by SL Huang
“I don’t know how this helps us,” I said tiredly.
“Maybe…” Denise folded her lips together. “Maybe I can convince him I’m going to join him. He—he’s just arrogant enough to believe that could be possible.”
“You’re talking undercover,” said Arthur, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Maybe deep. Maybe for a long time, before you know enough to move against him. Ain’t easy, something like that.”
“And Cas sucks at it, assuming she’d be going with,” said Checker, not looking up from his computer.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Well, it’s true,” Checker responded without hesitation. “Plus Agarwal would want to take you apart eventually, and he’d see you bleed when he pricks you, and it would all be over.”
He had a point.
“On that note, quick interrupt,” said Checker. “We’ve got some volcano numbers for you. Pilar, send me the—there it is, thanks.”
I went to look over his shoulder; he minimized a chat window with Pilar, tiled the research on the laptop screen, and handed it up to me.
I sat down and skimmed, the numbers slotting into my brain, forming a picture, eliminating possibilities one by one by one. I could feel everyone else’s eyes on me, quiet, tense—the awkward, surreal wait of finding out if we were at the end of the world.
We were lucky, in a way. The region was so seismically active and prone to earthquakes that it had been under monitoring for some time, especially since a swarm of thirty thousand quakes in one year had hit a few decades ago. Add that to the eruption risk, and the caldera had been under a fair amount of study. I ran seismic indicators, estimated explosive outputs, buried my mind in the vast magma cavern beneath California, the overwhelming size of it dwarfing any puny efforts of humanity…
I blinked and looked up, something loosening deep in my chest. “He can’t do it.” The words felt almost fragile, hopeful rather than true, about to shatter even as I spoke them. “He can’t—he can’t. Nobody could. To trigger an eruption—it’s too big.”
“You sure?” said Arthur. “Some of the bombs we can make—and he might’ve built—”
“No. You don’t understand. It’s…the amount of destabilization he would need to make it happen…saying one man could manage that is like saying he could manage to knock the Earth askew in its orbit. Or lower the level of the oceans. Or break a continent in half. Well. Not quite. But what I mean is, this is too big. It’s too big a problem.”
“You telling me—ain’t no possible tech way?” said Arthur. “The man built a kid. You ain’t think he—”
“That’s nothing,” I said. “When I say it’s too big a problem, I don’t just mean intellectually. It’s too physically big.”
“I actually have no problem believing that,” said Checker. “We as humans are terrible at perceiving scale. The caldera’s huge.”
“Why else would he be there, though?” asked Pilar.
“It is pretty up there,” murmured Denise. “Maybe that’s all.”
“Wait—wait,” said Arthur. “Russell. You saying it’s no chance at all of this?”
“Well, sure, there’s a finite chance,” I said. “Just like there’s a finite chance the thing’ll erupt tomorrow naturally. But I’d rather play the lottery.”
Checker snorted a laugh, and the tension seeped out of the room. Pilar took a deep breath, grinning, and Arthur turned away, scrubbing his hands over his face.
“Hey,” said Pilar into the almost giddy silence, “I have a crazy thought.”
“What is it?” said Checker.
“Well—okay, this might be totally nuts—but we were just talking about handling Vikash, and…if he’s not blowing up the mountain, what if we do it?”
“Uh, because I just said it’s impossible,” I said. “Not to mention why would you want to do that—”
“No no no, that’s not what I meant!” she cried. “I don’t mean we really blow it up. What if we tell him we can?”
“You mean bluff?” asked Checker.
“Yes! He’s the kind of guy—you can’t reason with him. You either have to manipulate him into thinking he wants what you want him to want, or you have to outdo him by so much you flatten him right out of the gate.”
“You agree?” Arthur asked Denise.
“Well—yes, I—I suppose so. I was his supervisor, so it was a little, a little different—ego stroking, mostly—”
“Making him think he wants what you want,” agreed Pilar, nodding.
