Technomancer (31 page)

I struggled to continue my story in an even tone of voice. While I did so, I reached up and ripped loose my talisman. The strap didn’t break, but the weak metal clasp we’d attached to the bottle did. I slipped the thing down into my lap and held it there in my fist.

Next, I quietly popped the magazine out of my .32 automatic, letting it clatter onto the floor. Before she could turn around, I quickly took the photo of my supposed family and threw it on the desk between us. When she turned back, she noticed it. Her eyes slid up to me, and once again she was frowning.

“Where did this come from?” she asked.

“From my pocket,” I said.

Dr. Meng stared. “I didn’t tell you to put it here. Is it part of your report?”

Finally, at long last, I allowed myself to smile. In fact, I grinned broadly. The grin turned into something feral, the kind of grin the wolf must have had when it ate good old Granny.

“No, it’s not,” I said. I slowly lifted my gun and aimed it right at her. The look on her face was worth a year’s pay to me. “I’m sorry, but I have a confession to make. I’m not in your power. I haven’t been since I walked in.”

She stared at the gun in absolute horror. That single expression made my day. I could aim the gun at her now because it was unloaded—but she didn’t know that.

“But how?” she said.

I shrugged. “New objects,” I explained.

“Why would you pretend?”

“To see what you asked about. How much you knew.”

“So, your stories were real?”

“With a few omissions, yes. Now I want to know some things. Let’s call it
your
report.”

“I’ll grant you one question for initiative,” she said.

I eyed her. She still sounded self-confident, but that could have been an act. I decided to ask my question regardless. “Why did you send me out there to wander around?”

“I thought that was obvious. To locate rogues with objects and mark them for death.”

“Death,” I said, somehow surprised to hear her admit that was the mission. I felt hot and mildly sick. I really had been an assassin of sorts. The hound leading the hunters. “So you fed this information to the Gray Men? They weren’t trying to kill me all this time, they were trying to kill the people I located?”

Meng shrugged. She eased herself into her chair across from me. I let her do it. I reached out to her desk and tapped the picture.

“Is this my family?” I asked her.

“I honestly don’t know. You had it with you when we picked you up. It was your sole object, your qualification as a rogue.”

“What does the photograph do?” I asked.

She smirked at me. “Haven’t figured that out yet?” she asked. She reached toward it, slowly stretching her arm across the table. As if by chance, she brushed against her bronze statuette. My empty gun tracked her movements. I realized she was about to give mind control another try. I didn’t blame her.

“Go ahead and make your move,” I said confidently. “If it will help you accept this reversal, I’ll allow it. Try to give me another command.”

Meng grabbed the statuette with desperate fingers. This time I was sure I saw a tiny white flash. But I didn’t feel any effects.

“Jenna, kill him,” Meng said, her voice low like cat’s growl.

I realized, in shock, that she’d never intended to influence my mind again. She had failed with me, but Jenna was still in her power. I felt small hands reaching for me. I pushed Jenna away, but she kept coming, so I shoved her down. She bounced back up, making strange sounds deep in her throat. Her face was—insane.

I turned back toward Meng and realized she was in the act of leaving. She had opened a door I hadn’t realized was there. I wouldn’t call it a secret door, but it was covered by a bulletin board and the door handle was unusually low. It swung open to reveal a dark space beyond.

“Don’t make me kill you,” I said to Meng.

Meng froze in the doorway, and looked back in real fear now. I had my hand out, pushing against Jenna’s chest
to keep her off me. Fortunately, Jenna wasn’t very large or strong. She tore at my wrists with her broken nails, and we were both bleeding. Soon, she was going to get the idea to bite me, and I didn’t want that.

“Release Jenna, or I’ll put a round into your legs right now,” I said. I lowered my aim and paused.

“Jenna,” Meng said, “be yourself.”

Jenna stumbled and grabbed on to me for support. She looked down at her hands and my palm against her chest. There was blood on both of us.

“What did you do?” Jenna asked me breathlessly.

“She did it,” I said, gesturing toward Meng. “She blanked your mind then ordered you to attack me.”

Jenna stared, disbelieving and upset. She looked down at the finger that rolled around in the bottle in my hand. I was pressing it against her, so she could hardly miss it.

“Meng, step over here,” I said. “Come back to the desk. We’ll try to talk civilly again.”

Slowly, the doctor complied. She didn’t look happy about it.

“The talisman worked?” Jenna asked me.

“What talisman?” Meng asked, but we ignored her.

“That’s what you did to Robert, isn’t it?” Jenna asked her suddenly. She held out her hand in my direction. “Give it to me, Quentin.”

“Hold on, Jenna,” I told her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about—” Meng began.

I felt a stabbing pain in my hand as Jenna suddenly bit me, blood welling up. I roared in pain and surprise, dropping the talisman. Jenna caught it. She had that wild look in her eyes again.

I realized Meng was using her powers again—and then I knew no more.

When I woke up, I was lying on the floor of Meng’s office. The first thing I noticed was the noise. The entire sanatorium had come alive at last. It was filled with wild sounds: banging, screeches, and warbling noises like the cries of the distant birds. The inmates had awakened.

Jenna stood over me, aiming my pistol over toward Meng’s chair and dry-clicking it. She was breathing hard. Her eyes were wide and her lips were curled back. Her hair hung over her face unheeded, exaggerating her wild expression. I knew then what she had done. I struggled to my feet, feeling dizzy. I looked over the desk—there was Meng, sprawled on the floor. There was blood on Meng’s chair, on the floor, and a growing circle of it stained her white lab coat. It looked like wine spilled upon a tablecloth.

“You shot her,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said in a hollow voice. “We have to get out of here.”

I picked up the .32 auto’s magazine from the floor, staring at it. “There must have been a round in the chamber.”

