Critical Point

by S. L. Huang

  Checker had gone stone-white. He started coughing like he was choking on his own breath.

  D.J. crowed in delight. “Did you believe me? You’ve gotten so gullible in your old age! Or you just have an ego the size of God’s butt, but we knew that already.”

  I wanted to shake him through the camera. A name, a name was a start, but D.J. clearly knew a lot more. “Why is she out to get us, then?” I demanded. “If it’s not about you two, then what the hell does she want from us?”

  “You? I have no idea. Are you someone important? She’s got some fucktastic shitbrained mission now, thinks the US of A needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt or some shit. Clean slate, she calls it, destroy the establishment and all that, it’s too corrupt and worm-eaten from the inside. She’s gonna try for it too, says things are just too fucked up to solve otherwise.” He didn’t sound particularly bothered.

  What Arthur had said. Targeting people in government.

  “I wonder where she got that idea,” Checker said bitterly.

  “Are you trying to blame me? Charles, I’m hurt. And here she tried to blow me up with my own powder magazine for saying no! I get no love.”

  “So, she’s not working for you,” I put in.

  “Nobody works for me,” D.J. said with distaste. “I’m independent. ’Sides which, I just told you. We had that nice little blowup a while back.”

  “Literally,” I couldn’t help muttering.

  “It was only a few hundred kilos of TNT,” D.J. said. “I tried to shortwick her in return, but it only blew her up a little.” He made a face so serious, it was comical. “She’s a royal fucking nutcase, Charles. You oughta be careful.”

  “I take it she got that from you too,” I snapped before I could think about it. I was willing to bet I was more fucked in the head than either of them, and it wasn’t making me go around kidnapping sixteen-year-old girls.

  But D.J. only giggled. “We did get along, for a while. Every so often, I still poke at her, but I’m really fucking lazy—didn’t know she was going around pretending to be yours truly, though.” He considered us for a moment and seemed to make a decision. “I was just here in your town pestering her, as it happens. A little pick-me-up between jobs, test some new toys, make her mad as a hornet. How funny that you ended up after her too.”

  Not really—Arthur had been after D.J. when he’d stumbled across Fifer’s trail. Everything was finally beginning to fit together.

  Then I connected. “The binary explosive,” I said. “At the wellness center. That was you.”

  “You were there? Delightful!” D.J. threw his hands wide. “First time I’d given that a go. I give it five stars, two thumbs up, and a blowjob.”

  “You were mocking her for the assassination of Teplova.” I remembered thinking how messy that murder had struck me. Not with the terrifying completeness D.J. had rendered on the buildings. Two different bombers, that was why. SLOPPY, the sky writing had said—D.J.’s jeering message for Fifer before he showed her how it was done.

  “We need to know everything you know,” I overrode D.J.’s snickering. “Whoever this Fifer person could be working with, any other information you have.”

  He snorted another laugh. “Fifer? Work with people? Her ass is far too cray for that. And I told you, she thinks she knows best anyway. I pity the dude or dudette who tries to work with her—they’re probably dead.”

  Like Teplova was dead. And Oscar. But then what about Willow Grace…?

  And it hit me.

  Willow Grace.

  Willow Grace.

  Willow Grace, the famous news anchor, whose background was pristine. But Willow Grace, with her perfect features, who had gone under Dr. Teplova’s knife to get them, those perfect features that had differed very slightly from the online footage I’d seen of her. Willow Grace who’d changed her whole life six months ago to seclude herself away, supposedly on a sabbatical from her far more public life.

  Willow Grace … who, as of six months ago, was not Willow Grace at all.

  She was Fifer. An imposter. Taking a famous news anchor’s place, a news anchor who’d had a history of secret surgeries herself, surgeries that could then be copied. The real Willow Grace likely dead and at the bottom of a lake by Fifer’s hand.

  And now Fifer had Tabitha. She had Tabitha.

  “She changed her face,” I said. “She changed her face to be a famous news anchor, so…” She wanted access, access for her bombings … “Checker, find out where Willow Grace has been issued a press pass in the last six months.”

