He could even sort by type, DNA markers, species—anything, really.
Beat the standard language translation and vitals assessment modules.
Keene had selected blood from the holographic menu floating in the ether that only he could see, narrowing the search down to James Mitchell’s DNA. The blood droplets lit up on the ground with a green, radioactive glow.
“Just what lead are you following up on, anyway?” Duke said.
“We’re the FBI. We got satellites. Snowden, baby.”
“Oh.”
Keene rounded the corner of the alley, thinking damn, that was easy, cut past a diner and gas station, and after a light walk found himself on a residential street. Two story wooden houses, white picket fences, green grass in the yard. Anything a family could want.
Except people.
Or lights.
Even near midnight, not a single house light was on, making the glistening asphalt and dim glow of the moon foreboding. Menacing, like a wolf’s slobbery jowls.
“Everybody goes to sleep early, I guess,” Keene said.
“Curfew.”
Keene stopped in the middle of the wet road. Duke looked at the ground, refusing to elaborate. He had the expression of a child who had misbehaved and wished he could take back his misstep. His hands were grasping at something in his pocket, his eyes flitting back and forth.
“I’m real sorry, Mr. Keene, but—”
Keene punched the detective in the head, dropping him with a single blow. The young man crumpled to the asphalt, his head knocking against the slick surface. A gun skittered away, near a gutter covered in leaves.
Duke groaned as Keene raced towards the standard issue pistol. Keene noticed one of the house’s curtains swinging in the dark. But no lights came on.
He cocked the pistol and aimed it at Duke. “You can call me Keene, you know.”
Duke rubbed his head and tried to get up, but lost his balance. “You hit me so damn hard.”
“That’s what happens when you try to shoot someone.”
“I wasn’t going to shoot you,” Duke said. “Just scare you.”
“Or maybe you were getting rid of me.” Duke looked sullen and turned away. “Yeah, I know you’re holding people here. Get your cuffs out.”
“We’re doing important work, Mr. Keene. We’re guarding paradise.” The cuffs glinted in the dim light. “Until Cladius can save the world.”
“Who the hell is Cladius?”
Duke pursed his lips together and refused to answer.
“Fine. Get up.” Keene waved the gun, indicating that it was time to hurry. Duke complied. “Cuff yourself. Behind your back.”
“That’s kind of difficult.”
“Fine, one wrist. There you go.” Keene walked over and yanked the detective’s hands backwards. “Done.” The cuffs clicked shut.
“What are you going to do?
“We’re headed towards the house at the end of street.” Keene pointed the gun towards a residence that matched all the others. A carbon copy, except for one thing.
James Mitchell’s blood trail led right inside.
They reached the stairs, Keene indicating that the detective should go first.
“But I don’t have a key.”
“Just stay in front of me, all right?”
Keene kept the gun trained on him as the detective stumbled up the wet stairs. Then Keene followed and tried the knob. As expected, it was open. The interior was pitch black.
“You carry a flashlight?” Keene said.
“Penlight in my front right pocket.”
Keene shot Duke an unamused look. “Great.” He reached into the detective’s pocket. Duke tried to jostle him with an elbow, but Keene saw the gambit coming. He sidestepped and coldcocked the detective in the spine. Duke buckled in the doorway on one knee as Keene finished his search, extracting the small LED light.
“Just kill me.”
“You keep pulling crap like that and I just might,” Keene said, flicking the light on. The narrow beam cut a tiny path into the suburban home. Blood stained the white carpeting. No need for the neural implants any more, so he turned them off. He walked towards the kitchen, watching the splotches of red grow bigger and bigger.
Keene shoved Duke into the room first. The detective began yelling, trying to scramble away.
“He’s dead! Get me outta here, he’s dead.”
Even the gun couldn’t calm the detective down. Finally, Keene raised the firearm into the air and fired it at the ceiling. Duke froze, one fear overtaking another.
Ringing ears proved much better than a grown man’s cries of terror.
