They were all around, actually, and Hawk heard the adjustments of each one, a symphony indicating Atlantis’ readiness to communicate.
“My child,” the city said. “Your final task is near.”
The voice came from within the snake itself—one of many speakers and other amplification devices littered about the city. Like Hawk’s own society, the Atlanteans had been quite fond of music and aural delights. The speaker embedded within the mechanical beast had once been used for some other unknown purpose. But now, it served as a mouthpiece for the city’s decrees.
Hawk nodded and bowed her head, long white hair streaming across her shoulders and into her eyes.
“Tell me.”
“Take the tail of the Great Creature,” the city said with great reverence.
Hawk walked around the basin and climbed over the knee-high lip, setting her feet gently inside the cracked interior. The tail was in three main pieces, and many little ones.
She picked up the largest section and stood.
“Now break it open, my child.”
Hawk hesitated and said, “I do not understand.”
“Do not worry. I am watching over you. The Great Creature will forgive you, for you are undertaking its bidding.”
Hawk held the piece over her head and then threw it to the ground. A heavy crack reverberated against the tall ceilings. She coughed at the small cloud of reddish dust emitted from the tail.
Hawk waved her hands in the air to clear away the debris.
Bending over, she scooped up the crystalline powder. A tingling sensation, so familiar, spread from her fingertips to her toes.
Hawk could now hear the minute gyrations of the tiny lenses adjusting and autofocusing. A million disparate thoughts connected within her cortex, coalescing into a single stream of heightened consciousness. The continuum of reality flowed through her, converted into complete understanding.
“You understand what you are to do, child?”
“I understand,” she said, hearing every independent crackle and creak of the old sound system, the noise fighting through thick layers of stone to be heard. “I understand perfectly.”
“Then you know what you will have become. I am old, my child. You will continue my work.”
She sifted through the powder, an endless supply. “Yes. I shall.”
“Bring the tail to the residences. You will find the rest of what you need there.”
In a strange haze—so clear as to be disconcerting—Hawk took the rest of the broken pieces to the designated house, the city announcing when to stop.
She piled the stone outside, and then walked in the door. A single chair. Tools. And many gallons of water, sealed in clear containers in the corner.
Hawk looked around the old storage shed.
“You will disassemble the Great Creature piece-by-piece. This is what must be done.”
She nodded, dragged in the first piece, and began.
26 | Old Friends
Wade Linus watched the diagnostic program on his laptop screen go haywire.
This was bad.
Like really freaking bad.
He adjusted his oversized cap, then decided to remove it entirely. His fingers glided furiously over the compact keyboard, meeting with some resistance from the fresh, soft keys. The mushy typing experience made him long for his expensive rig, back on the outskirts of Boston.
But he probably wouldn’t be seeing that any time soon.
Or ever, if he didn’t get the submarine’s core systems back online.
Another window at the bottom of the screen flashed, indicating that Wade had made some headway on his other task. From the schematics, he had determined it was possible to access Atlantis’ central supercomputer. But for now, priority one was keeping Strike and Keene alive.
The submarine’s sensors were reporting unusual gyrations and speed resulting from an impact about two minutes prior. They did not, however, indicate that the sub had been depressurized or punctured.
Death would be guaranteed, though, if they hit anything at the current velocity.
Wade rewound the footage from the tail cam recorded right before impact. The dim green and white video played back in the corner as he continued to type. He glanced over.
No, it wasn’t a missile.
It had been a humanoid creature with a metal exoskeleton and glowing eyes. Straight into the submarine’s back, without hesitation, knocking the camera stream out. With no further footage, it was difficult to say if the creature—or machine—had survived.
But it didn’t look likely, given the violent nature of the collision.
Wade switched the window to display a live feed from the sub’s front camera.
It pitched and turned all over the place in a nausea-inducing mess. Wade stopped the live playback so that he wouldn’t vomit.
“Guys? Hey, Striker? Keeney? Anyone read me?”
Nothing but static. Communications were still out. The computer’s uplink to the sub’s navigational systems, however, seemed fine.
For the moment.
To get the submarine steady, Wade had to reduce its speed. A lot. Then the two people actually in the sub could straighten the nose out and re-chart their course. But rapid deceleration was tricky business, especially deep underwater.
Wade took a deep breath.
Handcuffs rattled on the other side of the master suite.
“Shut up,” Wade said. “I’m working.”
Derek growled something savage and pulled against the thick pipe. Lorelei joined him.
Wade tried to focus on the numbers. Something stood out at him.
He tried to figure out a way to tell Strike and Keene his plan.
Then he had it.
He typed in two commands and pressed enter.
Wood snapped and metal clanked against the door.
Wade looked up. Derek was coming straight for him, Lorelei not far behind.
He reached underneath his chair for the gun.
