S Huang - Zero Sum Game

“And what gives you the right to decide who lives and who dies?” I challenged her.

“We all have that right, Ms. Russell,” she said sadly. “Every one of us. We are only unequal in the power we wield. Pithica has great power, as do I. I and others like me—we divine connections few can, and we have the strength to alter them. If I chose inaction, I would be choosing death for all those people I would otherwise save. Any decision I make condemns some and not others.” She leaned forward. “I can see what a rational person you are, Ms. Russell. You must see the logic here, that if I did not step forward, I would be making a choice in favor of all the suffering I could prevent, as surely as if I had caused it myself. So I would instead ask, what would give me the right to refuse that responsibility, when I can help so many?”

“No,” I said weakly. My head was spinning. Her philosophy seemed so logical, so mathematically correct, but it had to be inconsistent somewhere. It had to be. “No. That can’t justify what you do.”

She nodded as if she had expected that response. Hell, she probably had. “In that case, I would like to pose a question to you. If you regard aggression as so unjustified for any greater good—forgive me if I beg you to consider an inconsistency.” She waited a beat that was almost apologetic before plunging on. “You call us evil, yet you seem to accept the same behavior quite readily in your friend.”

I almost laughed. “What are you talking about?” Half of Arthur’s problem was that he wasn’t willing to be violent enough, even in self-defense.

“I was not referring to Mr. Tresting,” Dawna corrected gently.

A sudden sick feeling condensed in my stomach, and for the briefest moment my grasp on my internal mathematics wavered. “He’s not my friend,” I said, ignoring the something in me that didn’t like to say it out loud.

“Perhaps not,” said Dawna. “But you are his.”

The sick feeling intensified. I said nothing.

Dawna seemed to be waiting for something, gazing at me with her eyes slightly narrowed—I ensured my brain was still as occupied as possible with its mundane algorithmic litany, wondering what she sought, what she saw —but after a moment of silence she broke the tension and leaned back in her chair. “Ms. Russell, I would like it if you would trust me. I know it does not come easily to you, but perhaps I can help. I beg you, ask me anything. I swear I shall answer you honestly.”

I found my voice. “Like it would mean anything, that you promised not to lie.”

“True, you have no way of being sure of my word. However,” she added, with the slightest hint at a conspiratorial smile, “at least you will know what answer I choose to give you.”

Jesus Christ. I stared at her, my mouth dropping open slightly. She knew me better than I knew myself. As much as I was opposed to going along with her on anything, I was constitutionally incapable of not taking her up on such an offer. More information was always more information, no matter how little I trusted the source—after all, I would at least be able to file away the particular answers she chose to give me as the answers Dawna Polk would choose to give me. And that could tell me something, right?

Ridiculous. Was I honestly thinking about trying to match wits with someone who was literally psychic?

And yet, she was offering to tell me anything I wanted, and that meant I had to ask. I had to know.

Oh, hell.

“Fine,” I said, redoubling my brain’s furious churning through its mental mathematics as I tried to dispel the sinking certainty that I was about to play right into Dawna’s hands. I fancied I could feel the ground giving way beneath my feet, but I couldn’t stop myself. “To start off with, your high and mighty motives are all well and good, but I want to know what kind of game you’ve been running on me in particular. And why. You say that trying to kill me or locking me up is all for the greater good because I’d make trouble, but you’re the one who dragged me into all this in the first place, remember? If you own the cartels, why let someone you’ve brainwashed into being your pawn get captured by them? And why fake a contact from Rio to hire me to get her back out? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Ah. Yes, that needs some explanation. It was not a case of allowing Ms. Polk to be captured so much as it was engineering it.”

What? She had set it up?

“Yes. Courtney Polk—bless her, we already had her working for the cartels, and she was perfect for this role. You see, we needed someone who might conveniently be taken captive. And who might conveniently be worthy of rescuing.”

Be worthy of…

The pieces were starting to come together, even with half my thoughts busy at pointless arithmetic. “It was a test.” As I said it, I was sure. “Courtney didn’t know it, but she and the cartel, they were all your people all along. You were testing me.”

Dawna hesitated, almost as if embarrassed. “No. We, ah, we weren’t testing you.”

And suddenly I understood. “You were testing Rio.”

She inclined her head slightly.

They hadn’t cared about me at all; I was only another pawn. Somehow, the game had always been about Rio. “You wanted to see if Rio would rescue her,” I said slowly, feeling my way through. “You already knew he was working a cover. And when he didn’t…”

“You are unusual, Ms. Russell,” said Dawna. “You may not be aware of quite how much. The relationship you have with Mr. Sonrio is—well, in point of fact, you are the only person we have found who has a relationship with him. When I sent you in after Ms. Polk, we wanted to see how far he would go. For you.”

The puzzle was taking shape, fitting together as neatly as the Hamiltonian circuits I had going in the back of my head. “You told the cartel I was coming. You made sure I got caught. I thought it was too convenient.”

She smiled at me. “Truth be told, you were far more skilled than we had anticipated. That was when we first started to discuss recruiting you, as well.”

“Instead of just having extremely well-armed bikers kill me off afterwards?” I asked pleasantly.

Her color heightened a touch. “I must apologize for that. We mistimed that attack. It was meant to be another gauge of Mr. Sonrio’s response to imperiling you.”

Right. Though presumably they hadn’t much cared if I bit it, either—especially not after I had name-dropped Pithica to Dawna in the coffee shop. “So, all of this. Calling me in the first place. You were—what, studying Rio?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you learn?” I asked.

“He surprised us. He let you go.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I had to knock him out with a chair.” We looked at each other for a second. Dammit. “Fine. If Rio hadn’t wanted me to escape, I probably wouldn’t have. Okay, then why Rio? Why are you so interested in him?”

She scrutinized me for a hairsbreadth before answering. “We need someone like him.”

“Seems like you’ve got your own private army already,” I observed.

“Ms. Russell,” said Dawna delicately, “I am not sure you are fully aware of Mr. Sonrio’s skills. His ability to be effective—it borders on the unrealistic. He has destroyed entire governments. Leveled armies. Found and obliterated terrorist cells the intelligence agencies of several continents were chasing their tails trying to pursue. He has altered the course of nations. A lone man.” Her voice was calm, factual, and very serious.

Huh. So that was what Rio did in his spare time. I’d had no idea he was that impressive. I’m not going to lie: I was jealous.

I forced myself to chew over the math of a path problem, and didn’t answer.