“But there was one time—he had some grudge against Dana, and I told Vikash if he didn’t stop making snide comments about his code, I’d have Arkacite stop ordering Mountain Dew for the office fridges.”
I stared at her.
“It was his version of a nuclear threat,” she said. “But yes—Pilar’s right. There’s no ramping up. If you do, he’ll have a contingency plan at every step. So if you do have to threaten him…”
“Go big or go home?” said Checker.
“Yes,” said Denise. “At least, I—I think so.”
“Then why not plant, I don’t know, an actual explosive device?” I demanded. “Something we wouldn’t have to bluff our way through?”
“He’d be on the lookout for that,” said Denise. “Any sort of normal double-cross, he’s going to see coming. I don’t know if this is a good idea, but it has the advantage of being outside the box.”
“So far outside the box that it’s something literally impossible!” I objected. “He’s going to know—”
“We didn’t,” pointed out Checker. “We thought there was a chance he was up there being a supervillain and had rigged the whole thing to blow.”
“But even to make this plausible, it would be a ridiculous endeavor!” I argued. “Remember when I said this was big? To be even remotely believable, you’re talking about mining the entire caldera, or at least pretending to, and even to fake that we’d need an army—”
I stopped.
I knew someone with a private army who owed me a favor. Or at least thought she did.
“Cas?” said Checker.
“Hypothetically,” I said slowly, “say I can get us manpower. What then?”
“Could fake some geological survey,” suggested Arthur. “It’s a volcano, right? Can have someone play a volcanologist, make local folk believe we’re out planting sensors. Agarwal won’t worry till you tell him it was for something else.” He paused. “Not that I like this plan. What if he calls the bluff?”
“He seems too egotistical to want to die,” said Checker, though his voice held a thread of doubt.
“More than that—it’s his work,” said Denise softly. “His work will be threatened.”
We all looked at each other for a moment.
“This is the craziest plan ever,” said Checker. “If you had said to me, ‘Come up with a plan so crazy no one would ever think of it,’ this plan wouldn’t even be on that list, it’s so crazy.”
“So crazy he won’t expect it’s fake?” I asked.
No one answered.
I turned to Denise. “You know him best, and you’re the one who’s going to need to sell this. And you’re the one who’ll be in his sights if he doesn’t believe you. Be honest. You think this’ll work?”
“I…I think it has a chance. And I think we have to try.” She swallowed. “It will—we’ll need some time to prepare, right? We can try to figure out—if we think of something better—but if we don’t…he might be fleeing the country any day. He might already have done. If this is our best shot, I want to take it.”
“I’ll be there with you,” I said. “But I might not be able to protect you.” The words sounded hollow, an admission I’d never thought I’d have to make.
“I understand.” She squared her shoulders. “I want to do this.”
Jesus Christ. I’d never understand self-sacrificing people. “Okay,” I said. “Checker, Pilar, get on figuring out how to fake this, and stat. I want to head up there as
soon as humanly possible. Arthur…I think maybe call your doctor friend now.”
Chapter 35
We relocated back to Checker’s place now that the Mafia wasn’t after him anymore. Checker and Pilar buried themselves out in the Hole to figure out the best way to fake a geological survey, and Arthur’s doctor friend swooped into the house, berated me for getting shot again—I vaguely recognized her from the last time—and proceeded to fix me up very briskly and with absolutely no sympathy. I had no idea where Arthur found these people.
She did also leave me some highly illegal prescription painkillers, which made me inclined to feel a bit more charitable toward her.
Arthur made a run for supplies, and Denise—who had picked up welding somewhere along the line in her robotics education—seared together an overlapping metal casing to go over my cast. It might already strain Agarwal’s credulity that my arm hadn’t been fixed up as good as new; we wanted him to see what he expected to see as much as possible. A robot with a temporary metal arm might not ring any alarm bells. We hoped.
