Plastic Smile (Russell's Attic Book 4)

by Huang, SL

Oh, Jesus. Without it, I was going to lose.

  I’d thought I could push through it. For fuck’s sake, I could handle a few scary memories. Going to pieces over the shadow of a nightmare—it was childish.

  The Fox screamed, a wild, unearthly sound—

  I jerked.

  My hands pressed against my eyes, my fingers a crisscrossing spider web trying to keep my brain inside my skull, keep me sane. Useless.

  “Tell me,” Arthur said gently.

  “They’re pushing me out,” I mumbled. “The memories. Like I’m going to wake up one morning and be someone else, someone who is—” My jaw clenched so hard it locked; I pried it back open. “I’m not that person. Whoever she is. I can feel her. She’s—she’s not me, Arthur. I know it sounds crazy, but I swear it’s true. And I keep—I keep losing track…” My grip on reality was slipping; I would dissolve into the abyss and be nothing but scattered atoms, emptiness…

  I didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to die.

  Arthur moved closer to me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling my head against his shoulder the way a father might with his child.

  I thought about what Checker had said, that Arthur had an obsession with fixing people. I decided I didn’t care. Fuck, our current conflict notwithstanding, I considered myself Rio’s friend and had for years, and he’d never pretended his concern for my welfare extended an inch beyond religious obligation. People had all sorts of reasons for helping each other. It didn’t change anything.

  In fact, it made me feel better about the logic of it all to think Arthur might have a fixation with hard luck cases as one of his axioms. His concern for me made a lot more sense that way.

  I leaned my forehead against his shoulder. The fabric of the button-down he wore was slightly rough, like canvas, and smelled of clean sweat and old leather.

  “You have twenty-three seconds,” said a voice, and I jumped—

  Arthur felt me flinch.

  “I don’t like to say it,” he said softly, “But maybe…if you got no other options…this Simon guy, he might be able to help you.”

  My stomach twisted like I wanted to be sick.

  “I don’t know,” Arthur admitted. “God knows I understand why you don’t want to talk to him. But this…might be he’s the one you need.” He sounded despondent, as if it were his failing I had no other option. “He says he won’t do nothing you don’t want him to, right?”

  “And you believe him?”

  I felt Arthur shrug slightly. “He could’ve already, and he ain’t. Guess that’s a point in his favor.”

  I pulled upright and sat back against the wall. “It doesn’t matter. Even if he got a signed agreement from me every other fucking second—it doesn’t matter.” The fear loomed, a black, ugly cloud, and I struggled to confine it to words, to articulate it so Arthur could understand. “I’d be letting him into my brain. Letting him. There’s no way I can know what the fallout from that could be—there’s no way I could ever, possibly, in a million years, understand it well enough to say I’m okay with it. And what if he does something accidentally? Or that he thinks is the right thing, and…” The words felt disconnected, floundering, islands of meaning with no continuity between them.

  “I get that,” said Arthur, and Jesus, it sounded like he did.

  “Too many variables,” I murmured.

  “Thing is…what if it’s the only way?”

  The impending nightmare settled on me like a thousand dusty cobwebs, stifling. Doing nothing, continuing on, descending into madness until I lost myself—it wasn’t an option, was it? Especially if I wanted to be functional to do what I really needed to, to save the city I’d signed up for protecting only to lead it toward its downfall.

  Or even if I only wanted to save myself.

  Then why did part of me still want to cling to that suicidal dive instead of submitting to Simon?

  “Sometimes a thing’s needed,” Arthur said. “Like what we got going right now in LA, nudging people’s brain waves. A little help ain’t no bad thing. Not even for you.”

  I tensed away from him. I didn’t want to think about Simon helping me as being in any way parallel to the brain entrainment. One was a benign crime-fighting measure; the other was the most personal violation.

  What I was doing wasn’t the same. Not the same thing at all.

  But what Arthur had said…sometimes a thing was necessary.

  I hated it when he had a point.

