Plastic Smile (Russell's Attic Book 4)

by Huang, SL

  “God save us all from your brand of love,” I said.

  Of everything I’d said, that was what defeated him. He hugged his arms around his chest, shrinking into himself.

  “Get out,” I said. “I never want to lay eyes on you again.”

  He half-turned back to me, like he wanted to argue. But then he looked at my face, and whatever his psychic ability saw there, it made him curl back and close himself away and stumble for the door without another word.

  I sank down on the couch and dropped my head into my hands.

  Valarmathi. Be polite.

  I don’t like being touched, but then, you don’t like touching people.

  It works, right? Ignore everyone else.

  Valarmathi might get her wish and come back to life. Or maybe she’d kill us both in trying. I wasn’t sure she even existed anymore—but then, I wasn’t sure I did, either.

  “Hey,” Checker said. He’d come over next to me.

  I didn’t answer.

  His moved a hand as if he were going to reach out, and then thought better of it. “Do you want to talk—”

  “No.”

  “Okay.”

  I squeezed my hands against my face until it hurt, as if I could hold myself together. I thought about the shattered bits of memory and emotion that belonged to a dead woman, the pieces of feeling that I now knew echoed from someone who hadn’t wanted to leave. And the life that had taken her place, my own half-life, bereft of any real meaning…even the proofs I’d tried lay impotent, dangling threads of elegance I knew had to mean something, but didn’t.

  Simon had no idea what he had taken from me.

  Even worse, I only existed because of his clumsy attempts at playing God. Valarmathi and I were completely different people. Did that mean I owed every part of who I was to Simon?

  The question festered in me, turning me inside out and making me question every part of who I was, and I hated it, because nobody except me should have had the slightest claim on myself.

  “Do you want to be alone?” asked Checker.

  Even if he left I wouldn’t be alone. Valarmathi lurked in the shadows, mocking, making me wonder if I wasn’t a creature born entirely of Simon’s own making. I thought about Rio and his belief in a deity who had brought all of creation into being, a God responsible for who we all were at our cores. Some being who had made us. How could he believe in something so violating?

  Checker moved his chair a little closer to me and sat back, his hands relaxed in his lap.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  We sat that way for a long time.

  Chapter 23

  I stayed at Checker’s place that night. I didn’t even ask—he ordered in food and brought some sheets and blankets out to the living room to stack beside me on the couch. I didn’t say anything, but I was grateful.

  Arthur came and joined us late in the evening. I got the sense he already knew what had happened—Checker had asked me quietly if it was okay if Arthur knew, and now I belatedly connected that when I’d seen him on a tablet he must have been sending an email version.

  That had been considerate of him. I didn’t want to relive it, even by hearing someone else relay things.

  “How you feeling, Russell?” Arthur asked, sitting down next to me.

  “Losing it,” I said baldly. There was no use putting up a front anymore.

  Valarmathi snickered.

  “He erased me,” I whispered. “He…”

  Arthur put a hand on my back, gently supportive.

  “And Rio knew.” He had to have.

  Giggling. “We stole the second one. What do you think they’ll do?”

  “I’m living in someone else’s body,” I said. “I don’t even know if I’m a real person.”

  “Hey,” Arthur said sharply. “Stop that talk now. Ain’t matter what they did to you, you got the same worth and value as anyone else.”

  “Even the woman whose life I stole?” I said bitterly.

  “Wasn’t your doing,” Arthur said.

  “I know. After all, I didn’t exist when they killed her, did I?”

  “Cas…” Checker said, but he didn’t seem to know what to say after that.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I said. After all, nothing had changed, had it? I was still going to go insane and die, unless I let Simon violate me, again. He and Rio hadn’t lied about that; my own mind was bone-certain.

  And Rio was still going to tear Los Angeles apart at the seams if I didn’t do something to stop it.

  Checker and Arthur didn’t say anything. Somehow it was comforting, that they offered only weighty silence instead of platitudes.

