Critical Point

by S. L. Huang

  “Everything’s great!” A new and almost reckless energy was flooding into me. I knew exactly what I could do to break through and get us just what we needed. “Simon was talking to Oscar forever, right? He probably picked up some things he’s not telling us because he judged it ‘immoral’ that he knows them. Well, that’s not good enough anymore. For once in his life, I’m going to make him use his telepathy for us.”

  It was fantastically amusing watching Checker’s face as it dawned on him what I was about to try.

  Rio would be at Diego’s house soon to protect the rest of them. And I’d be on the trail of D.J. and whoever else was behind all this, Halberd or Pithica or whatever shadowy villains wanted to use them to blow the whole country up so they could build their own better version on top of it. All it would take was turning the tables on one morally dubious mind-leaking psychic.

  If Checker called any objections after me, I didn’t hear them.

  My face bent into a feral grin as I slipped out onto the midnight streets and then tore away from the Rosales house. We could get the information to break through this stalemate and rout all our enemies. I would see it happen. And if we could take D.J. down with a one-two punch, then maybe, just maybe, I could take a breath and find a way to get through to Coach.

  Of course, Rio and Simon would most emphatically not be on board with this plan. But it served Simon right for everything he had done to me that morning, because I was going to do the same fucking thing back to him. And as for Rio …

  Well. Faking remorse was a lot easier than asking permission.

  twenty-six

  WHEN I busted into the apartment, Simon lurched up from the bed. I caught a wash of panic that sent me scrambling for the door before he saw it was me.

  “Cassandra—Cas! I’m sorry—”

  His emotions whipped me around so fast, I reeled. I no longer wanted to run; I wanted to stay and sit with him, comfort him until he felt better …

  I beat at the urge with an effort.

  “Cas, I’m still not—you have to go. Why are you here?”

  No point in hiding, not when Simon had no control anyway. I thought about it loud and clear.

  “What? No!” he cried, and tried to bolt.

  Before he could realize what I was doing and think at me to stop it, I slammed the door and kicked the key out underneath it. This door locked from both sides—I’d still be able to break out, but it would take more effort. Hopefully enough that Simon’s leaking brain wouldn’t force me to do it.

  “I’m trying not to force you to do anything!” He sounded panicked. But at least I didn’t have a strong urge to break the door down. Yet.

  He did try for the window. I did my best to get in front of him, but he didn’t want me to, and I started doubting it really was a good idea to try to push him into answering my questions about Oscar anyway. I sat down hard on the bed while he tried and failed to get the window to open.

  “We’re six stories up in this place, anyway,” I pointed out. “Are you really going to commit suicide to avoid me?”

  No, he wasn’t.

  “Hey, this is super convenient,” I said.

  “Cas, please. Don’t.” His eyes darted around like a cornered animal’s. Guilt and sympathy washed through me. How could I be so cruel as to force him to do the one thing he tried so hard to avoid?

  How could I do the same thing to him that I despised his ability to do to others?

  “I’m not reading your mind.” Even as I said it, Simon’s certainty on the matter convinced me I was wrong. This was the same thing as mind reading, involuntarily, forcefully. And I would be committing this crime against him, the same crime I would have wrung his neck for deliberately doing to me.

  “You did do it to me,” I said. “Oh, wait, you didn’t just read my mind. You fucking erased it.”

  He buried his face in his hands, and his grief flooded me with such force, I stopped breathing.

  I saw through his eyes. Saw myself. Was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the connection he felt … for me. Or her. Valarmathi.

  Saw him reaching for her, his vision blurring with tears, her frantic begging tearing apart his soul until he had nothing left.

  It had killed him to save her. He almost couldn’t bear it, still, every time he remembered, every time he saw me. But the one thing he truly could not have borne was burying her.

  “We’ve been through this,” I gritted out. “You’re incredibly self-involved with regard to erasing me, I get it.” I found the kernel of my anger. It helped me struggle back against him.