  Checker started typing, fast, his face pale and dazed.

  “She kidnapped Arthur to see what he knew,” I continued, feeling it all out aloud. “To see if he was investigating her plan. Tried to kill me in case I was looking into her too. But then … it turned out Arthur didn’t know anything, not about her, and once she saw that we wouldn’t stop digging until we found him—that’s when she gave him back to us.” We’d known it was too easy. Once we’d flat-out told Willow Grace we’d stop investigating once we found Arthur, she’d directed us practically straight there. She’d grabbed her old mentor D.J. as a convenient scapegoat only after I’d given away that we suspected him, and then she’d planted a file she knew we’d find.

  Though she hadn’t known how easily we’d crack it, or that it would therefore arouse our suspicions. And she hadn’t counted on Tabitha.

  “Tabitha kept on thinking something was up with her,” I said. “She was looking, she must have found something…” Had she caught Willow Grace setting the bomb? Disabling the security system? Leaving the house? Had Fifer decided to take Tabitha as she’d taken Arthur, to find out how much she knew and who she had told?

  Please let her have been taken. We’d never heard Tabitha’s voice on the phone call.

  We hadn’t given up the investigation like we’d told Willow Grace we would. And Arthur had overheard more than she’d known, the exact plan Fifer had been trying to prevent us from finding out. Not only that, but we had Teplova’s files now, and we hadn’t stopped digging into them.

  I remembered then my guesses about how Teplova’s clients could be used. How they might be molded into an army.

  And Fifer—she wouldn’t even have to do any molding, I realized. The hard-coded powers worked on anyone from regular folk to people like Simon; they’d definitely work on one another. Whatever politicians and other powerful people had been Teplova’s clients, they were primed into a ready-made force of impossible people, and Fifer not only knew who they were but could make them follow her just by smiling at them.

  Fifer hadn’t only killed Dr. Teplova to protect herself after getting her new features. She’d committed the murder to take over.

  Had she known about the power Teplova had bestowed on Willow Grace’s flesh and bones before forcing the doctor to make the same copy on her own? She must have. Any position or press credentials had been a side benefit to worming her way onto the top of Teplova’s pyramid, all with a face that couldn’t be refused.

  And we, the people with a partial client list, who wouldn’t stop looking under all the virtual rocks—we would have been the only people who knew enough to stop her. The only people who had a chance of recognizing her army for what it was.

  She had stolen prestige and a frightening ability with explosives. Add who knew how many brainwashed superpowered minions who wielded their own power … if she thought the country needed to be taken down a peg, she could drop us into anarchy as easily as pushing a button, playing the sides of both terrorist and authority to her own predetermined tune. It wasn’t a perfectly coordinated plan, but it didn’t need to be—any sloppiness could be papered over by raw power.

  Until we got in her way.

  Apparently, as soon as that seemed at all likely, she’d aborted subtlety and decided to put the kibosh on all of us before we discovered the truth. D.J. wasn’t kidding about what kind of person she was. If she’d decided the same about Tabitha …

&nbs
p; But Tabitha had been researching on her own, and very well might have found something solid revealing Fifer’s true goals. Fifer had to be worried about that, had to want to interrogate her.

  Had to have kept her alive. I wouldn’t allow myself to entertain alternatives.

  “Glad you got all that mumbly-jiggero figured out,” D.J. broke into my stunned thoughts. “Good luck being on her hit list. It was nice knowing you.”

  Checker spun back to the screen. “You have to help us. You’re here in LA, right? You’ve been tracking her, you know her—you have to help us. You have to!”

  “What?” D.J. said. “No, I don’t! Don’t get me wrong, I will heartily agree to blowing shit up for money, or if I’m mad, or if it’s fun enough, but going up against Fifer? No, thank you. I’d rather relax by the surf and build more orgasmic little toys.”