  “I don’t want to die,” I said.

  Arthur’s hand squeezed my shoulder, hard.

  “I’m—I’m not trying to be the false hope guy,” Checker said, “but maybe there’s still a third option. Something we haven’t thought of.”

  “Yeah,” I said, unconvincingly.

  I ran my hands over the uneven stitching of a patchwork quilt, the colors faded but still vibrant.

  I cleared my throat. “If there is a third option, it’s got a deadline. And…I don’t think it’s a very long one.”

  Arthur squeezed my shoulder again.

  After a minute, he said, “If it’s a psychic you need, maybe more of ’em are out there. We met two already.”

  “One not connected to Pithica?” I snorted. “Good luck.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Checker said, reaching for his tablet, but I could tell he was lying. There was no way we’d find another telepath to help me.

  “Maybe we talk to Rio,” Arthur said. “He knows this world, seems to me.”

  In all my life, I never would have expected a solution like that to be coming from Arthur. “I’ll give it a shot,” I said. In spite of everything, I still trusted Rio. He wouldn’t have supported Simon’s decision to…delete me. The only reason he even talked to Simon seemed to be in an effort to keep me from dying, and it wasn’t like he was wrong about that.

  I was viciously glad to remember how he’d beaten up Simon in the warehouse. Rio was still on my side. In this, at least.

  You listen to me.

  No.

  “I shouldn’t exist,” I said. “He should have let her die.”

  “I—um, not in any way excusing what happened to you, but—selfishly, I’m kind of glad you do,” Checker said. He shrugged a little. “Exist, that is.”

  “Same,” said Arthur.

  I took a shuddering breath. “Are you sure about that? I’m pretty sure I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”

  “You have saved both of our lives.” Checker gave me a lopsided smile. “So, you know. I wouldn’t write you off so quickly.”

  “Eh…” Arthur said, and I couldn’t help laughing a little.

  They sat with me until I fell asleep on Checker’s couch. I woke up in darkness, covered in a blanket, and knew what I had to do.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Jacob Pourdry awoke with my gun in his face. Even in the dead of night, tousled with sleep, he had the look of an animated Prince Charming—slick and handsome with conniving eyes and a con man’s grin.

  “You got past my security,” he said. He didn’t seem concerned.

  “Hey, Vance told me you were smart,” I said. “I woke you up because I wanted you to know. I’m about to kill you.”

  “I could use someone like you.” He gave me a lazy half-smile. “How much will it take?”

  “No one’s ever told you no, have they?” I said.

  “Not yet.” He sat up. “How much?”

  I shot him in the knee.

  The inhuman squeal that ripped out of him as he went down was extremely satisfying. I raised my Colt back up and pointed it at his left eye.

  “Please!” He cringed behind his hands, the confidence finally gone. With his skin pale and tight with pain and the bed spattered with blood, he suddenly looked so young. Like a boy who’d only wanted to play a game. “Wh
atever you want, just tell me, whatever—”

  “I wanted you not to traffic in kids,” I said. “I’m going to kill you now. I’m telling you so you have a few seconds of abject self-loathing to contemplate the fact that you lost.”

  He tried to plead through the sobbing.

  “Bye,” I said, and shot him.

  I was Los Angeles’s avenging angel.

  I pulled out my phone and called Yamamoto. “I just shot Jacob Pourdry,” I said. “You call everyone else and tell them. Anyone makes a move, they join him. You know how good I am, Taku. I am not fucking around, and I am not going to let this city devolve into a war. If I have to clean up Los Angeles by wiping all of you from the face of the planet, I will fucking do it.”

  “Cassu-san—”

  I hung up on him.

  Vengeance! someone cackled, and I wasn’t sure whose voice it was.

  I thought back through everybody who had been at Yamamoto’s little meeting. Maybe I should pay them all a visit myself, just so they knew I could.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Malcolm was the only one who got the drop on me. In the ensuing fight he threw me through a plate glass door.