  He turned to the wall, pressed against it as if he could disappear through it. “I can’t help what I feel.”

  “Then maybe you should do some work on yourself, shouldn’t you? Now. Let’s think about Oscar.”

  He tried not to. But I flashed on him talking to the guy, carefully, gently, drawing out voluntary admissions in that Australian accent. He asked where, who, how. Oscar’s face betrayed images he hadn’t put into words: a barn, a ranch house, more of the do—

  I fell off the bed.

  “Cas!” Simon rushed to me. “Cas, remember, you can move outside the fear. Talk to me, Cas.”

  Maybe it was all his unfiltered reassurances and worry pushing at me in person, but leaving the panic behind was easier this time. “You saw the dogs,” I gasped. “The rest of them. He—what, he takes care of them? Feeds them?”

  Jesus, how many were there? And had D.J. made more people like them—like Coach?

  More flashes from Oscar. It jarred us both. The dogs snapped and snarled, and this time, I saw glimpses of Coach too, in the same place, a chaotic tangle of mindless fright. Simon’s hand on my shoulder gripped me so hard, it went painful.

  “You’re affected by them too?” I said.

  “I have to—like with Oscar, I have to convince myself out of it. I don’t know if in person…”

  “Well, we’re going to find out,” I said.

  “What? No, Cas, that’s not a—you shouldn’t—I won’t—”

  He was right. It wasn’t a good plan. I struggled against the certainty, but fortunately, I could set the battle aside for a moment while I concentrated on asking more about Oscar. Simon didn’t want me to, which made it terribly hard even to order my thoughts enough to ask anything else, but since he was thinking about not wanting me to ask, he was necessarily thinking about Oscar anyway, no matter how hard he tried not to.

  “Ha,” I gasped. “Again, convenient!”

  I was immediately ashamed for mocking him. The poor guy had a head injury, and I was using it to read his mind.

  But as much as Simon’s imposed guilt made me slump in mortification, the thoughts he was trying not to have about what he’d accidentally gleaned from Oscar washed through my consciousness as well. The ranch. How long it took the man to slog there from Los Angeles. The stars wheeling above. The line of mountains on the horizon.

  How it felt, going there—everything was always wrong these days, but here was worse, here was always such a fog, high, high as a kite, the drugs, the drugs she said would let him be near, and they did. The dogs wouldn’t attack him anyway; they didn’t see him; nobody saw him; nobody saw nobody saw nobody saw alone alone alone—

  “Ow!” I cried, grabbing at my head.

  Simon had smashed his own into the wall.

  He staggered, blind with the pain. All thoughts of Oscar had fled.

  I hadn’t seen D.J. or anyone else. But I had enough. It had to be enough.

  I pressed a groaning Simon onto the bed a lot more gently than I ordinarily would have and resisted the urge to sit ministering to him. I did check his vitals and the dressing on his bandages. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t in immediate danger, and his own head injury was muddling through my consciousness so clearly, I thought I could tell how bad the concussion actually was.

  Huh.

  I was also keenly disappointed in myself.

  Or he was. In me.

  “Sorr
y,” I said, not sure whether I meant it this time.

  I did sit with him for a few minutes after that. He needed rest; his thoughts eventually started to become more disorganized as he drifted, and I managed to rouse myself to go to the computer Rio had left. I opened a chat session with Checker.

  Is Rio there? I asked.

  Checker’s reply came back immediately: cas!

  And one second later: he’s been trying 2 reach u

  After another second: how did it go? r u ok?

  I made sure Rio wasn’t watching over his shoulder and then explained what I’d seen. Can you help me pinpoint this place? I asked.

  We put our brains together. I gathered Rio was not happy—at least, if Checker’s i think he might be furious at u but its rly hard to tell w him and i’m not putting my neck on that block sry was anything to go by. But Rio had at least done what I predicted and stayed at the Rosales house to ensure the family wouldn’t go unprotected just because I decided to do something foolhardy.

  Foolhardy and unethical.

