Null Set

by S. L. Huang

  The sound thundered into me like a herd of rampaging bison, trampling my eardrums, clobbering me in the sternum and putting me on my ass. I managed to hang on to my Colt, and I twisted against the maelstrom, unable to see or hear or sense a goddamn thing but depending on the lines of sight and minutes of angle I’d already spun out to guide me—and I put five rounds straight into her fucking briefcase. The Colt twitched in my hand as I pulled the trigger, but with the world taken over by Vance’s sonic weapon only the sting of the recoil told me I’d fired.

  I could tell I’d disabled the weapon because I was able to move again, but my senses were a dark and echoing box, and any equilibrium provided by my inner ear was dead gone. I leaned into my proprioception instead and put my faith in the mathematics, flipping up to my feet even as the rest of my brain was convinced I was falling sideways off the planet.

  Vance only had one smart play to make, assuming she hadn’t been knocked out by her own weapon. I pivoted through the correct angle and fired again to take out the front tire of my own car and then bulldogged straight toward where I knew the driver’s side was.

  Metal slugged me two feet before I got there—Vance had swung the car door out to body-slam me. I shot out one hand and grabbed the top of the door as I ricocheted, the new data giving me enough points to extrapolate a partial picture. I used my grip on the door to rebound my momentum and swung around it to smash the side of my gun into Lauren Vance’s face.

  I pushed her head down in the street and straddled her, my gun barrel against the back of her skull. The car engine vibrated next to me. She’d been so close to getting away.

  My vision was starting to clear, fuzzy shapes oozing through the dimness, and my hearing had gone from an empty void to a rising, high-pitched ringing. Interpolation filled in enough blanks that I estimated I could still drive like this. I’d limp out of here on the rim of my wheel and then tie Lauren Vance up somewhere until I could recover and interrogate her.

  I felt in my pocket for a zip tie and trussed up Vance’s wrists behind her, and then tugged off my belt to tourniquet her leg above where I’d shot her. I started out doing it by feel, but my vision had mostly returned by the time I finished, albeit with fuzziness around every outline.

  Vance stirred weakly against me.

  I belatedly noticed she had some kind of fancy earplugs in. That accounted for the delay in her briefcase flashbang bomb—she closed her eyes for the flash, stuck in the plugs, and then escaped while everyone else was incapacitated. I ripped the earplugs out.

  “Hi,” I said. My ears still rang, painfully enough that it stabbed all the way to the back of my throat and made me want to throw up, but I could hear myself in a muffled, tinny way. “You’re coming with me.”

  And better to skedaddle sooner than later, just in case we’d attracted any cops.

  Or this neighborhood’s version of the cops.

  I realized my peripheral vision was still compromised when dark shapes solidified out of it to show us surrounded. Dark shapes in colors.

  Shit, whose colors? Which neighborhood was this?

  The lead silhouette detached himself from the rest and approached us with a swinging, loping gait, full of ego and scorn, and cemented into none other than my rowdy friend Miguel from Yamamoto’s meeting.

  He said something.

  “You’re going to have to speak up,” I called back.

  He came closer and raised his voice. “You on our turf, lady.” The words were still wrapped in muffling layers of sensory loss, but I could understand them. “And this here’s our prize, we been looking for her all night. Hey, you that chick from the bar!”

  Shit.

  “The one that shot me! I gonna learn you real good, woman.”

  I tensed my muscles. If I could delay a little, till my inner ear wasn’t trying to bowl me over at every step … “What do you want with Vance?” I said. “Maybe we’re on the same side here.”

  Miguel howled with laughter. “Same side? Woman, you on drugs? You fucking shot me!”

  “Only your gun,” I said. “I’ve got money. Let’s talk about a deal. I get what I want out of Vance, and then you can have her.”

  “And then you get the credit? Nuh-uh. The Blood Skulls are the ones taking her down, and all those fancy gangsters the little Chinaman got together, they gonna be eating out of our hand.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about until Vance shifted below me. “It’s not us,” she called. “You’ve been misinformed.”

