Technomancer (Unspeakable Things: Book One)

flash of memory then, something I knew was a snippet of my real past. I remembered buying her a drink in a bar. It had been a strange place full of strange people. I grabbed hold of the memory before it could fade away and tried to make the most of it that I could.
    “Of course not,” I said. “I remember buying you a drink once—not long ago.”
    Meng shook her head. “You’re wrong. That was a long time ago, in a distant place.”
    I didn’t argue, having no way to judge the honesty of her words. I did note that she seemed mollified, however. She didn’t know how severely my mind had been erased. That was just how I wanted things.
    She took something out of her pocket, a metal object. She placed it upon the desktop between us with a mysterious air. It was bronze in color and looked well aged. Staring at it, I realized it was a statuette of a woman with wings raised in midflight.
    Dr. Meng was studying me, watching my reaction closely. “What do you think of that, Quentin?” she asked, using my first name for the first time. “How does it make you feel?”
    I flicked my eyes up to meet hers, then looked at the statuette again. I shrugged, feeling nothing special. “I thought the Maltese Falcon was supposed to be black.”
    She glared at me and moved her hand toward the thing, as if to snatch it up again in a fury. I felt as if I’d insulted a religious icon of hers. Perhaps I had.
    “Fine,” she snapped. “Your resistance is high—but that’s not an excuse for rudeness.”
    “Um, why don’t you tell me what it is?”
    “It’s a hood ornament,” she said. “The rarest of them. Found right here, on this scrap of land where they built this sanatorium.”
    “Uh-huh,” I said, trying to sound impressed. It looked like a hunk of old bronze to me. It would serve fairly well as a paperweight, but appeared likely to fall over if bumped.
    “We think Harriet Frishmuth sculpted it around 1920. She did a lot of these, and due to the stamp, we know it was forged at the Gorham Foundry in Providence…”
    “Look,” I said, tapping my fingers on her desk, “I’m sure this antique is worth thousands, but I don’t see—”
    “Always you play the fool,” she snapped, cutting me off. She picked up the statuette and eyed it closely. “It’s worth millions, billions—perhaps more. It’s priceless, like all of its kind.”
    My eyebrows were riding high in disbelief. “Billions? For part of an old car?”
    “Not just any old car. It came from here, at this crux point. It was probably mounted on an automobile that moldered away in the barn of some desert rat before they developed the area. I’m not sure why it became a local nexus—but it did.”
    I let out a sigh of breath. She had used a long list of terms that meant nothing to me. I was having difficulty buying anything she was hinting at. “OK,” I said. “So what exactly does it do?”
    She released a puff of air, a tiny snort. “It rules this place. Or rather I do, as I’m attuned to it. Have you forgotten everything?”
    “Show me,” I said.
    Meng laughed. “A rare request indeed. Most people I meet in this office beg for mercy when I reveal the artifact—not a demonstration. But I’m going to take a chance on you, Draith. I’m going to assume you are who you appear to be, and not some copy from another place. I’m going to lie for you. I’m going to tell my associates you escaped.”
    “I did escape.”
    “No, not just from your room. In this fiction, you’ve escaped
me
. You’ve slipped from my grasp and vanished from my domain entirely.”
    Her domain?
I thought, but I didn’t ask more.
    “This is a daring step for a person in my position, Draith. I’m not like you. When I take silver for a job, I stick to it. I’m not a wandering rogue. I have a reputation and a home.”
    I had the vague feeling I was being insulted, but I shrugged and waited for her to continue.
    “First, you will need better clothing,” she said, pressing a button on her desk. I’d not noticed it before. It was recessed into the wood itself.
    I shifted in my chair, concerned. Had she activated a silent alarm, fitted in with all kinds of bullshit meant to put me off my guard? I wasn’t sure, but if it was, it was too late to do anything about it. I leaned back, letting my pistol rest on her desk, and tried to appear calm and in control.
    “I would be happy with whatever clothes I came in with,” I said.
    She shook her head. “I’m afraid