“You vomit after the car, but you don’t during this?” Keene’s words came out as a jarring series of chattering single syllables, like he had been left out in the cold too long without a coat.
“Look.” Strike pointed at two flashing buttons on the elaborate navigation panel. With the dim emergency LED strip lighting on, the words fire and emergency stood out like they were radioactive.
Keene slammed his fist onto each plastic button. Nothing happened. A red warning message, illegible given the corkscrewing, flashed briefly across the front windshield.
“Nothing.”
One of the wooden crates sailed against the glass. He held his breath, expecting water to pour in. But the glass didn’t budge, and the submarine turned yet again, this time sending the crate towards his stomach.
He blocked the box with his elbows. Already damaged from being tossed about, the crate splintered, and a cloud of straw descended upon his lap.
Along with a long metallic tube.
Two of them, by the sound of the clang.
Keene clung to them as the submarine continued to spiral. He managed to hook both of them underneath the crook of his elbow, pressing the mysterious objects against his thighs.
“Why are you hugging the torpedoes like a teddy bear?”
Keene looked down at the two small missiles, outfitted with fins for deep-water combat. He loosened his grip, allowing one of them to fly away.
Strike flailed for it and snagged it out of midair before it could plummet to the back of the ship.
“Yeah,” Keene said, his vision blurry, still hanging on to the other underwater missile, “that would’ve been bad.”
The buttons lit up again. Fire. Emergency.
Keene glanced down at the rocket.
“I think we need to launch these.”
He couldn’t tell whether Strike nodded or shook her head vigorously in opposition. It didn’t matter. Another thirty seconds of this and he would probably black out, or they would collide with a giant squid or the ocean floor, and that would be the end of things.
Unfortunately, the back of the submarine might as well have been miles away, since he couldn’t walk back and load the missile. If he unhooked himself from the harness, he’d be thrown around the interior, bouncing off sharp edges.
Unconscious within a second, best case scenario. More likely, he’d just be dead and bleeding all over Strike during her final moments.
The ladder.
If he unsnapped his harness at the perfect angle, he’d travel right past it. Reach out, catch it with a free arm. That would get him about halfway there. Then, after another favorable roll, he could let go, and hopefully wouldn’t slam against the back of the sub too hard.
He began undoing the buckles on his harness.
“Are you joking?”
“I need to load this.”
“What, are you Superman all of a sudden? You gonna fly back there?”
“Kind of.”
The submarine’s nose titled towards the sea’s surface. Keene’s shoulders slammed against the back of the seat from the force. Then he was upside down, the straps digging into his midsection. He could see the ladder.
His thumb hovered over the final buckle still tethering his waist to the chair.
He clicked it open.
Then Keene hurtled towards the back of the sub at supersonic speed.
27 | All Good Things
Keene caught the edge of the ladder with his fingertips, the skin burning off from the friction. His shoulder popped out of his socket as his momentum stopped, then it rammed back in as he bounced in midair when the sub’s trajectory changed with another sudden gyration.
He clutched the missile against his chest with his free arm, twisting his body into strange shapes to avoid massive injury from the momentum shift.
With his knees curled up to his ribs, he slammed against the wall behind the ladder. His shins and shoes bore much of the impact, but it still hurt.
His fingers slipped, and he held his breath.
The next spiral wasn’t as violent, which allowed him to reposition his hand.
“Still alive?”
“Just be ready to fire,” Keene said. He twisted his neck towards the back, searching for the torpedo bay. Once he was in free fall, there would be no mulligans. One shot to load this thing.
“Aye, aye, Captain Keene.”
“Don’t call—” The sub’s nose began to tilt upwards again. Scraps of wood and straw flew through the air past Keene, rifles and pistols bouncing off the walls as they raced towards the back of the craft.
Now or never.
He let go, curling into a fetal ball, the missile firmly clutched between his arms.
With the sub situated almost vertically, this was essentially an eight or nine foot sheer drop into a bed of firearms and other untied jetsam. His lungs and chest exploded with sharp pain due to the force of impact.
His grip loosened, and his body expanded into a sort of crooked C. Keene writhed on the floor, body shifting with the sub’s jerky movements. It had only been half a second, maybe three-quarters, but the sub was already shifting its axis.
And a voice deep within Keene’s mind screamed for him to ignore his body and get the hell up.
He tried to move, but none of his limbs would respond. Blinking, he saw the loading door an arm’s length away. But his fingers and other appendages remained uncooperative. The sub began to spiral over again, and Keene found himself pinned to the side wall, about to be sent hurtling towards the windshield.
Flopping over, he found that he was now next to the opposite loading track. With leaden arms, he lifted the missile upwards, like it was an offering for the gods themselves. Using the last bit of his willpower and strength, he notched it inside the crevice, pushing it through the flap.
He heard it click, and then the motorized track grabbed hold of the missile and sucked it through, making it disappear.
