S Huang - Zero Sum Game

“Cas Russell? Is that you?”

“Yeah, Checker, it’s me.” I was grinning myself silly at Arthur. “Good to hear your voice.”

He was slow in answering. “You said Dawna Polk got to you. Both of you.”

“Yeah. It turned out that going into a known ambush was a spectacularly bad idea,” I said pointedly in Arthur’s direction.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but…how do I know you guys are still you?”

That was a very good question. I sat down on the bed and thought about it. “Huh. Yeah, I guess I wouldn’t trust me right now either.”

He made a sound like a hopeless laugh. “That makes me feel better about you than what Arthur’s been saying. His messages don’t sound like him at all; I’ve been going out of my mind. Is he okay? You guys got out, right?”

“Yeah, we escaped, and then Arthur betrayed us, and then I got shot, and then we escaped for real.” I had to jump up and duck away from Arthur, who was trying to grab the phone again. “Dawna had me shot in front of Arthur, though, so she kind of messed up her own mojo there. He’s in a state.”

Checker was sputtering. “You got shot? Are you okay?”

“Yeah, fine. Arthur’s been smothering me. I think he feels guilty. ’Cause it was, you know, his fault.” I peeked at Arthur. He looked ready to murder me. “He still seems under the influence a bit,” I told Checker. “But he’s lucid enough that he hasn’t been calling Dawna to come get us, so I think he’ll probably be all right.” I had already figured that the only reason Rio had let Arthur stay was that he’d needed the extra hand in helping me back from the brink of death—as a general rule, Rio didn’t like working with other people if he didn’t have to—but it occurred to me that he probably would have kicked him to the curb anyway if he’d judged Arthur was still enough of Dawna’s tool to be a danger. It made me feel better about Arthur’s chances.

“Oh,” said Checker in a small voice. “Okay.”

I winced at his tone. I wasn’t the only one Arthur had betrayed, and Checker had known him a hell of a lot longer. “He really couldn’t help it, you know,” I said, adding in a spurt of honesty, “Uh, neither of us could. I would have given you away too, if I’d known how.” I thought of Rio and was flooded with shame again. “Don’t blame him.”

“Oh, I know that,” Checker brushed me off. “You guys were going after a mind reader, duh, of course I got somewhere safe. It’s Arthur I’m worried about; what did she—”

“Hang on, you weren’t even there anymore when they broke in? But—we saw blood, and it looked like there had been a struggle—”

“Yeah, uh, sorry if I scared you guys. I figured with multiple groups in play, whoever came by first would think the other one had beaten ’em and then go after them instead of me. I think it worked, too; I proxied into my home security and by the way, these people are truly evil the way they’ll tear apart a perfectly nice computer that never did anything rude to them—”

“Wait, you staged your own kidnapping? That was all you?”

“Well, the Hole was my work, mostly, though when whoever-it-was came they scavenged everything that was left. My poor network! I’m going to have to rebuild it from scratch. And I have no idea why they felt the need to break into my house. Talk about unnecessary.”

“They were probably looking for the flash drive,” I said. “Everyone knows you have it now.”

“Yeah, what’s the deal with that? Arthur, he—he left me like seven messages about it—”

“He did, did he?” I looked up from the phone conversation to glare at Arthur. “Tresting, really? No wonder he didn’t call you back.”

“What?” demanded Arthur, all innocence.

“She really did a bad job on you if you’re coming off that programmed.” I talked back into the phone, explaining to Checker. “Dawna tried to convince him it was meaningless, but I got a source says Pithica’s still trying to recover it. I think it might be important. Did you crack it?”

“Yeah, a few days ago; it’s mostly numbers. What do you mean, she programmed Arthur? How bad is he? Is he going to be okay?”

“He’s, uh—well, I’m not an expert or anything.” I tried to figure out how to answer. “I think she only influenced him with regards to this case. He seems as annoying as usual otherwise. I think maybe just don’t trust anything he says about Pithica, and if she doesn’t get a chance at him again…”

“You really think he’ll be all right?” His voice sounded tinny over the line. “He’ll be—back to himself?”

“I’m guessing there’s a good chance.” It wasn’t a comforting answer, but what else could I say? For all I knew, Dawna had twisted up Tresting’s mind permanently. “Go back to the drive. You said it’s numbers?”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. Lists of numbers—gigabytes worth. I haven’t been able to find a pattern yet.”

Numbers. “I’m good at numbers,” I said. “Email it to me.”

There was a pause. “Done.”

“Wait, how do you know my email address?”

A hint of his former humor returned. “I’m all-powerful, Cas Russell. Didn’t I tell you?”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, you mentioned it once or twice.”

“I’m like Oracle, Mr. Universe, and Elaine Roberts all rolled into one. Nothing can hide from me! Oh, uh, speaking of, I think I found Dawna Polk.”

“Wait, what?” I turned away from Arthur and lowered my voice. “What do you mean, you found her?”

“Sorry, ‘found her’ as in ‘figured out who she is,’ not physically located her. Arthur left a name in one of his messages—Saio, he said. I did a search. Well, a lot of searching—”

“Checker. Spit it out.”

“It was decades ago. A Daniela Saio. Her parents were famous fortune-telling psychics—”

I snorted.

“I’m on your side on that, but here’s the interesting part,” said Checker. “When she was ten or so, Daniela got more famous than her parents. Psychic extraordinaire. The toast of Europe. She was brilliant at it.”

“Brilliant at making people believe her rigmarole,” I said.

“I told you, I’m with you, but you’re not seeing this. She was doing that when she was ten.”

The air in the room suddenly felt heavy. “And after that?”

“That’s the weird thing. She just dropped off the face of the earth.”

“And then what?”

“And then nothing, that’s what I’m telling you. For years. I found two other recent aliases for her in other countries, both as airtight as the Polk one, and who knows how many others might be out there, but in between—”

“What happened to ‘nothing can hide’?”

He hissed in frustration. “I’m still working on it.”

“So wherever she went in between, that’s where she…what, got trained up? Injected with psychic superpowers?”

“I don’t know,” said Checker. “But wherever she went when she was ten, I’d bet an original mint condition Yak Face action figure it had something to do with Pithica.”

I digested that. “You think Pithica took her.”

“Find genius kids and recruit ’em young,” he said. “It’s one theory. The skills she had already, well, anyone who could get her on their side—and then considering they were able to give her this crazy boost in psychology? Someone was thinking ahead.”

A strange ringing was buzzing in my ears. “She was just a kid.”

“Huh?”

“They took her when she was just a kid.”

“So?”

I closed my eyes, took a breath. “I don’t like it when bad things happen to kids.”

“Right, well, I’ll keep looking. Maybe I can find something that will help us fight the adult version.”