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

by Nicholas Erik

  He gently undid the strap, which allowed Strike to slump to the floor.

  That would be better, more comfortable.

  Keene sat down on the floor nearby and stared down the long corridor of splintered tanks that looked like a perverse sort of modern art.

  “Thank you. Not that you can hear, but thank you.” He sighed, feeling a shudder coming through his chest. “I guess it’s time to go home, then.”

  There was a little cough, and then a voice said, “Don’t cry on me like some sort of pussy.”

  Keene jumped up, slipping and sliding on the floor. “If that’s the city, I swear, I’m gonna burn this place.”

  “Count me in for that.” Strike looked up at him with her crystal blue eyes and blinked.

  He reached down. She strained, and when she was halfway to standing, threw up a half gallon of seawater on his shirt.

  “We’re gonna have to look into that,” Keene said.

  “Dude, I just almost drowned. Give me a break.”

  “You sound like Wade.”

  “Don’t say things you can’t take back.”

  “I think he’s rubbing off on you.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see, Mr. Feelings.”

  Keene shrugged. Better than Captain Keene. In the middle of the doorway, Strike let go of his shoulder to catch her breath.

  A voice crackled through the intact speakers.

  “Guys…guys?”

  “Wade?”

  “The earpiece went out and—look, I think you need to get up to the catwalk.”

  “You cannot take my legacy,” the city’s voice said, almost inaudible, completely plaintive. “You will not desecrate the Great…”

  “This is my line, buddy. Get off,” Wade said.

  “What? Why?” Keene looked up at the metal grating. “The hell is up there?”

  “I played back some of the camera footage and it looks like Hawk assembled something in those huts…”

  His voice faded out.

  “Wade? Wade?”

  Silence.

  Keene glanced back at the narrow catwalk. He scanned the room for a ladder, and found it near the entranceway.

  He sat down and sighed. “I’m gonna need a minute.”

  An almost inaudible voice whispered, “You cannot take my legacy. You cannot…”

  A thin smile creased Keene’s lips as the sentient city perished, its voice trailing off into nothingness.

  “I’ll take whatever I damn well please,” Keene said. He leaned up against the wall and closed his eyes. “After I take a nap.”

  32 | Return

  Keene bounded out of the submarine’s hatch and set foot on the SS Bank of Legends’ overpriced decks. He turned around to help Strike.

  She slapped his hand away as she jumped down. “What am I, an old lady?”

  “Glad to have you back.”

  “Yeah, yeah. None of that chivalrous shit.” But she cracked a smile as she dragged the catwalk haul along the deck. “Jesus, good thing we found this.”

  Keene looked at the cannonball shaped object that Hawk had placed in the catwalk. She’d been preparing to mix its contents—ground up pieces of the Ruby Rattlesnake fountain—with the water in one of the intake tanks.

  The plan, then, was to reverse the stream, set a time lapse delay and then expel the contaminated water into the Mediterranean once she was a safe distance away. Everything for hundreds of miles would be poisoned and infected by the nano-bots. The chaos from the massive psychosis would take care of the rest.

  Presumably, she would have released similar devices on other continents.

  Wade had pieced this plan together from the footage and various files he’d copied from Atlantis’ central computer.

  “Funny,” Keene said.

  “What?”

  “One thing’s been bothering me.”

  “Just one?” Strike said.

  “Why didn’t we go crazy? I mean, that dust had to be all in the air down there. The water had to have touched a little of it. You saw what happened to Lei and Derek. The sprinklers were enough.”

  “I look like a scientist?”

  “Just thinking out loud.”

  Keene shifted the backpack on his shoulders and headed down to the master suite.

  Wade stood with his hands hidden in the pockets of his floppy jeans. He stared at the spotless floor.

  Against the bed, Lorelei strained against her double handcuffs and screamed threats in a ruined voice. When no one took the bait, she gave the metal chains a final rattle and settled against the side of the bed wearing a toothy scowl.

  “Where is he?” Keene spoke in quiet, measured syllables.

  “Um, this lady showed up out of nowhere, man, out of nowhere and just…she took him.”

  “And you didn’t shoot her ass dead?” Strike said. “You were pretty good with a pistol before.”

  “I…I had no choice,” Wade said, faltering over the words. His cheeks glistened and his shoulders slumped. “She was too fast and I didn’t want to shoot her.”

  The resentment and blame dissipated from Keene’s body when he saw the scared boy before him. Just a kid, and he had done the best he could.

  There was no other option.

  Derek hadn’t been Derek, which was apparent from how Lorelei looked like a rabid wolf who would slit all their throats with glee.

  He walked over and put his hand on Wade’s shoulder. “It’s okay.”

  “I killed him. I killed your friend, dude,” Wade said between sniffles.

  “It wasn’t him.”

  “It was, though.”

  “It was and it wasn’t.” Keene gave him an affirming shake, then stepped back. “So who was this lady?”

