Null Set

by S. L. Huang

  “Yes,” Rio answered.

  We stared at each other.

  “I won’t do it,” Simon gasped from behind me. “I won’t…”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  Rio spoke to Simon, even though he was still looking at me. “If you do this, I shall think it meet to kill you.”

  Hell, he apparently thought it meet to kill Simon at the very suggestion I might be able to convince him to break his moral stance. This did not bode well for Simon agreeing to help.

  Even if, after fantasizing so many times about his death, I was about to save his life.

  “Simon,” I said. “Stand up and go to the door.”

  He hesitated, which made me furious—if he did know me, he should know my skill. He did know my skill. Which meant he was hesitating because either he couldn’t wrap his brain around it or he just couldn’t handle being efficient under pressure, neither of which I had any patience for.

  He finally scrambled up and edged for the front of the apartment. I rotated in line with the scuffling of his feet, staying between him and Rio.

  “Cas,” Rio said. “Do not do this.”

  “If you want to stop me,” I said, “you’re going to have to stop me.” I backed away from Rio until I nearly collided with Simon, and then shoved him out of the apartment behind me without ever turning around.

  Rio didn’t try to follow us.

  thirty-three

  SIMON MADE a break for it as soon as we got outside, but I grabbed him by the coat and collared him into my stolen car. He scrabbled at the door handle, but I took off too fast and sped us out and away, running from Rio, zigzagging past any probability he might be able to track us.

  “I’m not going to do it,” Simon said. Shrilly. He’d wrapped his arms around himself in the passenger seat.

  I ignored him. I drove out to the desert, where no one would see us, out where he couldn’t get away from me even if he fled, and pulled off the road to bump over rocks and dirt and scrub before I stopped the car.

  Simon slumped, defeated, and didn’t get out. “Don’t try to convince me,” he said. “I’m not going to. This is the one thing—I vowed I wouldn’t, and I won’t. Ever.”

  I only had one piece of leverage to bargain with. But even here at the end, with no other option … Christ on a crutch if I wasn’t going to try everything else first.

  “Do you know what we’ve been doing in LA?” I said, without looking at him.

  “I’ve guessed—broadly.”

  Guessed, my ass. “Brain entrainment,” I said. “Technology that knocks people out of groupthink. But we need to dismantle it. Problem is, we’re poised on the brink of a gang war.” For once I was glad he could read the truth of it in my face and voice, read the severity of the situation off my posture and expression. “We need you to go on the radio and tell everyone to stand the fuck down, or a lot of people in this city are going to die.”

  He looked away. “You know I don’t do that, Cas. I can’t.”

  “Make a fucking exception.”

  “And then what?” He whipped back around to me. “If I make an exception to help Los Angeles, manipulate everyone here against their will because it will help, where does it end? What else do I do to ‘help,’ Cas? Should I help you against your will? Would you like that? I’m not going to start down that slippery slope—”

  “The slippery slope is a fallacy!” I got right in his face. “You’re a goddamn human being; you’re capable of making judgment calls. You don’t become a mindless brain-munching zombie just because you decide it’s okay to stop a war!”

  “Oh, really? I know some other people who make very careful judgment calls about how they use their powers. You know them, too, and you decimated them. We wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t decided they—”

  “Pithica was different,” I insisted. I had to believe that. “They were manipulating everyone, the whole world. I’m trying to get you to stop some incredibly violent groups from firing the first shot in a riot that will kill a lot of innocent people. This is clear and immediate.”

  “And if you have a power that allows you to see many degrees of logic away, it still seems clear and immediate,” Simon shot back. “People like Daniela and me aren’t the only ones Pithica has. When you have as much power as we do—Cas?”

  I groped blindly for the door handle and fell out into the night. The sky reeled above me, stars half–washed out by the city brightness.

  “Cas? Cassandra—Cas?” Simon had gotten out, too, but for some reason he wasn’t trying to run. He crouched over me, his hands half-raised as if he wanted to touch me but knew I’d try to break his fingers if he did. “Cas, what’s going on?”

