Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

toward a drooping, unkempt palm tree. I peered, and saw the outline of a thin woman under the low-hanging fronds. “Who is it?” I asked.
    “Her name is Abigail,” he said. “She is one of my best. She covers our tracks. She makes this place quiet, dark, and—uninteresting.”
    “Yes, I’ve met her before. She controls minds? Like Meng?”
    Gilling’s hand fluttered. “Not exactly. Abigail changes the air, I think. It becomes more dense and harder to see and hear through. Look up at the stars.”
    I did as he asked, and frowned. They were normally dim near the city due to light pollution, but the stars here were blurred almost to the point of invisibility.
    “That is very odd,” I said. “It reminds me of the way the other side of a rip looks. All smeared and wavering.”
    “Yes. I think it is a similar effect. She increases the density of the air, I believe. She makes it thicker.”
    “Why is she under that palm?”
    “To concentrate. She needs to focus to maintain the effect.”
    “Now,” I said, “tell me who is on my combat squad and why.”
    He pointed out each of my team members. There were six of them. They included Old Red with his new dolly that threw blasts of heat around and Rheinman with his hammer, who obviously still hated me. In addition were three men who carried hunting rifles and grim expressions. Gilling explained to me they possessed objects of minor power, but two had been in the military and one was an ex-cop.
    The last member of my team I knew at a glance. She was young and wild-looking. She had a knife in her hand that I’d been introduced to when I’d first met these cultists. She had slashed the back of my leg with it.
    “That’s Fiona,” he said. “Her object is the knife. She can slash with it at a distance of ten paces—more if she is angry.”
    “That’s how she got me the night I walked past her,” I said, nodding.
    Gilling disagreed. “I don’t think so. Her knife touched you without help. If you had not been protected, she would have cut your throat while sitting on the floor a good distance away.”
    I stared at the wild-eyed girl. She couldn’t be more than fourteen. Her hair floated around her head like a wispy cloud. Her arms were thin and pale, but I knew they were deadly. No wonder the cultists hadn’t cowered when I had waved my gun at them that night.
    “Once I set the fire, Abigail will be the first to step through,” Gilling told me. “She will thicken the air andmake us hard to sense. I will move in more support people, my entire team. Your combat team will come next.”
    “How far will we be from the cubes?” I asked.
    “A few miles.”
    I stared at him. “You plan to walk across the desert to the cubes? With fifteen people?”
    Gilling crossed his arms. “You have a better plan?”
    I didn’t like marching in the open for so long. I thought of several possible options. “Can’t you open the rip closer to our destination?”
    “Not when stepping out to another place. In our own existence, I can connect two points as I did when invading your hotel room from here. But to go to the lands of the Gray Men, I can only tear through the membrane between a spot here and a corresponding spot on the other side.”
    “Let’s pack up, then,” I said. “We can drive close to the enemy cubes and come out closer to our goal.”
    Gilling’s fingers ran over his face thoughtfully. “We operate from the mansion usually—we are familiar with it. I’m not sure where to go. It’s not like we have a map, you know.”
    “All right,” I said. “I’ll scout. Just Abigail for cover and maybe Fiona for backup.”
    “You make me curious. Out of all of them, why Fiona?”
    “Because she won’t hesitate to strike when things go wrong. And add Old Red to the group. I want to see if he can handle that heat-blast effectively.”
    In the end, he agreed to my plan for a scouting mission. Ten minutes after that, the three of us stepped through into the world of the Gray Men through a rip we’d opened for that purpose. This rip seemed higher and stronger than those I’d seen before. Perhaps it was the large amount of fuel Gilling had put down in the bed of the fountain. Itwas a bonfire in comparison to previous rips. I hoped that wouldn’t make us stand out more to the enemy.
    I felt the thrill that must run through every warrior when he first steps out of his village to raid his neighbor on the far side the forest. It was exhilarating and