“The hell is that?”
“Wade claims he can gain access to the city’s systems if we press these up against the dome. That’s how he’ll help us navigate. Tons of cameras all over this place.” She tugged the cluster further and dropped them near the back edge of the room, where the giant bubble doubled as a wall. “Since the city is an electro-organism.” Strike tapped her ear, where a small headset was barely visible amongst her flowing blonde locks.
She pressed the wires up against the clear dome.
Wade’s voice came thundering down from above. “Holy shit, I’m in, I mean, I’m really in, this—”
His voice cut out as Strike dropped the wires away. “So about those other things.”
“Yeah.” She rubbed the toe of her boot against the smooth surface and stared at the ground. “Whatever hit the sub, it was alive.”
“Actually alive or alive like the city?”
“Hard to say,” Strike said. “The footage was grainy.”
“Of course it was. And the other thing?”
“It’s about Derek.”
“What about Derek?” Keene said, but he could’ve guessed, and his lungs, already tight from being tossed around the sub, felt like the whole city had crushed him. Dash had been his best friend, once upon a time, 200,000 years gone.
So when Strike said in a flat voice, “He’s dead,” Keene wasn’t surprised. “He got loose, and the kid shot him. Had no choice.”
Keene’s throat twitched and he contorted his jaw so that he wouldn’t lose it. “And Lorelei?”
“She’s okay. Managed to sedate her with the morphine.”
“Then I guess we keep going.”
Red rivers of blood seeped between the cracks of the tan floor in the master suite. A single fresh hole in the wood paneling completed the morbid story.
The entire cabin had shook when Derek had hit the floor.
By some stroke of luck, Lorelei had dove right on top of Wade, right into the morphine needle he had clutched in his other hand.
So he hadn’t been forced to put them both down.
He stared at the busted wall, where Derek and Lorelei had torn themselves loose.
His hands quaked as he tried to type and get his mind off the event.
So much blood.
The gun was so damn loud.
A last resort.
Something pinged on the screen. Wade now had access to all of Atlantis’ sensory systems and cameras. He couldn’t shut everything down from here, as he was locked out from master administrative access. But he could glean plenty of intel and direct Lorelei and Keene where they needed to go.
One of the city’s rooms registered an organic heat signature. Human.
“Guys?” His voice cracked over the communications array. He’d manage to restore the link, but not without some degradation from the impact and mileage.
“You’re not coming through the city like the voice of God any more,” Keene said.
“I routed the sound through the earpiece. Incognito.”
“Tell us where to go,” Keene said, business-like and curt. “You’re the eyes, we’re the hand.”
“What happened to Striker?”
“She gave me the earpiece.”
“Look, I’m sorry about—”
“What’d you want to say?” Keene said.
“Um, okay. You have company.”
“Where?”
“I can’t read the text coming from the system.” Wade switched to a different feed. A giant stone cobra sat in the middle of a room that resembled an atrium crossed with a zoo. “There’s a big snake in the place. You can’t miss it. Literally, the path you’re on—”
“Got it.”
“It’s a woman in a red dress. How’d she get down there?”
“We’ll meet again at the Ruby Rattlesnake,” Keene mumbled.
“Huh?”
“Good work, Wade.”
The channel clicked shut.
There must’ve been something really wrong with Keene.
Wade shivered as he zoomed in on the woman standing near the wrecked fountain.
“Who are you,” Wade said to no one in particular.
Lorelei woke up and screamed, her cries growing hoarse as he stared at the feed.
28 | Never Enough
The fair-skinned woman’s arms crossed and uncrossed as Kip Keene approached. He gave her a short nod from the entryway, and then walked slowly across the room, his head turned skyward.
“It is all quite impressive, no?”
Keene stopped a few feet away and sat down on the rim of the crumbling basin. Fox hadn’t changed at all since he had last seen her in the Incan ruins. Bright red hair that glowed in the soft torch light. Still wearing the same red dress, tiny straps hanging off her slender and agile shoulders, a white tail of fabric streaming behind her.
“Who the hell are you,” Strike said.
Keene rose up and stretched his legs. “Fox, meet Samantha Strike. Strike, meet Fox.” He pointed with a raised finger to each, then shrugged, the introduction over.
“Mr. Keene is quite important,” Fox said.
“So she claims. By the way, you promised me two hours in the jungle.” After an unfortunate gunshot wound, Keene had been revived by Fox with an emergency medication from his own bygone time. She had claimed he would have two hours before the pain and effects of the gunshot wound would degrade his abilities.
He had only gotten forty-five, which had been barely enough to escape the Lost City of Gold and save his friends.
“You are here, right?”
“So, she always this stuffy?” Strike said.
“Pretty much,” Keene said. “I got your note.”
We shall meet again at the Ruby Rattlesnake.
Now he knew what it meant.
Keene looked over his shoulder at the faded stone snake, once red, but now a kind of sad, drab looking pink—like a lawn ornament that had battled the elements too long. Still, this qualified as a Ruby Rattlesnake.
