The Enhancer series Box Set

by Wyatt Kane

  “But how?” Ty asked, unconsciously repeating Tempest’s question.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it?” she said. “That’s why I asked if the Master’s voice matched that of my father. It doesn’t, so whoever he is, it isn’t him. But my father is involved. Somehow. There’s no other way the Master could have identified these people.”

  Ty nodded, understanding. To his mind, the Architect had to be complicit in the Master’s plans, or, like Lilith, he was being coerced. Either way, the Architect was part of it.

  But there was another implication as well. “This Master. Why would he need these people unless he was planning to give them devices as well?”

  It was a sobering thought, but one to which there was no response.

  The conversation drifted, with Ty and Tempest taking turns to fill Dinah in, but Ty avoiding some of the more horrific details. When they spoke of Lilith, the deerkin asked a question.

  “Do you think she’ll cause trouble?” she asked.

  Ty shook his head. “I don’t think so. She asked Tempest to hurt her rather than let the people on the pendulum ride suffer, and that was with her stepfather’s life under threat. And she took all those people to safety. She didn’t need to do that. She could have just taken her father and disappeared.”

  Tempest went further. “I don’t think we’ve seen the last of her though. She knows where we are and can find us through our devices. And from what I could see, she seems to have a thing for our Ty,” she said.

  Her words caught Ty by surprise, but she said it in a way he couldn’t clearly interpret. He didn’t know if it was an accusation or just a statement of fact. He heard hints of jealousy and anger, but pride as well, as if she was happy that someone like Lilith would find her man attractive.

  Ty didn’t know what to say, so said nothing at all. But Dinah grinned broadly. “She can’t have him,” she said. “He’s mine!” Then her grin grew even broader. “Or ours, if you insist.”

  “Oh, I do, I absolutely do insist!” Tempest replied, and there was such an overtone of ownership that Dinah pulled a face of mock dismay.

  “You’ll have to fight me for him,” the deerkin declared, and before Ty knew it, both women had picked up cushions, Gremlin was running for her life, and he was in the midst of a battle.

  Tempest and Dinah were grinning and laughing as they attacked each other with cushions around Ty. For the first few moments, he tried to protect himself against an inadvertent battering. But he knew that wasn’t a winning strategy, so instead, he turned toward Tempest, grinned broadly, and tackled her.

  “Hey, no fair!” the blonde superhero cried, still grinning. “Two against one!”

  Ty shot a glance at Dinah. “Sounds fair to me,” he said. “Don’t you think?”

  It was all the invitation the deerkin needed. She discarded her cushion and leaped onto them both with an expression of maniacal glee, and Ty learned something important about Tempest.

  She was ticklish. The most super of superheroes that existed turned into a giggling, writhing, helpless mess when the deerkin dug her fingers into her sides, and there seemed to be nothing she could do about it.

  Ty thought it looked like fun, so he joined in as well, then abruptly switched his attention to Dinah.

  The deerkin gave a whoop of surprise and collapsed into just as helpless a mess as Tempest, and all of a sudden Ty had the upper hand over two giggling, writhing women.

  But it didn’t last long. Tempest was still Tempest, and Ty had made a tactical error. He wasn’t wearing his projector discs. He couldn’t activate his shield.

  The blonde superhero bore his attentions for only so long, then all of a sudden, Ty somehow found himself on his back with Tempest on top of him. Dinah joined in, and Ty then learned that sometimes there was only one thing to do.

  “I surrender!” he cried as he laughed.

  It did him no good at all. He found himself completely smothered in wonderfully firm and yet surprisingly soft female flesh, and their hands were everywhere. Yet at some point, their intent changed from tickling into something else entirely, and Ty stopped trying to fight them off even in jest.

  The three of them made love right there in the den, enjoying each other’s bodies with abandon. Ty found that even after the events at the prison, he could give himself to these woman completely and be deliriously happy. For him, even though he’d been with each of them separately during the day, it felt like it had been ages since he’d enjoyed them both together.

