S Huang - Zero Sum Game

“You will not acknowledge her deception as possible?”

“No!”

He sat back in his chair. “Odd.”

I didn’t like the judgment I heard in that word. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Ordinarily, you acknowledge every possibility. It is part of what makes you good at what you do,” Rio said evenly, and if I hadn’t been feeling so hostile toward him at the moment, I might have been flattered by that. “Logic, yes? It’s how you’re wired.”

“How I’m wired?”

“I do not mean it as an insult.”

“Well, maybe I’m taking it as one!” I snapped. “I’m allowed to have a gut instinct about people, you know!”

“Cas, you detest reliance on gut instinct.”

“And maybe you don’t know everything about how I work!” My voice was rising, a biting fury building in me by the second. “It’s such a bad thing not to suspect an innocent woman? Oh, right, I forgot— you wouldn’t know anything about valuing other human beings—”

“This isn’t like you, either,” Rio observed calmly. “Something’s affecting you.”

“Something’s affecting me?” I cried incredulously. “Well, yes, genius, things affect me! You think you’re such an expert on emotion all of a sudden? You? Did you ever think that maybe I’m reacting like a normal human person?”

“Cas—” Rio tried to cut in, but I wasn’t having any of it.

“The poor woman has done nothing but care about her little sister, and she’s being dragged into this whole violent mess with drug dealers and cops, and now we find out someone very dangerous called her and lied to her, and you want to dump it all on her? Maybe while we’re doing that, the people we should have been investigating will take their sweet time to come kill her and Courtney!”

“Cas, sit down—”

“No, fuck you, Rio!” I spat. I wasn’t sure when I had stood, but I was looming over him, so angry I felt like my skin was splitting open, my insides seizing. “I don’t owe you a goddamn thing! What, does it ruin your sick little masturbatory fantasies that I might care what happens to someone else? Too bad! Because unlike some fucked-up people, I have emotions, and morals, and a sense of right and wrong that doesn’t come from some demented version of the Bible!” Red was fuzzing around the corners of my vision. I wanted to hit him, to hit him so hard that he wouldn’t get back up. The math pricked my senses all over, whispering of all the ways I could strike. Maim. Kill. “And you? You dare preach to me about how I should or shouldn’t act, well, fuck you, because I’m not a fucking psychopath!”

My final words rang in the air between us, echoing in the space between trust and history.

“Oh, God…” I whispered.

“Do you believe me now?” Rio asked dryly.

“Oh, God, Rio…” I couldn’t move.

“I’m not angry,” said Rio. “Sit down.”

Of course he wasn’t angry. Somehow, I wished that he would be, that he would get up and slug me, fight back, because I…I had stabbed him as ruthlessly and effectively as I knew how, and it didn’t matter that he was pulling the knife out and dismissing it as a flesh wound, because I had crossed the line, that line—

“Sit down,” said Rio again, his voice calm and even and without injury.

I couldn’t sit down, but I was leaning on the table to keep from falling. “Rio, I can’t…I’m so sorry…”

“You are not usually so blunt,” said Rio, “but we both know what I am.”

“But that wasn’t even true, I—” I was having trouble speaking. Everything was wrong, twisted and crumpled. “I owe you my life, I owe you everything…”

“And on that we shall agree to disagree, since I will insist on giving the credit to the Lord.” He gave me a small smile. “Be careful, Cas. It would perhaps not be a good thing if you were to give me an ego.”

I laughed before I could stop myself; it came out half a hiccup. It wasn’t funny; Rio without boundaries was about the most unfunny thing I could possibly imagine—not to mention nightmarish and heartbreaking and absolutely fucking terrifying —but it was either laugh or turn and walk away and never speak to Rio again because I couldn’t deal with what I’d said, and as appealing as that sounded, it also sounded really fucking dumb.

So I sat down, my face in my hands, and said, “Rio, I think something’s affecting me.”

“An astute observation,” he replied with a straight face. “Considering the context, I suggest we look into Miss Dawna Polk.”

I still felt a strong ridiculousness at the idea, to the point of defensiveness, but now I shoved it aside angrily. Something had interfered with my logic here, had made me lash out irrationally against the one person in my life I could depend on, say things to that one person I would have laid out anyone else for so much as thinking. The one person.

I was going to figure out what was going on here if it was the last thing I did. Whoever had done this to me—Dawna Polk or Pithica or some shadowy government organization of people in dark suits—I was going to take the bastards down so hard it would register on the Richter scale. I realized I was literally growling, deep in my throat, a low, animal sound.

“I have a conjecture about what might be happening,” said Rio. “Tell me, Cas. Did you tell Dawna Polk you were meeting me here?”

“Yes, I—” My head suddenly started ringing as if I’d been clocked, and I felt as if I were seeing double. I told her… But that wasn’t like me either. I hardly ever told anybody anything. Why would I have told Dawna I was meeting Rio? And where?

Well, she was crying and wanted to know you were doing something for Courtney, and you’re clumsy with people so you were probably just talking in order to say something…

I didn’t know what shocked me more: that my brain was trying to rationalize this, or that this type of rationalization might have worked a few minutes ago. A deep and furious self-loathing thrummed through me.

I had told Dawna everything because she had asked. And then I’d been attacked.

“Jesus Christ,” I mumbled into my hands. “What the hell?”

“I believe Dawna Polk might answer some questions for us,” said Rio.

“I know how to find her.” The shock and horror were coalescing into rage in the pit of my stomach. Dawna had done something to me. A drug? I hadn’t drunk anything with her, only eaten an energy bar that I’d brought with me, but there were other ways. Dawna Polk, you are going to give me answers. And after that…

Well. I wasn’t a forgiving person.

“I think, perhaps, it would be better if I took that part of the job,” said Rio smoothly. “It appears I cannot go back to my role here, and there is the chance you are…still affected.”

I made an angry noise. “I’ll be on my guard.”

“Even so. Let me take Dawna. Your time may be spent more profitably by talking to your new detective friend.”

I almost laughed. “Tresting? I think you might not have a good grasp of the word ‘friend.’”

Rio smiled slightly, and I felt myself flushing at the unintentional truth. “Doubtless,” he said, “But Tresting will have other contacts. And it is quite clear he will not talk to me. You can find out more of what he knows. I’ll track Miss Polk.”

I swirled the dregs of my coffee in the paper cup reluctantly. What he was saying made too much sense not to agree. “I guess this means we’re working together on this one, huh.”

“It appears you have become involved despite me.”