Technomancer (32 page)

I took out my cheap cell and tapped in McKesson’s number. He answered, yawning. I nodded to myself—an afternoon sleeper. Like me, he seemed to be on the go all night. I supposed that when you were dealing with aliens and rips in space, you had to expect to work nights.

“What do you want, Draith?” he answered.

I nodded to myself. He had my number traced and identified by now. So much for my precautions. I had to ditch this phone soon in case the rest of the police force was tracing calls every time I used it.

“I just paid Dr. Meng a visit,” I said.

“Really? In that case, I’m surprised you still know who I am.”

“So you do know what her power is. You could have warned me.”

“I warned you not to go there.”

I set my irritation aside. “In any case, you might want to send some emergency units down to the sanatorium,” I said.

“What did you do?”

“I shot her,” I said.

Jenna frowned at me. I waved for her to stay quiet.

McKesson didn’t say anything for a few seconds. I think he was in shock. “You sure know how to stir up shit, don’t you?” he asked finally.

“She tried to pull some mind-control trick on me. It was self-defense.”

“Self-defense?” McKesson laughed unpleasantly. “You think that will hold up in a court of law? Or with the rest of
the Community? They hate each other, you know, but they hate a killer rogue even more.”

“I’m not even sure she’s dead,” I said.

“You better hope she is. She’s got friends. But I’m not one of them. Let me bring you in, Quentin.”

“No.”

I heard sounds of rustling. I figured he was getting out of bed and pulling on clothes.

“Where do I find you?” he asked.

“I’m hoping you won’t. Listen, do you want to stop these murders? These attacks by the Gray Men and others?”

“Yeah,” he said warily, “but it depends on what you want to do.”

“Keep the cops off me for a few days. I’m going back to those cubes. I’m going to do some convincing of my own.”

“We’ve got a truce with them—”

“No we don’t,” I snapped. “You keep saying that, and I keep telling you we don’t have anything. You told me yourself they grow bolder every day. They’ve been using me to find others. Meng seemed to be in on that, maybe picking up an object now and then and keeping them busy killing rogues. But I’m stronger now. I’m strong enough to make my move.”

“You’re crazy, Draith. You’re just one rogue with a couple of tricks in his pocket.”

“Gilling has a new term for powerful rogues: technomancers.”

McKesson snorted at that. “Gilling belongs in one of Meng’s cells. You know you can’t possibly take out more than a few Gray Men alone. Not on their home turf.”

“Who said I was going alone?” I asked him.

After I hung up on McKesson, I asked Jenna to drive to Henderson. Even though I had a plan I was still feeling woozy and didn’t want to risk blacking out with my foot on the pedal. She agreed. I could tell something was on her mind, but I didn’t feel like prying it out of her. I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. When she was ready to talk, I would listen.

“Meng told me about Robert while you were blank,” she finally said in a small voice. “You sat there like a zombie. It was very strange.”

“You did the same thing while I talked to her.”

“Such an
evil
woman,” she said. “Seeing you like that—understanding her power over people’s lives—it made it much easier to shoot her. She was a monster. All those people…she locked them up and made them sit there for so long…”

“What did she do to your husband?”

“Apparently, he was a rogue, like you. He had the ring, a minor power. He went to see her, to try to sell her his services, I guess. She took his mind for her own instead. She told him to find others. She used him, just the way she used you.”

“I don’t see how that adds up with the rip appearing in your room and with his disappearance.”

“She said he knew about the cultists and Rostok too. I think Gilling opened that rip in our room. He went to the cultists and then vanished. Meng said she didn’t know where he went. But she could have been lying.”

“A distinct possibility,” I said. “But yeah, the cultists. Their involvement makes sense. They tried to enter that same room again later, while McKesson and I were there. Gilling summoned a rip into that room and then Robert stepped out. Maybe that’s how his shoe ended up in their cellar. Gilling indicated he knew who Robert was.”

We merged onto Interstate 515. It was rush hour and traffic was heavy.

“Did Meng say anything that explains the way Robert treated you? Why he might have run out on you?”

“Yes. She said she told him to leave me, because I would get in the way. She said something about difficult commands causing bizarre behavior. If she commanded a person to cut off their own toes, for example, they might laugh hysterically while they did it.”

“Nice lady,” I said.

“It wasn’t as hard to pull the trigger as I thought it would be.”

“Why would she provoke you when you had a gun on her?”

“I think she believed she had the upper hand. Do you remember biting my leg?”

I shook my head.

“Well, you did. When she blanked your mind, you fell to the ground. I had the talisman, which kept me safe, but it left your mind open to her. While I was talking to her, you grabbed me hard and bit my calf. I knew I was going to lose, so I shot her.”

“Sorry,” I said, remembering none of it.

“Don’t be. It gave me the strength to fire.”

I thought of the bite Jenna had given me. I rubbed a bloody spot in the meat of my palm. “That woman was a real live witch,” I said.

“Can she come after us?” Jenna asked. “If she’s still alive, that is?”

“I don’t think so. Her power is strong, but localized. She must stay in the sanatorium to use it.”

“I see. She’s a prisoner there just like her inmates. I wonder how many years she’s gone without leaving those walls.”

We’d probably never know the truth. My other thoughts were much more disturbing. I didn’t tell Jenna, but I was worried Meng would send assassins after us. She might not be able to leave the sanatorium safely, but she’d shown she could use people like me to do her work for her.

When we arrived in Henderson, we stopped at a gas station. I washed my hands in the public bathroom. The blood had finally stopped flowing from my gouged palm and wrists. Jenna really had done her worst. My face, reflected by the scratched mirrors, was drawn and pale. I thought to myself I was almost as gray as a Gray Man.