  All of them reveled in their shared passion and affection, and just like when teleporting with Lilith, time lost all meaning. At some point, Gremlin came back into the den and meowed at them, but none of them paid her the slightest attention. She stared at them for a few seconds, then wandered over to one of the chairs and settled herself down to sleep.

  Eventually, once they were sated, Ty found himself lying among the small pile of naked, exhausted bodies of the women he’d so quickly come to love. None of them had suggested heading off to bed. It seemed that the couch was large and comfortable enough for them to share.

  Idly, Ty wondered what Lilith might be up to at that moment and hoped that she was happy and safe.

  Then, as he drifted toward sleep, he started to think about what he needed to do when he woke. He still had some work to do on his suit, and Bain and his Master were still out there. But from a more practical perspective, he still needed to sort out his job situation, and the hole in his apartment wall had become a major issue.

  Other than that, there was little that he needed to worry about.

  Or so he thought.

  ◆◆◆

  It was several hours after midnight when an alert jerked all three of them–and Gremlin–awake.

  Tempest grumbled wordlessly in a semi-asleep state and Ty blinked in the dark. This time, it wasn’t his alarm.

  “Sorry,” Dinah muttered. “That’s my tablet. It isn’t supposed to do that unless it’s important. I’ll see what it’s all about.”

  She climbed over Ty to the pile of clothes on the floor, and Ty found himself drifting off once again.

  But it wasn’t to last. “Hey you two, wake up,” Dinah said.

  Ty was instantly alert, as was Tempest. Despite the urgency in Dinah’s voice, Ty couldn’t help but stare at both her and Tempest. Fully clothed, each of them was stunning. Naked, either of them would be enough to stop an old man’s heart dead in his chest.

  Together, and Ty thought he knew what Heaven was like. Or should be, at least.

  It was a gift he would never grow tired of.

  Yet despite her lack of attire, Dinah was once again all business. She’d activated the den’s screen and synched it with her tablet.

  “It’s a message from Rubio,” she said.

  “Rubio?” Tempest muttered, her voice grumpy with sleep. “What does he want at this time of night?”

  “Let’s see, shall we?” Dinah replied.

  44: A New Threat

  The deerkin opened the message. It was a video file, and within moments the face of the crime lord filled the screen.

  It was Rubio Vecoli, almost as large as life, as blocky and urbane as he had been in the bistro.

  “Is this on?” he asked someone off-camera. “Good. Good.” He sat back a little, relaxing. “Technology,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I don’t care for it, mostly. Don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly useful, and I wouldn’t want to do without it. But I prefer if other people actually work with it, you know?”

  He smiled at the camera. “Anyway. Enough of that. Tempest, Ty, and Dinah, I do hope I’ve remembered that right. I just wanted to let you know that we took your suggestion and investigated those rumors in more depth. And you’ll never guess what we found.”

  The man paused for a moment as if intentionally building the suspense. “We found the lab. It was making something that I’m sure you’ll find interesting. In part of it, they were growing a peculiar crystal that my guys
tell me is exceptionally rare, and quite valuable in its own right.”

  As soon as the gangster said those words, Ty felt his heart sink. He didn’t want to hear the rest, fearing what the man might say and hoping he wouldn’t. Yet he had no choice. He had to be sure.

  “In another part, they were putting together a piece of technology I’d seen only a few times before,” the crime lord continued. “It’s a device just like the ones you wear on your wrists.”

  Just like that, Ty’s fears were confirmed. But Rubio hadn’t finished.

  “They must have been working on the devices for some time. My men interrupted a shipment of about twenty of them.”

  Both Tempest and Dinah made small noises of shock and deep concern. Ty didn’t move or say anything. What the crime lord was saying was too awful to contemplate.

  Rubio Vecoli leaned forward, into the camera, and this time his grin was demonic. “When last we met, we talked about a deal,” he said. “The way I see it, things have changed. I don’t think I’ll need a favor from you any more. With these devices, I can make my own favors.”