  “You got one minute, then I let the dogs loose,” he called from inside the estate house I’d tracked him to, a sawed-off dead-steady in his hands. “Now we’re even.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Rio met me at the same diner we’d eaten at before. He raised an eyebrow at my appearance.

  “Your move,” I said.

  Green for you, and red for me. Do you need infrared?

  “Cas,” Rio said.

  I turned to go.

  “Cas. I have spoken with Simon.”

  Chapter 24

  “I would kill him for his sins, if you did not need him,” Rio informed me.

  I closed my eyes. “I’m not going to let him help me. It’s off the table.”

  “All right.”

  I remembered what Arthur had suggested. “Do you…do you know of anyone else?”

  “Another with his abilities, you mean?” Rio asked. “Yes. But all would be even less advisable to invite into your life.”

  So there were others.

  “Simon attempts to sin no more. It does not excuse him, but the Lord is forgiving. More so than I.”

  “And I,” I said.

  “Understood.” Rio stepped around to face me again. “Cas. Stop this madness.”

  I blew out a breath that was almost a laugh, and didn’t dignify that with a response.

  “You must know. This is not the way.”

  “I don’t know anything, Rio,” I said. “I don’t even know who I am. And hey, I’m dying.” My lips twisted into a devil’s grin. “Once I’m gone, the secret of what I’ve done to LA dies with me, no matter how many innocent people you kill. I just have to wait you out.”

  “Cas,” Rio said. He said my name with as much anguish as I supposed someone like him was capable of.

  “There won’t be any point once I’m dead or insane,” I said. “You’ll just be helping more people get hurt, and I know you won’t want that, so you’ll stop. LA will go on and be better, and so maybe all this is okay.”

  “Do not do this, Cas.”

  “Which? Save LA, or die?”

  “Either.”

  “Free will, right?” I said. “My choices. My decision.”

  Rio didn’t usually have much expression, but he tensed as if he didn’t want to go forward with what he said next. “Cas, three militia groups arrive tomorrow.”

  Of course they did. “You can’t let me fucking have this, can you?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Well, then I’ll fight them, too. And if it doesn’t work, you’ll be stuck with the cleanup.” I started to push past him, but he caught my shoulder very gently.

  “Cas.”

  I didn’t look up. “This is the only thing I give a damn about right now, Rio. I’m going to keep at it until I can’t anymore. That’s it.”

  “So be it,” he said, and let go.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “This is what life should feel like,” he said, but I needed blood, so we went out and found knives and guns and a crusade. Then we traded riddles until the sun set and I beat him at chess.

  Maybe this is your chance to be normal.

  I didn’t know you were so good at making jokes.

  “Cas. Cas, are you with me?”

  I struggled to dig back into reality. “Yeah. What’s going on?”

  We were in Checker’s Hole. Now that Pourdry was out of the picture, Checker had moved back home, apparently finally taking my word for it that he didn’t need to worry about Rio.

  I wasn’t sure how many days it had been. My sense of time kept eliding the hours, leaving blank chasms and collapsing spans of consciousness. Not more than two weeks had passed, probably—I’d looked at a calendar a few days before and been surprised to find it had only been ten days since I’d thrown out Simon.

  Without discussing it, most nights I’d been staying on Checker’s couch. I’d punched him twice when he’d woken me from nightmares. For some reason, he kept doing it.

  “Do you want to hear the latest on McCabe’s show?” Checker asked. The various leaders of the militia groups kept popping up as radio guests, under pseudonyms. Three men and two women were the most common ones. We hadn’t yet been able to figure out who they were or where they were camping out in Los Angeles, if they were even basing inside the city limits at all.

  The mainstream news shows had started dropping line items on the situation, though they acted like they were reporting on conspiracy theorists rather than reporting on a conspiracy. Small favors.

  “Summarize it for me,” I said. “Anything new?”