A handsome man with an ashen face sat slumped against the fridge. A pair of bullet wounds in his upper torso had soaked his tailored suit with blood. His hands were clutched around the mythical box 462.
Keene pried the fingers loose and shook the box.
“Anything I should know before I bust this open?”
Before Duke could answer, a radio crackled. “It’s the sheriff.”
“Make it sound normal.” Keene dug a walkie-talkie out of the detective’s pocket and held it to Duke’s ear.
The conversation was brief, mostly Duke answering with a lot of yes sirs. It ended with an I’ll be right back, after which Duke gave Keene a strange look—self-satisfaction mixed with intense fear.
“Well, obviously I’m not going to kill you,” Duke said. “I’d have let you go.”
“I bet.” Keene considered the more pertinent portion of the conversation, where Hendricks had insisted that Duke return to the station straightaway with the contents of the box, since the sheriff had a new initiate—whatever the hell that was. Who it was, however, wasn’t a mystery.
Strike.
“What’s he gonna do to her?” Keene ground the pistol into the detective’s temple.
“I can help you. I swear, I can help you.”
“How’s that?” Keene said, seriously considering pulling the trigger.
“I know another way into the station.”
Keene fired the gun.
10 | Hacked
“Slow down,” Wade Linus said, just before his hat launched backwards, carried away into the street. He didn’t look back, for fear of toppling off the motorcycle and smashing his head against the asphalt. Carmen had informed him that helmets were for pussies.
And Linus really needed some points right now.
But after whipping down Seaside Boulevard, not slowing down to take the sharp turn down Seventh Avenue, Linus wished he’d ignored her and demanded headgear. Instead, his only recourse was to clutch her waist and hope that everything would stop.
The bike skidded with a brutal screech. Burnt rubber filled his nostrils. His eyes ratcheted shut, refusing to open.
“Let go.”
“We’re gonna die.”
“You’re losing points,” Carmen said. “Like, a lot of points. Serious points. I don’t know how many more you can afford to lose.”
Linus reluctantly unclasped his hands and ventured a cautious look with one eye. The motorcycle was parked between two cars, in perfect parallel to the curb. He glanced around the sidewalk, as if some sort of necromancy had taken place.
“We’re not dead.”
“No, dumbass.” Carmen gave a sweet, husky laugh. Linus felt his insides melt, and his thoughts immediately go from survival to uncontrolled love. He tried to focus on whatever trouble Keene and Strike were in, but it was difficult. “This is my place. Kind of.”
He coughed and mumbled. “Your place.” He rose from the seat and walked up the stairs to the screen door. He rattled it and said, “Well, what do you need to show me?”
“Something about a safety deposit box,” Carmen said, sliding past to unlock the four locks, each one requiring a separate key.
“What’s that?” Linus followed her up the stairs. A musty smell, like the room had never been cleaned, almost bowled him over. A thick layer of dust lined everything, except for a
few footprints on the floor. “This is your place?”
“You don’t like it?”
“No, it’s just…” Linus placed his hand on a dresser and grabbed a dust bunny so large that it looked about ready to gain consciousness. “It’s nice. Great, uh, view.” He pointed at the lone tiny window, so dirty and dust-streaked that it was almost impossible to see out of.
“Relax,” she said. “It’s a safe house.”
“What are you, CIA?” Linus wandered into the study, where files were stacked from floor to ceiling in moving boxes. Carmen was already working her way through a box, manila folders kicking up plumes of sediment from the floor.
She laughed, like his naiveté was cute. But she didn’t answer, her fingers flying through the papers until she stopped on one sheet.
“Here.” The sheet crumpled as she hastily yanked the staple out. She handed it to Linus.
“Within Box 462 is rumored to be an artifact capable of opening a portal to Shambhala.” Linus scanned the top of the sheet for more information, but it was all theory—bordering on pure junk science—on how the artifact functioned. Or if it even existed at all, since no one could confirm the box’s actual contents. “This can’t be real, can it?”