  Still grinning, the man leaned back again. “We’re going ahead with our expansion, and you can rest assured that I now have other things in mind as well. I’m sure you’ll want to continue disrupting our enterprises. Consider this a courtesy warning. We may not be the easy targets we have been the past.”

  With that Rubio chuckled deep in his chest. “Turn that thing off,” he said to someone, and the screen went blank.

  For a moment, none of them said anything. They were all in shock.

  Tempest was the first to recover. “Well. That could make life interesting,” she said, in what Ty thought of as a potentially massive understatement.

  Here ends book 2 in the Enhancer series.

  Enhancer 3

  By Wyatt Kane

  1: Same Shit, Different Outcome

  Ty Wilcox stood just inside the main room of the Concubine Club and waited for his eyes to adjust to the flickering gloom.

  He didn’t want to be there. He hated every dark corner of the place with a passion he’d kept buried until recently. The thick stench of alcoholic vapor and sticky floors were like the setting for a nightmare tailored to him. Combined with the migraine-inducing strobe lights and incessant pounding of blended techno-punk music, it was enough to make him feel sick to his stomach.

  It was as if Ty’s very bones rebelled at his setting foot in the place. He’d done his time there. Paid his dues in full, cleaning up spills, vomit, and very much worse, until the cloying stench and oppressive foulness of the place were as familiar as his own heartbeat.

  Yet despite the familiarity, just at that moment, the Concubine Club felt surprisingly alien as well. It had been two full days and a lifetime ago since he’d last entered the building. Two days since Angie the Hutt had fired him for skipping out on his shift without saying a word.

  Ty would have happily avoided the club for the rest of his life. But the realities of existence were forcing his hand. He had bills to pay and couldn’t see many options for paying them.

  “Shit on a sandwich!” came a voice from behind him. “If it isn’t Ty Wilcox. You’ve got some nerve coming back here!”

  It was a voice made for scorn and derision. Ty recognized it immediately. He closed his eyes and deflated a little. To him, it was a voice carved out of venom and spite. The exact, diametric opposite of anything nurturing or kind, it was as savage as a screech. Fingernails on a blackboard would have been easier to listen to.

  Ty drew a deep breath. In the past few days, he had fought armed mercenaries and gone toe-to-toe with a monstrous villain who made the Rock in his prime look pathetic and weak. He was better prepared than ever to stand up to the speaker without blinking. Yet he still didn’t look forward to it.

  With bile rising in his throat in anticipation, he turned to face his ongoing minor nemesis, Angie the Hutt.

  If life was a game, she would be the annoying enemy Ty had to face to gain quick XP. She was an obese, slug-like woman who had modified her skin to a greenish color, and she couldn’t hide her glee that Ty was there. It was like she had been presented with a free chocolate cake and didn’t have to share.

  “Did you not get the message I left you?” the foul woman said with an exuberant grin. She stepped in close and thrust her quivering chins into Ty’s personal space. “I thought it was clear, but you never struck me as particularly bright, so perhaps a reminder would help. I said you are fired! As in, you are no longer required. You need not come to work because you have no work to come to. You have no business being here at all, and your lingering presence is an unfunny joke I don’t have to suffer any more.”

  The repulsive woman surged even closer to Ty. Her breath carried a hint of rot, a fitting metaphor for her cankerous soul. Angie grinned at him in utter delight and looked him up and down. Before Ty could muster a suitable response, the loathsome woman continued.

  “I get it,” she said, as if in sudden understanding. “I know why you’re here. You did get my message after all. You know I fired you. You’re here to beg me to reconsider!”

  The look she gave him was triumphant and gloating, and Ty despised her for it.

  He thought back to every horrible thing the woman had done during his time at the club. Not just to him, but to the other workers as well. She was like an infectious cancer spreading her own brand of poison and vitriol around her with enthusiasm, paying no heed to the damage she did.

