Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

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 inthe 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