  With Checker’s help, forty minutes later, we’d pinpointed the ranch in Oscar’s memories. Time to reach it gave us a radius from the city, and I’d been able to estimate the distance to the mountains and also to a line of light that had indicated a highway. A blurred memory of the sky showed the angle to the North Star, so we had approximate latitude.

  And once we were down to scanning satellite imagery, the three-dimensional shapes of the buildings easily converted to a two-dimensional bird’s-eye in my head, and there was the ranch.

  Excellent, I wrote to Checker. We found where the dogs are kept. Or bred. Or … something.

  and whats yr plan??? u aren’t going r u???

  Of course I am, I typed back.

  ???!!!

  Checker’s chat responses didn’t always get the benefit of words.

  Simon’s going too, I said. Though he didn’t know it yet. If we run into anything mind-warping, he’ll just have to talk both of us down.

  V BAD IDEA CAS

  Bombers and killers coming after us and a lot of other people, I reminded him. Plus possibly psychics behind it all. Do you have a better plan? If not, bye.

  And I shut the laptop. A text popped up on my phone, but it was only more punctuation marks.

  But this was good. This was perfect. This was a risk I could take, a good risk, the right risk. One I could win. And be the person who shielded everyone else.

  Simon groaned.

  “Wakey wakey,” I said. “How’s the head? Are you still out of control? Because if so, I’ll wait. We’re going on a field trip.”

  Usually Simon’s unintentional telepathy didn’t come with words attached, but this time I caught the virulent Fuck you, Cas.

  That was uncharacteristic of him. He must be very, very mad at me.

  twenty-seven

  HAVING SOME backup who wasn’t Simon along might have been nice, especially given his head wound. But I was sure Rio was still pissed, plus I needed him where he was.

  I thought about calling Pilar. But a twinge of risk assessment reminded me how many probabilities here were still question marks. Checker wasn’t out of line in objecting—this was dangerous, and impulsive, and I didn’t know what we’d find. But dangerous and impulsive were where I lived. And Pilar could be one of the people I did it to protect.

  That was the way things should be.

  Besides, bringing Pilar might have strained Simon’s focus too far. I was already a bit worried about that with only two of us. Simon had tried to refuse to go at first—but after a little more rest, he’d wrestled back enough of his control that his refusal didn’t have any more weight than making me second-guess myself. I pushed it away and told him that if he wasn’t coming, I’d be going in alone. As whacked as it was that he felt so strongly about not seeing me hurt—I’m not her, I’m not her, I’m not fucking her—the leverage was certainly handy.

  “Screw you, Cas,” Simon said unhappily, aloud this time.

  But he agreed—unwillingly, unenthusiastically, warily, but he came—and we managed to head off in the wee hours of the morning. The perfect time for breaking and entering. I drove, again having appropriated Pilar’s car, and Simon hunched in the passenger seat.

  It was a clear night, and the stars imprinted on me through the windshield like they had in Oscar’s memories, leaving the taste of his mind in my mouth.

  “That’s what you get for taking someone’s thoughts by force,” muttered Simon.

  He was one to talk. “I think it’s great that when you don’t read people, you still happen to know so much about them.”

  “I try to respect people’s secrets.”

  I snorted. “Oh, hey, I bet you knew too, didn’t you?”

  “Knew what?”

  “Don’t give me that.”

  Simon cleared his throat. “I didn’t—he didn’t—Arthur never told me. I’ve never met his family. But I couldn’t not know, it’s too important to him. I could see it every time he—”

  “Thought so.” It was almost funny. Checker knew, Pilar knew, Rio knew, Simon knew—the only person Arthur had prevented from knowing about his family by not telling me was me.

  At least I knew where I stood. It was sort of freeing.

  Simon heaved a sigh. “What are you planning to do when we get there?”

  “Look for clues.” I wasn’t sure whether to expect that we’d actually run into Oscar or Coach—or D.J.—at the ranch. I’d had the sense in Oscar’s memories that he was going to the place only to take care of the animals. I’d felt his desolation.