  “Stop talking,” I said. “I can’t know more about Pithica. She made it so I can’t.”

  “Oh, God, Cas,” Simon said, and it sounded like he was swallowing back tears.

  “Jesus fuck, shut up,” I said.

  He folded himself to sit cross-legged on the ground next to me. “I won’t say anything more about Pithica, I promise. But you must see why—I can’t be the judge of that much power. I can’t. Maybe you think you could do it, but I’m not—I’m not smart enough, and frankly, I don’t think any human is. Or maybe the better way of phrasing is to say my judgment call is not to use it. Ever. Not unless people tell me I can, and that’s where I’m drawing the line, because I’m not smart enough to be able to draw it anywhere else.”

  “I have superpowers, too,” I said. “I use them.”

  “Yours are different. You don’t … unmake people.”

  “No, they just underestimate me and then I kill them.”

  He flinched. “Well, then maybe you should think about drawing some lines, too. But that’s not for me to say, Cas. Honestly, it’s not. I have to decide what I’m comfortable with when it comes to what I can do, and I have to draw a line, and I have to draw it here. I’m … I’m sorry. I truly am.” His face wrinkled at me earnestly.

  “You’ll let a whole mess of innocent people die, then.”

  He turned away again, and his jaw clamped shut like he was resisting saying something. I thought I heard it anyway: Just like you did, when you took down Pithica.

  I wondered if it was an unconscious psychic projection or my own guilt saying the words.

  Fuck.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe I’m just like Dawna, in wanting to do this. I still have to make the decision in front of me. I still have to— I can’t live with myself, if I let this happen.”

  “And I have to make the decision in front of me, too,” Simon said, anguished. “And I … I can’t live with myself the other way. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  I was down to my last hole card. Every emotion shriveled inside me in rebellion, made me want to get up and run, drive away, flee to another city and leave LA to burn.

  That would be the easy solution.

  But I’d come here knowing I’d have to. Knowing this was my only shot. I’d made this situation happen from the get-go: I’d caused the crime spike when I’d hamstrung Pithica; I’d set up the brain entrainment to try to combat it.

  Maybe it was only fair I had to give myself to fix it.

  “You were right, you know.” I picked up a stone and dug it into the hard-packed dirt. Cars whizzed by on the freeway thirty meters distant. “You were right that … it is killing me.”

  Simon whirled back around, and whatever he saw, his whole face went wild with alarm. The fucker could read off my expression that I’d had a breakdown, apparently.

  At least it saved me needing to tell him.

  “Cassandra,” he said, my name a breath of relief. “I mean, Cas. I don’t know how you’re all right, but thank God you are. You— I told you this would happen. I told you…”

  “Yeah, because of what you did to me,” I said. “And that’s twice tonight, by the way. I thought you said you didn’t read people’s minds.”

  “I explained—sometimes I can’t help it. But I only get the sort o
f … overall picture, not details. What happened? Are you truly all right?”

  “Never better,” I said automatically. Shit. It would only help my case if I told the truth. I opened my mouth to change my answer, but the “no” curdled on my tongue.

  Simon saw it anyway. His face creased in worry and pain as if I’d spoken the word aloud. As if he had any right to worry about me.

  “Checker tried to call you,” I said. “You’re a hard person to find, apparently.”

  Guilt washed over his features. “I didn’t think. I should have been there.”

  For some reason it made me angry, that he didn’t try to defend himself with the indisputable facts: that I’d said no and told him to leave, that therefore no reason existed for Checker or any of my other friends to have his number. I’d chosen his absence. He didn’t get to take responsibility for my life like I was some pet he had created in a lab.

  He didn’t get to feel guilty for me, to deny that my own self-destructive decisions had at least been mine to make. Not his.