I’d been wearing the same shirt since the day before, and it was stiff with dried blood. Checker gave me a very loud patterned button-down he said he’d used to cosplay Wash—whatever that meant—and an unlikely purple blazer, since I’d given Arthur his coat back. I had to cut my T-shirt off to change, and with the slightly large, mismatching garments and only one arm through the jacket and the other encased in metal, I looked rather absurd. Which I supposed worked to my advantage.
By the next morning, Checker and Denise had figured out what they wanted the fake volcanic sensors-slash-explosive-devices to look like. Arthur went on another supply run while I made a terribly uncomfortable call to Mama Lorenzo.
“Don’t tell her she owes you a favor,” Pilar instructed me, completely unsolicited. “Ask her, like you’re in a tough spot and you know you’re really putting her out. You want her to feel all magnanimous when she says yes.”
“Malcolm’s the one who told me she feels like she owes me,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but she didn’t,” said Pilar. “You want her to feel like she’s in the position of power on this one. Trust me. It’s all about making her feel good about it.”
“What are you, my public relations advisor?”
She shrugged in her exaggerated fashion. “Well, you kinda need one.”
So I called Mama Lorenzo and rather woodenly begged her for help. The conversation was excessively awkward on both sides, but she conditionally agreed to the favor and set up a meeting with me to discuss details. In probably the sanest move I could have made, I told her I’d be sending Arthur. Pilar was right about my public relations ability.
By the time night fell again, Checker’s living room had been transformed into a soldering lab. Checker and Denise were already pros, and Pilar tentatively offered to learn. “I mean, don’t take the time if it’d be quicker to do it yourself, but I want to help—”
Checker snorted. “A trained monkey could learn to solder. It’s easy. Come on over.”
Pilar’s face lit up as she joined him at his workstation.
“Get a room,” I muttered from where I sat paging one-handed through maps of Mammoth Lakes, memorizing the terrain.
Checker closed his eyes for a moment. “Cas, that was highly inappropriate.”
“It’s okay,” said Pilar blithely. “I’ve learned when I should ignore her.”
“Hey!” I protested.
“Knowing that’s a useful skill,” Checker said to Pilar, as if I hadn’t spoken. “Ignorance is bliss. Especially as I really was hoping to ask you if you wanted to grab a drink with me after this, although now I’m afraid it’ll just seem creepy.”
Pilar laughed. “I’m flattered. But you know, the last girl you dated got you in trouble with the Mob, so I think I’m going to pass.”
“Shot down,” I mocked.
Checker rolled his eyes at me. “For Zarquon’s sake, Cas, I am perfectly capable of accepting it when a woman says no.” He handed Pilar a soldering iron.
“I do want to come see your band sometime, though,” said Pilar. “You should let me know when you’re playing. I’m super into indie music.”
“Oh—wow, uh, cool,” said Checker. “Sure, I’ll let you know.”
“You’re in a band?” I said.
Checker took a moment to stare at the ceiling, as if appealing to the heavens. “You really are a horrible friend. Though you did save my life, so maybe you’re all right.”
Fortunately, Arthur chose that moment to come back from the meeting with Mama Lorenzo, saving me from the risk of descending into sentimentality. “Went well,” he said right away. “She’s marshalling people to go up by tomorrow morning. Got the sense this’ll even the scales ’tween you. And her pet sniper wants to help back you up.” He transferred his attention from me to Checker. “Think I got her to do something for you, too, though don’t count your chickens yet.”
“For me?” Checker froze. “Arthur—I’m really okay; I don’t want—”
“Worse if she feels like she owes you, right?” said Arthur, the slightest touch of teasing in his tone.
“I suppose…” said Checker unhappily.
“I’ve got technobabble for you to memorize,” I said to Arthur. “You’re the best one of us undercover; you play lead volcanologist on this. Interact with the town. Let the Mob guys refer people to you. That sort of thing.”
“That means I ain’t backing you up,” said Arthur with a frown. “Was thinking your sniper buddy and I could watch your back. Can’t do that if I’m play-acting the scientist.”