  “You shut your pretty mouth,” Miguel said, and turned back to me. “And you, why don’t you put that piece down nice and slow.”

  “Wait.” My brain felt like it was working only in skips and halts. “You think Vance and Pourdry are the ones who’ve been shutting down LA?”

  “It’s not us,” Vance repeated, more urgently. “Whoever told you that lied. They’re trying to start something. We got word today the responsible party is the Grigoryan brothers.”

  What?

  “Piece on the ground, sister,” Miguel repeated. “No sudden moves, neither.”

  I had one round left before I needed to reload. My vision had recovered enough to count: Miguel plus six other guys, most of whom had guns out already.

  But Miguel had gotten closer so I could hear him, confident his boys were backing him up, and there was no doubt he was carrying as well, which gave me potential to gain another weapon. Of course, just to make my life difficult, he hadn’t drawn yet. And I couldn’t see well enough yet to figure out where he might be concealing.

  “What happened to your gun?” I taunted. “What, did I scratch the finish on it? Afraid you’ll get it messed up again?”

  It worked. It fucking worked.

  Miguel went for his piece and I rocketed up from the ground right into him. His boys all hesitated, not wanting to shoot their boss, and by the time they started to react I’d brought my hand up past his shoulder, wielding Miguel’s own pistol. With my Colt jammed up under Miguel’s chin, I shot all six of his guys in less than a second and a half.

  I could hear the last body slump to the street through the ringing.

  Miguel squeaked and went wild, his hands going for my gun. It was a stupid move on his part, because I pulled the trigger. Heat and wet spilled against my face and neck as he went down.

  I wiped at the mess with my sleeve and turned back to Vance, tucking away Miguel’s weapon and reloading my empty Colt, though it was so sticky I wasn’t sure it would function right. I studied Vance as I did it. She didn’t look scared; she looked calculating.

  My equilibrium was still off, but I didn’t let my senses relax. Something in me warned I shouldn’t appear the least bit weak in front of her. I kept an iron grip on my mathematical perceptions of gravity and my own bones and limbs, and I was steady as a rock when I muscled her into one of the gangsters’ cars and drove away.

  nineteen

  “YOUR INFORMATION is wrong,” Lauren Vance said, from where she was sitting on a mattress, tied to its metal bed frame. Her voice was tight, the only display of the pain she had to be enduring—she hadn’t made a sound even when I’d slapped a field dressing on her leg. The woman was sculpted from ice.

  I sat at a table eating some processed meat out of a can and drinking cold coffee, still waiting for my ears to stop ringing entirely and my headache to go away. Vance’s flashbang had been a motherfucker.

  I’d wiped off my face, but Miguel’s blood still stiffened my shirt and jacket, the collar poking me every time I shifted. Reminding me.

  I hadn’t gone there to kill anyone. In the new Los Angeles I had created, would taking out seven members of Miguel’s street gang lead to more violence, or less? Would there be retaliation, or would this just become part of the cleanup?

  And if I hadn’t fired, if I’d solved the night another way, would Miguel’s guys have drifted off eventually from their places in the Blood Skulls, the brain entrainment freeing them of feeling trapped by gang control? Or had I kille
d young men who were loyal for life of their own free will?

  What about Miguel himself?

  Sure, I’d been halfway incapacitated, but maybe there had been another way of stopping them, of giving them that second chance. Until this moment, I’d been thinking of the brain entrainment as being in place to help victims of crime … but the massive dropoffs were making me start to see the perpetrators as victims, too. Especially ones as young as Miguel and his lieutenants had been.

  I thought of Pilar’s cousin. The probability he was one of the boys I’d shot out there was so slim I wasn’t actually worried about it, but in theory, he could have been.

  I closed my eyes briefly. I almost wished my decaying mental state would rear back up and confuse everything. It might be more comfortable than the choices I’d made tonight.

