Technomancer Read Online Free PDF Page B

secrets—but no one had bothered to tell me anything.
    “The sunglasses,” she said, still holding out her hand.
    I stared at her, then at the safe. I knelt beside the safe, and she knelt beside me. I reached down and gave the handle a twist. It didn’t budge. I let my hand fall away. I took the sunglasses out of my pocket, but I didn’t put them on.
    “Are you telling me that if I put these things on, I’ll know the combination?” I asked.
    Holly shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know. All I know is—it will open.”
    I rubbed my chin for a moment. I took out the sunglasses and eyed them with alarm. What was I playing with? Could these plastic shades do something…strange? I recalled the way Meng’s hood ornament had tossed me out the back door of her sanatorium.
    For a moment, as I stared at them, I found the sunglasses threatening. A cold ripple ran through my nervous system. I knew it was silly. The lock on the office door had been a fluke. This woman was as crazy as the rest of them. But back at the sanatorium that pistol had vanished from my hand—and I had been transported and dropped onto a set of cement stairs.
    Sometimes, when a man’s world shifts under his feet, it causes paranoia. I had experienced these odd events stoically, if suspiciously. I’d played along up until now, assuming some logical explanation would eventually present itself. Perhaps I’d been experiencing side effects from days on heavy drugs. But now it was different, because I was being asked to actively participate in this particular impossibility.
    “This can’t be real,” I said.
    “You know it is.”
    I looked at her. “How do you know me?”
    Holly appeared incredulous. “Your picture is on your blog,” she said.
    “Blog?”
    “Draith’s Weird Stuff,” she said. “You post photos of creepy things every week. You’re an underground hit, you must know that.”
    I smiled weakly. “I didn’t realize.”
    “You should be the one explaining this crazy crap to me. I never believed in any of it until I began seeing it with my own eyes. I thought you must be trying to sell health supplements and dating sites on your blog, so you made it all up. Now, I know you were telling the truth. Don’t you believe your own stories?”
    “Um,” I said, having no recollection of having written articles about the supernatural. “I suppose it’s different when you are staring them in the face.”
    Holly nodded. “OK. I guess I can understand that. But you should at least try, don’t you think?”
    I nodded, then lifted the sunglasses to my face. I paused.
    “Open it!” she urged.
    I stared at her. “No,” I said.
    “What?”
    “You want this safe open more than I do. But I’m not going to do it. Not until you tell me your story.”
    Holly made a sound as if she were strangling. “What can I tell you that you don’t already know?”
    “Start with how you know me. Besides reading about me online.”
    “That night,” she said, looking down at her hands. “The night Tony died. You were in the accident.”
    “You remember any details?”
    “He almost ran me over with his Cadillac.”
    I took out Tony’s wallet and eyed the photograph on the driver’s license. I’d never taken the time to look at it before. Light brown hair, swept to the side. A single earringgleamed beside a crooked smile. So that was Tony. There was some familiarity to the tiny square headshot. I recalled liking him.
    “I don’t remember the accident,” I said. “There were head injuries.”
    “I’m not surprised about that,” she said. “I’m surprised you made it at all. I can hardly believe you are walking and talking. When I first saw you, you scared me. You were really messed up after the wreck. You were ejected and broken up. That was less than two weeks ago.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    “Look,” she said. “I’ll tell you all about it. I swear. But you have to open this frigging safe before we get caught in here.”
    I