Zero Sum Game

by SL Huang

  “Did you believe her?”

  I picked at the blanket across my knees. “I’m not sure.”

  “I see,” he said.

  “She didn’t brainwash me,” I insisted. “It wasn’t like that. I remember everything. She just…she had a lot of really logical arguments.”

  “Cas,” said Rio, “She had logical arguments for you because you respond to logical arguments.”

  I was confused. “What other type would someone respond to?”

  “It’s clear you don’t often converse with other people,” said Rio with a hint of irony.

  “Oh, and you do?”

  “Touché,” he said. “Cas, she used the method of argument that would most appeal to you. With another she might have used emotional appeal, or irrelevant facts, or fallacies of any stripe.”

  He was missing the point. “It doesn’t matter what she would use on anyone else,” I said. “She had logical arguments. The logic in them doesn’t go away just because she wouldn’t have mentioned it to someone-not-me.”

  “She had what seemed like logical arguments,” Rio corrected. “People can pretend to logic to perpetrate almost any reality.”

  “Except when you dig deep enough, that kind of ‘logic’ always has deductive flaws,” I contested hotly. “This was different. I think I would know.”

  “Are you so sure?” asked Rio.

  “Of course I’m sure! I’m perfectly capable of differentiating—”

  I stopped. Rio was smiling.

  “What are you laughing at?” I asked crossly.

  “We can keep going until you call me names again,” he said.

  My brain screeched to a halt. I had been getting steamed up at him again, and for no reason except— “Oh,” I mumbled. “Sorry.” I buried my face in one hand. The familiar—and suddenly welcome—thudding of a headache started up in the back of my skull. “She did get to me, didn’t she.”

  “Only in the incipient stages. If you keep out of their way from now on, it will be of no consequence. If they cannot find you, they cannot do anything. Will you stay off the case this time?”

  But she had logical arguments. She had logical arguments! Was there a flaw? Could I find it?

  Rio, though not psychic, seemed to know what I was thinking. “Cas. It is much more difficult to apply logic to morality than you sometimes believe it to be.”

  “That’s stupid,” I muttered, but without any vitriol, and without any real belief behind the words. “You should be able to axiomitize everything. How else can you know right from wrong?”

  Rio was smiling again. “If you’re asking me personally, you know how. Sumasampalataya ako sa iyong tsarera.”

  “What does that mean?” He didn’t answer me, but I knew already. “God’s not my thing,” I said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he countered. “Whether you believe or not, it remains that there are no mortal answers to these questions, and any claimant thereof must therefore lie.” He sounded so calm. So sure.

  I’d never talked philosophy with Rio before. I had always assumed his blind faith meant he hadn’t given it much thought and he would parrot Bible verses as his version of argument…but apparently I was wrong.

  The pending migraine notwithstanding, I started feeling better about my tangled feelings regarding Pithica as an organization. I was less sure than ever of the right answer, but if Rio was correct and a right answer might not even exist, then I didn’t have to plunge wholesale after where Dawna’s logic led. At least not right away.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled. I realized something. “You think Pithica’s pretty bad, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Cas, the Lord could force us all to peace and righteousness if He wished to. Our world would have no war, no pain. Instead, He gave us free will.”

  Huh. That wasn’t a bad way of looking at it. “But you could argue that Dawna’s using her free will,” I pointed out. “Even if it’s to take away other people’s.”

  “And like all those who use their freedom to harm others, she sins in doing so.”

  “Oh.” I mulled that over. Because Rio was the only religious person I knew, I tended to forget that mass murder wasn’t supposed to be in the playbook. Except…Dawna was doing the exact same thing Rio did: hurting people to make the world a better place. “But what about what you do? I thought—your God…”

  “Cas, I am a condemned man in the eyes of the Lord,” he said. “I have sinned far too gravely.”

  Shock rippled through me. Rio believed in God and also believed that he was going to go straight to hell? “But you…” Words failed me.