“I can be the volcanologist,” offered Checker. “All it takes is being able to jabber out a whole lot of scientific jargon at people, right? It’s not like I’ll be in danger of coming face to face with Agarwal—he’s not going to risk being high-profile by nosing around too much. He’ll get the gossip through the grapevine.”
“I was thinking you would coordinate with Mama Lorenzo here in LA,” I said. “We need someone on this end.”
“Oh, God, not me.” Checker blanched. “I’m really not the right person for that. She terrifies me. I’d screw it all up. And probably she would end up shooting me.”
Pilar raised a hand. “Put me on that.”
I squinted at her. “You realize we’re talking about the woman who basically runs the Los Angeles Mafia, right?”
“So what?” she said. “You need an admin, and I’m a really, really good one. I can’t do anything up in Mammoth because Vikash knows me. But I can do this.”
“It would make the most sense,” agreed Checker thoughtfully. “I’m not good undercover like Arthur, but I’m really good at handwaving through bullshit science, so a lead volcanologist is one role I can do. And then Arthur can back up you and Denise.”
“Are you sure about this?” I asked Pilar. “She’s a dangerous woman. You’d be better off not being on her radar.”
“I knew you cared!” said Pilar, a smile breaking out on her face.
“If you’re not taking this seriously—”
“No, no—I am, I am!” she insisted, sobering her features immediately. “But the thing is…I can’t just do nothing, can I?”
“Yeah, I get that,” said Checker.
I didn’t. Most people were perfectly content to do nothing, particularly when doing something might put them in the sights of some very dangerous enemies. Hell, I would’ve rather been doing nothing. But someone had to fix my screw-ups, and Liliana…Denise and I were the only chance Liliana had left.
If she was still alive. If she was still intact.
“Hey, maybe the Mob will be so impressed they’ll end up wanting to hire me,” said Pilar. “I do need a job, and they probably pay pretty well, right?”
Checker made a strangled sort of sound.
“I didn’t mean it!” Pilar assured him hastily. “It would just be nice to, you know, have rent money by…what day is it?”
“Monday,” I said. �
��For a few more hours.”
“Oh. Then by tomorrow. I guess that ship’s already sailed. At least if I get evicted and don’t have an address, the FBI will have more trouble finding me.” She cocked her head to the side. “Wow, that is one sentence I definitely never thought I would say. I’m glad my mother doesn’t know all this.”
“That reminds me,” I said. “We said seventeen an hour, right?” I dug in my pocket and came up with a handful of hundreds. “How much time have you spent on this?”
Pilar’s mouth dropped open, and she blinked at me. “I don’t—I don’t know?”
“Well, I’ll estimate, then. And start keeping track better.” She was supposed to be the admin, for Christ’s sake. I counted out the bills and tossed them on the table next to me. “That should cover up through today.”
Pilar stared at the money and then slowly came over and picked it up. “Thanks. That’s, uh. That’s really nice of you.”
“It’s not nice,” I said. “It’s what we agreed. I don’t welch on people.”
“Wait wait wait,” cut in Checker. “Cas’s bizarre non-generosity aside, are you seriously that strapped? Oh my God, why didn’t you say something? I can totally spot you some cash to get you through after this. Hell, scratch that—come work for Arthur and me.”
“What—really?” Pilar’s face got tense, like a starving person who didn’t want to be rude by stuffing her face. “You honestly need someone? You’re not just saying that?”
“Nope, we could definitely use someone,” said Checker. “Arthur spends way too long on paperwork and filing because he’s Mr. Neat Freak Perfectionist, and I don’t do hard copies. It’s been getting out of hand. And we like you, so, done.”
I expected Arthur to jump in and defend himself, but he’d disappeared—only Denise was soldering quietly in the corner. I got up and checked the kitchen. No Arthur.
Pilar was thanking Checker behind me. “This is amazing. You guys are saving my life; I could kiss you.”