“Intel is solid. Read the top. The fine print, as they say.” Carmen tapped the top edge of the sheet, where URLs or fax numbers usually appeared. “FBI. A clandestine division, of course.”
“Unexplained Crimes Division,” Linus said. “There a crime I should know about?”
“Soon, we think.” Carmen shuffled through the papers and handed Linus another one. “And here’s why I think your friends are in danger. Not just your friends, in fact. The world. I tried calling them. They shouldn’t have gone to Tillus.”
“That call was you?”
“I think they might be out of their depths.”
She placed a leather journal on the table with a large thud. Dust shot out from the yellowed pages. Linus hesitated before flipping it open to the first page.
Open the portal to save the girl. Protect the girl to save the world.
“So he got more than one journal through.” Linus thumbed through the crinkling pages until he got to the back. Another plaintive note, this time signed February 1993.
“The UCD has a few,” Carmen said. “We thought your deceased friend, Ben, had another one, purchased at auction some years ago. I was sent in to retrieve it, see if anything was useful.”
“Like what type of useful?” Linus said. He skimmed the note in the back. It was similar in its insistence that something bad was going to happen towards the end of 2015.
“Anything. A confirmation of what’s actually in the box, for one. How the people of Tillus became immortal.”
“Wait, dude, what?”
“We’ve been observing them from the water treatment plant for about fifteen years. It was built on the location of the author’s purported disappearance, right after we came into possession of one of the journals.” Carmen paced around the room and played with a few strands of hair as she spoke. “No one ages in Tillus. No one seems to die.”
“No wonder the government is so interested in this place.”
“What we’re concerned about is the prophecy of Martin Redbeard, the man who sent the journals back. About this world ending business. And how, exactly, he, his dog and his daughter slipped through to Shambhala without whatever’s in that box. Because we sure as hell can’t get through.”
“There was nothing new in the other journal. It was from 2001, I think,” Linus said. “I don’t think I can help that much.”
“What were you trying to text Keene?”
Linus hesitated, biting his lip. But he had no other option but to trust Carmen. His friends were in real trouble, and there was no way he could help them by himself.
“I was thinking there might be a hidden code in the journal. Maybe.” Linus wrinkled his nose and tried to act nonchalant. “It’s probably nothing.”
“We gotta trust each other, Wade, if this is gonna work.”
“Well,” Linus said. “I shared a little already, so that makes it your turn. And you owe me one.”
“For what?”
“Lying to my face.”
“We ran an op today,” Carmen said. “Sent in one of our best men, an Agent Mitchell, to retrieve the box. Haven’t heard back from him, but then, phone service is down. Some sort of electrical storm, it looks like. Probably related to the town and the portal. The guy in charge of the Tillus facility got impatient and green-lit the whole mission without clearance.”
“How come?”
“I guess he wants to see his father again,” Carmen said. “It’s been almost twenty-five years. Can’t imagine that.”
A chill settled into Linus’ heart. Keene and Strike were on their own.
And the walls were closing in from all sides.
11 | Sewers
Detective Duke tried to clutch his ears from the loud shot, but the cuffs prevented him from moving. Instead, he jerked like a beached fish on the floor. A small trickle of blood ran down from his ear, towards his jawline.
“Son of a gun,” he said. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Couldn’t listen to you any more,” Keene said over the ringing din. “I don’t need your help.”
“I can get you to the precinct.”
“Tell me what Hendricks is going to do with Strike.”
“She’ll live forever,” Duke said. “It’s a gift.”
“I bet it is.” Keene pistol whipped the man in the face, knocking him out cold.
A hostage was too much to handle, and he didn’t trust Duke worth a damn. The detective had been far too squirrely during their walk over. He’d find another way into the station on his own.
Keene racked the pistol’s slide and checked the clip. It would do, although he would have preferred to have more than five bullets. He tried his phone, but it still showed no signs of life. What he wouldn’t do to talk with Linus, that goofy bastard.