More than half of it was missing, too. Some of the damage looked fresh.
“You are important, Kip Keene,” Fox said. She didn’t move.
“You already said that.” Strike stepped closer, adjusting the arms of her leather jacket. “Look, lady, I don’t know what’s going on here, but if you’re not going to help, we got things to do.”
“I know.” A sad smile spread across Fox’s lips. “I believe this will be our last encounter, Kip Keene.”
“You’re saying we’re going to die?”
“Not quite.” Fox laughed. Her sweet voice bounced off the high ceilings. “I am saying that my job is coming to an end. But yours is just beginning.”
“Are you another one of those crazies from the lab?” Strike pulled a pistol from her waistband and leveled it at the short, slender woman. “Playing us?”
“Like Mr. Keene, I am not from here.” Fox shook her head and began to walk away. “It will become clear soon. I must return home.”
“Yeah, you and me both, lady.”
“Oh, and Mr. Keene?” She stopped in the opposite doorway, the tail of her long dress fluttering to a stop.
“Yeah?”
“I do suggest that you head for the main power source. There were three, but I do not think the sun or wind are factors so much as the water.” She stared up at the sky. “To think, children played here once.”
“What?”
But Fox had already disappeared into the shadows.
Keene glanced around the strange room. He closed his eyes, activating his neural implants, installed long ago on his home planet of Apollus. Scanning the area, he picked up bits of text that, before, had been nothing but gibberish. Somehow, however, the ancient mythological text was translated perfectly by the language im
plant embedded within his skull.
And Fox was literally right.
Faded letterings and stone etchings before the glass cages lining the walls indicated that they once held animals. Tigers, lions, gazelles, small elephants, crocodiles and other exotic creatures. He looked at the floor, where faded letters read Atlantis in an ancient script.
Stepping back from the basin, he saw a warning written in front of the rattlesnake sculpture.
PLEASE DO NOT STEP INSIDE THE FOUNTAIN. SNAKE’S MOVEMENTS CAN BE ERRATIC.
He scanned the room, noting two doorways other than the one he and Strike had entered by. One label said “Employees and Residents.” The other said “The Park.”
What had once looked like ornamental scribbles had turned into a world of hidden meaning. Keene tilted his head, the neural implant firmware highlighting certain serifs and features of the symbols. While he hadn’t seen this particular language before, its organization and style did have many similarities to his native tongue—like the similarities between the romance languages.
He shuttered the curiosity from his mind in order to focus on more pressing matters.
Keene vaulted over the basin and knelt down to examine the dust.
“Hey Wade,” he said, pressing the communications device inside his ear with his fingers. “You there?”
“Yes.” The sullen voice had lost all its boisterousness. “Who’s the woman?”
“An old friend. Or foe. Not important.” Keene rubbed the dust between his fingers, feeling the grit and grain. “Anything in this place’s files that tell you what it’s for?”
“A bunch of ancient script I can’t read, but yeah, I guess an explanation’s in Atlantis’ files somewhere.”
“This is gonna sound crazy,” Keene said. “But I’m pretty sure it’s a theme park. Fox said kids played here, and the whole place, it just has that rundown carnival vibe.”
“Holy shit.” Tapping crackled over the intercom. “Yeah, that’s exactly it. A high-tech amusement park.”
“This snake the same one as the schematics from Project Atlantis?” Keene figured it was, but he wanted no surprise.
“Pulling them up now.”
A long pause. “Wade?”
“Yeah. It was kind of…alive. Nano-robots mixed with the stone. Think animatronic, except…”
“Real. Or almost real,” Keene said. “Thanks to the nano-bots.”
“Whoa.”
“Apparently they didn’t do safety checks around here. This statue’s like giving your kids toys with lead paint.” Keene got up and left the basin. “What about power sources in this place?”
“Looks like the outside dome was a sort of solar array. Retractable, so that on certain days the park could be powered by wind.”
“The water.”
“It’s through one of those doors. It’ll take you through some residential houses—I don’t know, maybe lodgings? The hydroelectric conversion plant is up on a hill. It looks like a castle.”
“Got it.”
“One problem,” Wade said.
“Naturally.”
“The thing that attacked you in the water? There are a lot more of them. They’re coming out of the houses. And they’re headed your way.”
“Fantastic. Wade?”
“Yeah?” The kid’s voice sounded tentative, like he was afraid of getting reamed out.
“Search the city’s databases. Find something to neutralize the nano-bots.”
“I’ll try.”
“Don’t try. Do it.”
“Yeah, Keene. Sure thing.”
Keene turned off his headset and turned to Strike. “How much ammunition you got?”
“Enough.”
“There’s never enough,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The residences looked almost picturesque, squat and square and perfectly in a row, complete with a cobbled street running between them. The quaint street wound away, far into the distance, up a hill stretching high in the air towards the edges of the dome. Presumably the hydroelectric converters were located just inside the building perched atop the green knoll, where they could draw power from the depths.