The bizarre sounds coming from the hallway behind me increased in volume. As my mind grew clearer, I realized Jenna had released everyone in this place who was under Meng’s control. The doctor had a bullet in her chest, and as a result, we were all off the leash. Jenna had cut the strings of every puppet at once.

I took the gun from Jenna’s rubbery fingers. I reloaded the weapon and pulled back the slider to chamber another round. We went to the office door, and after a momentary hesitation, I threw open the door and leaned out into the hallway.

In the hallway, the noise was a hundred times worse. People howled, cackled, and sang at the tops of their lungs. I had no doubt some of them had been brought here for good reasons originally, their mental health far from stable, but none of that could explain the madness I heard roaring from dozens of combined throats.

I was at a loss to understand it, but I imagined they’d been imprisoned here, silent and motionless in their cells for years. Countless quiet hours had been imposed upon unbalanced minds. Now that they’d finally been released, they had gone completely mad.

Doors shook with powerful blows. Wired windows cracked, spitting flecks of glass. Door handles rattled under furious hands. From somewhere, wisps of smoke had crept into the hallway. I wondered if one of the upper floors was ablaze.

A pair of people rounded the corner at the nurse’s station, heading our way. Nurse Miranda was in the lead and right behind her was the orderly I’d beaten down to escape this hellhole a week ago.

“You!” Miranda screamed.

There was a light in her eyes I didn’t like. I was glad I had her pistol, because right then I was sure she would have emptied the gun in our direction. I lifted the gun and found that I either had no compulsion against harming her, or Dr. Meng’s state had freed me. The two slowed as they saw the gun in my steady hand.

“Put it down, Draith,” Miranda said.

“No,” I said. “I’m free. Just like the rest of them.”

They both advanced, their hands up with open palms. They wore expressions akin to people approaching a strange growling dog in their living room.
There’s a good doggie.

I took a step back, but my gun didn’t waver. Miranda turned toward the orderly, her eyes were wide. “He must have killed her,” she said.

“No, I did it,” Jenna said. “She told me what she did to my Robert, so I shot her.”

I glanced at Jenna, recalling the fierce, determined rage I’d seen in her the night I’d met her in the casino. I reminded myself never to get onto this woman’s bad side. She looked cute and sounded innocent, but she was a killer.

“You don’t understand what you’ve done,” Miranda said. She walked closer, peering into the office. “Where is the doctor?”

“On the floor behind her desk,” I said.

“Will you allow me to help her?” she asked.

I nodded and backed up two more steps.

“Go get the emergency cart,” the nurse told the orderly.

He hastened to obey, disappearing for a moment. He came back at a run, wheeling a white-clothed cart full of medical supplies. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. If they succeeded in reviving the good doctor, would that mean she
would again hold sway over me and all the others in this building?

The howling had subsided. We could still hear the noise coming from the upper floors, but the nearest inmates were watching us. In a dozen dimly lit little windows, faces and staring eyes were pressed hard, straining to see. They fogged the windows with their panting breaths and their cheeks left residues of sweat and blood. Why were they quiet now? What were they thinking, this audience of crazies? I had no idea, but their scrutiny was unnerving.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jenna whispered to me, tugging on my arm. “This is her place. If she awakens, she might be able to turn us against each other.”

I thought about her words, and I also thought of giving her the gun to shoot Dr. Meng again—just to make sure. If I left now and the doctor recovered, would I regret it?

In the end, it was the crazies who decided matters for us. They’d been waiting for something and we learned what it was very suddenly. An alarm went off, a keening sound. It was a smoke alarm. I knew that annoying, piercing blast well.

Then I heard another sound—a much more frightening one. The doors all clicked open. When the fire alarm went off, the doors were built to automatically unlock themselves to allow the inmates to escape.

A dozen doors opened; many were thrown wide with a bang. From each dim room came a shambling person with slack lips and haunted eyes. Old women, teenage boys, balding men in glasses. There were fat ones, but most I would describe as thin, even gaunt. They all came out of their rooms, where they’d been held for so long.

I aimed my gun at them, but they took no notice. They didn’t even look at me or my weapon. Ignoring us, they
surged forward and caught the orderly. They knew him well, it seemed, and they clearly did not have a favorable opinion of him. He managed to stay on his feet at first, shoving them back, shouting and threatening. But more came. He bashed two to the floor, where they bled and crawled. He broke free and reached the door of Meng’s office. Inside, nurse Miranda worked to save Meng’s life.

Somehow, the door had swung closed and locked. This lock, among all of them, seemed immune to the fire system. Perhaps Meng had had the wisdom and foresight to disable the unlocking mechanism on her own office door. Whatever the case, Miranda had locked the orderly out.

The inmates rushed close. He used his stun gun liberally. It crackled and flashed while the reaching inmates shrieked. But in the end, they took the man down. I backed away from them down the hallway with Jenna doing her best to drag me. I was left with a choice: I could shoot the enraged inmates, or I could run.

I decided to run. What right did I have to kill these people? Who was I to say his life was more valuable than theirs? He had most assuredly abused them. He was part of this place—part of an institution meant to help people, but which had gone bad and stolen what little they had left of their own minds.

We reached the emergency exit at the far end of the building. I recognized it once I was inside the concrete stairway. A few people wandered the steps above us, lost. I hit the panic bar on the outside door and threw it open.

Fresh, cool air washed over me. Holding Jenna’s hand, I led her outside into the streets. I had escaped the sanatorium again. Part of me wondered just how many times I’d done so before. Would this be the last time? I hoped so.

We hustled to the car, trying to cover our faces from security cameras. We were two fugitives on the run now, it seemed. If Meng lived, she’d probably send the police after us. If she didn’t, the Community might send their minions. I didn’t like my odds in either case. I probably didn’t have much freedom left.