Plastic Smile (Russell's Attic Book 4)

by Huang, SL

  Arthur spun a story similar to the one I’d told Mama Lorenzo, one about subtle leverage and coded language we assured McCabe his audience would understand. “It’s gonna get ’em all back from the brink,” Arthur said. “Then we fix it all, and you get to report on the whole scoop.”

  “I can give you a sample of the technology, once we get everything removed,” I said, adding, “Um, both of you,” when Mama Lorenzo turned a burning gaze on me. I’d give them each a mathematically-incorrect version of one of the Signet Devices, one no one would be able to make work again. McCabe would report on the truth, all right, but likely nobody would believe him, and somehow we’d figure out a way to convince Mama Lorenzo we’d already brought Malcolm’s killer to justice. Everyone else would comment on the strange dip and resurgence in crime as a random happenstance.

  McCabe would be a hero, one who would remain unsung except in the echo chamber of his followers, even after he’d saved all of Los Angeles. The status quo would continue. Everything would go back to normal.

  Except for Malcolm. And Katrina. And Miguel and his boys. And all the other people who had died or had their lives derailed because of this.

  And me. I wasn’t sure who I would be, tomorrow. I tried not to think about that.

  Arthur outlined the plan. McCabe objected to parts of it. Arthur restated those parts in different words until he agreed. It was impressive: he didn’t try to talk to McCabe like they were friends, didn’t even try to hide his dislike for McCabe’s views. He just…acknowledged the other man’s power, and listened to him bluster and argue where I would have tried to shout him down.

  And he got us exactly what we came for.

  “You may think I hate people like you, Mr. Tresting,” McCabe said, as they stood. “I don’t. But I love my country, and I have to do what’s best for it.”

  “Yeah,” Arthur said. “Me, too.”

  “Have your man here at seven,” McCabe said. “I want to interview him. We go live at eight for the morning show, eleven on the east coast.”

  Arthur glanced at me.

  “I’ll get him here,” I said.

  And I would. Whatever it took.

  Chapter 32

  I needed to hurry. Rio was probably waiting for me with Simon, so the sooner I got this over with, the sooner Rio could re-dedicate himself to knocking off pieces of the immolating tension he’d plunged LA into.

  That we’d plunged LA into.

  Instead I drove out to the coast.

  The ocean at night is a beautiful thing. I parked at the side of the highway and climbed over the guardrail to sit on the rocky tumble overlooking the beach. The surf tumbled in out of the darkness with comforting trochoidal periodicity, the depth and wavelength and breaking pattern outlining the contour of the sea floor. The liquid water spun in never-ending circles as the energy of the waves pulsed through it, stretching into hyperbolic tangents before crashing on the shore as if they had never been.

  I sat and watched the numbers roll in and out, the fine spray dampening my face. For the first time in my life, I wanted to call someone just to talk.

  But I couldn’t. Arthur had stayed back at the radio station to keep McCabe and Mama Lorenzo monitored, and even I could read how he’d been mired in his own guilt since all this had gone south—he’d listen, but I doubted he wanted to, at the moment. Checker was opposed to what I was doing full stop. And Pilar…

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know how badly I’d messed up my relationship with Pilar.

  That left Rio, who not only also wouldn’t approve of what I was doing—in the most violent of ways—but who was the one person in my life utterly devoid of empathy.

  Screw it. Maybe that was what I needed right now.

  I pulled out my phone.

  “Hello, Cas,” Rio greeted me. “Are you on your way?”

  I was so angry with him.

  “Cas? Are you all right?”

  “I’m having trouble…” I said. I swallowed. I don’t want to die.

  Rio waited.

  “What was she like?” I asked. “Valarmathi?”

  Rio considered for a long enough time that I thought he wasn’t going to answer, thought he was again going to tell me I couldn’t know. “Very different from you,” he said finally.

  “How?”

  “Cas,” Rio said. “I am sorry. I am not certain I am adequate for answering these questions.”

  “Please tell me something.”