  “Then you should help us!” Checker argued. “What do you think is going to happen if this Fifer person gets her way? It’s going to be chaos! Where do you think you’ll get your advanced devices then?”

  “Oh, the old evil versus oblivion argument,” D.J. said. “Oldie but a goodie. ‘Come on, D.J., you live in the world too!’ But you should remember, Charles, I’m really fucking lazy.” He leaned back and studied his nails. “Besides, she probably won’t be able to do it. She’s a fucking slob. Somebody’ll catch her. Too bad it won’t be in time for the little kitten you’re trying to save.”

  D.J. didn’t know she had access to a whole supernatural army of power. People who could grab her coup for her and then run her empire with the hand of a vise, one the people never even noticed as the faces on their television sets soothed and controlled them.

  But we had one last shot, because Checker was right—her old mentor’s help might be just what we needed to blindside her.

  “If it’s money you want, fine,” I said. “Name your price.”

  “What’d I just say? There’s no pile of green in the world that would be worth plopping myself into this bucket of diarrhea tentacles. I taught the kid, remember? She may be sloppy, but harmless, she is not. I like my fleshy parts attached to me, not in bitty bits.”

  “But you already tried to stop her,” Checker said. “Isn’t that why you’re here? And now you know she’s impersonating you. Don’t tell me you’re going to let her get away with that!”

  “I dunno. Am I?”

  Checker’s eyes narrowed. “You want something. You already would’ve hung up otherwise. The girl this Fifer has, she’s—she’s like my sister, okay? Tell me what you want, and I’ll do it. Anything.” His jaw bunched. “Do you want me to beg you? I’ll beg.”

  “Oh, tempting! But no. There you go again, Charles, thinking everything is about you.” D.J. turned his face up to me. “But you, you are fascinating. I’ve been thinking about you. In my dreams. Who are you, for realsies?”

  A subject I didn’t want to talk about with anyone, up to and including myself.

  It’s okay, Vala, said Coach’s voice in my ear. I know who I am.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m nobody.”

  “Oh, we both know that’s not true. Did you really solve the P versus NP thing?”

  “No. You’ve been misinformed.” Technically true. I hadn’t solved it. I didn’t even know if it really had been solved.

  D.J. laughed and wagged a finger at me. “Aaaa, you’re such a shithead. I can see why he likes you. Hey, Charles, should she join our cabal?”

  Checker opened his mouth, closed it, and then acted like he hadn’t heard the question.

  “Spit it out,” I said to D.J. “You may not care about this girl’s life, but we do. What do you want?”

  D.J. flexed his fingers against each other and stretched. “I like to build shit,” he said. “Come to my labs. You’re some sort of mathematical professor genius. Promise to give me some new shiny, and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  “You want me to help you build new bombs?”

  “I get so bored,” D.J. whined.

  “No,” Checker cut in. “No. We’re not doing that.”

  “Wasn’t asking you, darling,” D.J. said. “Don’t fuss your pretty heads; I’m not saying I want you to help me use them. I’ll take all the responsibility and stick it up my own ass.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “No!” said Checker.

  “Glee!” cried D.J., and literally clapped his hands. “Where do you want my gracious self?”

  “We’re in the Valley,” I answered. “Are you close?”

  “Oh, good, just a shake of a lamb’s tail. I’ll come meet you straight off, soon’s I disarm a few fuses. Message me where.” The video blinked off.

  Sudden silence in the garage.

  “We can’t do this,” Checker said into it. “Arthur wouldn’t want—”

  “Arthur would want us to do exactly this and never tell him about it,” I said. “So that’s what we’re going to do.”

  I refused to see D.J.’s aid as anything other than a massive stroke of good fortune. We’d make a plan by the time he got here, and then I’d be able to take him with me after Fifer. She’d have her bombs, but I’d have a bomb expert.

  One even better than she was. One who could predict how she would move.