  His loneliness.

  I shivered. As angry and uncomfortable as my current friendships were, going through life with nobody ever knowing I existed …

  “Cas,” said Simon. “I don’t like what you did to me just now.”

  “Here are some tats to go with those tits. Do you even know how many hours you kept me in your thrall yesterday morning?”

  He sucked in a breath. “You know I didn’t mean to. Maybe I could have done better, but … God, Cas, you meant to do this. You—you planned it. It was violent and it was wrong and you did it on purpose.”

  His voice was shaking, low and intense, and it only renewed my disgust for him. After how he had contorted and violated my entire life—the gall of it. “Say those words back to yourself.”

  “What I did to you years ago was awful. Maybe unforgiveable. I’m not denying it. But does that mean—”

  “Yes,” I said.

  He stared out the window.

  “Are you going to quote some fun little aphorism here?” I said. “Something like two wrongs not making a right, or an eye for an eye making the whole world blind?”

  “No,” he said. “You weren’t doing it for revenge. It might have been better if you were.”

  I had a chilling premonition of how he was going to finish.

  “If you had been trying to get back at me, that would be one thing, but … you were doing it because you had an opportunity, and because … because I’m not a human being to you. Don’t try to deny it,” he added hollowly. “I could see it.”

  I swallowed. Checker’s words from the car came back to me, about only being able to take clever advantage of people when one didn’t think of them as fully, equally human.

  “Maybe you handed in that card when you killed me,” I said.

  “Maybe.” He dipped his head, interlacing his fingers in his lap. “I’m not asking you to forgive me, Cas. I wouldn’t. But I don’t think it means I can’t tell you—this was wrong. This was really, really wrong, and I’m asking you, please—please don’t do it again.”

  I shrugged uncomfortably. “Hey, look. We’re here.”

  I flicked off the car headlights and nosed up outside the lane into the ranch. An old, creaking sign with illegible writing swung over the gate.

  And lights were on down in the buildings. We could see them from the main road.

  Simon saw it too. “Someone’s here,�
�� he said. “Cas, are you sure about this?”

  Someone here … I didn’t know whether to consider that a stroke of good fortune or bad. Could it be D.J.? I hoped so; I could level him right now. Oscar? We’d take him back with Simon’s help. Coach?

  Having Simon with me at least gave us the best odds possible.

  And if we encountered anyone from Pithica, as Rio suspected?

  Well, Simon would just have to step up to that too. This was too good an opportunity to waste. Besides, one of the things I hated, hated about Pithica’s people was the way they made me feel helpless. Like I couldn’t make any move if they might be there to counter me … it made me want to boil into a hurricane of rage, show them I could be a goddamn threat. I wasn’t going to become a mewling coward around them. I had Simon, and I could place my bets on him and take a chance for a win.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m sure.”

  I checked my weapons—my Colt and the Vector I still had from the venture to rescue Arthur. Then I backed up the car so it wouldn’t be visible to anyone peeling out of the ranch, and we got out.

  “If we run into any of Teplova’s people, or the dogs, your job is to start talking very fast,” I said. “If we run into Dawna or someone like her, you’ve got the lead. Otherwise, don’t distract me.”

  “Cas, I can’t guarantee I’m going to be … strong enough. Especially if—”

  “We’ll try not to face anyone directly,” I conceded. “But you’re the only telepath we’ve got, and I’m not passing on a shot like this.”

  I broke into a jog, and he swallowed any other doubtful protests to hurry after me.

  The layout here was burned into my brain from Oscar’s memories. We were coming in at an angle to the lane, and we would hit the barn and outbuildings before the ranch house itself. Right now, the buildings were only shapes in the dark, but lights shone from between the barn and the ranch house—outside halogens of some sort. A large cube truck partially blocked our view of what the activity was.

  But as we got closer, shouts and barks echoed through the night.

  Barking. And growling.

  My skin crawled, already anticipating the rabid fear.