by S. L. Huang
“Stop trying to make me feel better,” I said.
“Don’t be so selfish.” Pilar spoke more sharply than I was used to hearing from her. “We’re trying to feel better, too. Did you know the past month was the first time this whole school year my brother stopped getting beat up? He was smiling, his grades skyrocketed, he tried out for the debate team … yesterday he came home with a cut lip again and wouldn’t talk about it. I don’t know, Cas. Even after everything, I think maybe we were doing a good thing.” She sniffed. “Until, you know … everything else.”
“Tell that to kids like Katrina,” I said. Justin had stopped by to see Arthur. Katrina was using again, and she’d dropped off the grid. Arthur was devastated.
I’d done that to her. My machines, which had gone in and knocked her brain around without her consent.
“Not to sound callous, but there are lots of kids like Katrina. Cas, wait, hear me out,” Checker said, when I tried to growl back at him. “I know this is going to sound really fucked up, but speaking strictly numerically … it looks like you helped more of them than you hurt. And it could stick—I don’t have enough data to give an accurate prediction. Now don’t get me wrong, I still think this was a horrible idea from the beginning, but there’s also no denying it took out a good chunk of Los Angeles’s worst criminal element—so only castigate yourself where you deserve it.”
There were enough legitimate reasons. He was too tactful to remind me.
“I guess it’s an argument for the more traditional methods of fighting crime,” Checker added. “Low-impact superheroics, and all. Saving people one at a time.”
“That would be good,” Pilar said. “You save one person a night, that’s three hundred sixty-five a year, right?”
“Three hundred and sixty-five?” I tried to keep from yelling. “That’s nothing!”
They didn’t get it. Didn’t get how big the human population was. What Pithica had been doing had been worldwide—a nudge here and a tuck there that had been changing people’s lives globally, millions upon millions.
The upper limit of human perception was a ratio of one to seven. If two objects differed by more than a factor of seven, people ceased to be able to compare them effectively: one was “small” and one was “big,” and that was it. Similarly, most humans were bad at distinguishing any large orders of magnitude.
But I wasn’t.
A few hundred people was a handful. An order of magnitude not even comparable to what we’d stripped from the world when we’d fought Pithica. And the change we had wrought here in LA was barely a feather’s weight more.
“You guys aren’t seeing scale,” I said tiredly. “You’re trying to convince me we made a positive overall difference, but compared to the global population, what we did here is … it’s nonexistent. Our actions were mathematically trivial.”
The world, as a whole, was just as it had been.
Disintegrating. Collapsing. Because of what we’d done to Pithica.
“Maybe this is as it should be, then,” Checker said. “Humanity muddles along, and everyone makes the best of it they can in a chaos of messy, non-optimal Nash equilibria.”
“No.”
“What do you mean?” Checker asked.
“No. I refuse to accept that,” I said. “I refuse to accept that the only two options are either a society spiraling into black holes of entropy or one in which people are murdered and brainwashed to meet the requirements of some self-appointed master puppeteers. There’s a continuum. There has to be. To say it’s one or the other is—it’s a false choice. Just because this didn’t work isn’t proof nothing else will.”
“Cas,” Pilar said softly, “we tried this, and it went bad. Don’t you think that’s a sign?”
“I don’t believe in signs,” I answered.
I didn’t say the other thing I was thinking—that I refused to accept we weren’t powerful enough. Because Checker was right, in what he always said half jokingly: between me, and Rio, and—God help me—Simon, we had a terrifying level of both human and superhuman resources.
I just had to puzzle out a way to use them. One that did things the right way.
Whatever that was.
And from what Simon had said—or, well, cagily hinted at—maybe there were more like me. Like us. Pithica had psychics other than Dawna, and Simon was proof more existed outside their influence. If there were other people like me out there …
Well. I’d probably have to either kill them or recruit them.
Dawna had an army. Maybe it was time I found one, too.
* * *
THE MORNING my week’s grace period with Simon expired, I sat with Arthur on a bench off one of LA’s more deserted hiking trails. The old stone seat had been placed where the trail curved up against the lip of a spectacular bluff, and the day was unusually clear for Los Angeles. We could see all the way to San Pedro and the ocean, with the city spread out below us in between.
I drew my knees up in front of me, staring off into the indigo line where the sky met the sea, where my eyeline grazed the curvature of the earth in a graceful tangent.
Silent idleness without the blur of alcohol wasn’t usually kind to me. But I wanted this, today, and so far my brain had let me have it.
Perhaps the dread kept everything else at bay—the yawning shadow of the unknown, whispering this might be the end.
My end.
“I don’t get scared,” I said to the endless blue. “Not easily. Even when I should.”
Arthur waited, listening.
“This scares me,” I said. “A lot. More than … more than anything I can remember.” Which was only about five years’ worth of fears. But still.
“You know being scared is okay, right?” Arthur said. “It’s not a weakness.”
“That depends on your definition of weakness.”
“Guess that’s so.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes.
“Scares us, too,” Arthur said.
I frowned. “What does?”
“That we’re gonna lose you,” he said. “That this Simon fellow isn’t on the level. That … that he’s gonna hurt you.”
I mulled that over for a while. I was even less used to people being afraid for me than I was familiar with being afraid myself.
“Checker called him,” Arthur added.
“He did?” Now that I officially had Simon’s contact information, I’d made sure everyone else had it, too. Just in case I … unexpectedly worsened again. “What for?”
Arthur chuckled. “To threaten him.”
“Checker threatened somebody?” My feet thumped down off the bench in shock. “Electronically?”
“Nope. Physically. Think he meant it, too.”