  “I don’t know who is spreading the lie that we are responsible for the behavioral changes in the population of Los Angeles,” Vance tried again, drawing my attention back to her. “But they are either misinformed or fabricating the information. We have nothing to do with it.”

  “Right,” I said. I was still thrown by the sudden slew of rumors flooding the streets. “You say it’s the Grigoryans.”

  “After what happened, I’m beginning to suspect that information is unreliable,” Vance said. “Someone is pitting us all against each other.”

  If she was right, that was an even worse turn of events than the criminal elements in LA banding together. An all-out war would hurt a lot of people. That scenario had been one of the things I’d been trying to prevent.

  God, my head hurt. I finished my coffee, left Miguel’s gun on the table pointed vaguely in Vance’s direction, and started taking apart my Colt. Miguel’s blood gummed every surface.

  “I’m willing to pool information,” Vance said. She must remember me from Yamamoto’s meeting. “We want this stopped as much as you do.”

  “That’s not why you’re here,” I interrupted. “I don’t care. I want your boss.”

  I could almost see her brain click and whirr as she switched gears. “What do you want him for?”

  “To kill him.”

  “I see,” she said. “Is this a business dispute, or a personal one?”

  “I want him in the ground,” I said. “I don’t care how much money anyone pays me. Your only concern is whether you go with him, or you help me.”

  “I see,” Vance said again. Her gaze sharpened. “You’re one of the people who’s been interfering with our operations. The dark girl from the bridge.”

  “Me and my colleagues, yeah.” I grinned wolfishly. Rio had been out working against Pourdry the other night, too—combined with the difficulties the brain entrainment was causing them, we had to be making the higher-ups frantic, even if Vance wouldn’t show it. “And we’re not going to stop until you’re finished.”

  Vance nodded. “If I help you, I’d like to be taken to a hospital, and then given enough time to leave town. Can you guarantee me that?”

  I blinked. Given the slavish devotion Pourdry’s people were famous for, I hadn’t expected this to be so easy. But then, maybe this was her way of panicking. Her exceedingly calm way of panicking.

  Or maybe the brain entrainment was working on her, too.

  “Talk and we’ll see,” I said.

  “There’s no advantage in me lying to you,” Vance countered. “I saw what you did tonight with my own eyes, and in any event the other reports had been making me reconsider our organization’s position. I’ll tell you whatever you wish to know about Jacob, on the condition I have time to move aside before the fallout.”

  “I want to know how to find him,” I said. “Convince me you’re telling the truth, and you’ll see the inside of a hospital before they end up needing to take your leg.”

  “All right,” she said. “You will believe my motivation once you understand what kind of person Jacob is. If I may?”

  I knew what kind of person Pourdry was, but I waved her on with Miguel’s gun anyway. As long as she kept talking until she told me where to find him, I didn’t care.

  Vance nodded and continued on. “He and I met back at HBS. Jacob was the type of intelligent other people didn’t even try to compete with. And more than smart, he was confident. Half the time I think he won because he went in assuming he had won, and everyone else ceded to him without thinking. But he always wanted a challenge.”

  “A challenge like selling kids into slavery?” I said.

  She gave me a tolerant tilt of her head. “You have to understand. It’s a game to him.”

  I snorted.

  “I don’t mean that the way you’re taking it. He’s not a sadist. He’s … moving pieces on a gameboard to wipe everyone else out at Monopoly. It’s not even about the money to him—or perhaps it is, but not the money itself. It’s about being the person who has all that money. He’d burn it afterwards on a whim, but he likes being the person who owns everything.”

  “Does he own you?” I said.

  She shifted her leg slightly, and winced. “Jacob is a genius. He’s the best businessman I’ve ever met. My talent is picking a winning horse.”

  “He’s not winning. I’m taking him down.”

  “All right.”

  “That doesn’t bother you?”

  “One thing about picking horses is you know when to collect your winnings and look for a new race. If people like you are after Jacob, it’s time for me to cash out.”

