Critical Point

by S. L. Huang

  “I wouldn’t have thought even he would … but the way he’s been building people now, that all fits in too,” Checker said. “If he’s that angry, he must think he can make his own country out of the ashes or something. Complete with all these altered people who can keep him in control…”

  “This supports my suspicions that a more complicated manipulation is present here,” Rio put in. “Regardless of whether this explosives expert you have been tracking is responsible for most of it.”

  No. I didn’t want to believe that. This was bad enough if it was only headed by D.J. on a power kick, using the doctor’s Halberd-granted skills for his own ends. Creating an army out of either willing allies or coerced victims, a custom-designed arsenal of undeniable people …

  “You still think Pithica might be involved,” I said slowly to Rio. “You think Dawna’s somewhere in this pulling all these puppet strings.”

  “I believe we must proceed with caution. I have been following up multiple avenues to support or repudiate their involvement. Simon has a severe concussion and is suffering short-term memory loss, but we are also attempting to construct a more whole picture of who Oscar was and whom he might have been connected to.”

  I stopped myself from saying who? just in time not to feel ridiculous. Oscar. Who was missing, but before that he had talked to Simon for a long time.

  “If this is them, what do they want?” Pilar asked nervously. “And why would they have taken Arthur and then let him go?”

  “So they can still claim they’re holding up their end of their little détente with us?” I guessed. “Or maybe they wanted to feed him false intel and have us believe it. Or maybe they wanted us to stop looking for him. Or they might be planning on us realizing they let him go and predicting what we’ll do next now—with them it’s Russian nesting dolls all the way down.”

  “Cas,” Rio said. “Be careful whom you involve in further investigation. You know Pithica’s methods.”

  “Right.” Fortunately, most everyone had been in the same vicinity with me since we’d gotten Arthur back, which meant they probably weren’t compromised by telepathic brainwashing. Unless Pithica had been playing an even longer game than we thought …

  This was why I fucking hated psychics.

  “What is our next move?” Checker asked. “I can work the Oscar angle too, from a distance. What else?”

  “There has been an incident at the police station we threatened last night,” Rio said. “Cas, I believe it to be connected to the man you used to know.”

  Oh, God.

  Hey, I think you broke a world record, said the Coach in my memory, laughing. Too bad we can never tell anyone.

  I pushed my head against my hands.

  “Cas?” Checker said.

  He had every right to be angry with me. I’d yelled at him and Arthur from the mount of my self-righteousness for not telling me anything, and then I had done the same thing right back at them. It didn’t quite hit me until that moment how much I’d been pushing off any discussion of how any of this intersected with my past, shoving it down the line from the very first time I’d suspected it at the wellness center and lied to Pilar. I’d told myself I was sharing the necessary bits, but other than Rio, I’d only let go the barest minimum. Halberd. An objective history for a talented doctor. Nothing to do with me.

  Even though it had everything to do with me.

  But Checker didn’t sound angry. He sounded worried.

  “What happened?” I asked Rio thickly.

  “News stories are relaying it as a massacre, although I think that term is incorrect. More like a notably tightly grouped serial killing.”

  Checker pulled a laptop toward him and hit a few keys. “Oh, geez,” he said, going pale. “This has to do with us?”

  “What is it?” Pilar asked. Checker pushed the screen so that she and I could both see.

  The images seared themselves into my retinas. Body after body. Mangled against the pavement, limbs too acute, skulls flattened beyond the volume necessary to hold a human brain.

  Most of them in well-creased navy-blue uniforms.

  “Officer Massacre,” read the headlines. “Twelve Police Killed in the Streets Surrounding Valley Bureau Station After Bomb Threat Prompts Evacuation.”

  Just like the driver in the street. After he’d promised to help me.

  Coach had seen me setting that bomb. Somewhere in his mind, he thought I wanted them all dead.

  So he’d killed them.

  Because of me.

