“Like this,” she said, and she smiled at me more broadly.
I eyed her teeth, and they grew in my sight until they were big and white like the infamous grin of the Cheshire Cat. At the same time, the rest of the room that surrounded us faded. For a split second, it was just me and that grin in our own private universe. The rest of reality was a gray-white nothing, like an old TV tuned to static air.
I tried to shout, but there was no sound. I felt my throat quiver, but that was all. The next sensation I had was that of falling briefly, followed by a hard landing on unforgiving, rippled concrete—a set of stairs that came up and hit me in the ass. I tumbled forward with a series of mild pain explosions. Fortunately, I only had about three of those hard steps to roll down. At the bottom, I picked myself up and felt for newly broken bones. There were only bruises.
I had fallen into an emergency stairwell. It was a big, echoing place, where everything was gray-painted steel tubing and stained cement. Above me a sole fluorescent tube in a wire cage illuminated the scene with harsh, blue-white light.
A single dark object sat upon the steps. It was the .32 automatic Dr. Meng had caused to vanish from my hand before she had made me vanish after it. I snatched it up and put it into my coat pocket.
I faced the emergency exit at the bottom of the stairs. Above me the stairs wound upward, switching back and forth into the distance. I reached out and pushed the panic bar on the emergency door and hobbled outside.
A whining alarm sounded. It wasn’t very loud, but it was irritating. I walked away, limping as I went, and pulled my overcoat around myself to cover the surgical greens I’d stolen. The gun weighed down the right pocket, causing it to bang into my thigh as I limped along.
I was on a sidewalk, stained and deserted. The sun had recently risen and the early morning light was diffused through clouds. I looked up and down the street, then behind me. The Sunset Sanatorium rose high, built entirely with ugly square blocks of concrete. It looked like a fortress, and the top of it was complete with a tall square tower. Free at last, I had no plans to return to this freaky place. I wanted to put some distance between me and Meng’s prison.
I limped down the street and took the first turn I could. I didn’t look back again.
One thing I remembered was the city. The streets of Las Vegas felt familiar; they felt like home. They called this place Sin City. Viewed from a distance in the dark, it was a glittering mass of lights that rose from the desert floor a hundred miles from everywhere. Once, it had been a lonely rest stop on highways between Los Angeles and the rest of the world, but it had grown and gathered its own followers. Most of these followers sought fame, fortune, and decadence. But my town was waning now, eclipsed by online gambling, online porn, and economic decay. It had taken a turn for the worse. For all of that, it was a unique city, and I felt at ease here.
After I’d turned a few random corners and avoided several sets of staring eyes, I paused, leaning against a chain-link fence surrounding a boarded-up gas station. The rusty links rattled and pushed back against me like bedsprings. I felt a little off balance. I wondered how many days it had been since I’d eaten solid food.
I took stock of things. As it stood, I was apparently destitute and not overly loved by those who knew me. I had no close relatives—no mom I could call and pester for a loan. I methodically searched the pockets of Tony’s coat. I found the pistol where I’d put it, in the right front pocket, but underneath that was a pair of sunglasses. I pulled them out and eyed them. They were black plastic and appeared to be of little value. I shoved the sunglasses away and forgot about them. I kept digging and found a set of keys next. These had far greater possibilities. I examined them closely to see what they might open. The keys had few distinguishing characteristics. There were several that could have been for any door in town, standard house keys. There was a large car key, however, and a keyless remote to go with it. I eyed the key in the dawn light until I made out a Cadillac emblem. Great, I thought. All I had to do now was roam the city parking lots, pressing the unlock button, until either a car beeped or the batteries in the remote ran out.