  He winced. “I’ve upset you. I can’t seem to stop doing that.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Good read there. You know, for a psychic, you have terrible people skills.”

  He wasn’t looking at me. I wondered if that was out of consideration for trying to read less of what I was thinking, and hated him for it. I liked being able to categorize him as a one-hundred-percent dick.

  “Will you tell me what happened?” he asked, staring out into the night.

  “I passed out,” I said. “My friends brought me back. With math. We didn’t need you after all.”

  “How do you feel now?” he asked.

  “Well, you know. Fewer voices, but I can tell they’re coming back.”

  He jerked. “Cassandra, please consider—”

  “I have a different proposal for you,” I said over him. “You’ve got your lines. I want to trade with you for crossing them just this once.”

  “Cas,” he gasped, and I suspected he already saw what I was about to say. But I kept talking anyway.

  “I’m fucked. What Checker and the others did to bring me back this time—it wasn’t a permanent or practical solution. They can’t be around with my math every time I go crazy and collapse. It’s also not something that will work until I’m knocked out entirely, which leaves a whole lot of messy gray area fucking me up in between blackouts. And you were right—it’s getting worse.”

  He’d hunched over his knees and dropped his face into his hands. It made me perversely satisfied to see.

  “I’m perfectly happy to slide right off the deep end before I let you anywhere near me,” I continued, and for the second time I was happy Simon was a human lie detector, because he would know I wasn’t bluffing. “I don’t trust you or your obsession with me. I’ll look for a solution on my own. But since you’re so very consumed with wanting to get your fingers in my brain, I’m willing to make a trade.”

  “Cas,” he whispered against his hands. Shredded. Hopeless. “I just … I only want to help you.”

  “Said the spider to the fly.”

  Yes, I did realize he could do anything he wanted to me anyway, and it was his oh-so-righteous moralism that was preventing him, the very moralism I was arguing against …

  “You’re thinking at me. Stop it,” I said.

  “I’m not trying to.”

  “Try harder.”

  He dropped his hands, but kept his eyes on the distant mountains. “You’re saying you’ll let me help you. But only if I fix Los Angeles.”

  “Look at you, drawing conclusions all by yourself,” I said.

  “You’re threatening to kill yourself if I don’t do what you want. That’s … you’re emotionally blackmailing me.”

  “You have a tremendous talent for making this all about you,” I said. For Christ’s sake, I wasn’t suicidal—that was the whole problem with saying yes to him. “I’ve already found a partial solution. I’ll keep looking for a better one until I can’t anymore. It’s you who’s so convinced there isn’t one.”

  “Cas, the level of damage you’re fighting—”

  “You’re part of the reason I’m so ‘damaged’ in the first place. What were you doing that time? Oh, yeah, trying to help me. I remember. Except, wait, I don’t.”

  “Cas, I understand why you’re angry.”

  “Oh, goody. Fortunately, I do, too, so you don’t have to explain it to me.”

  “I’m not—God. Cas. I’m not trying to be condescending.”

  “Well, you suck at it. Are you sure you’re really a psychic?”

  We sat in the desert together. I stared at the freeway, my eyes unfocused, the headlights zipping through my vision in vectors of light. Simon stared the other way, into the darkness.

  “You know,” he said, and his voice broke. “You’re so … you’re so different. But every once in a while, you say something, and there’s an echo…”

  “I’m not her,” I said harshly. “Don’t ever think I am.”

  His breath hitched. I wasn’t looking, but I thought he might be crying. “This is the only way you’ll let me help?” he said, the words washed with pleading and failure.

  By bargaining with him to break the first principle of his ethical system.

  “Yes,” I said. “Take it or leave it.”

  “What about Rio?” he asked. “He … he can kill me. He might, for this.”

  “Then I’ll help you disappear.”

  “What we need to do, Cas—it’s not an instantaneous thing. I’m going to have to keep … seeing you. Making sure.”

  Do you realize how complicated the human brain is? Of course it’s taking months to get her stable!