  “She enjoyed books,” Rio said, “and animals. Poetry. Elaborate schemes I am given to understand were practical jokes. She found humor in her surroundings, some of it optimistic, some of it cruel. She was a woman of great conviction; she spoke with passion and laughed with startling frequency. She was also competitive, and persistent—traits you share.”

  The only ones, it sounded like. Rio needn’t have worried about my head—his listing was so far off from my reality it sparked no new connection to my misremembered past.

  “I really am a different person, aren’t I,” I said.

  “Only God can answer that, Cas,” Rio answered. “I do not know if you share a soul.”

  Right.

  “I don’t remember much of her,” I said. “I remember…how hard she fought. How much she didn’t want to go.”

  Standing at the window, pressing one hand to the rain-drenched glass as droplets washed me away.

  “I do not believe it will be that way this time, Cas,” Rio said.

  “But you don’t know, do you?” I stared out at the black and endless sea. “If he finds me too…damaged, he’ll just—reboot me again, won’t he? Clean up his mistakes.”

  The same way I was trying to undo what I’d wrought upon Los Angeles. Reset button. Try again.

  I didn’t want to be reset.

  “It is a danger,” Rio said. “But I do not believe it to be a probable one.”

  “Would you be able to tell?” I asked.

  “Under some circumstances, probably.”

  “If I start to go…different…” I stopped.

  “Yes, Cas?”

  “I want you to end it,” I said hoarsely. “Will you do that?”

  “You mean kill you.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  The phone was silent. I waited.

  “I believe I can promise that,” Rio answered at last.

  Some tension inside me unclenched. Perhaps it was simply the notion of having some control, some way.

  “I’m coming in,” I said, and turned my back on the crashing waves.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I arrived back at the apartment where we’d made the phone hacking devices.

  And everything went straight to hell.

  Rio and Simon stood up as I came in. And Simon, brilliant people person that he was, took one look at my face and exclaimed, “No! Cassandra, I’m not going to do that!”

  Rio glanced between us, in one half-second figured out my whole plan, and went for his gun.

  I lunged for Simon and tackled him. A shot slammed out over our heads. Rio attempted to adjust his aim but I was in the way now; I kept my body collinear with Simon’s and rocketed up at Rio’s gun hand.

  Rio tried to block me and twist around. He was very, very fast—but not faster than mathematical extrapolation. I lurched into where he was going to be and applied the requisite force to either wrench the gun out of his fingers—or break them, if he didn’t let go.

  He didn’t let go.

  I did, a split-second before I snapped his wrist.

  I stumbled. My breath heaved. I raised my hands, trying to deny the tremor in them. “What the hell, Rio?”

  Instead of pressing his advantage, he’d stopped in midstride, weapon still pointed vaguely toward Simon behind me. A slight frown had appeared between his eyes. “Cas?”

  I couldn’t hurt Rio. In the same way I couldn’t seriously hurt Simon.

  In exactly the same way.

  “Did you know?” I asked. My voice shook.

 
“No, Cas,” Rio answered. “I…did not.”

  “You did this,” I said, my voice raised to accuse the man behind me. “Or you’re doing it, right now.” I honestly couldn’t tell which, but since the latter didn’t make much sense…

  Rio didn’t seem to know what action to take. I stayed standing in front of Simon.

  The tension in the room teetered on the point of a needle.

  “What?” I yelled at Rio. “You don’t want to fight me because—it wouldn’t be fair?” I didn’t even know what I was saying. “Come at me. Come at me!”

  “Cassandra, don’t—” gasped Simon. I mule-kicked him without looking, and without moving out of Rio’s way.

  “I am unsure of the proper way to proceed,” Rio admitted.

  “What else did you do to me?” I screamed, without turning around. “What else?”

  Simon coughed wretchedly and didn’t answer.

  “Come on, Rio.” I couldn’t seem to stop. “Hit me. Shoot me! I have to be able to fight back then, don’t I? I have to have some control—”

  “I am not going to shoot you, Cas.”

  “Try!”

  Rio lowered his gun. “No.”

