Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

held the cell phone up, but it went into sleep mode. I fumbled with it, and when it lit up again, I saw her.
    Holly was sitting on the floor. She was shackled to a structure of some kind. I took two steps more toward her, and she squirmed in fear.
    “It’s me, Holly,” I whispered. “Quentin Draith.”
    “Get me out of here before they come back,” she hissed at me.
    “Who are they? The Gray Men?”
    “I don’t think so. They’re some kind of freaks. They like to cut up meat. I think they’ll cut us up too, if we stay here.”
    The cultists
, I thought to myself. I used the sunglasses to remove her bonds and helped her to her feet. I saw the place where she had been sitting. There was a row of shackles there, indicating the spot had been used to chain people up before this. I saw one other object, and squatted down to pick it up. It was a shoe. A black, brightly polished shoe. I looked it over carefully.
    “What the hell are you doing?” Holly demanded.
    “I think I know who this belongs to,” I said, holding up the shoe. “Robert Townsend.”
    “Who the hell cares about a shoe?”
    “Just carry it for me, OK?”
    Holly did it, but she clearly thought I was crazy. I didn’t care. If that shoe matched the one Jenna had packed up, it was worth carrying out of this hole.
    I led her back toward the spot where I’d come into this place. I took a moment to look around. Clearly, we were underground. There were drains in the concrete floor, and they looked as though they’d drained away years’ worth of blood.
    I soon found the spot where I’d stepped into this place. The body of the man I’d seen come into the hotel room amoment ago was there, cooling on the floor. But I didn’t see the vortex.
    “How do we get out of here?” Holly asked.
    “It was right here,” I said, feeling around in front of me like a blind man. The cell phone kept going to sleep every few seconds, casting us into total darkness. I shook and cursed it every time.
    “What was here?”
    “Do you know this guy?” I asked.
    “What?”
    I toed the body at our feet and aimed the light down toward it. Holly gave a little whoop of fear.
    “He might be one of the guys who grabbed me out of my apartment,” she said. “Did you kill him?”
    “No, he killed himself. But when you saw him a minute ago, didn’t he step into a smoky region? An area that looked like a heat shimmer?”
    I brought the cell light to her face. She looked terrified and baffled at the same time. “I haven’t seen him since I was dragged here,” she said.
    Then I finally got it. Hadn’t McKesson said they’d “missed”? Well, maybe they’d screwed up in more ways than one. There was no rip down here for me to find. This spot was a one-way chute from the hotel room to this dungeon. I had stepped through, and McKesson had tossed the body through after me, but there was no way back. The pathway the cultist had used to enter the hotel room started someplace else.
    “What’s wrong?” whispered Holly.
    “The anomaly opened in two different spots. Each of the doorways was effectively one-way. That’s probably why when I looked through, I couldn’t see the other side.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?”
    “I was in a hotel room. The hotel room can send things through to us here, but the starting point where the cultists are coming from is in some third location.”
    Holly stared at me with big, scared eyes. “Just get me out of here,” she said.
    I imagined McKesson at the far end, keeping his gun trained on the spot where I’d vanished. I wondered how long he would wait for me or something else to come through. I doubted he’d step out to look for me. That wasn’t his style. He’d watch the shimmer until it vanished, then shrug and go have a drink. I doubted he would even tell anyone how I’d disappeared.
    “You came to find me, didn’t you?” Holly asked.
    I nodded and put my arm around her. She hugged me in return. We were in an unknown dungeon—possibly in another version of our universe. A dead man lay at my feet, and he doubtlessly had friends somewhere nearby. We were in their stronghold, with no clear path of escape.
    In short, we were screwed.

We searched the dungeon and eventually found two exits. One was a normal door, but the second was hidden and looked like part of the wall. I listened carefully at the normal door. I heard nothing on the far side other than the sighing of wind and possibly street sounds. The