  “I dunno, she wore a red dress, had this white tail, spoke super proper. Said you would understand when you took a look at what she left for you. Kind of looked like that lady from the fountain, now that I think about it. But she was quick, in and out, two minutes tops.”

  “What’d she leave me?”

  Wade fumbled inside his pocket and handed Keene a wadded up piece of paper.

  Keene opened the note, read it, and smiled.

  “What’s it say?” Strike said. “What’d the Fox have to share?”

  “We’re going home,” Keene said. “We’re going home.”

  33 | Home

  The morning sun glinted off the small wooden box. Derek’s final resting place was plain, other than a smooth black lacquer finish covering the outside.

  Franz Chibuco, the old scientist, had wordlessly exchanged the ashes for the carefully packaged remnants of the Ruby Rattlesnake. The old man had bowed his head in a moment of reverence, nodded at Keene, then returned to his work.

  The small cottage now had an addition in the back built in the months since Keene had last visited.

  But there had been no time for Strike or Keene to inquire about a tour or make small talk.

  Franz safeguarded Lorelei, still suffering from the effects of the nano-bot infection, while the partners set out to scale the peaks of Cotopaxi and lay Derek to rest.

  Keene sat down on the half-frozen ground and wiped his brow. An infinite vista of jungle, punctuated by the shimmering Lake Limpiopungo, stretched out below.

  He leaned against one of the many rocks littered about the high altitude trail.

  Calling it a trail might have been generous.

  Hands on her hips, Strike stood over him and tapped her boot. Her hair had been fixed, and was now in a sort of pixie cut that made her look aggressive and rebellious. Keene’s own floppy mane had been chopped down into a business-like and simple crewcut.

  “You want this to take all day?” Strike said.

  “We have somewhere else to be?”

  “Is that really the poi
nt?”

  “I’m taking it in.” The last time Keene had been up on these peaks, he’d been scrambling for his life from an exploding emergency capsule and potential threats on an unknown planet. Now, the strange had a nostalgic familiarity—the closest thing to a home he had.

  “Why have us come up here, anyway?” Strike’s neck swiveled around the landscape, taking it in. “I mean, she left the box with Franz. Why not leave everything else?”

  “Closure. Full circle.”

  He closed his eyes and thought about the note Wade had handed him.

  Come to Cotopaxi. Your first ally on this planet will safeguard Derek’s ashes until you arrive. I regret that—even for someone of my abilities and freedoms—transporting a body without paperwork halfway around the world and through many customs departments, is a luxury I do not have time to accommodate.

  When you have arrived, go to the place it all began.

  There, The Silver Songbird awaits your arrival.

  I would say that we shall meet again, but I believe you must carry on the work that I have prepared you to do alone, for I am returning home.

  You must now be the god in the machine.

  I trust that you are up to the task. The items accompanying the Songbird should be of some assistance in your new quest.

  Fox

  P.S. I believe there will be something that can help your sister, though I am not sure. Perhaps your old friend can reverse-engineer some sort of antidote for the masses.

  “All the mystery and woo-woo fate nonsense is a bit much,” Strike said. “You don’t think she’s jerking you around?”

  “She saved my life. Twice.”

  “More like one and a half. Or a quarter. We kicked most of the ass down in Atlantis.”

  “Twice seems right.”

  “God in the machine? Isn’t that a little…dramatic?”

  “I don’t know.” Keene’s thoughts flitted back to the very first thing he had heard as his emergency capsule disintegrated around him. The first cryptic message from Fox.

  Everything that has been will be again, Kip Keene.

  Would he finally find the meaning behind these words?

  He got back to his feet and began climbing again. Patches of frost and snow began to dot the landscape as the altitude rose.

  “Can’t believe Atlantis was a goddamn amusement park,” Strike said. She shook her head in disbelief, walking behind Keene. “That—thing the city protected like it was sacred, it was part of an ancient amusement park…”

  “Doesn’t seem fair,” Keene said, his voice quiet, thoughtful. “Right?” When his neural implants had rebooted and stabilized, he’d read some of the files Wade had pulled from Atlantis’ brain—or hard drive, depending on how one looked at it.

  The place had been built many millennia ago as a recreational isle for a mysterious group of settlers. In fact, the scattered ruins on the sea floor were the only evidence of the city proper—the computer had only been able to save a small recreational part. From some of the symbols dotting the data dumps, blueprints and archival schema, it was apparent that the builders had probably been exiles from the Coalition, just as Keene had been. They had travelled across the stars in search of a new home, and found Earth.

  A similar tale as Keene’s, merely from a different planet. Hence the unreadable, but eerily familiar language adorning Atlantis’ walls.

  These people, however, had woken much sooner—and burned out much faster. The entire city and civilization had lasted only ten years before being destroyed by a historic earthquake.

  No trace of them existed, except deep underneath the sea.

  Now, the only evidence left was on Wade’s laptop.

  “What doesn’t seem fair?”

  “Anything at all, when it comes down to it,” Keene said. Up ahead, he caught sight of the sloping edge of the crater where his faithful ship The Blue Maybelle had crash landed so long ago.

