Technomancer (40 page)

Somehow, Gilling’s chant made the entire experience more otherworldly. I felt disconnected from my surroundings. Maybe it was the stark insanity of what I was about to attempt. We were going to assault unknown beings in their lair and try to damage equipment we’d never seen, but knew they must hold dear. My respect for these Gray Men increased as I embarked on the kind of mission they had performed against us many times. They had real courage to come to our existence and make daring strikes. But when I thought of Holly, Tony, and an unknown number of others, I hated them anyway.

When the rip opened enough to step out, we didn’t waste any time. I went first, and then McKesson came right behind me, lugging his RPG box. We left Gilling and Rheinman behind in the desert. Their job was to keep the rip burning until our return and to kill any Gray Men who tried to flank us by coming through to our side.

I could see a blur of walls around us. Where were we? My first thought was that we had made a mistake. Gilling had screwed up, reading the wrong poem, perhaps. With my luck, we’d find ourselves in the Lucky Seven again, or maybe in the middle of a shopping mall. That was going to require quite a bit of explaining.

I pressed ahead and stepped out of the active region of the rip. Reality shifted and rippled around me, but at last my senses operated properly and I saw where I was.

Walls.
Flat, square, and boring. They weren’t gray, but rather a dull golden color like that of molten tin. I twisted this way and that, looking for armed enemies. There weren’t any. The walls were featureless for the most part. The cubical nature of them was unmistakable.

“Bull’s-eye,” I whispered over my shoulder. “We’re inside the cubes!”

I glanced back, expecting to see McKesson standing there with his box. But he still stood in the rip. I could see his outline blurring and whipping about like a dark sheet in a stiff wind. When seen inside a rip, a man looked like a painting done by a half-blind impressionist.

I snorted. McKesson was waiting to see if I died on the spot. I waved both my arms, beckoning him forward. The room was essentially empty, about the size of a standard living room with a high ceiling, and there was only a single corridor against the far wall that led in and out. The corridor had nothing that could block it; there were no doors to close.

McKesson finally inched forward out of the rip.

“All clear?” he asked me quietly.

“Get out here and cover me.”

He did so, with many reluctant glances. I felt cautious too, but decided bold action was a better policy. For all I knew, alarms were sounding in other cubes, and armed Gray Men were racing to this spot. We had no idea if they had cameras on us or not.

“Every second we stand around we are losing our element of surprise,” I told him.

“Yeah, but the longer they don’t know we’re here, the longer we have to find this mystery machine of yours.”

“You can’t carry that box everywhere,” I said.

“I suppose you’re right. I thought we would have to blast down a wall. I can’t believe we’re already inside.”

I gestured for him to hurry. I watched as he snapped open the box and quickly assembled the RPG. He loaded the weapon and stood up.

“I’ll lead,” I said. “Don’t shoot me in the back.”

McKesson shouldered his RPG, which now looked like a large rifle with a pointed rocket on the nose. In his other hand, he carried another charge. We were down to two, and I hoped that would be enough.

We walked for what seemed like a long time, passing more cubical rooms. Each was identical to the one we’d first entered. We passed eight of them, most of which had a truck parked inside. I realized we were in a garage, of sorts. I didn’t see how the trucks were supposed to get out of these cubes, since the walls they faced were blank, flat sheets of metal. I didn’t see a door or a button to push to open one.

Feeling like a rat sniffing at a trap too complex to comprehend, I pressed ahead. The first cube hadn’t had a truck in it and I counted this as a further stroke of good luck. We’d appeared in a relatively quiet region of their garage at night, and that was much better than popping into their mess hall in the middle of dinner. It was almost as if we’d planned it.

A negative thought nagged at me, however.
Nine garages?
Having that many garages indicated they might have a lot of personnel who needed transporting. That news wasn’t so good.

We came to the end of the line of garages and the corridor turned to the right. I turned with it, leaning around a corner with my gun in my hand. There was no one there, but new sounds assaulted me. Loud sounds of heavy machinery.
A buzzing hum came through strongest of all, a sound that set my teeth on edge.

“What’s wrong?” McKesson hissed at my back.

“Something new up ahead,” I said.

I led the way, creeping ahead. I wanted to move faster, but it was nearly impossible. I expected one of those big bolts of energy to burn me down any second.

The next room was different. A dozen times the size of the garages, this region was a massive area filled with hot pipes that sweated thick liquids. I felt the heat on my face the moment I came through.

“What the hell?” asked McKesson.

I shared the thought but didn’t say anything. I walked along the empty, safer side. We were in the open now. Thinking about the building layout, I figured we must have seen the entire first floor by now. One side was a row of garages. Logically, these had to be located on the ground level so the trucks could drive out into the desert. Now we had entered the second half of the building, the one dominated by this strange machinery.

“Is this it?” asked McKesson. “This has to be it. Let’s blow it up and run.”

I shook my head. “For all we know, we’ll be destroying their sewage plant. I don’t see any projectors or computers. This looks more like a generator for power or hot water.”

“What the hell are we going to do, then?” McKesson demanded. “Keep prowling around until they find us?”

“Let’s see what’s at the far end.”

Grumbling behind me, McKesson followed. I picked up the pace to a trot. We were exposed, and the only thing I could think to do was move faster.

We found our first Gray Man then. He was wearing something like a wet suit. He had his back to us and was in
the midst of the pipes, checking them or repairing them. The machinery was making so much noise he didn’t even notice us pass by.

I felt even more nervous, but also exhilarated. The building wasn’t empty, but the Gray Men didn’t seem to know we were here. All that changed in the next few seconds.

I heard three sharp pops behind me. I stopped, frowning, and looked back. McKesson wasn’t there. I walked with my gun in sweating hands back the way I’d come. He soon reappeared. I knew in an instant what he’d done.

