Null Set

by S. L. Huang

  Pithica had originally been a government project, or at least linked to a project code name. We knew that much.

  Halberd and Pithica, something echoed and chanted in my head. Halberd and Pithica …

  Halberd was—what? Another project? A missing piece of my life? I opened my mouth to ask, but the question strangled me. Dawna’s prohibition against learning more about Pithica meant no matter what guesses I had, I wouldn’t get any of them confirmed. “Goddammit!”

  “Cas?” Checker said, his voice shot through with worry.

  “I think Pilar’s right,” I said. “I think I was … associated with Pithica, or something like them, and I think—I think they did this.”

  “It makes sense.” Pilar was babbling a little. “I mean, considering your amnesia—how many bad guys could there possibly be with real-life psychic powers? It would be totally weird if there were a bunch of unconnected sets of people walking around with the ability to muck with people’s brains, wouldn’t it?”

  “Pilar,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Good job. Now shut up.”

  “Okay. Right. Okay. Sorry.”

  I turned back to Simon. “Somehow, in the past, you and I were both connected to Pithica.” Maybe we’d decided to turn renegade and fight them, and that’s how we’d hooked up with Rio. I was feeling it out, but it made sense. “We got out, but before we did, they fucked me in the head. Of course, you’re not going to confirm or deny this.” If I thought he would, I probably wouldn’t even have been able to say it, thanks to Dawna. Pithica had fucked me twice now.

  We appreciate your loyalty, murmured the voices in my head.

  “Will you let me help you now?” asked Simon.

  I almost laughed. “Help me? By doing what, screwing around with my brain on top of whatever fun mutilation someone else already did? Yeah, that seems like a good idea. And you and I might have worked together against Pithica, but that means nothing. I’ve worked with a lot of people who were scum of the earth. For all I know we were allies of convenience.”

  Simon sucked in a breath as if I’d stabbed him and wrapped his arms around himself again. “It wasn’t convenience.”

  I raised my eyebrows at Rio to see if he’d confirm that, but he gave me a half shrug, as if to say, What do I know about human relationships.

  Well, true.

  “Please,” Simon said. “This isn’t going to go away. I can help you repair—”

  “What?” I challenged him. Checker’s suggestion from a few minutes ago tugged at my consciousness. Impossible. Simon couldn’t repair the math; this wasn’t about that. It didn’t stop the fleeting, aching hope from wringing through me.…

  He saw it, the asshole.

  “I can’t do what you want,” he said hoarsely, and disappointment lanced through me hot and bitter, for all my resolution not even to imagine it. “I’m sorry. But I can mend what Daniela—what Dawna, I can reverse what she did. I won’t do anything to hurt you. I promise.”

  “I wonder if the person who scraped all my memories out said that to me beforehand, too,” I said viciously. “Isn’t Pithica all about making the world a better place? They were probably making me a shiny new person, just like you want to.”

  “Cassandra—”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “Cas,” he amended. “This is serious. The symptoms you’re having are going to keep getting worse. Please, you have to let me help.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  There are limits here, babbled one of the voices. Limits such as death.

  “You don’t understand,” Simon pleaded. “You could die.”

  “I understand perfectly,” I said. Such as death. “What you’re not understanding is that I am fucking done with people reshuffling my neurons. Pithica, Dawna Polk, you, anyone else.” What is death, except utter unending unconsciousness? I couldn’t tell if it was my own thought. “I’ll find another solution.”

  “I don’t know that there is one.” Simon had started to sound panicked. “Cas, I know what happened to you; I know your mind; I can— This isn’t something you can snap yourself out of!”

  “She’s right,” I said, jabbing a thumb at Pilar. “I have superpowers too. I’m as good as you or Dawna Polk. I can fix LA, and I can fix my own goddamn brain. I’ll figure it out.”

  The room stopped dead.

  I can fix LA …

  “Cas?” Rio asked, with the moral weight of centuries.

  Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit.