  “I can be there, if you want,” Arthur continued. “Make sure nothing goes wrong, or happens on accident. If this guy’s aboveboard, he ain’t going to be throwing nothing my way, right?”

  Rio was the more logical choice, given his immunity, but I didn’t want to see him right now. I twitched my head in something like a nod.

  “You got a number for Simon?” Arthur asked gently.

  I didn’t, but I was more than certain Rio would send him to meet me, even if he was currently trying to screw me over in every other way.

  “We gonna get you taken care of, Russell,” Arthur said. “And then we gonna go and fix the rest of it.”

  I let him help me up.

  I should have known it would never be that easy.

  Chapter 22

  Arthur got a call as he was helping me back to his car.

  “Hello? Justin, hey, did you get her—” He listened for a long minute. “Easy, kid. Uh—gonna be there as soon as I can, but it might be a few minutes, I got someone else with an emergency right now. Can you call—”

  “Go,” I said. “It’s okay.” I was a fucking adult. I appreciated Arthur trying to support me, but I’d feel worse than stupid if he tried to treat me like spun glass above kids who actually needed him.

  Now that I’d made the decision, I just had to go through with it. I could do it by myself. I wasn’t a coward.

  Arthur covered the phone with a hand to turn to me. “I ain’t all right with you going to this guy alone anyway, Russell. Just in case, you know? Even if you feel like you gotta do this, you should have someone with you.”

  “I’ll call Checker, then,” I said wearily. “Go take care of your kids.”

  He nodded reluctantly and spoke back into the phone to tell Justin he’d be there in half an hour, which I thought was ridiculously optimistic for the time of day no matter where he was going, but whatever. Then he insisted on calling Checker himself and waiting with me while I texted Rio. He probably suspected I would have chickened out otherwise.

  He might have been right.

  Checker had told me to come back to his place—Simon already knew where it was, after all, and there was no point in burning the safe house Checker and Pilar had been staying at. I drove to Van Nuys alone like I was driving to the gallows. As I walked inside, I couldn’t help swiveling my head, taking in the trees and grass, the slight scent of smoke from someone’s barbecue, the layers of mathematical data edging every stone and corner.

  I couldn’t help feeling like I’d never see it again. Like this was the end.

  My lungs twisted tight in my chest. I walked up to Checker’s door and knocked.

  He was the one who opened it. I was grateful for that, and that he didn’t say anything really, just let me come inside. Simon was already there, sitting on the edge of the couch.

  “So how does this work?” I said.

  “It’s nothing—invasive. You don’t have to worry.” Simon gestured, and I forced myself to sink down across from him. He half-raised his hands as if he were about to lean forward and touch me, but thought better of it. “I’m just going to talk to you, and have you talk back. That’s all, I promise. You’ll be aware through all of it.”

  Cassandra? Talk to me. Talk to me!

  I shook the voices away. “I want to know what you’re doing,” I said to Simon. “Every step of the way. I want to know when you’re influencing me.”

  “I…I can do that. It will be a little less effective, but I can, if you want me to.”

  “I don�
��t care if it’s less effective,” I said. “Tell me.”

  “All right.”

  “Are you going to bring her memory back?” Checker asked.

  The sun stabbing through clouds onto the cobblestones, the scent of roasted nuts and blood—I clenched my teeth, trying to anchor myself.

  “No,” Simon said. He looked faintly annoyed Checker was there and talking, but I didn’t give a fuck. “Cas, believe it or not, the amnesia is protecting you. You had some—uh—some trauma—”

  “That you can’t tell me about, I get it,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “I could reverse your memory loss, but it might—it would kill you.”

  “Peachy,” I said. “So this is just about shoring up whatever Dawna did to me.”

  He shifted a little. “Essentially. I’m afraid that will mean reinforcing your—um—your mental blocks.”

  “You mean making sure I can’t remember anything.”

  “I’m sorry.” He looked it, too, his face drawn and strained. “I wish I could do more.”