  “Don’t force me to make this argument, Cas, please don’t,” Checker begged. “I—it’s Tabitha, I know it’s Tabitha, but—” His hands had curled into desperate fists. “You’re promising new bomb tech to someone who has no compunction about using it on people. That’s so far over the line it’s, it’s not even in the same hemisphere. We’ll figure out something else; we’ll offer him something else—”

  “Is this guilt?” I said. “You helped him before so you swore never to do it again?”

  He flushed. “Don’t go there. That’s not what this is.”

  “No? Because D.J. doesn’t seem all that different from me.” Checker had told me so himself, in the heat of anger, but I could own that truth. “And you seem to be able to help me out all the time without having the arrogance to say you’re responsible for anything I do.”

  Checker’s mouth flattened. “Nothing I’ve ever helped D.J. with—or you, for that matter—was ever about hurting people. Ever. You’ve seen what he’s like now. There’s no room for—there’s no justification for this; I can’t—”

  “You can’t,” I said. I was calm. “You’ve spent too long around Arthur and Diego. You keep thinking of me like you, someone who just hasn’t been saved. But maybe it’s time you faced that I’m not.” I was coming to a realization—a hard one, but one that was giving me back my equilibrium, my direction. Maybe I wasn’t the person I wanted Arthur to see. Maybe he’d been right about me all along.

  But that meant I could do this for him when people like Checker couldn’t.

  D.J. wasn’t the worst person I’d ever worked with, not by a long shot. And maybe it was time for me to start shaking out my own morality and see exactly how my friends would react. Either they’d come to terms with it … or they’d leave.

  “Arthur already knows what I am,” I said. “That’s clear now. And you know what? I … it’s okay. I can figure out how to live with that. But if I’m willing to do the things I’m willing to do, what does it say if I suddenly won’t when it’s Tabitha’s life? Because that’s something I can’t do. If you want D.J. to be more judicious with his dynamite, take it up with him when this is over.”

  I’d already shown how far I would go. When I shot Coach to protect Arthur.

  Checker opened his mouth to argue back. But at that moment, his security system pinged.

  Our attention snapped over.

  “Oh, no—Cas—” Checker hurried to blank all his computer screens. “Oh, no, this is bad—”

  The screens for the outside security cameras showed the burly form of Detective Sikorsky striding up the walk.

  thirty-four

  “SHIT,” CHECKER said. “Shit, shit, shit—”

  We shouldn’t have come back to Checker’s plac
e, I thought numbly.

  No way to take out a cop without consequences. And no way to run without Sikorsky seeing us.

  “My security’s recording,” Checker said in a whisper. “But we can’t let him—Cas, if he does anything, we can’t fight this after the fact, we can’t let him delay us, not with Tabitha…”

  I saw what Checker was driving at. Sikorsky didn’t have his partner with him. Or any uniforms. Which meant he wasn’t here with an on-the-books arrest warrant. That made this simultaneously easier and more dangerous—I might be able to take a dirty cop out of play even without the threat of Checker’s recording, but it also meant he wasn’t going to be playing by the rules of the law.

  And, like Checker had said, we had to deal with this fast.

  “Steady,” I said out of the corner of my mouth. “Follow my lead.”

  Sikorsky bypassed the house—either he’d glimpsed movement through the garage’s window or he remembered from when he’d dragged Checker in before. A meaty knock thumped through the Hole.

  “I know you’re in there,” he called. “Open up.”

  I moved forward and tugged open the door.

  Sikorsky barged in and gazed around with a smirk. He ran a finger across the top of one of Checker’s machines as though checking for nonexistent dust, then rubbed his finger and thumb together.

  “You rats,” he said. His tone was deliberately careless, conversational.

  “Did you find the person who blew up Diego’s house?” I said.

  “Oh, I know who.” He sneered at Checker behind me. “Always an attention seeker, weren’t you?”

  Checker didn’t reply.

  “Where’s your partner?” I asked.

  “I sent ’er home. I told her she looked tired. She agreed.”

  So he was unquestionably here to do something off the books, and his partner was turning a blind eye. And he wanted us to know it. Checker’s gaze flickered to me for a second, but he said nothing.