  “So, back to Wall Street then?” I said.

  “Maybe.”

  I raised Miguel’s gun and pointed it at her. “Maybe I just shoot you instead, you don’t back any more horses.”

  She gazed at me coolly. “I thought you wanted my help. Now that you know our history, understand this. I have no loyalty. I calculate what’s best—for me—and that’s the way I tack my sails. So if the way out of being hunted down by the likes of you is to help you and then leave the state, I am all too happy to do that.”

  So it wasn’t the brain entrainment. This was just how she was. Wow. “You’re not afraid Pourdry’s goons will come after you for betraying him?”

  She lifted one shoulder in half a shrug, the movement somehow elegant even tied to a bed with a bleeding leg and a face full of airbag burns. “Like I said, I pick winning horses. I have no interest in who wins this vendetta of yours, but whichever way the wind blows, I expect Jacob isn’t going to be doing much chasing down of anyone by the end of it.”

  “If you’re so fickle, why would Pourdry trust you with anything?”

  “Because I’m very good. And it’s not like Jacob doesn’t know this about me. I’d even venture to say he respects it. He’s always been confident he’ll continue to win, and that would have kept my loyalty.”

  “You’re disgusting,” I said.

  “After what I saw tonight, I suspect some might say the same of you,” Vance replied evenly. “Our morals are simply different.”

  Different morals my ass. Vance had no morals. “Tell me how to find him.”

  “Jacob does not see people. He conducts his business from his home office, always.”

  “And do you have an address?”

  “He doesn’t know it, but yes.”

  I almost laughed. She was so axiomatically selfish. “What is it?”

  “I’ll agree to tell you. After I’ve left town.”

  “You’ll tell me now, or you’ll never make it out of town.”

  We were both aware we were negotiating, and where it would land. “Take me to a hospital,” Vance said, “and I’ll give you the address. Guarantee me forty-eight hours before you move.”

  “Twenty-four,” I said, and she nodded.

  I was cautious of a trap, of course. But if the information did pan out, it was nice to have something go right for once.

  Or at least, I thought that until I dropped Vance off outside an emergency room driveway. She told me what I wanted to know and waved off my threats of what I’d do to her if she’d lied, and th
en she added something.

  “You were at Yamamoto’s meeting. It would do you well to figure out who is trying to set us at each other’s throats. I’m sure someone was whispered your name as the likely culprit.”

  And as Vance limped out of the car, it hit me.

  Nobody had been whispered my name as a target. Because I knew who was doing the whispering.

  I sped away from the hospital so fast the tires almost broke static friction, my fingers stabbing the buttons on my cell phone.

  “Hello, Cas,” Rio said blandly.

  “You’re pitting everyone in LA against each other?” I said. “You know what a gang war will do to this city!”

  “I do,” he answered.

  “What, is this some messed-up way of trying to convince me this isn’t worth the trouble, because you can just boost the violence back up to the same level?” I ranted. “That doesn’t even make sense—it’s not exactly going to convince me this is less necessary. And you know how many innocent people are going to get hurt!”

  “So do you,” Rio said. “Collateral damage. You can make it cease.”

  His statement took my breath away. He wasn’t trying to make the brain entrainment functionally useless—this was extortion, plain and simple. If I stopped what I was doing, he’d stop setting people up to die. “You’re blackmailing me by provoking violent criminals into destroying Los Angeles,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not fair.”

  “I do not mean it to be.”

  “I’m not backing down,” I said. “I’ll figure out a way to keep this from happening. People aren’t going to start shooting each other just because you tell them to.”

  “You have a far more optimistic view of human nature than I do, Cas.”

  Someone put a hand on my shoulder. “The definition of humanity is far more flexible than most people believe.”

  Goddammit. This was the last time I needed my stupid brain acting up on me again.

  “Good luck to you, Cas,” Rio said. “Let me know when you change your mind. I hear a militia is coming to town.”