  This was why the cops at the other station had been so spooked. A monster in the shadows targeting them, picking them off one by one all morning while I’d been in with Simon. I remembered how strenuously I’d double-checked everything when I’d set the damn bomb, making extra sure no one would be hurt by it.

  Twelve people. Dead.

  What if he didn’t stop there? What the hell was he going to do next?

  “Cas,” Checker said. He touched my arm. “You know who did this?”

  “He was my friend,” I said to the tabletop. “D.J. made him like the dogs. And now he…” I couldn’t finish.

  “He was … your friend?” Pilar repeated hesitantly.

  “Not really mine, I guess. From before. But I remember…” I cleared my throat. “I don’t remember a lot. But enough. I remember that he was important. To me.”

  “The current hypothesis is that he was likewise a friend of the doctor calling herself Eva Teplova,” Rio said blandly. “And as such, a victim of experimentation once she was subjugated. It may not have taken long after that for people’s reactions to him to drive him into such an altered state. Cas, I reiterate my opinion that it may not be possible to rescue him, and unraveling more of your connection to him would compromise you in any case. A better approach would be to see if he can lead you to his master.”

  I tried to answer, to say something about how of course that was all logical, or maybe argue that I still wanted to try for some miracle cure. Or to shout at Rio, because murdering twelve unoffending people in cold blood might just be an average Sunday for him, but it was about six bridges too far for me, and I didn’t want to be reminded that I accepted him doing it either, and was there so little moral span between me and an act like this that Rio expected me not to react to it?

  “We can try to track this dude down,” Checker said to the phone. “We’ll be in touch.” He reached over and hung it up. Then took one of my hands and grasped it. “Hey. Cas. We’re here for you, all right? Tell us what you want us to do.”

  Only hours ago, I’d railed at Checker in the car for wanting to be sympathetic to his own old friend. And now here he was, taking my hand and offering his help.

  I wanted to save Coach. I also wanted to put a bullet in D.J.’s head while I did it.

  Maybe that made me every kind of hypocrite.

  “I don’t know if he’s even affiliated with D.J. anymore,” I murmured. “Or if he just went off on his own.” To try to please me.

  “We still might get something by looking,” Pilar said. “If D.J. made him…” She gulped. “That’s as bad as setting a bomb in a place already. Like, making someone who sparks that kind of fear everywhere he goes, and now killing—it’s like it’s made to terrify folks.”

  “Oh, God.” Checker’s head dropped, and he murmured the words to the table. “It’s a perfect, classic means of political repression. Fearmongering 101. The first step to oppressing people is to make them scared—then you don’t even have to take over. They invite you in.”

  It fit. It all fit.

  If that was the case … maybe D.J. hadn’t even intended to be able to control Coach. Just counted on him to twist people to panic, and if he eventually became the monster he’d been cast as, then that was an anarchic bonus.

  I pushed up from my chair and grabbed back my phone. “I need to use the bathroom.”

  They let me go. I slipped around the corner and out into the hall only to run straight into a pajama-cl
ad Tabitha.

  “Jesus! Don’t do that to me.” I shoved my Colt back into my belt from where I’d drawn it halfway out, my nerves ping-ponging back from adrenaline.

  Tabitha straightened from where she’d clearly been eavesdropping, looking slightly abashed. “Sorry.”

  “You heard all that, huh?” I said.

  “Yeah. But it’s okay. I’m not scared.”

  “You should be,” I said.

  I made to move past her, but she kept staring at me, and hopped a little from one foot to the other.

  “Can I help you with something?” I asked.

  “You are really cool,” she blurted.

  Of anything I would have expected her to say, that ranked about dead fucking last. “I’m what?”

  Tabitha hunched her shoulders. “I really admire you. You’re so—fearless. I want to be like that.”

  God help me, she thought I was a role model.

  “Kid, I don’t think your dad would be—” I tried.

  “Papá is too overprotective! He thinks I’m going to—”

  “I was talking about Arthur.”