“Fire,” Keene yelled, the sub pitching so that the nose was down. “Fire now.”
He didn’t hear anything.
He just felt himself get blown against the back wall before everything went black.
“Hey,” Strike said. “Sleepyhead.”
She slapped Keene in the face and he sat bolt upright, banging his head against the back wall.
“We’re dead.”
“No.”
“This is hell, and we’re dead.”
“Not quite.”
“You’re Satan.”
“I’m surprised you know who that is.”
“We’re not dead?” Keene’s head flooded with sharp pain. Two Strikes leaned over, blonde hair everywhere. A sea of blonde hair, like being strangled by a mountain of it. “You need a shower.”
The two Strikes merged into one as his vision recovered.
“And he’s back,” Strike said. “Look outside.”
“Can’t see. Need rest.”
Keene heard rattling and rooting, hollow plastic objects being tossed together. Footsteps, deep and heavy. A pinch against his arm.
“Hey.”
“Adrenaline.”
“Trying to give me a heart attack?” Keene’s mouth twisted into a pained frown as his already fast-beating heart accelerated to a breakneck pace. This horse wasn’t just leaving the barn, but burning rubber away from the entire farm at the speed of sound.
“To my hero?” Strike’s voice sounded drippy and sweet.
“Did you hit your head or did I?”
“That was your second test.”
“How’d I do?”
“Passed with flying colors.”
“That’s kind of literal, right now.”
“Just look outside, damn it.”
Keene closed his eyes in silent protest, but his whole body was twitchy and his eyelids felt spring-loaded. Being a revolutionary and a rebel was just too much damn effort. Better to go along and look outside.
He opened his eyes and tried to focus on the distance, beyond where Strike was crouched.
“Where’d the water go?”
“We’re here.”
“There’s no water.” Keene crawled forward, towards the front of the sub. He ignored the sharp pains springing up all over his body. Reaching the controls, he pushed himself upright and flopped elbows first onto the navigational panel.
His nose was only a few inches from the glass.
An obsidian walkway stretched out ahead, leading to a doorway framed by two ionic columns. A tympanum with naked stone figures frolicking together stood inside a triangular pediment, reminiscent of most famous ancient Greek buildings.
Inside the doorway, a set of gleaming obsidian stairs stretched upwards, towards the unknown.
Keene looked down and found the water he was looking for. The sub was docked, only the very bottom of the craft still submerged in the sea.
He pushed against the panel, muscles quivering. The force was enough to get him standing on his own. He limped back to the middle of the sub, grabbing a loose backpack from the floor and filling it with stray munitions and firearms.
“Put this someplace safe,” Strike said. She picked up a missile from the floor and handed it over. “You’re lucky I grabbed this.”
“You’re lucky I fired the other one.” Keene slipped the aerodynamic shell carefully into his pack.
He tracked down the other wooden crate against the wall, which had somehow survived the churning and turning. He smashed it open with his heel. Straw and splinters covered the floor.
“Gearing up there?”
He slipped the other two shells into the bag, removing a few handgu
ns to make room. “Could come in handy. They did once before.”
With a wince, he threw the nylon straps over his shoulders and adjusted the buckles.
“Yeah, Wade said that basically the missiles can act as a counter-thruster—”
“Wade? You got the radio working again?”
“Yeah. He explained why the torpedo thing worked.”
“Spare me the science. How’d we get here?”
“You’ve been out for a little bit.” Strike looked around the vessel, like she was searching for a clock. “Maybe about twenty minutes?”
“Shit.” Keene touched the back of his head. No bumps or cuts, but even rubbing his fingers through his hair made a shock of pain course through his temples. “He tell you anything else?”
“Wade can help us navigate the city.”
“I’ll send him a thank you card.” Keene reached for the ladder. His shoulder screamed in protest, but he fought through the pain and climbed up. The sealed compartment gasped when he popped the hatch.
Strike followed him on to the black walkway of slick stone.
“So I guess we can assume our crazy friend is around.” Keene nodded at the other submarine floating in the water nearby.
“It couldn’t be that easy.”
“Never is.”
“There’s one more thing.”
“What?” Keene stopped in the doorway and leaned against the column to catch his breath. The adrenaline helped, but what he really needed was some sort of horse tranquilizer that tricked his injured muscles into thinking they were in tip-top shape.
Such a drug would bring about a precipitous drop in mental aptitude, however, and thus was not a viable option.
“Three things, actually. Just wait.”
Keene watched his partner disappear back into the hatch. He stared at the ceiling, which wasn’t actually a ceiling, but a sort of transparent dome. Light from the flickering lanterns created a faint glare. Otherwise it would have looked like the sea itself was being kept at bay by nothing at all.
He stared at the blackness until Strike returned, dragging a tumble of wires.
The Kip Keene Box Set: Books 1, 2 & 3 Page 28