  I’d been planning to avoid Rio for exactly this fucking reason.

  Rio considered me. “You.”

  I pointed at Checker and Pilar. “You two. Out.”

  Checker opened his mouth like he was going to try to protest, but Pilar just hustled them out of the room.

  I turned back to Rio. It was no use trying to lie to him after a slipup like that; he’d see right through it. “Are you going to try to kill me?”

  Simon jerked and almost fell off his chair. My gun hand twitched a little, as if I wanted to defend myself, even as another part of me wanted to laugh in hysterical disbelief at the idea.

  “No, Cas,” Rio said. “I would not harm you. But I am going to stop you.”

  Fuck.

  eighteen

  RIO DIDN’T insult me by trying to ask me any questions about how I’d done it. I wasn’t going to answer, and he, apparently, was not willing to attempt the application of his … usual methods.

  Given that, we didn’t have much more to say. I swallowed any of my own doubts about the effects of the brain entrainment, forcibly reminding myself of the statistics we’d seen cascading out of Checker’s programs. It was working. I would make it work. Rio or Yamamoto or anyone else—if they got in my way, I’d plow through them and win.

  As for Simon, I made him leave with Rio. He kept swiveling his head back and forth between us as if he wanted to plead with me but was forcing himself not to because he knew it wouldn’t do any good.

  Smart man. Or maybe just telepathic.

  Once I was satisfied they’d gone, I went out and found Checker and Pilar right where I expected—in the Hole, watching a feed of the living room from one of Checker’s security cameras.

  “We should abort,” Checker said immediately. “If we reprogram the hack—”

  “What? Not a chance in hell!” Checker wasn’t going to stop me either. “You’ve seen the statistics. We’ve got a real chance to change the city here—we’re not going to fold the instant someone tries to throw up an obstacle. Not for Rio or anybody else!”

  “I—I think I’m with Cas,” Pilar said. “If we’re making a difference—Cas, as long as you’re sure this guy can’t, um—”

  “He can, that’s the point,” Checker said shortly. “You don’t understand; you haven’t been in this world long enough. There are times you cut your losses and run, and when someone like him targets you…”

  “Since when have you been the cut-and-run guy?” I said. “You’re the person who wrote me fifty fucking pages about how this could prevent another Nanjing or Hitler. And now we have proof it’s saving LA and you want to wuss out?”

  “I was also against this from the beginning,” Checker snapped. “And even though we’re seeing an effect—shit, maybe because we’re seeing such an effect, it’s gotten goddamn frightening. Cas, you’re the one who doesn’t want anyone so much as touching your brain even though it would be helping you—how can you feel like this is all okay? Are you really fine with saying we should have this much power?”

  “It’s not the same thing,” I gritted out.

  “Rio thinks it is,” Checker shot back. “Arthur told me what he said. I may not be religious, but I have a moral system, and I can’t believe I’m on his side on anything, but his reasons here make sense. You can’t tell me they don’t!”

  “Why can’t both sides make sense?” Pilar was studying the ground like she wanted to disappear into it. “Why can’t what we’re doing be a lit
tle bit wrong but also be right? It’s not like life is black-and-white. I know you guys think I’m naïve on a lot of this stuff, and I know I am—but you two are trying to draw lines where there just, there aren’t any. You’re so invested in what’s right or wrong always making some sort of nice logical sense, but real life is, it’s messy, and sometimes you can’t draw nice perfect boxes around it and know what to do.” She hunched her shoulders.

  “Bullshit,” I said. “If there’s illogic involved we just haven’t defined enough axioms for the system. Or the proof is fallacious.”

  Checker laughed. It sounded a little hysterical.

  “Cas,” Pilar said. “Your friend, um, this guy—what’s he going to do?”

  That was a very good question.

  Rio didn’t know what our methods were. He did know about Yamamoto’s effort to rally LA’s criminal element, thanks to me—if he wanted to, he could tip them off and slingshot the entirety of Los Angeles’s underground around to land right on top of me.

