching it tight between his fingers.

  “So, you ditch old Wade and shack up with two babes? What’s that about, Keeney?”

  Keene scratched his forehead with the edge of the drive. “Don’t call me that.”

  “Dude. Dude.” Wade sauntered across the kitchen to place his arm around Keene’s shoulders. Keene attempted to squirm away, but the kid, despite his general lack of musculature, clung tough. “You know I have nothing but love for you.”

  “You smell like a marijuana farm got in a fight with a Mountain Dew factory.” Finally getting loose from Wade’s iron-clad hug, Keene brushed himself off, sniffing the air. Satisfied that Wade’s scent hadn’t transferred to his own clothing, Keene pointed at the glowing computer. “So you can crack this level of encryption with that thing?”

  “I can travel back in time to fuck your mom and become your daddy with this system.”

  “Good to know.” Keene shoved the drive into Linus’ gut. “Get started.”

  “Whoa, bro. Payment upfront and all that.”

  “Consider us even for dicking me over in the Sonoran Desert.”

  “Aw, bro. That was just business. You know I love you.”

  “Nothing says love like forcing me to walk twenty-five miles naked.”

  “That was probably too much.”

  “Oh, you think that was too far.” Keene threw his hands into the air. “You remember Alvarez, right? He still wants me dead.”

  It wasn’t the most moral undertaking of Keene’s life, but after spending 200,000 years in cryostasis, his prospects on Earth had been somewhat limited. After actually stumbling into Wade at a Phoenix coffee shop, they’d found their skillsets overlapped.

  Skills neither possessed, however, were the ruthlessness and acumen required to hack it as business-minded criminals.

  The job had been simple. Linus would hack the security systems at a local Mexican precinct housing some of Alvarez’s confiscated contraband, allowing Keene entry. Then Keene would get the goods out of lockup, load up a van and drive it out of the station’s garage, back to Alvarez.

  Hand the dope off to the cartel, get a finder’s fee and everyone went home happy.

  But the old van stalled out in the middle of the desert, forcing Keene to give Linus—who had been monitoring the operation from afar—an emergency call. And Linus had shown up, all right—with another vehicle.

  They’d loaded it up, then the kid had driven off as Keene went back for the last brick.

  In the middle of summer, with one meager bottle of water, Keene had been forced to strip down naked in an attempt to beat the heat, although that had only resulted in a bad sunburn and a lot of dust getting in uncomfortable places.

  Worse, having set up the deal, Keene had been on the hook with Alvarez—who had been none too pleased at his new hire’s ineptitude and failure to deliver.

  An open bounty was still on Keene’s head.

  “All in the past, man. New leaf.”

  “What was it you said to me? Don’t trust strangers?”

  “Stranger danger, dude. It’s real.”

  “It looks like you made out all right yourself.”

  “Oh, this place? It’s okay, I guess,” Linus said.

  “So why’d you do it?”

  “Jack you? For the money, dude.”

  “You could’ve left me some more water, at least.”

  “You never apologized.”

  “What the hell did I need to apologize for?”

  “You ran into me in the coffee shop. Ruined my rig, my threads, my new kicks, and you didn’t say sorry.” Linus’ eyebrows knitted together, and his mouth turned pouty. “You just said ‘Watch where you’re going kid.’ Only reason we talked was because I’d seen the logo on your shirt before in comic books and stuff, talking about the legends of the past. Atlantis, the Incas.”

  “You left me in the desert because I didn’t say sorry?”

  “Payback’s a bitch, dude.” Linus grabbed the drive. “But I’ll do this job on the house.”

  “Hey, kid,” Strike said, reentering the room from wherever she’d wandered off to, “what was that about Atlantis?”

  Linus was furiously tapping away. “When I met Keeney over here, he had a shirt with weird symbols. An ancient language. Turns out, it’s been found in myths and records of other places, if you dig deep enough. Type of mythical lands you read about and think are all a load of crap. So I’m thinking, who the hell is this dude? I gotta find out, you know, so I team up.”

  “Some team,” Keene said.

  “Atlantis?” Strike said. “Tell me about that.”

  “On the deep web, some guy claims he found Atlantean artifacts washed up on shore in Spain. Carbon dating says it predates anything else out there.” Linus popped the drive into the USB port and started tapping.

  “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet,” Keene said.

  “Ah, I get it.”

  “You get what,” Strike said.

  “That’s why you’re so curious about Atlantis.” He pointed at the logo and the animation. “This belong to your sexy friend? No offense to you. You’re also gorgeous—”

  “Just crack the drive, Wade, like a good little boy.”

  “Right.” A few keystrokes later and the clearance screen faded into a vortex of pixels. “I’ll be damned.”

  “What?” Strike and Keene said in unison.

  “It’s real,” Wade said. “Atlantis is real.” He clicked through a variety of the files. “Oh.”

  “That didn’t sound like a good oh,” Strike said.

  “You’re gonna want to come look at this,” Wade said. “Because I think some nutcase is trying to destroy the world.”

  12 | Leading Questions

  After the failure at the low-rent office space, Commander Owens had regrouped with incredible speed. Despite building Project Atlantis himself from scratch, this particular plan and pivot no doubt ranked near the top of his finest moments.

  Then again, that could have been the pills speaking.

  He rattled the transparent amber container and looked at the contents. Filled to the brim at the beginning of this Rabbit-induced crisis some eight hours prior, his final reserve of medication had dwindled to only three quarters full.

  At the current rate of consumption, that meant he had two days left of maximal cognitive and physical function. Then the side-effects would set in, followed by a rapid deterioration of all facilities.

  But if they could get the girl back, everything would change.

  His satellite phone rang.

  “Are you still en route?”

  “Yes, Walter.” The engine of the private jet hummed while Owens looked at the pristine sky. “Tell me some good news.”

  “We’ve finished processing the labs. Mapped the genetic structures and the amino acids—”

  “Just the bottom line.”


  “If we recover Subject 8, her genetic material can likely be used to create a restorative serum.”

  Owens cleared his throat, which had suddenly gone dry. “Serum?”

  “Excuse me, sir? I didn’t get that last word.”

  “You’re saying you’ve found a cure?”

  “A cure—yes, I suppose that’s the word for it. If our data is correct—”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “Without Subject 8, it’s impossible to be certain.”

  Owens twisted his stiff neck and stared at the ceiling. Finally he said, “Go on.”

  “It’s a one-time dose that repairs the malfunctioning cells to better than full strength. No more of the prototype tablets. A permanent fix.” Walter stopped. “There is one complication.”

  “But of course.”

  “The serum can only be engineered from living tissue. The plasma must be harvested from its living host, reconstituted and delivered within one hour.”

  “Are the cloning chambers complete at the main facility?”

  “I checked in an hour ago. Yes sir.”

  “Have them online and ready.”

  “Sir?”

  “I do believe I’m about to get Subject 8 back sooner than expected.”

  Owens ended the call. Outside the window, the outline of a lush jungle began to stretch out beneath the plane.

  When he got Subject 8 back, there would be no more pain.

  No more suffering.

  Just life, as it was meant to be.

  The supersonic jet touched down on the runway in Cotopaxi, Ecuador without a bump or indication that the aircraft had come screaming down to Earth at several hundred miles an hour. A black limousine, chauffeured by a driver whose body armor poked out from the bottom of his ill-fitting dress shirt, waited on the tarmac. The man stood still, even as the engines generated terrific gusts of wind further down the runway.

  When the plane’s engines shut off, two men hurried forward with a set of stairs. The jet’s door opened, and Commander Owens walked down to the warm surface, staring off into the distance at the jet black limousine.

  “It’s rather far.”