  “Do not think me such a tragic figure, Cas. I am too weak to my baser desires. The least I can do is use them to do God’s work.”

  I was stunned. Not that I believed in heaven or hell myself, but the fact that Rio did and still thought no matter how faithful he was, the former was closed to him—I couldn’t imagine living that way.

  Rio had given me a lot to think about. It was so strange—Dawna had seemed so right, her logic absolutely inescapable. Rio had only brought up more questions, and not even entirely consistent ones, and if possible everything was less clear than it had been and I was developing a killer headache to boot, but at least I knew the muddy snarl was my own thoughts on the matter.

  “Did our friend Miss Polk discuss anything else with you?” Rio asked.

  “Not really. Mostly she just offered to answer my questions.”

  Rio looked far more serious about that than I would have expected. “I see,” he said again.

  And the realization blazed through me, viscerally painful, my recovering wound hot with agony and every nerve ending on fire. By asking her questions…by asking her questions, I had been willingly telling Dawna everything she wanted to know. I had asked about what I had thought was important, and in asking about it, I had thought about it, and in thinking about it…Jesus Christ, if she had let me keep going, I would have asked her about everything, given away the smallest detail of everything I knew, as far back as I could remember.

  But she hadn’t been interested in any of that. She had stopped our session even though I was still ready to spill a lot more than I already had. Thinking back, I realized with horror that she had only taken the time to converse with me on one topic: Rio. She had turned the conversation toward him at the very beginning, and then taken all the information I had.

  “Oh, God,” I said. “I—I’m so sorry. Rio, she only wanted to talk about you—” Dawna was a bloody psychic; I had given away every last morsel I knew about Rio in that conversation; I was sure of it. Tresting’s treachery was nothing compared to what I had done. “I told her…I told her—” I was so stupid. The only person in the world I could trust, and I had spilled my guts about him at the first opportunity.

  “Cas, calm yourself,” said Rio. “I expected that. I do not think you could have given away anything of harm to me. Take me back through what you spoke of, as nearly as you can remember.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said desperately. Why couldn’t he hate me? “She’s a mind-reader! She got everything!”

  Rio raised his eyebrows. “She had me her prisoner and could not use anything you gave her to any effect. What does that tell you?”

  It didn’t matter whether she had hurt him with it; I had still betrayed him. I turned away.

  Rio sighed, the barest susurration of breath. “I promise you it is of no consequence to me. Melodrama does not suit you, Cas.”

  Melodrama? I had just proved myself completely untrustworthy, and he was calling it melodrama?

  “In fact, considering why I am insusceptible to her influence, had you been able to resist her, you would now have a far more significant worry.”

  I still felt wretched, but that almost got a laugh out of me.

  “Now, humor me, Cas. Take me through your discussion with her. I don’t believe there is any cause for concern.”

  Chapter 28
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  Now that I was awake, the hours passed slowly. I discovered I detested convalescing. It was extremely boring. The one saving grace was that I was still technically on a job, at least enough to satisfy my messed-up brain. Despite Rio’s and my discussion about what had gone down with Dawna, I still hadn’t talked to him or Arthur about what our next step would be regarding Pithica.

  Of course, Rio still wanted me off the case. Ordinarily someone else’s objections wouldn’t have stopped me, but I had a sneaking thread of suspicion that he was right, that dealing with Pithica truly was out of my league. I’d never felt that way before, and I didn’t like it.

  Presumably, Rio was still going after Dawna himself, but he wasn’t telling us about it. Arthur, meanwhile, was mired in some sort of guilty cognitive dissonance between what Dawna had convinced him of at first and what she had inherently convinced him of later by trying to have me killed in front of him, and seemed perfectly content to hover over me as I recovered. He spent a lot of time on his phone, too, though I never heard him reach anyone.