  But if he did that, there was the very real possibility I’d get killed. Speaking of logic, I didn’t think Rio differentiated between hurting me himself and weaponizing all of LA to do it for him.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  “Then why don’t we wait and see?” asked Pilar. “Would it be so bad to—to see how things play out? As long as he’s not, um. Not threatening you?”

  “Or us,” Checker added darkly.

  “I told you, I talked to him about that,” I said. “Yeah, I vote for wait and see, too. Whatever he’s planning, I bet I can beat him.”

  Checker mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, “I didn’t sign up for this” and moved over to one of his computers. “Cas, there’s something else you should hear. It doesn’t sound like this is going to change your mind at all, but Rio and Yamamoto aren’t the only people noticing something. This popped up in my alerts earlier today.”

  He clicked at the mouse a few times and then held down a key to turn the volume all the way up. A blustering man’s voice filled the room from the computer speakers.

  “… and something’s going on in this city. You can feel it. Something is wrong here in Los Angeles, and I promise you, patriots, I will get to the bottom of it. Bombs aren’t the only way for the terrorists to strike against this greatest of nations. We’ve long known how vulnerable we are to a biochemical attack, but did our mewling, terrorist-appeasing president take even one step to prevent it? No, of course not. And now you and me are the ones paying for it. Let’s talk the water supply here in Los Angeles, for starters. Do you know how easy it would be for someone to…”

  Checker dialed the volume down again until it was muted.

  “I’ve heard that guy before,” I said. “Who is he?”

  “Reuben McCabe,” Pilar answered. “Isn’t it?”

  “Yup,” Checker said. “Radio host, political shit-stirrer, and professional troll. And one with a hell of a reach.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. “Him. Likes to inflame people or something, right?”

  “Understatement of the year. But this time he’s onto something. He’s always been on about suspected conspiracies, but now he’s revving it up, and he’s got specifics. He knows there’s been a change.”

  “Hey, maybe what we’re doing will axe his audience. Stop people from being lemmings or whatever.” It was an appealing thought. “Do his listeners really take him seriously anyway? He sounds like an idiot.”

  “He’s a charismatic idiot with a nationwide show, and yes, a lot of people—” started Checker.

  “My dad loves him,” put in Pilar. “I mean, he says he could do without some of the, um, inflammatory tone and stuff, and he doesn’t always agree with everything, but he says McCabe is the only news person willing to say what he thinks.”

  “The important point,” Checker said loudly, “is that in this case McCabe is right. Nobody in the mainstream is reporting on the drop in crime, other than mentioning it in passing and praising the mayor’s policies, because anything else would sound like a conspiracy theory. But McCabe doesn’t care, and he’s going whole hog on it. People are starting to pay attention.”

  “So what?” I said. “What can they do? Complain about it on the radio? Let them.”

  “Not just complain. I was listening earlier, and there are some militia groups who’ve been calling in to his show and making noises about coming to town. Setting things right, that kind of talk. These are the type of people who take it upon themselves to patrol the border like it’s a video game, or stand their ground to Feds armed to the teeth. They’re dangerous.”

  “Okay,” I said. “They still won’t know where to point their guns. If they come to LA and start making trouble, I’ll deal with them. Heck, once they arrive the brain entrainment will probably neuter them for me.”

  “Take this seriously!” Checker said. “People are getting mad about this, and I can’t say I blame them! Can you please hit pause for a minute and consider there might be a good reason they want to stop you? Stop us?”

  “So you’re saying you think Rio and McCabe are the good guys here?” I scoffed. “You?”

  “And you’re trying to tell me I should think they’re wrong because, why, because I think one’s a destructive moron with too much power and the other legitimately scares me shitless? That’s a logical fallacy and you know it!”

  We glared at each other.

  “This is what I was talking about,” Pilar said into the silence. “It’s messy. I don’t think the right solution is to try to make it not-messy, because it isn’t.”

