S Huang - Zero Sum Game

“Or what?” I asked curiously.

“I have some minimal security measures in place.”

“Goody,” I said. “Just make sure you don’t forget to tell me about any of them.”

Arthur had taken off first, following my hastily-scrawled directions to retrieve copious amounts of cash from various places in Los Angeles to buy computer equipment with.

“Wait, you remember where you keep your stashes with equations?” he’d demanded incredulously when I started giving him directions.

“It’s easier than memorizing them,” I tried to explain, but he just shook his head at me and departed with the list. The plan was for Rio to meet him and then drive all the equipment out, stopping to collect Checker at a rendezvous point some distance away from the safe house. Rio didn’t trust anyone who wasn’t him or me not to pick up a tail.

Rather than risk accidentally activating a LoJack signal, I retrieved an old clunker from a storage space that I had acquired quasi-legitimately some years ago—along with a few weapons for the trunk—and fought creeping LA traffic to the 405, where I jerked northward through the rain. I figured I’d hit the 14 and cut across, taking a roundabout route via Victorville. If I got made on the first leg, the assumption would be that I was heading towards Vegas, or maybe Mojave. I kept one eye on my mirrors the whole way, but I got out of the city clean, and eventually I left the crush of LA behind to mark mile after mile through the desert.

I reached Yucca Valley and slued east, following Rio’s directions and heading off the highway. I’d left the rain behind with the city, and the wind swirled fogs of dust across the asphalt, the tiny grains of sand pattering against my windshield and obscuring the half-hearted attempts at civilization out this way. I thought it too generous to call them towns.

I finally crawled up a steep, winding dirt track to the address Rio had given me, wheels crunching and thumping over rocks not nearly small enough to be considered gravel. The little car strained up the slope, the tires skidding on the scree, until I reached a small clapboard house clamped to the top of the crumbling plateau, its high ground commanding a view of the desert nothingness for miles.

Twilight was falling over the landscape heavy and purple as I got out of the car, and the rock formations and knobby Joshua trees cast long, stretching shadows across the emptiness of the desert. The last rays of the sun warmed my skin, but the air was already turning cold and biting in the shadows. After retrieving some guns and a stack of legal pads from my trunk, I heeded Rio and went in the back door.

The place was small but well-stocked. Crates of MREs, foil packages labeled as emergency rations, and sealed bags of drinking water dominated most of the storage space and were stacked against the walls of the rooms, with a respectable number of gasoline cans keeping them company. I even saw a cabinet filled with hard liquor, which I frowned at—as far as I knew, Rio didn’t drink. Temperance was one of the Christian values, after all. Maybe alcohol had some survivalist purpose I didn’t know about.

I also found a heavy metal door that was very solidly locked. I figured Rio stored the armaments back there. Or it was a small bunker. Or both.

I flicked on the lights to banish the shadows collecting in the corners and leaned my weapons up against a nearby wall fully loaded—a girl has to feel safe, after all. Then I picked up the first legal pad and pulled out a ballpoint pen. My chest ached, my head ached, and the long drive had drained me, but none of that mattered.

I started writing.

My longhand scribbles expanded over page after page. As I finished each one I tore it off and spread them out in order over every available surface. By the wee hours of the morning, the floor was carpeted in scrawled-on yellow paper, the walls had sheets Scotch-taped up to form an overlapping wallpaper, and the cardboard backs from five dead legal pads lay discarded in a corner while I scribbled on a sixth.

When I heard tires on the dirt road, I dropped my pen, slung a rifle over my back, and picked up the pump-action Mossberg beside it. I was pretty sure it was only Rio and Checker, but better to be safe. I slipped out the back door into the pitch darkness of the desert night, the sky crusted in stars above me.

Headlights cut through the blackness at the top of the drive. It was indeed Rio, helming a large white van with Checker in the front seat. After acknowledging my shadow with a nod—Rio was nothing if not aware of his surroundings—he got out and stepped over to flick an outside switch and bring several floodlights to life, blanching the scene in white light. I lowered the shotgun and stepped out from the wall of the house as Rio went around to the back of the van to start unloading boxes.

Checker slid his chair out from behind the seat, set it up with practiced ease, and swung himself down into it. He wheeled over to meet me, making a face at the gravelly drive and throwing nervous glances over his shoulder. “That was the longest car ride of my life,” he muttered when he got close enough.

I raised my eyebrows, and he flinched at the reminder he was talking to someone in Rio’s corner. I sighed. “I told you, I trust him.”

“Cas Russell, not that I’m scorning your recommendation or anything, but you’ll forgive me if I think you’re frakking insane,” he hissed.

“You probably shouldn’t antagonize me, then,” I said, very mildly.

He blinked twice, opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

“Jesus Christ, I’m only kidding.” I wasn’t sure I liked how genuinely nervous he’d looked at the idea I might hurt him. “Look, why don’t you come inside. I’ll catch you up on what I’ve got.”

I’d been writing out the math on paper specifically so I could walk him through it. He swung back to the van to grab a laptop before we headed into the house, and in minutes his fingers were tap-dancing across the keyboard while I talked.

I kept talking while I helped Rio unpack the computer equipment, and Checker either got over his freakout about Rio or was capable of ignoring everything else when it came to computers—I suspected the latter—because he proved more than equal to multitasking, bossing us around with the authority of someone who knew exactly how he wanted his personal computer cluster to take shape and taking time out from his coding to flash around the cramped rooms and set up the network cables the right way around or slot in the correct hard drives when he deemed we were being too slow or too dull to get it right on his time schedule. He’d brought a huge stack of solid state drives originally pulled from the Hole, along with at least seven laptops—seven I counted, anyway—and in short order, the monitors spread across the table and counters sprang to life to show Checker’s customized operating system.

By the time the sun began baking the little house the next day, Pithica’s revenue sources were unfolding for us layer after layer, banks and locations and names blossoming fast and furious in a text file thanks to my algorithms and Checker’s coding. The skinny hacker also had a frankly surprising level of financial knowledge, which accelerated the process considerably. I could hardly believe how quickly we were aggregating the information.

Of course, nothing was as easy as all that. Rio, who had been moving around the place doing who knew what—probably setting up a Barrett on the roof or something—came back in while we were in the middle of a raging argument.

“I’m telling you, I know how this works! The notification needs to come from the banks, and we’re talking at least fifteen different government agencies in a dozen different countries! I don’t even know half the strings we’d need to pull—”