  As for me, I decided to defer my decision on what to do about Pithica. If I could fool my brain for a while longer into thinking I was still working, that was fine by me. I still couldn’t figure out if I wanted to charge after Dawna Polk with everything I had or run as far away as possible and hope she never found me. Not to mention that some part of me still thought her logic might be right and Pithica might be a pinnacle of moral rectitude and I should do everything I could to help them. It was confusing. And I got a headache whenever I tried to think about it seriously.

  Rio had given me a secure laptop to use, and I spent the hours reading up on the latest papers in recursion theory to give me something to focus on. It was marginally interesting.

  On the fourth day after I’d woken up and been able to keep track of time effectively again, I remembered my email and went to sign in. I didn’t use email much. The only person I talked to about anything other than business was Rio, and he was strictly a phone person. The only thing I used email for was to get messages about potential jobs, though most of the people who knew to contact me did it via a permanent voicemail box. Likewise, I used email more as a message drop than for anything else.

  I did have three overtures for possible work, all old clients or people who had been referred by old clients, which was how most people found me. Two looked dead boring, the other only vaguely intriguing, but at least they would keep me busy if I ducked off Pithica. Provided I stayed in LA, I thought—I might have to go back to considering a disappearing act if I decided to run. My autoresponder had already taken care of the “on a case, will reply shortly” messages and none of the circumstances sounded urgent, but I took the time to dash off replies anyway, telling them that I was currently busy with a job but that I was potentially interested and would be in touch.

  That left one message, from an address I didn’t recognize. I clicked on it, frowning a little. It was encrypted. I passed my public key around to anyone who wanted it, but I didn’t know many people who would have sought it out, let alone used it. I decrypted the text—and my whole body went cold, like a ghost had reached out and touched my soul.

  The message was from Anton.

  All I could do was stare at it. The seconds ticked by, and I still stared. First of all, Anton never sent email. Despite being a professional information broker and probably owning more computers than I had guns, he had been something of a Luddite when it came to living in the modern world. He hadn’t even had a mobile phone. I always picked up a folder full of printouts from him in person, and though I had always assumed part of that had to do with much of his information coming from places that weren’t accessible via clickable URLs, I also figured Anton simply liked dealing with the world through landlines and hard copies.

  Second of all, he was dead.

  That part was still true. I looked at the timestamp and thought back, then shivered—he’d sent this less than three minutes before the first explosion had gone off.

  I finally took a deep breath and read the words. The email was only one line long:

  penny’s real excited. wants me to send you this right quick. her find.

  -anton

  p.s. “p” = “pithica” we think

  One file was attached. I opened it. I felt like my fingers should be shaking, but they were perfectly steady.

  The file was text only, and looked like a response to someone:

  To: 29814243

  Re: Missing flash drive

  >> his wife, he must have had an unbreakable hiding place. Lost cause at this point?

  All sources verify P. has not found it. If they are still searching, so are we.

  H. suggests it may have been removed from the scene but not handed over. Unlikely, but the zombies they use, it’s possible. Pursue that line. Let’s hope it was a blind spot.

  The beginnings of adrenaline had started tingling through me. I read the message again. The mention of a wife…could that mean…?

  “Arthur,” I called. He was next to me in a flash; I tried not to roll my eyes. “Arthur, was anything missing from Kingsley’s crime scene?”

  “Yeah. He had a USB drive he always wore around his neck, but they never found it. Was one of the things that made the whole thing weird—the doc said he never took it off.”

  The email was definitely talking about Kingsley, then, and he’d had a flash drive with…something…on it, and Pithica had been going crazy trying to find it. And apparently so had someone else, whoever had written this message…

  My thoughts constricted in horror. As far as we knew, the only other group working against Pithica was Steve’s. And he had as good as told us that they would obliterate anyone who found out about them in order to protect themselves from Pithica.

  Oh, God. Anton.

  Penny.

  “I found the drive, you know,” said Arthur morosely. “Too bad it was useless.”

  It took my brain several seconds to catch up with his words, and then I cried, “You what?”

  “Found it. In Polk’s house, once I tracked down she was the killer. Was only a few weeks ago.”