  “Oh.” She thought on that long enough for me to start down the hallway, but then came and dogged my heels. “Dad does tell me all the time how dangerous his work is. Like, so many times. But I don’t care. I think I might want to be a private investigator too. And he does say I have good instincts about people.”

  If she thought I was cool, I heartily disagreed with that assessment.

  “Bully for you,” I said.

  She ran around to my other side so she could face me. “For example. Willow Grace. Something’s not right about her.”

  I’d left the kitchen desperate for a minute alone, and I’d been half a second from snapping at Tabitha hard enough to make her run back to the safety of her true crime books. But that statement gave me pause. She’d said it with defiance, like she was expecting to have to defend it.

  “We wouldn’t have found your dad without her, you know,” I said.

  “I know! I can’t explain it. I keep feeling like I should trust her, but then my gut tells me not to.”

  “Oh, your gut.” Tabitha’s face fell, enough that I regretted the sarcasm despite myself. Christ, I was not in the right state of mind to be coddling a child right now. “Look, kid,” I amended. “You can’t rely on gut feeling, okay? You need evidence.”

  “Dad says we should always listen to our gut,” Tabitha said. “He says it’s our subconscious telling us things.”

  “It is. It’s our subconscious telling us probabilities based on our priors. That’s all. You met Willow when she was aggressively lying to us, so of course your priors make your subconscious distrust her.” The reporter had proven herself since then, though. Of everything I was worried about at the moment, Willow Grace didn’t even make the list.

  “I think it’s more than that.” Tabitha bridled up like she was about to launch into an argument, but she took in my expression and faltered. “You said I need evidence. If I get some, will you look at it?”

  “Sure. Fine,” I said. “Now go away.”

  I needed to get back on a computer myself and look for evidence—real, solid, relevant evidence that would lead us leapfrogging forward and solve every question mark. Instead, I passed the door to the washroom and sank down against the wall in the foyer.

  You’ll never make it, Valarmathi assured me cheerfully. I didn’t.

  What would we be able to find now that we hadn’t when we were so full-throatedly tearing after Arthur? Even with all of Teplova’s files, we’d been hitting dead ends until the lucky break that now seemed no more than a devious setup by someone who could predict our moves too well. That certainly fit Rio’s Pithica hypothesis. Checker might be able to track down Coach now that he knew what to look for, but even if he did …

  The thought of finding more bodies made me want to throw up. Left for me on the street like proud gifts, the way a cat might trot home with the corpse of a small animal as if such a trophy would impress its human keepers. Coach was killing people, thinking it would get me to help him, and even if we found him, I didn’t know how I could get him to stop. Let alone how to communicate that I wanted so badly to be on his side … because the instant I saw him, I’d fly into the same confused panic as everyone else he met.

  I’d probably try to kill him. I didn’t think it unlikely he’d try to kill me back this time.

  There had to be some creative answer. I indulged myself for a moment in wondering if we could pull off some feat of capture that meant we weren’t drawn into his sphere of blackout terror. Or using Simon somehow, once he was better.

  If we didn’t have less than zero time to track down D.J. and protect ourselves. If every hour that passed didn’t mean Coach was out there stalking and mangling another human being. If we had all the luxury and resources to plan how to reach a too-charitable hand after one man.

  Rio would have said something about numerical good. I’d already rejected that in trying to move earth and sky to get back Arthur.

  Hands—reaching for me, through the cracks in my brain, Valarmathi and Coach and a thousand others, each grasping for too many pieces of me …

  My breathing stuttered. I just had to hold out a little longer. People were depending on me.

  “Hey, Cas.”

  Checker had come out of the kitchen. He came over and pushed out of his chair, swinging down to scoot against the wall next to me.

  We sat together for a minute.

  Tiny veins of rawness and insecurity whispered to ask how Checker really felt about me, if, after all this was over, he’d step back. Realize that he no longer had to sit in sympathy with someone like me. Shut me out to protect himself.