  I took a breath. Tried to be mature about it. If I was honest with myself, I wanted nothing more than to keep my prior self safely behind thick black walls, forever. If Simon had said we were going to let her out, I wasn’t sure I could have gone through with it. Whatever Pithica had done to me—whatever anyone had done to me, back in the distant past—I was better off not remembering.

  The status quo was much preferable. Well, the status quo without going mad and dying.

  “Are you ready?” Simon asked.

  “Fuck you,” I said. “Of course not.”

  His jaw worked a little. “I, I won’t start until you feel—”

  “Simon, I swear to God, if you don’t get this over with—”

  “Right, all right, I just wanted to make sure.” His breath hitched. It occurred to me that this seemed to be as unhappy a process for him as it was for me, and took some vindictive pleasure in it. “Try to relax,” he said.

  “Fat chance of that,” I muttered.

  Simon leaned forward.

  Simon leaned forward—

  My vision doubled, two versions of the man in front of me staring earnestly into my eyes. I recognized the second version from my dream, the nightmare in which every fear had coalesced. But this time I noticed he looked younger—

  “No,” I said. “No—”

  No—

  “I have to.” Tears flooded his cheeks, his expression stretched with pain. “I have to—we have to—”

  He reached for me, and resistance folded in my brain with a dying whimper, even as I fought to cling to it, fought to live…I didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to die.

  “I’m sorry,” Simon wept, “I’m so sorry…”

  And I ceased to want anything at all.

  I jerked back and up, stumbling to stand, stumbling away.

  “Cas?” Checker’s voice.

  I’m sorry, Vala.

  “Cassandra!” Simon leapt to his feet as well.

  “You…” My hand had come up of its own accord, my finger pointed, trembling. “You!”

  “Cassandra—Cas—don’t—”

  “Don’t what? Don’t try to remember? Why, because I’ll know what you did?”

  “Cas!” Checker’s voice again, high with alarm. “Cas, what is it?”

  “Admit it!” I screamed the words, spat them in Simon’s face. “It wasn’t a dream, was it? You—it was real!”

  He won’t be remaking you, Rio had said.

  Rio had lied.

  “This was never about protecting me, was it?” I was hyperventilating. Oh, God. “You telling me to block it all out—not to try—”

  “It was to protect you!” interrupted Simon. “It is. Cassandra, I was not lying, I swear. This will kill you—”

  “This will kill you,” pleaded Simon, somewhere dark and close and far away. “You must let me—it is the only way—”

  The world seesawed.

  “Cas!” Someone grabbed my arm. I shoved him off violently before I realized it had been Checker; he flailed as his chair tilted but managed to catch himself against the wall before he fell. “Cas!”

  “Pithica didn’t take my memory,” I said. “It was you. It was you.”

  Simon’s face was stricken. He didn’t reply.

  The room fell into a silence so complete it was as if all the air had been sucked out of it.

  Checker broke it. “He did what?” he whispered.

  “He’s the one,” I said. “He erased me. Admit it. Admit it!”

  “It was—I had to, we had to.” Simon’s eyes darted desperately between Checker and me. “I can explain—you were dying—”

  “I was someone else, wasn’t I?” My throat closed. “I was a—I was somebody, and you destroyed her. You killed her, and she didn’t want to, she didn’t want to go…”

  Simon was breathing raggedly. “You have to understand—”

  “I can feel her.” Suddenly everything made sense, too much sense, stampeding through my head like it wanted to take me over. “She wants to come back. You killed her and she didn’t want to die, and now she wants to come back.”

  “Not her, Cassandra, you. You! We were saving your life!”

  “No! You weren’t!” Certainty surged in me, the certainty of voice and memory and knowledge creeping through into my own goddamn brain. “You killed her, and you wiped her brain, and you made me on top of it. Don’t tell me I’m not fucking remembering it right because I am.”