  He jogged up the slope and peered over the lip.

  At the bottom of the empty thirty foot divot, something flashed in the sun.

  Hurrying down the incline as fast he could, Keene found a plain metal strongbox with a key inside the lock. He turned it open and assessed the contents.

  “What’d she leave?” Strike said. Her momentum carried her into Keene’s back, and he rocked forward. “Sorry.”

  “Exactly what she said.” He shut the box and handed it to her. “Hold this.”

  In his other hand, he still held the small lacquered container. He waited until the wind died down before opening it. The ashes were contained within a small plastic bag. A small slip of paper tucked inside, typed on an old typewriter, read (1) Remains John Doe…€99.99

  Keene crumpled the receipt and stuffed it in his pocket.

  Then he undid the twist tie at the bag’s throat, and gently unraveled the plastic.

  Kneeling down, he sprinkled the ashes at the bottom of the crater, in a ring around his feet. The wind began to pick up, and wisps of gray swirled in the air, catching on the breeze. Soon there would be little of Derek Dash at all in this crater. He would be everywhere, part of the Earth.

  “There were some good times, right,” Keene said as the last of the ashes fell into the hard soil. “Yeah, there were a lot of them.”

  He got up and paused for a minute with his head bowed.

  Then he returned to the top of the crater, where he said, “What do you think?”

  “I think, if I ever die, you should be the one who takes care of the funeral.”

  “I meant about the box.”

  “I’m just saying, that was real nice. Simple.”

  “He was my friend,” Keene said, and then the two walked down the mountain in silence.

  34 | Cure

  As fate would have it, Franz only needed an hour to craft a cure from the instructions on the crumbling piece of parchment Fox had left behind for Keene. Apparently the woman had found the antidote’s formula somewhere on the rest of the grounds, in the section of the park that Keene hoped he would never see.

  Keene took the long needle from the table and jabbed it into Lorelei’s neck while Franz and Strike held the young woman down. Her eyes fluttered into the back of her skull as the tip pierced the skin, then she fell limp.

  Extracting the needle, Keene surveyed the scene. “Is this good?”

  “We will see,” Franz said. “In due time my young friend, in due time.”

  “And you sent it to the Barcelona hospitals?”

  “Yes,” Franz said, his eyes glowing with kindness, “we have internet out here, now. An upgrade.”

  “Good man.”

  “Apparently, there were a few isolated cases of immunity.” Franz paused, running his hand through his silver hair. “They’re calling these people miracles.”

  Miracles indeed.

  Keene laid out the rest of the box’s contents on the simple wooden kitchen table. The Silver Songbird—literally a bird figurine, about a foot tall and six inches wide, crafted entirely of silver—stood watch over a half dozen USB thumb drives, all labeled neural interface firmware upgrades, numbered one through six.

  There was also a golden key, large, the type used by 18th century jailers and those living in castles, if their keys were flaked with 24 karat leaf.

  “Nothing for me,” Strike said. “Buzzkill.”

  Keene looked at the items. No further explanation of them had been given, as no note or clues were contained within the box.

  He pulled up a chair and examined the Silver Songbird. It looked like nothing more than a decorative bookend or ornament one would place on a living room table.

  Lorelei groaned, and his head whipped around.

  “Lei? You all right?”

  “My head.” She swept her matted black hair from her eyes, dirty and greasy from days with a s
hower, and looked around. “What happened? Where’s Derek?”

  No one answered her. Keene’s gaze dropped towards the plain floor.

  She didn’t reiterate the question.

  From the lengthy silence, it was clear she understood.

  “Where’d you…where is he?”

  “Up on the mountain. In the Maybelle’s crater,” Keene said.

  “That’s a good spot.”

  “I figured.”

  Lorelei gave him a small smile. “There were some good times, you know?”

  “There’ll be more,” Keene said.

  Her smile faded. “And bad, too.”

  “Just part of the deal.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  “Fair, child,” Franz said, “is in the balance of things. A life of both happiness and tragedy. All one, none of the other, that cannot be.”

  Keene nodded and walked outside, Strike following.

  “So,” she said. “The artifact retrieval thing didn’t work out so good, eh?”

  “Not really.”

  “But we saved the world. Again.”

  “There is that.”

  Keene stared at the lake, transfixed by its tranquil ripples. Strike cut in front of him, blocking his view.

  “So I figure that means we should stick together.”

  Keene smiled. “Maybe that’s the tragedy Franz was talking about.”

  Strike popped him in the arm. “Yeah, well, we’ve done all right so far. Two for two. Some thanks would be nice, though.”

  “It’s not about that,” Keene said, his mind drifting to the past, the present, the future.

  “Oh, Captain Keene getting metaphysical and deep on me.”

  The name didn’t bother him. Because he realized, when it was gone, and everything faded to black, he’d miss it. And that meant all of it.

  “So you’re going to follow me down this rabbit hole?”

  “If I get to be the goddess in the machine, hell yes.”

  “All right, partner. All right.”