by B. V. Larson
“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 tha
t 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.
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.
“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.