  How many more months?

  I closed my eyes. “Then I’ll disappear with you, if necessary.”

  The cars whizzed by. A light breeze blew against my skin.

  “You’re letting me save you only if I do what you want,” Simon said. “That’s obscene, Cas, you know that?”

  I knew it.

  “Hey, you made me this way,” I said. “You’ve only yourself to blame.”

  He took a shuddering breath.

  “Will you do it?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “God forgive me.”

  I’d won. He’d agreed.

  I’d won.

  If I’d believed in a god, I would have been asking forgiveness, too.

  thirty-four

  I ARRIVED at the radio station with Simon just after seven. The sun had risen as we drove back into the city, the morning cool and breezy before rush hour and heat. I kept an eye out for Rio, just in case he’d guessed this part of our plan, but caught no sign of him. Likely he was surveilling the people he’d set against each other, expecting us to try to talk to them directly.

  Simon and I barely spoke on the way back. I’d explained what I needed from him, and he had nodded. That had been the extent of our communication.

  McCabe met us as jovially as he had in the middle of the night, only clean-shaven now and in fresh clothes. He introduced himself to Simon, ignoring me, and ushered him into a back room to “interview” him. I clearly wasn’t invited.

  I slumped onto a chair in the hallway. I had to trust Simon would do what I asked. As long as he radiated friendliness and confidence at McCabe, I had no doubt we’d be fine. And then we’d get on the radio and calm Los Angeles, I would reverse the brain entrainment, and Simon would go in with a melon baller and scrape out my brain.

  Arthur sat down next to me. “I guess you convinced him.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You okay?”

  Somehow it crushed me, that Arthur was killing himself over what we’d done and still had energy to ask about me. He knew what this was costing me.

  I stood abruptly. “I gotta hit the head.”

  When I came back, McCabe was showing Simon around the glass-walled on-air booth, pointing to a seat and headphones and giving instructions. Mama Lorenzo’s security still
lurked, fading into the background despite their weaponry, and some of the radio station’s staff had arrived, moving about their duties while taking quick glances at all the people with guns.

  “Are they vetted?” I asked Arthur, readjusting the sling on the PS90 I was still toting myself.

  “Well as we could on short notice,” he answered. “It’s a skeleton crew; he canceled most of ’em. Only the ones we need.”

  “And where’s their boss?” I asked, waving at the nearest of Mama Lorenzo’s guards.

  “She’s around; I— Oh, there.” Arthur gestured to the side of the studio, where Mama Lorenzo had just appeared. She’d washed up and changed, too—I wondered if she’d gone to a safe house or her men had brought her clothes and toiletries. Arthur probably would have insisted on the latter, just to make sure she wasn’t targeted and followed back here.

  Mama Lorenzo swept over and started talking to Simon. I couldn’t hear what they said from here, but she was clearly grilling him. His face was tight, but he responded to all of her questions quietly and evenly.

  Apparently satisfied, she nodded to him and McCabe and then came out to greet us.

  “You are a resourceful woman, Miss Russell, finding a man with his leverage.”

  I shrugged uncomfortably. “That’s what they tell me.”

  “We shall talk more when this is over,” she said. “Your discretion is understandable, but there is one name I will have.”

  The name of the person who’d killed Malcolm.

  “I don’t—I’m not sure I know it,” I floundered. “I mean, I know who it’s not, but—”

  “If not, then you suspect,” Mama Lorenzo said. “You know how it ties to the situation as a whole. I will have that information.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Right. After this is over.” I’d think of something.

  Mama Lorenzo gave me a nod so sharp it was almost a salute and stepped over to station herself watching the booth.

  I checked my watch. It was twelve minutes to eight.

  I sidled up to watch the on-air booth, too, on the other side from Mama Lorenzo. Simon finished talking to McCabe and came out while the host made the rest of his preparations, which apparently involved him consulting notecards and talking to himself a lot under his breath with very grand gestures.