  I wanted to march over and raise it back up, right at me, and force him to pull the trigger.

  I wanted to yank it out of his hands and turn it back on him.

  I wanted some modicum of power over my own goddamn mind.

  “I’m going to use him to fix Los Angeles,” I said. “I’m going to convince him. That violates every ethical principle you stand for.”

  “Yes,” Rio answered.

  We stared at each other.

  “I won’t do it,” Simon gasped from behind me. “I won’t…”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  Rio spoke to Simon, even though he was still looking at me. “If you do this, I shall think it meet to kill you.”

  Hell, he apparently thought it meet to kill Simon at the very suggestion I might be able to convince him to break his moral stance. This did not bode well for Simon agreeing to help.

  Even if, after fantasizing so many times about his death, I was about to save his life.

  “Simon,” I said. “Stand up and go to the door.”

  He hesitated, which made me furious—if he did know me, he should know my skill. He did know my skill. Which meant he was hesitating because either he couldn’t wrap his brain around it or he just couldn’t handle being efficient under pressure, neither of which I had any patience for.

  He finally scrambled up and edged for the front of the apartment. I rotated in line with the scuffling of his feet, staying between him and Rio.

  “Cas,” Rio said. “Do not do this.”

  “If you want to stop me,” I said, “you’re going to have to stop me.” I backed away from Rio until I nearly collided with Simon, and then shoved him out of the apartment behind me without ever turning around.

  Rio didn’t try to follow us.

  Chapter 33

  Simon made a break for it as soon as we got outside, but I grabbed him by the coat and collared him into my stolen car. He scrabbled at the door handle, but I took off too fast and sped us out and away, running from Rio, zigzagging past any probability he might be able to track us.

  “I’m not going to do it,” Simon said. Shrilly. He’d wrapped his arms around himself in the passenger seat.

  I ignored him. I drove out to the desert, where no one would see us, out where he couldn’t get away from me even if he fled, and pulled off the road to bump over rocks and dirt and scrub before I stopped the car.

  Simon slumped, defeated, and didn’t get out. “Don’t try to convince me,” he said. “I’m not going to. This is the one thing—I vowed I wouldn’t, and I won’t. Ever.”

  I only had one piece of leverage to bargain with. But even here at the end, with no other option…Christ on a crutch if I wasn’t going to try everything else first.

  “Do you know what we’ve been doing in LA?” I said, without looking at him.

  “I’ve guessed—broadly.”

  Guessed, my ass. “Brain entrainment,” I said. “Technology that knocks people out of groupthink. But we need to dismantle it. Problem is, we’re poised on the brink of a gang war.” For once I was glad he could read the truth of it in my face and voice, read the severity of the situation off my posture and expression. “We need you to go on the radio and tell everyone to stand the fuck down, or a lot of people in this city are going to die.”

  He looked away. “You know I don’t do that, Cas. I can’t.”

  “Make a fucking exception.”

  “And then what?” He whipped back around to me. “If I make an exception to help Los Angeles, manipulate everyone here against their will because it will help, where does it end? What else do I do to ‘help,’ Cas? Should I help you against your will? Would you like that? I’m not going to start down that slippery slope—”

  “The slippery slope is a fallacy!” I got right in his face. “You’re a goddamn human being; you’re capable of making judgment calls. You don’t become a mindless brain-munching zombie just because you decide it’s okay to stop a war!”

  “Oh, really? I know some other people who make very careful judgment calls about how they use their powers. You know them, too, and you decimated them. We wouldn’t even be here if you hadn’t decided they—”

  “Pithica was different,” I insisted. I had to keep believing that. Had to keep believing I’d made the right call. “They were manipulating everyone, the whole world. I’m trying to get you to stop some incredibly violent groups from firing the first shot in a riot that will kill a lot of innocent people. This is clear and immediate.”

  “And if you have a power that allows you to see many degrees of logic away, it still seems clear and immediate,” Simon shot back. “People like Daniela and me aren’t the only ones Pithica has. When you have as much power as we do—Cas?”