  I wanted to make them all safe. But once this was over, once this case had resolved after shattering every boundary they’d erected to keep me at such a careful distance … We couldn’t come back from that. Nothing could go back to how it was, and I didn’t know what decisions they’d all make after we were out of danger, what lines they’d draw when they had space to think about it.

  I wanted to make them all safe, and once I did, I might lose them all.

  “Is it better if Pilar and I do the legwork on this?” Checker asked quietly. “There’s still plenty of Teplova’s data we could put you on.”

  “That’s all dead ends.” And I didn’t want to be cut out of the search for Coach. “It might help if I can remember more. About him or Teplova. I haven’t really—I haven’t pushed it yet.”

  “Will that … hurt you?”

  I shrugged harshly and meant yes. The smallest beginnings of it had made me start to wobble into an unstable orbit; I knew what more would do.

  But some childish piece of me still wanted to prove something by trying. If I couldn’t control whether I still had friends at the end of this, the least I could do was justify to myself that I hadn’t walked away. Part of it was pettiness, a vindication that I was willing to put my life in front of theirs beyond logical reason … even as an ugly truthfulness knew that sort of extremum couldn’t make up for failing a friendship in every other way.

  But another part of it was desperation. Because if I couldn’t at least do this, protecting Arthur and Diego and their family, and Checker and Pilar, and rescuing one man who used to mean something to me … what did that say about me?

  “Do you think—I don’t know if you’d be comfortable with this, but do you think maybe Simon could help you pull things out safely?”

  “Can’t,” I said. “He’s still leaking his brain all over the place…”

  I stopped.

  Simon was leaking his brain all over the place.

  It wasn’t Rio we needed over there after all. How had I not thought of this? I stiffened and yanked out my phone.

  “Cas, what is it?” Checker tried, but I held up a finger to him, punching the numbers to dial.

  “Do you have something new?” Rio asked by way of greeting.

  The impu
lsive anticipation made my thoughts scatter. I should have rehearsed what I was going to say. Especially as I’d never been good at lying to Rio.

  “N—maybe. Actually, change of plans,” I invented rapidly. If Rio cottoned on to what I was thinking, he’d never let me do it in a million years. “I need you to come back to the house. Nobody’s in danger, but we’ve got a … situation you could help with. I think it might lead somewhere.”

  He was instantly on alert. “What did you find?”

  “It’s a little hard to explain,” I hedged. “When can you get here?”

  “Cas,” Rio said slowly. “Did you by any chance look over the Lazarus data?”

  Oh. Shit.

  It was a code question. My lying was making me sound so uncharacteristic that he was trying to figure out if I was suddenly calling under duress.

  I toyed with giving the affirmative response as a cover, since that would easily explain everything. But that also might mean Rio would crash into the house guns blazing, and that was probably more dangerous than I should trifle with.

  “No,” I said. “I’m fine. Everyone’s fine. I’m just—” I thought of a good excuse, and kind of hated myself for using it. “My brain’s not doing great, and things are stressful. I’d talk to … well, you know who, except I can’t right now. I’m sorta barely hanging on—it’s going to be better if you take over follow-up here. Unless you really think you’re close to getting something out of Simon.”

  “I see,” said Rio. “In that case, I shall be with you shortly.”

  Apparently explaining my bad lies with something I would be stressed enough to lie badly about was enough, then.

  Are you sure it was all a lie? Valarmathi asked sweetly, from where she lolled in the back of my head.

  Shut up, I told her, and she laughed.

  Rio was still on the line—I could hear his voice, slightly muffled, talking to Simon. I confirmed with him that he’d be leaving Simon there—he was still too much of a danger to other people, after all—and we hung up.

  I hoped he wouldn’t be too pissed at me when he figured out what I was actually up to.

  “Cas?” Checker caught my arm. “What you just said to Rio—are you really—is everything okay?”