She raised her head and looked at him with big, amazed eyes. “They went right past us, but they didn’t even see us.”
“No,” he said. “They didn’t.”
He had to move quickly. The clock was ticking. He had maybe fifteen minutes at most to get back to the rendezvous point and turn Mary Beth over to the team. At least they now had the sled. With the illusion trap triggered, it was safe to go through the doorway to get it.
“It was like we were invisible,” Mary Beth whispered, watching him kick the three unconscious men off the sled.
“Yeah.” He checked the slab’s amber-rez locator. It was functioning. “Like we were invisible.”
He made the rendezvous point. The last thing he remembered was the face of the hunter who took the girl out of his arms. Then the cold chills swept over him, and everything faded to black.
FIVE DAYS LATER HE AWOKE TO DISCOVER THAT HE was trapped in a living hell named the Glenfield Institute, dimly aware of what was going on around him but utterly unable to communicate. He could smell the coffee the doctors drank and hear their grim diagnosis.
“Psi coma. He may never come out of it. Even if he does surface, he’s going to be a total burnout case. He’ll spend the rest of his life in a parapsych ward.”
Chapter 19
TITUS KENNINGTON LOOKED AROUND BENSON LANDRY’S office with amused disdain. Talk about clinging to the past, he thought. Unlike the Cadence Guild headquarters, which under Mercer Wyatt’s command had been moved into a gleaming downtown office tower, the Frequency Guild was still located in its original compound in the Old Quarter of the city.
The decision to move the Cadence Guild headquarters downtown had been a public relations bid designed to make the organization appear more mainstream. Here in Frequency, however, the local authorities were apparently not overconcerned with public opinion. The very fact that a man like Benson Landry had risen to such a prominent position in the Guild was proof that the local organization was not all that determined to modernize.
Landry was unstable and very dangerous. The dark energy emanating from him was similar to other para-sociopaths Titus had encountered in the course of his professional career. In addition, the man was obviously clinging to sanity by his fingertips. When this was over, he would have to be dealt with. But right now he was the only tool available for the job at hand.
Landry’s office had been built in the period following the Era of Discord when the status and power of the Guilds had been at their height. The room was paneled in spectrum wood and elaborately inlaid with yellow amber. A variety of alien antiquities, including an array of unusual-looking green quartz vases, were arranged around the room. The top of Landry’s desk was a smooth slab of quartz. The walls of the Dead City rose right outside the window. At night the office would be suffused with a radiant green light.
Power resonated throughout the room, not just the symbolic power associated with status and authority that one expected to encounter in the domain of a Guild Council member, but the very real paranormal power that emanated from the catacombs below.
Landry looked at him. “I brought Miss Stowe because I thought she would find this interesting.”
“Yes, of course.” Titus gave the blonde his soothing, Trust me, I’m a doctor smile. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Stowe.”
She smiled back, looking baffled but not frightened. She was clearly making an effort to show polite interest, a professional call girl who was accustomed to satisfying the whims of her clients.
“Benson tells me that you want to demonstrate an alien artifact to him,” she said.
“That’s right.” Titus looked at Landry. “Any chance we can do this down in the catacombs? There’s a fair amount of ambient psi in here, but the more the better for our purposes.”
Landry shrugged. He crossed the room and rezzed a hidden lock. A section of the wall opened up, revealing a flight of steep stone steps that led down into darkness.
Invisible waves of energy flowed up the steps into the room. They were, Titus knew, a sure sign that somewhere down below there was an opening into the catacombs.
“This way,” Landry said, picking up a flashlight. “Watch your head.”
He rezzed the flashlight and led the way down the steps. The blonde went next. Titus followed.
The staircase ended in a dank, heavily timbered basement that dated from the Colonial era. Landry played the beam of the flashlight on one wall, revealing a modern, mag-steel door secured with a sturdy lock.
Titus watched him rez the lock, wondering how many bodies had disappeared through the door and into the maze of catacombs over the years. There had always been rumors about that sort of thing, especially in the old days. Titus did not doubt the stories and legends associated with them. He was certain that at various times, all of the Guilds had found the endless, largely uncharted alien tunnels convenient dumping grounds. Once a body disappeared into an unexplored section of the ancient underground maze, it was unlikely ever to be found.
The heavy door swung open on near-silent hinges, revealing a scene illuminated in the acid-green glow of alien energy. Titus found himself looking through a jagged opening in a green quartz wall. Beyond was another staircase. The steps, like the endless maze of tunnels and chambers beyond, were constructed of green quartz. They had been designed for feet that were not quite human.
The green quartz that the aliens had used to build everything from urns and vases to the most ethereal aboveground spires and towers was virtually indestructible. Certainly no tool yet fashioned by humans was able to make a dent in the stuff.
The experts did not know what forces had been powerful enough to create the rips and tears in the tunnel walls, but there was no shortage of them beneath all of the Dead City ruins. Some researchers speculated that great earthquakes had, over the years, created the openings. Others suspected that the holes in the walls had been fashioned by the aliens themselves—possibly criminals, rebels, or others who had found the openings useful and who’d had access to the powerful tools that had been used to construct the catacombs.
Over the years the main entrances to the vast underground realm had been excavated by licensed, authorized explorers and researchers. The Guilds controlled access, because they were the only ones who could provide protection from the energy ghosts that drifted at random through the tunnels.
But ever since the arrival of the human colonists, uncharted holes in the walls had been exploited by a wide assortment of people who, for one reason or another, had a reason to go underground without professional protection. Licensed and unlicensed small-time antiquities collectors, entrepreneurs engaged in the manufacture and distribution of illegal substances, criminals fleeing the law, and risk-takers attracted to the adventure of unauthorized exploration all made use of the openings.
A short distance into the glowing green tunnel, Landry came to a halt and looked back at Titus.
“Will this do?” he asked.
“Yes,” Titus said. “This will do nicely.” He withdrew the ruby amber artifact from his pocket and smiled at Miss Stowe. “This is what I intend to demonstrate.”
She glanced at it without much interest. “It’s not made out of green quartz. It looks like red plastic.”
“Believe me when I tell you that this is no human-made plastic.”
He focused on her psi patterns, rezzing energy through the ruby amber. He possessed a great deal of natural talent, enough to read her psi waves and even exert a limited and very temporary influence over them. With the aid of the ruby amber, however, his own power was enhanced to an astonishing degree.
Working swiftly, he pulsed psi through the device, dampening and neutralizing the woman’s own paranormal wave pattern. Her eyes widened slightly in shock. She shook her head once and started to step back, as though to flee.