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 they were cut away and destroyed. We kept some of Tony’s things, however. They were in better shape and there was one item we were looking for.”
We? I thought. Yet another reference to an out-of-sight cabal of allies. I was determined to remember that we and find out who they were. I wondered about this person she called Tony. The way she mentioned him, it seemed she assumed I knew who she was talking about.
“What happened to Tony?” I asked.
“Killed,” Meng said without a hint of concern. “In the same accident that brought you to us.”
“Did you know him?”
“Of course I did. Everyone knew Tony. You were his friend, Draith. Pull it together, man. You must remember something.”
I narrowed my eyes toward her. She didn’t have much of a bedside manner. She was telling me my friend was dead, but without a note of compassion. If I could have remembered the man, I was sure I’d have been upset.
Miranda showed up, apparently having been summoned by the button in Dr. Meng’s desk. The good doctor ordered her to get Tony’s things. Miranda quickly returned with a plastic bag. There wasn’t much inside. Mostly, it consisted of a black overcoat with a few lumps in the pockets. I shrugged it on.
“That’s all?” Dr. Meng asked the nurse. “Disappointing.”
“He wasn’t wearing this at the time of the event, milady,” Miranda said. “The coat was in the backseat. Everything he had on at the moment of death has been…lost.”
Milady? I couldn’t hide my wide eyes when I heard that. It sounded to me like their relationship went deeper than the professional norm.
I cleared my throat. “It will cover these green scrubs, at least,” I said. I took this opportunity to slip the photograph I’d found under my pillow out of my scrubs and into a pocket.
I decided I would play along with these two. I wanted a clean break from this place. If I could get out of here without further weirdness, I’d be happy.
“What do you want me to do, exactly?” I asked.
“I want you to go out there and do what you do best. I know there are strange things happening in the Community, and I know you’ve been trying to investigate them. Keep doing it. Keep pestering and sniffing about like a stray dog at a butcher’s shop. If you find anything interesting, come tell me about it. Find out what happened to Tony. I liked him—even if he was a petty thief.”
All this talk of my being a mongrel and a loser who consorted with more of the same finally annoyed me. I waved the pistol around. “I don’t understand your attitude. I’ve got the gun.”
“You do?” she asked.
I felt a tingling in my hand. My eyes snapped to my fingers, which were still curled around a ghostly trigger. There was no pistol visible in my hand, however. There was nothing there at all. The freaky thing was I still felt the weight of it, for a fraction of a second. But then that was gone too, and I was left clutching air. The gun had vanished.
“How did you do that?” I asked, feeling my first real thread of fear. Up until that moment, I’d taken all her hints as a big mind game, perhaps meant to talk me into giving myself up. She was, after all, a brain doctor.