I had the feeling Meng was still alive. I wondered if I would come to regret not having finished the job when I had the chance. But I couldn’t have murdered a helpless woman while she bled on the floor, even after what she had
done to me. That kind of coldness wasn’t in me, and I hoped it never would be.

It was dark by the time we reached the abandoned mansion at the top of the hill. I smirked at the thought, knowing it was far from abandoned. The cultists had made it their gathering place. I wondered if they would return tonight.

Jenna pulled up at the curb and left the car’s engine idling. “What’s the plan?” she asked.

She’d asked that before, but I’d avoided the question. I’d done so partly because I didn’t have a clear plan, and partly because whatever I was about to do, she wasn’t going to be coming with me.

“I’ll check the place out and call you when I learn anything interesting,” I said.

Jenna narrowed her eyes at me. “You think you are going to get away with ditching me? Now?”

I took off her wedding ring—or rather Robert’s ring—and handed it to her. “You’ll need it if I don’t come back,” I said.

She shook her head and refused to take it. “No way,” she said.

“Really,” I said, trying to press the ring into her hand. “It’s yours.”

She pulled her hands back and placed them in her lap. “I don’t want it. My memories of Robert are all painful now. The last thing I want to do is wear his ring. Just let me come with you. We did well as a team at the sanatorium.”

“Sort of,” I said, putting the ring back onto my hand. “But if there had been only one of us, we couldn’t have been turned against one another.”

I felt her eyes on me. I took the time to reload my pistol and to dig out the extra magazines I’d bought for it. I dropped more bullets into my pockets when the magazines
were full. After all, there were a lot of Gray Men in those cubes.

Jenna blinked away tears. She leaned close and hugged me. It was an angry, dismissive hug.

“Just go then,” she said.

“I’ll call you. Find a safe place for us to hide when this is over. You can take the car, I won’t need it,” I said as I climbed out.

“Why would we need to hide if it’s over?”

“I guess I mean—if I fail.”

Jenna nodded and drove off. I stood there, watching her. When her brake lights flashed and she turned the corner, I remembered sending Holly away from this place. I hadn’t managed to keep her alive, but I tried not to think about that.

I walked onto the property, following the fence, and stayed behind overgrown brush. The grounds had really gone to hell. It must have been nearly a year since the land had been properly cared for. I’d seen this kind of neglect before in abandoned, repossessed properties. The bank would make sure the lawn was watered, but they never put any money into trimming anything. Plants of every variety grew in wild profusion. Wasps’ nests buzzed everywhere and broken pipes had formed muddy spots on the lawn.

Eventually, I reached the side door that led down into the cellar. I knew that route in, and hoped I would encounter less trouble that way. I quietly twisted the door handle. It was locked.

I slipped on my sunglasses, but then the door swung open silently. It hung there ajar, and I couldn’t see past it into the dark interior. I put away my sunglasses and pulled out my gun instead.

“Come in, Mr. Draith,” said a familiar voice. It was Gilling.

“You expected me?” I asked, still standing outside. I gripped my pistol in both hands.

“Not really, but we do have security cameras.”

I looked around and saw a few plastic bubbles. They didn’t look like much, but they were big enough to hide an infrared camera. I knew this could be a trap. The cultists could be in there, all waiting for me. I was armed, but they might be armed as well. Their little tricks wouldn’t work on me, but if there were enough of them, that wouldn’t matter. A significant part of me wanted to retreat, to jump the nearest fence and call the mission a failure.

“Come, come, Mr. Draith.” Gilling laughed. “Do you have so little faith? I will unilaterally declare a truce. Tell me why you’ve come to visit. Don’t be rude and leave me bursting with curiosity.”

Taking in a deep breath, I leaned forward and nudged the door open the rest of the way. So much for my plans to stealthily investigate the place.

I stepped inside and waited for my eyes to adjust to the deep gloom of the interior. Outside there were lights from neighboring houses, stars and streetlamps, but inside there was only a single candle in the middle of the room. Gilling stood near the candle, leaning against what appeared to be a bookshelf. I peered at the shadowy corners of the room, trying to see if any of his accomplices were about.

“Could you put that thing away?” Gilling asked. “You’re making me nervous.”

I flicked my eyes to him, then eyed the surroundings again. I didn’t see anything upsetting, so I slipped the gun into my coat pocket. My hand still held onto the grip, however.

“Slightly better,” Gilling said. “As you can see, I’m alone. The rest aren’t here yet.”

“So you knew I was coming?”

He shook his head. With a faint smile playing over his lips, he pushed open the door that led through into the wine cellar. There, I could see the shimmer of a rip he’d apparently created. Finally, I caught on.

“You saw me on the cameras and stepped over here to meet me?”

“Exactly. I was at my residence.”

“Which is—where?”

He made a dismissive gesture. “My home is at the other end of these security cameras.”

I knew the cameras fed into the web, and his home could be anywhere. I could see the advantage of his system. Using his power to create portals, he could watch places such as the mansion and arrive when he felt like it.

I stared at the shimmering, twisting region of space that hung there in the wine cellar. Such a power. It dwarfed anything I could do. What would it be like, I wondered, to be able to open a path to any other place one wished to go? What would I do if I had such an ability? Travel the world? Empty bank vaults? I wasn’t sure. Clearly, Gilling had bigger ideas. He was trying to use his power to gain even
more
power.

“I really did come to see you,” I said.

“Why?”

“To ask for your help.” I then briefly explained my encounter with Dr. Meng. I left out any mention of Jenna. Even though I needed them, I had little trust for Gilling and his bizarre crew. I didn’t want anyone to get funny ideas about using Jenna as a lever against me.

Gilling’s eyes lit up with excitement as I spoke. He picked up his burning candle and stepped closer to me as
I continued. His eyes reflected the tiny yellow flame, and I could see he was entranced with my story.