  “What was on it?”

  “Couldn’t tell; it was all coded up. But it’s useless.”

  “How do you know that if it’s encrypted?”

  His face was all moon-eyed hopelessness. “Asked Dawna Polk about it. She said it was nothing.”

  Holy crap. “Arthur, where is the drive now?”

  “Checker’s got it. I’m going to get it back from him and toss it, though.”

  “Arthur! Arthur, no, that’s—that’s not you talking; that’s—forget it. Have you talked to Checker about this yet?”

  He sighed. “I can’t reach him.”

  I was suddenly having trouble breathing. “You can’t reach him?”

  “No. It’s strange, you know? He usually answers. I can’t reach…I can’t reach anybody.”

  Oh, crap. Oh, fuck. How had I not thought of this before? Shit, I had mentioned Checker in my generous tell-all to Dawna, and I had only just met him. Arthur worked with him all the time.

  “Arthur,” I said carefully. “Don’t freak out, but did Dawna ask you about Checker?” Would it matter? Could she have seen everything anyway, whether or not she had asked?

  “No,” Arthur answered. “Well, not until after I mentioned him. She was real interested. He’s a heck of a guy, you know?”

  “Oh, no.” I pushed back the blankets and scrambled up. “Oh, God.”

  “Russell, stop! What are you doing? You can’t get up!”

  “The hell I can’t.” I tore the medical tape off the back of my hand and slid out the IV, ignoring the dark blood that welled up. It would clot. “We have to find him. Now.”

  Arthur shook his head. “You ain’t allowed to find Checker. It’s part of his security whatsis, you know—clients don’t get to know where the Hole’s at.”

  “Arthur, this is very important.” I grabbed him by the shoulders. �
�Where Checker lives—he calls it the Hole?” I took a deep breath. “Do you know where it is? I’m not asking you to tell me, but do. You. Know?”

  He looked like he was thinking it over. It was wildly disconcerting, like watching a five-year-old child in a grown man’s body. “Of course I do. But I ain’t telling you, so don’t ask.”

  I physically shook him. “Arthur! We have to find him, now! You know, so Dawna knows, and Pithica’s coming after him!” We might be too late already.

  Arthur shook his head again, adamantly. “She wouldn’t hurt him. She was just interested.”

  “No! She would definitely hurt him! She lied to you, remember? About Rio? About not hurting me?”

  His face clouded. “Yeah.”

  “And it made you doubt her motives, right? Remember?”

  “Yeah…”

  Thank goodness Dawna hadn’t had another crack at him after undoing her own work. He would have been a Pithica-loving robot. “Arthur, listen to me. You don’t have to believe me, okay? But you do have to go see Checker, now. In person.”

  He frowned down at me. “You feeling better enough for me to leave for a while?”

  Oh, Jesus, did I ever. “Yes! I promise! Now go, right now!”

  He shrugged me off. “Don’t know what you’re so hyper about, but okay. I am kind of worried I can’t reach him.” He grabbed his coat off a chair. “And I can get that flash drive back off him, too.”

  Oh, brother. Was I this bad under Dawna’s influence? How on earth did I fix this? Rio always seemed to be able to talk me out of it, but Steve had implied I was highly unusual that way, and I still didn’t know why. I shuddered to think what Arthur would have been like if Dawna hadn’t had me shot.

  “You lie back down,” Arthur admonished, pointing at me as he headed toward the door.

  “Cross my heart,” I called after him.

  The door closed. I found my jacket and gingerly zipped it; if it was still raining out I probably didn’t want to get the bandages wet. My boots were by the door.

  It was indeed still raining, the continuous, drenching downpour that was the hallmark of Southern California’s wet season. The flat we’d been in turned out to be back in the congestion of Los Angeles proper, and Arthur, honest guy that he was, got on a bus. Since I stole a car, it was mind-numbingly easy to follow him, even through miles and miles of red lights and stop-and-go traffic.