Ruining the image was a road lined with humanoid robots, each a copy of one another, an army of metal monsters about five feet tall with glowing eyes and spindly mechanical limbs. When Keene and Strike had scaled the final step and emerged into this fantastical hamlet, the automatons had all swiveled and turned at once.
“There must be a thousand of them.”
“Never enough bullets,” Keene said.
The robots’ eyes flickered from green to yellow to orange.
“We’ll see.” Strike raised her rifle and aimed down the scope. Her finger flitted over the trigger, then pressed down. The bark of gunfire brought the machines to attention, their eyes glowing deep red.
A few fell.
The others turned and advanced.
Click-click-click.
Strike had run empty.
They were fifty yards away, closing fast, running it quicker than any human being could.
Strike fumbled with a clip.
“Don’t reload,” Keene said. “Run.”
One automaton leading the pack leapt through the air, covering fifteen feet in a single spirited bound, and grasped hold of Strike’s pack. She stumbled and faltered next to Keene.
“Help!”
“Let the pack go,” Keene said. He froze, halfway to the nearest hut, unsure what to do. If he ran back, they’d both die. She could only help herself.
She wriggled free of the pack’s straps. The automaton made one last swipe at her, yanking the rifle strap with enough force that it snapped, sending the robot backwards towards its friends in a screeching chorus of metal.
Keene and Strike dove into the nearest cottage and slammed the door shut. Outside, a thunderous chorus of footsteps pounded against the cobbles as hundreds of mechanical automatons surrounded the house and began beating against the walls.
The stone house shook and cracked, Keene and Strike huddled within, looking for a way out.
There was only one entrance and exit.
Five mechanical fingers smashed through the door, joined by ten, fifteen, a hundred more. Light poured in from the flickering lanterns illuminating the street outside, casting shadows inside the bare hut.
Keene’s gaze fell upon something at the back of the hut.
Keene walked to the back wall and said, “Give me a hand.”
“With what?”
“With killing them all, of course.”
29 | Power Down
Unlike the Ruby Rattlesnake, the automatons were still functional after many years underneath the sea. The question, then, was how—and Keene had found the answer within one of the residences.
These stone cottages weren’t meant for people.
They were meant for these robots which, at some point long ago, had been tasked with maintaining the upkeep of the park and ensuring its mechanical well-being. This explained how Atlantis had remained in remarkable shape, despite its age and tumble to the bottom of the Mediterranean.
The Ruby Rattlesnake had lost power long ago, the automatons unable to restore it after the tail had broken off. But the automatons hadn’t shared the same fate.
On the back wall of the hut was a row of charging capsules, clear chambers each bearing a single shoulder-height socket. The flickering torches outside cast a glare against the transparent containers as the robots clamored to tear down the door.
“Freaky.”
“Recharge pods,” Keene said. “Makes sense.”
Strike threw a glance over her shoulder. “Whatever you’re thinking, do it fast.”
The angry thumping of the throng had subsided into a much more concerted and directed effort at ripping apart the thic
k wooden door. It would probably take no more than a minute.
Keene pressed his earpiece. “So Wade, can you access the charging pods?”
“They’re all off.”
“Can you turn them on?”
“I don’t know—yeah, it looks like that’s low level access stuff. Way below administrator clearance.”
“Turn them on when I give the signal.”
“Uh, okay.”
“Good man.”
Keene set down his backpack and removed the three remaining torpedoes one by one. Then he went over to one of the capsules and yanked the socket loose, exposing a tangle of wires.
The light inside the small residence grew brighter, shadows growing on the walls.
“So your master plan is to commit suicide?”
“Nope.” Keene ripped the socket off from the wires and tossed it away, leaving the tips of the wires exposed. He traced the leads back to the top of the capsule, then decided there wasn’t enough time.
Hopefully this would be good enough.
He twisted the ends together, and then went to the next capsule and did the same, linking its wires to its neighbor in a big, twisting makeshift circuit. He let the group of interlinked wires down to the floor.
He grabbed a knife from his pocket and used it to chop away his shoulder length hair. Then he threw the blade to Strike.
“No way.”
“Best thing we got as a fire starter,” Keene said. He arranged the hair in a small bed, seating the clump of exposed wires beneath it. Then he took the missiles and made sure everything stayed in place, using them as weights to keep the pile in place.
He heard sawing, then felt a soft cluster of hair in his palm.
He added it to the top of the pile, arranging it along with any other flammable debris he could find. Shaking the backpack’s contents out on the floor, he scraped the rest of the munition into the pile just as the door came down.
He left a single handgun and a single clip inside the bag, throwing the absurdly light nylon pack back over his shoulders before running forward, charging the group of robots so they would stay away from his plan.
An outstretched metal arm clotheslined him, and he fell straight to the ground.
The Kip Keene Box Set: Books 1, 2 & 3 Page 29