The detective stirred on the ground as Keene cuffed him to a radiator.
“We have to protect the portal,” he mumbled, going in and out of consciousness. “Cladius said so.”
“I bet he did.”
Keene slammed box 462 against the edge of the table until the lock jarred loose. Then he pried the lid open and stared inside. A fist-sized clear object sat within, triangular in shape. It glinted a number of colors, like soap suds in the morning light.
Keene grabbed the talisman and held it up to the flickering fluorescent bulb. The prism shimmered and refracted rainbow colored waves across the kitchen. He tossed the empty box on the ground.
“So what the hell does this thing do, anyway?”
“You can’t…” Then Duke nodded off again.
“Very helpful.” Keene took a final glance at the prism, then pocketed it.
Just what was in paradise, anyway?
Keene accidentally nudged Mitchell’s body as he walked past on the way out of the kitchen. A thin cardboard tube, bloodied from its owner’s violent end, fell from Mitchell’s jacket and rolled along the floor. Keene knelt to pick it up.
“Come on.” He shook his hand out, the tacky blood sticking to his fingertips. Keene carefully uncorked the plastic top. Schematics, drawn at a draftsman’s table. The bottom quarter was almost unreadable due to the crimson stains. But the rest of the lines still made sense to Keene.
This was a blueprint of the town’s sewer system. But why the hell would Mitchell have these? Keene traced the lines with his finger, trying to figure out Mitchell’s purpose. He found nothing.
He reached into Mitchell’s pockets, searching for ID or anything else that might be useful. A rifle clattered to the floor, but there was no wallet, business cards or anything else that might explain who he was—or what his plan after robbing the bank might’ve been.
Keene contemplated grabbing the rifle, but it was difficult to conceal and its bulk would make movement a challenge. Sho
oting was more Strike’s thing, anyway. A pang of guilt knotted in his stomach. He really shouldn’t have left her alone as a decoy to draw Sheriff Hendricks’ attention away.
That wasn’t what partners did. Nothing to dwell on, though—now he just needed to get her back.
Keene’s gaze returned to the blueprint and his index finger landed on a route that caught his attention. Duke hadn’t been bluffing. The front doors weren’t the only entrance to the Tillus police station.
“The sewers.”
Keene shoved the blueprint back into the tube and charged out the door.
Hopefully Strike’s initiation hadn’t started yet.
12 | Awaken
Samantha Strike awoke to the smell of sulfur and burnt hair clinging to her nostrils. A trace of formaldehyde wafted beneath the other aromas. Whatever Sheriff Hendricks’ associate had knocked her out with, it’d left a nasty smell behind. Hospitality was not this town’s strong suit.
She tried to move, but found that her legs and feet were bound. Craning her neck, Strike ascertained that she was strapped down to a stainless steel table. Candlelight flickered around the room, casting a deathly pall.
Strike knew where she was from her FBI training at Quantico.
The morgue.
She strained against the leather straps and screamed.
“Now that’s hardly necessary.” Sheriff Hendricks’ face appeared above her, temporarily blocking the lantern dangling from the ceiling. His massive hands bore an equally massive needle, its point more similar in gauge to a dagger’s tip than a medical instrument’s. He pushed the plunger and liquid squirted into the air. “Almost ready.”
“Don’t you dare.”
“I’m afraid you don’t have much say in the matter, Agent Strike.” He disappeared from view, only to reappear a half minute later wearing an all-white smock and a plastic face-shield. “An initiation must be made to bolster our ranks. It is our duty to protect the portal until the Diamond Dragon awakens and cleanses the world.”
“I’m FBI, damnit!” The candle suddenly blew out, and Strike’s heart shot into her throat. Darkness threatened to swallow her completely, until the haunting glow of candles outside the room—behind glass—illuminated the surroundings again. “If you’re trying to raise the dead, I hate to tell you, but séances aren’t a real thing.”
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