“That’s not a— It doesn’t even—” I’d never seen Checker hit anyone, ever, and he flat-out refused to learn to fire a gun. It wasn’t that he was a pacifist; he was just—not violent. “I don’t need people trying to protect me like they know what’s best,” I grumped. That was what had started this whole thing in the first place, wasn’t it?
“’Course you don’t,” Arthur said.
Checker had threatened somebody. For me.
“It’s a nice thought, I suppose,” I said.
Arthur chuckled again. “If he overstepped, you let him know. But he meant well.” He sobered. “Speaking of … you want me there? Say the word. We are supposed to be watching each other’s brain meats, you know.”
“Thanks, but that’s okay,” I said. “Rio’s coming. He…” Rio had called me the day before from wherever he was convalescing, sounding perfectly normal. The gist of the conversation was that he was staying in LA for a while.
Because of me.
He’d offered to sit in with Simon and me, and I’d said yes, under no uncertain terms. But I had the sneaking suspicion at least half the reason he was staying was to make sure I went in the first place, and kept going. Simon had implied this would be a lengthy process.
Possibly an infinite one, if I kept falling back toward remembering every time I stopped seeing him.
Infinity doesn’t exist, sang Valarmathi. There’s always an end.
“When are you meeting them?” Arthur asked.
I checked my watch. “Twenty minutes ago.”
He grinned, and we sat for a while longer, soaking in the sky.
* * *
TWO HOURS later, I knocked on a door in Northridge. Rio opened it almost immediately, in a new tan duster, identical to his old one except no bullet holes. He was still favoring his right side slightly, but I doubted it was visible to those whose senses didn’t drop out the even functions of symmetry on a regular basis.
“Cas,” he said. “Come in.”
Simon looked up from where he sat in an upholstered chair. He’d been reading a book while he waited, relaxed.
The fear and loathing swelled in my throat, clawing at me remarkably like panic. I tried to swallow it back. Wistful regret flickered across Simon’s face as he read my expression, but for once he didn’t say anything.
Rio walked over like nothing was awkward at all and pulled up a chair himself. I tried to mirror him. If nothing else, I still trusted Rio.
And I sat straight, with more bravado than I felt, even if a telepath could see right through it.
“I’m here,” I said to Simon. “So. What happens now?”
acknowledgments
IT’S EASY TO MISTAKE writing for a solitary endeavor, but I have never been more grateful for my professional team, the people at my agency and publisher who made this book and this journey a reality. I continue to be terrifically grateful for my agent, Russell Galen, without whom my career would look nothing like it does today—and without whom I would not have my truly fabulous team at Tor. That team is led by my editor, Diana Gill, who brought such a perspicacious eye to this book, helping me push the manuscript until it was punching far above its weight class. I couldn’t be happier with the result, nor more thrilled with how thoroughly Diana champions the whole series. And the support I’ve received from the rest of the Tor crew—my brilliant cover artist, Jamie Stafford-Hill; the incredible Kristin Temple; and the whole team of publicists, production editors, copy editors, proofreaders, editorial assistants, and more—has been nothing short of amazing.
In my day-to-day writing life, my sister continues to be my first and greatest support. From the earliest brainstorming sessions to late-night phone calls when I’m stuck on an edit, and everything in between … writing without you would be possible, but so much more difficult and lonely, and I am so very grateful to have you.
So much gratitude also to the invaluable critiquers who helped me shape this book into what it is: Maddox Hahn, Kevan O’Meara, Jesse Sutanto, Layla Lawlor, and Tilly Latimer. And another huge round of appreciation for the people who jumped in during a very short time line to give me feedback during rewrites: MV Melcer, Lani Frank, Debra Jess, Aidan Doyle, and Gwen Phua. I’m unaccountably lucky to know so many generous, talented writers—thank you all so much.
Special thanks to Kevan O’Meara and Sam Schinke for their sharp knowledge and suggestions on baseband hacking for cellular phones—anything I got right is thanks to you; any mistakes are my own. And a big shout-out to Effie Seiberg for holding my hand on this one during a time I really needed it.
Finally, this book has had an evolving journey before it landed at Tor, and I still feel the warmest gratitude for the people who helped me make its previous incarnation a reality, including Najla Qamber, Anna Genoese, and David Wilson. You all rock.
But these acknowledgments wouldn’t be complete without mentioning all the other people in my writing communities and in my life who are so vital to me. My friends and family, as always, are my bedrock, and I don’t know what I’d do without you. Similarly, I find I am so grateful for all my various writing spaces—where I’ve met some of the people who’ve become closest to me—and where, both online and in person, I’ve found the most incredible support and community.
Thank you all.
ALSO BY S. L. HUANG
Zero Sum Game
about the author
S. L. HUANG has a math degree from MIT and is a weapons expert and professional stuntwoman who has worked in Hollywood on Battlestar Galactica and a number of other productions. The author of Zero Sum Game, Huang has published short fiction in Strange Horizons, Nature, Daily Science Fiction, and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016.
Visit her online at Website: www.slhuang.com You can sign up for email updates here.
Twitter: @sl_huang
Thank you for buying this
Tom Doherty Associates ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Acknowledgments
Also by S. L. Huang
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
NULL SET
Copyright © 2019 by S. L. Huang
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Jamie Stafford-Hill Cover photographs by Nishchal Joshi / Shutterstock.com
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
120 Broadway
New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-18030-8 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-18031-5 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250180315
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: July 2019
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Sev
en
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Acknowledgments
Also by S. L. Huang
About the Author
Newsletter Sign-up
Copyright