“What the hell?” I demanded.

“What? I eliminated a threat. Are you in love with these guys now too?”

“You didn’t have to shoot him!”

“Yeah, I did,” he said. “I’m not leaving one of them behind us. Any second he could have seen us in that long, straight hallway. We wouldn’t even know, and he’d sound the alarm. Don’t forget, Draith, you wanted to come here.”

Annoyed and uncertain whether he was right or wrong, I turned and pressed ahead. We finally reached the far end of the building. What we found was a corridor leading back to the other side of the building. Ahead I saw the back of one of their trucks. I understood the building layout now. This ramp led down to the garages again on the other side. We’d taken the long way around the entire bottom floor of the building.

“Something’s wrong,” McKesson said. “Look at the lighting.”

I did, and I saw what he meant. It was bluish now and pulsating slightly. There was no change to the deafening sounds of the place, but the lighting had indeed shifted. I wondered if the Gray Men really were deaf and they used subtle lighting variations to communicate.

“I bet that’s a Gray Man alarm signal,” McKesson said.

“Yeah, because you executed one of them.”

“We’ve got to take our shot and leave.”

I breathed hard, trying to think. We were amateurs, all right. McKesson wasn’t even willing to follow my leadership. Now that he’d blown our cover, we didn’t have much time.

“Wait here for a second,” I said. “I’ll check down this corridor.”

“That goes back to the garages, back to where we came in.”

“Probably, but I’m going to check. If there’s no better target, we’ll blow up this system. Even if it’s full of sewage.”

“Hurry,” he said.

I ran down the corridor and found a T intersection. A ramp led upward to my right. I had expected stairs or an elevator, but apparently stairs weren’t in style for Gray Men. They connected levels with ramps.

That moment of staring and thinking almost cost me my life. A jolt of freezing plasma flashed down from the ramp. I think I survived only because they’d tried for a head shot. Fortunately, they missed. My hair was frosted white, however, and a searing pain lanced the back of my skull. I lurched forward past the intersection with the ramp. Without looking, I pointed my gun up the ramp toward them. Only my gun and my hand were exposed. I fired again and again, blindly. My first empty magazine clattered on the ramp at my feet. I reloaded the gun with a fresh magazine.

Two more beams lanced down at me. They iced over a spot on the floor. The metal crackled and smoked. I fired three return shots, still without looking. I realized there was no way I was going to win this fight. There were several of them, and they were probably already moving to flank me.

I heard more sounds then. Distant booms. I had no idea what they might mean. Almost immediately after these
sounds, the lighting shifted again from blue to a subtle lavender. Another, deeper level of alert? What were those booms? The urge to run became overwhelming. This mission was over.

Behind me was the corridor leading to the garages. Ahead, across a deadly kill zone, was the path that led back to where I’d left McKesson. I couldn’t see him now. I realized my best move would be to run to the vortex we’d used to come here and step out. I could go home to my own peaceful desert in less than one minute.

But I hesitated. Another snap and boom sounded. More bolts of cold came down the ramp. They weren’t advancing, I could tell. They were pinning me down here and probably sending more troops around to get me from behind. Once they had me in a crossfire, I had no hope of survival. But I didn’t want to run and leave McKesson behind.

Cursing the day I’d met the man, I fired a last spray of bullets around the corner and up the ramp to make them duck, then I jumped across the open passage. I barely made it. The sole of my right shoe was frozen into a lumpy, misshapen mass. I was never sure afterward if I’d stepped in one of those cold spots or if one of the bolts had clipped my foot. In any case, I was running slightly off balance as I reached end of the corridor.

When I got there, I stared in disbelief. I instantly understood what I had been hearing. McKesson had fired his weapon and run. Hot, goopy fluid like oily blood gushed over the floor. McKesson himself was nowhere to be seen. His RPG, minus the charges, lay on the floor. Immediately next to that was a rip in space.

The rip was a small one, and it was guttering already. It would soon go out and vanish.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the object McKesson had so thoughtfully wrapped in aluminum foil. I ripped off the foil. If I’d ever needed some firepower, this was the moment.

The object was…an alarm clock. It was small and old-fashioned. Painted a bright yellow, it had two bells on top for ears and a smiling face with closed eyes on the dial. I squinted at the antique child’s clock. What was I supposed to do with this? I tried twisting the knobs in back, and the hands spun and the bells on top dinged once. I winced, but there was no reverberating boom. Did one simply set it down and let it go off like a bomb? I wasn’t sure. I felt a tickle of sweat.

Rostok had set me up, I thought. He’d given me something that would kill me and the Gray Men together, planning to take great pleasure in the reports afterward. Maybe McKesson was in on it, and that was why he’d fled. Together,
the two of them would sip fine booze in the dark tonight, having a laugh at my expense. Perhaps I’d warrant a toast for a job well done.

Running feet. I heard no shouting, but the Gray Men never shouted. They were charging down the corridors after me. In moments, they would come into the area where I was standing and freeze me into a block of ice. When I hit the floor, I would shatter into a dozen shards of icy meat. I could see Old Red’s split-open body in my mind.

I almost put the clock down and left, but I couldn’t quite do it. The thought that gave me courage was the knowledge that Rostok didn’t like losing objects. No one did. That lowered the odds he’d sent me here on a suicide mission.

I decided to give the clock one more try the moment the Gray Men arrived. Maybe it needed a specific target to operate. I didn’t have to wait long. Gray Men came jogging into sight.

I held the clock out in front of me and willed it to operate, to fire, to
destroy
. For a fraction of a second, nothing happened. Then the twin, yellow-painted bells on the top of the clock began to rattle. The rattle quickly turned into a high-pitched, irritating ring.