  I groped blindly for the door handle and fell out into the night. The sky reeled above me, stars half-washed out by the city brightness.

  “Cas? Cassandra—Cas?” Simon had gotten out, too, but for some reason he wasn’t trying to run. He crouched over me, his hands half-raised as if he wanted to touch me but knew I’d try to break his fingers if he did. “Cas, what’s going on?”

  “Stop talking,” I said. “I can’t know more about Pithica. She made it so I can’t.”

  “Oh, God, Cas,” Simon said, and it sounded like he was swallowing back tears.

  “Jesus fuck, shut up,” I said.

  He folded himself to sit cross-legged on the ground next to me. “I won’t say anything more about Pithica, I promise. But you must see why—I can’t be the judge of that much power. I can’t. Maybe you think you could do it, but I’m not—I’m not smart enough, and frankly, I don’t think any human is. Or maybe the better way of phrasing is to say my judgment call is not to use it. Ever. Not unless people tell me I can, and that’s where I’m drawing the line, because I’m not smart enough to be able to draw it anywhere else.”

  “I have superpowers, too,” I said. “I use them.”

  “Yours are different. You don’t…unmake people.”

  “No, they just underestimate me and then I kill them.”

  He flinched. “Well, then maybe you should think about drawing some lines, too. But that’s not for me to say, Cas. Honestly, it’s not. I have to decide what I’m comfortable with when it comes to what I can do, and I have to draw a line, and I have to draw it here. I’m…I’m sorry. I truly am.” His face wrinkled at me earnestly.

  “You’ll let a whole mess of innocent people die, then.”

  He turned away again, and his jaw clamped shut like he was resisting saying something. I thought I heard it anyway: Just like you did, when you took down Pithica.

  I wondered if it was an unconscious psychic projection or my own guilt saying the words.

  Fuck.

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe I’m just like Dawna, in wanting to do t
his. I still have to make the decision in front of me. I still have to—I can’t live with myself, if I let this happen.”

  “And I have to make the decision in front of me, too,” Simon said, anguished. “And I…I can’t live with myself the other way. I can’t. I’m sorry.”

  I was down to my last hole card. Every emotion shriveled inside me in rebellion, made me want to get up and run, drive away, flee to another city and leave LA to burn.

  That would be the easy solution.

  But I’d come here knowing I’d have to. Knowing this was my only shot. I’d made this situation happen from the get-go: I’d caused the crime spike when I’d hamstrung Pithica; I’d set up the brain entrainment to try to combat it.

  Maybe it was only fair I had to give myself to fix it.

  “You were right, you know.” I picked up a stone and dug it into the hard-packed dirt. Cars whizzed by on the freeway thirty meters distant. “You were right that…it is killing me.”

  Simon whirled back around, and whatever he saw, his whole face went wild with alarm. The fucker could read off my expression that I’d had a breakdown, apparently.

  At least it saved me needing to tell him.

  “Cassandra,” he said, my name a breath of relief. “I mean, Cas. I don’t know how you’re all right, but thank God you are. You—I told you this would happen. I told you…”

  “Yeah, because of what you did to me,” I said. “And that’s twice tonight, by the way. I thought you said you didn’t read people’s minds.”

  “I explained—sometimes I can’t help it. But I only get the sort of…overall picture, not details. What happened? Are you truly all right?”

  “Never better,” I said automatically. Shit. It would only help my case if I told the truth. I opened my mouth to change my answer, but the “no” curdled on my tongue.

  Simon saw it anyway. His face creased in worry and pain as if I’d spoken the word aloud. As if he had any right to worry about me.

  “Checker tried to call you,” I said. “You’re a hard person to find, apparently.”

  Guilt washed over his features. “I didn’t think. I should have been there.”

  For some reason it made me angry, that he didn’t try to defend himself with the indisputable facts: that I’d said no and told him to leave, that therefore no reason existed for Checker or any of my other friends to have his number. I’d chosen his absence. He didn’t get to take responsibility for my life like I was some pet he had created in a lab.