  What makes this so charming is that we all get to pass responsibility up the food chain, whispered someone, about something dangerous and far away. Nobody has to take the blame for anything.

  I jerked away from it. Whoever the voice was, I wasn’t like her. I wasn’t plunging my hands into people like they were sculpting clay and squashing them around until they either turned into something satisfactory or died or—or whatever she had been doing—whoever she was—

  I wasn’t like that. Was I?

  “Where’s my info on Vance?” I said. That was at least one fucking thing that was clean and clear cut.

  “It’s done, but I thought you were waiting for Arthur,” Checker said.

  “Arthur’s got other priorities, apparently.” And the mood I was in, Arthur probably wouldn’t approve of how I wanted to play things. “Did you figure out how I can find her?”

  Checker heaved a sigh. “Yeah. She doesn’t stay in the shadows like Pourdry does. In fact, she’s pretty easy to track; she pops up on the grid regularly.”

  “I don’t care about the rest of the intel,” I said. “Just get me a location. I’ll take it from there.”

  * * *

  I FOLLOWED Lauren Vance for the rest of the day. Checker was right—she moved around in a surprisingly ordinary manner, using ATMs and stopping to buy overpriced coffee. She also walked into meetings in some of the seediest areas of Los Angeles as if they were glass-and-steel corporations, always standing with perfect posture and carrying her briefcase. I didn’t know if she was depending on Pourdry’s reputation to protect her or if she was capable of protecting herself. Either way, she was making a statement by going alone, especially dressed like a New York banker—a statement about either her own power or Pourdry’s.

  She didn’t go to reconvene with her boss in person at all, and after watching how openly she moved around, I was starting to suspect she never would. I’d have to grab her and convince her.

  That was okay. I’d almost been hoping I’d have the chance to beat the shit out of someone.

  At least being back on the job did seem to be helping my dissolving sanity stay pasted together. Not as much as it had in the past, not by a long shot, but the stray intrusions had mostly retreated to a disordered susurration. I could only hope I’d be able to keep them there … especially as I was about to make things a lot more dramatic.
<
br />   I waited until after the sun set and I had followed Vance’s fashionable little convertible—I’d been right about her car choice—into the type of area you had to pay off the local gangs to spend any significant time in. Then, on a nice deserted street, I rammed the accelerator into the floor and ran her off the road.

  She must have seen the headlights grow huge in her mirrors, because she tried to swerve and speed away, but I was ready. I pulled the e-brake, juked the wheel, and countersteered to slam into her back rear panel at over fifty miles per hour. The crash was deafening, and her car imploded with a shattering of glass and polymer. I kept my foot on the gas, spinning us out of the skid and against a closed medical marijuana shop so the back of Vance’s car was crushed between mine and the storefront.

  I’d purposely been driving a tank of a sedan, and it hadn’t suffered more than a little hood crumpling. Perfect. I got out, my gun drawn.

  Lauren Vance got out, too, clawing the airbag out of the way and pulling her briefcase with her as if it was attached to her hand. Her face was scraped and burned from the airbag, but she still held herself with that rigorously straight posture and seemed rather too collected for someone who had just been run off the road and was facing an attacker with a gun.

  She raised her free hand slightly. “What do you want?”

  “You,” I said. “Hands on your head and get over here.”

  Very slowly, she bent her knees to set her briefcase on the ground.

  And closed her eyes.

  The world flashed pure white fire and my vision went blank. I reacted before registering what had happened, doing instant trigonometry to lower my gun and fire blind. Vance screamed.

  “I want you alive,” I said, blinking rapidly. Nothing but blackness—she must have used some sort of flash grenade. I stretched out my other senses—scuffling noises against the ground, ragged breathing—she probably hadn’t expected me to shoot. I let my mathematical awareness lean on what my ears and memory told me, let the numbers draw my surroundings. “But believe me when I say I can kill you without being able to see you, and if you do not—”