  “They’re convinced it’s the water system,” Checker said. “The way they’re talking…I worry about an attack on the DWP.”

  LA was in the middle of a desert. If someone knocked out the Department of Water and Power in a misguided attempt at justice, it would cripple the city. I thought back to when an EMP had fried every circuit in Los Angeles a few years before—that had been my fault, too, and a lot of people had died.

  If I go back there, I’m going to kill them all.

  “Are they still threatening the government?” I asked, with an effort.

  “Honestly, I think the only thing that’s stopping them from marching on City Hall with guns is the brain entrainment,” Checker said. “My stats programs are still all over the place, though. There aren’t enough priors for them to have predictability. And there are some really odd things happening, like the drug numbers.”

  “What do you mean, the drug numbers?”

  “I’m seeing evidence the various cartels have been hit hard, as you’d expect. But then there’s other data suggesting recreational drug use is up. I mean, a lot of this is drawn from correlative factors, and who knows, those correlations might have been made obsolete for some reason, so I’m not sure if there’s a useful conclusion to be drawn. And I don’t know; if we somehow manage to have higher recreational drug use without the negative impacts of the drug trade, is that necessarily a bad thing, or just neutral? My libertarian soul is inclined to say the latter.”

  “Bottom line?”

  He flung out his hands. “I don’t know? There’s not really enough firm statistical data to draw solid conclusions on the overall domino effect of secondary and tertiary impacts. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  “But the primary effects are still good? The gangs and big criminal organizations are feeling the impact still?”

  “Oh, hell, yeah. Did you know Los Angeles has been heretofore known as the gang capital of America? Almost fifteen hundred active criminal gangs with hundreds of thousands of members. I didn’t know that till I started trying to run data on this. That’s staggering.”

  “Only if you’re bad at estimation,” I said. It was about in line with what I would have expected. “Have those numbers changed nontrivially now?�
��

  “The jury’s still out until I can get some more solid correlations, but from what I’ve seen so far, I suspect the answer’s going to be ‘yes,’ ‘absolutely,’ and ‘to great effect.’”

  So all I had to do was keep them from falling for Rio’s instigation and firing the first shot, at least until that sort of provocation wasn’t worth it to Rio anymore. In other words, until I went insane or died.

  I hadn’t told Checker and Arthur that part of my plan.

  “This isn’t working,” Simon said. He was crying. He opened the door and left.

  I turned to Rio. “Who was that?”

  “Cas?” Checker said. “Are you okay?”

  “What? Yeah.”

  “Did you hear what I just said?” I didn’t know how he made the question as patient as he did.

  “No. Go again.”

  “Going back to McCabe’s show for a minute, he had someone new come on this last time. Anonymous, again, but from what he was saying I think it was one of the people from Yamamoto’s group.”

  “And?” I asked.

  “What you’d expect. A lot of threats. A lot of rhetoric. There’s either a movement to join the militia groups and attack the powers that be, or a movement to wage war on them until they leave the city. I wasn’t quite clear on which.”

  Either would be bad, and I was sure Rio was masterfully inflaming them in both directions.

  I probably shouldn’t have burned my welcome in Yamamoto’s group. Then I might know what was going on.

  “Is Rio still trying to get you to…” Checker trailed off.

  “To let Simon fuck with me? Yes.”

  He opened his mouth, then shut it again and turned back to his monitor.

  “Go ahead,” I said, without acrimony. “You want to say I should consider it, don’t you?”

  “I…” Checker looked down at his lap. “No. Yes. I don’t know. I get why you won’t. Just…”

  He didn’t want to see me die.

  “Are you?” Checker asked. “Considering it, at all?”

  “No,” I said. “If I’m going to die, I’d rather die as me. Whoever I am now, at least. I’d rather have at least that.”

  He nodded, and sniffed a little. “Yeah. Okay.”

  He didn’t try to tell me it was possible Simon might not destroy me, this time. Rio had tried to convince me of that, and I’d walked away.