  “You what?” Checker was leaning forward in his chair as if he were about to physically throttle Simon. I’d never heard him sound so dangerous. “You overwrote her like a fucking hard drive? You utter piece of shit—”

  “Stop!” I thrust out a hand, my other one cradling my forehead as if it could keep my brain from fracturing.

  Waves crashing—

  Glass breaking—

  Wood splintering—

  “Thank you.” Simon ran a hand through his hair and gestured limply at Checker. “He doesn’t understand. I’m trying to explain; we had to. You were—it was killing you, and I had to do it, I had to save you—”

  “Shut up.” I took a step forward, putting Checker behind me. “I didn’t tell Checker to stay out of this because he’s wrong. He’s not. But this is between you and me.”

  The certainty in Simon’s face faltered.

  “You erased my memories.”

  “To save your life! It was the hardest thing I ever did!”

  “You?” My mouth twisted, going crooked and ugly. “The hardest thing you ever did? Please, try to convince me this is about you. I’m just rabid to hear it. Go on, try.”

  “That’s not what I…” His dark skin went paler, the color draining from behind it and leaving it brown parchment. “Don’t you get it? You were going to die!”

  “Oh, I get it. You did what you thought was best.” I was biting out the words, each a sarcasm-coated pill. My voice had started trembling around the edges. “You went into my head and you took the most important parts of me and you want me to thank you.”

  “Did she even get a say in it?” said Checker from behind me.

  “I told you, stay out of this,” I snapped at him without turning around. I stayed focused on Simon. “Whether or not you asked to blank out everything I was—” I stopped. Simon’s features had gone tense and taut as if some too-large emotion were trying to burst through; he folded his lips together deliberately and looked away from me. “Fuck you. You didn’t ask me, did you.”

  “I did!” he insisted. He sniffed. “I did—I tried to convince you. It was the only way! You said, you kept saying that you—it would mean forgetting me, never seeing me again, forgetting us, and you said you couldn’t bear that. We were in love, Cassandra, do you understand?” He was blinking furiously against tears; they spilled over and slid down his cheeks and over his jaw, dripping onto his collar. “You wanted to keep on going together until you destroyed yourself and died, and I couldn
’t watch you do that! Even though it meant losing you. Even though it meant going into your thoughts when I had told myself I would never—when I had promised—and even when I knew it meant I would never be able to see you again, that seeing me might remind you—” His voice broke. “I gave up everything I had told myself I stood for, I broke every rule I had, I gave up you—because I had to save you. Even if it meant I lost everything!”

  I slugged him.

  The punch was so fast he never saw it coming; his head snapped halfway around and yanked his body after it. He staggered and fell against Checker’s couch.

  “You lost everything?” I cried. “You?”

  He cowered away from me. “I’m trying to explain!”

  “And I don’t like your explanation.” I crossed my arms, keeping my fists trapped in my armpits. I wanted to do a lot more than sock him one.

  We were in love, he’d said, as if he’d expected the words to break me. As if he had some claim on me.

  Instead, it only cemented my revulsion.

  Somewhere far away, I laughed. “Gotcha.”

  I clung to my fury, tried to keep myself in the present. “You keep bleating that you did this for my own good,” I said. “You know who else says that? Dawna Polk. You’re not so different from her after all.”

  He drew into himself, hunching down and leaning on the arm of Checker’s couch like it was holding him up.

  “You took everything I was. Everything.” He had been the one to take the math from me. Not Pithica or Halberd or whoever else lurked behind me. Him.

  I didn’t know how I was certain, but I was. My fractured memory knew.

  “You took everything, because you thought it was right. And you stand here, and you whine about how painful it was for you, and you tell me the only reason I wasn’t fully on board with it was that I was so in love I needed a few more minutes of your magnificence—that’s the only reason my former self would have for not having her personality erased, is that it? I’m sure she had no other objection at all.” My voice rose, cracking over the space between us. “You’re a raging egotist, you know that? And whoever I used to be, you murdered her.”

  “Vala would have understood,” he mumbled. His shoulders shook. “We were in love. I did it for her.”