  And Ty had had enough. He’d suffered her maliciousness for too long and saw no reason why he should continue to do so. Sure, he needed the money, and it had been his plan to ask her to reconsider. But right then, as he studied her smug and gleeful expression, he knew it would do him no good.

  Angie the Hutt excelled at tormenting others. She lived for a perverse sort of adulation, and took obscene delight in exercising whatever power she had in the worst possible way.

  She would never give Ty his job back. She would make him beg and jump through hoops like a trained puppy, but in the end, she would laugh in his face and tell him that her initial judgment stood. Or she would string him along, dangling a carrot in front of his nose. Maybe she would tell him to come back in a week and ask again, when he was truly desperate.

  Angie didn’t know it, but Ty was already truly desperate. He had bills to pay, a student loan that wasn’t getting any smaller, and an unexpected repair bill to his apartment wall that he didn’t want to think about.

  But he was not the same Ty of even a week ago. He had leveled up. He had gained self-respect.

  This was real life. To gain quick XP, he had to do more than just show up. He needed to defeat the monster.

  Ty decided he would find some other way to pay his bills. Instead of starting to babble or beg as Angie expected, Ty found himself grinning.

  “What would be the point?” he began. Angie’s expression didn’t change. She was as yet unaware that she had mistaken a pit bull for a mouse, and had no clue what Ty was planning.

  “It would just reinforce that you can treat people like shit and they’ll keep coming back for more. The funny thing is there’s even some truth in that. You know it, and in fact you live it. It’s what you enjoy most. But here’s the thing: treating people like shit doesn’t make you better than them. It makes you worse. Life is hard enough already, and all you’re doing is adding to the misery.”

  As Ty spoke, Angie’s gloating expression turned into one of shocked disbelief. Her eyes grew wide and her mouth dropped open.

  Ty didn’t give her the chance to respond. He’d bottled up his distaste for her viciousness for too long, and there was no better time to unleash than right then.

  “Your small-minded pettiness is unnecessary. It’s like stepping in a fresh pile of dog shit at the end of a cold, miserable day. It’s not even good for business. Do you understand how much more willing people would be to put in the effort if they liked you? If they trusted that you would treat them fairly?�
��

  Angie’s mouth snapped shut. Her eyes were starting to bulge from their sockets. In the flickering gloom of the club, it wasn’t easy to make out the color of her skin, but Ty thought he could see blotches of red starting here and there within the green of her face.

  She was starting to convert her shock into rage.

  But Ty didn’t care. There were things that needed to be said, that Angie the Hutt needed to hear them. And if his words could lead to a change for the better, he was more than happy to speak.

  “Here’s something you don’t seem to understand. People have limits. You can’t push them around forever. When you reach that limit, all the humiliation and hurt you’ve inflicted on them will come back to you as hate and anger. And you’ll deserve every last ounce of it.”

  Ty took a moment to study the hideous woman. He could see that she was nearly apoplectic with fury. He figured that she was moments from starting to shriek, and wondered if his words would have any real impact at all.

  Nevertheless, he had more to say. “I had planned to talk to you about getting my job back. But you know what? I can handle cleaning grease traps and toilets and puddles of vomit. But none of that compares to putting up with you! I’m not doing it any more. Clean your own shitty toilets. It’s not worth my while.”

  Ty didn’t even give her the chance to respond. He just turned and walked away as soon as he stopped speaking.

  It didn’t stop her. “Don’t you turn away from me! How dare you?” she spluttered behind him, but Ty wasn’t interested. He was done with her and done with this place.

  Yet speaking with Angie wasn’t his only goal in coming to the club. There was another opportunity he wanted to track down. The club DJ, Martin, had mentioned a cousin who might be able to use someone with Ty’s skills.

  It was a lead he would be foolish to ignore. The New Lincoln job market was far from robust, and Ty needed money. He knew better than most that without formal qualifications he would be hard pressed to find work no matter his skill. He knew there was value in what he could do, but hadn’t yet figured out how best to leverage it.