Authors: SL Huang
“You have a very special relationship with him,” Dawna observed.
Yes, well, I trusted Rio, which meant I could rely on him, and for his part, he wasn’t actively annoyed by me. It was a nice symbiosis. Generous of her to call it a relationship.
For the second time in our chat, Dawna seemed to be waiting for something, but I had no idea what.
I brushed aside my momentary puzzlement and reordered my thoughts on the number field sieve I had going in the background—and the next question I wanted to ask Dawna. “Okay. So you were trying to run psych experiments on Rio and I got caught in the middle. Fine. What about the other group working against you—the international one? What’s their game? And what were they looking for at Courtney’s house?”
“At Courtney’s house? Oh.” She thought for a moment. “I do not know for certain what they sought, but at a guess it was a keepsake I gave her. It was something of little importance, but I will admit I led Courtney herself to believe it needed protecting.”
“Why?”
“I wanted her to trust me. There are many ways of earning such trust, and granting it yourself is one of them.”
Then whatever they’d tossed the cottage for, it was meaningless. A stupid trinket Dawna had given to Courtney to make her feel trusted. “What about Anton Lechowicz? Was Pithica involved in his death?”
“Not to my knowledge. I’m afraid I don’t know that name.”
“And Reginald Kingsley? Everything in his file?”
Dawna shifted suddenly. “Excuse me.” She pulled out a sleek cell phone and examined it briefly. “I apologize, Ms. Russell. I have an urgent matter I must address. Perhaps we can continue this interview later?”
I had so much else I wanted to ask…so much more I needed to know…
“And I promise I shall give you the chance, the next time we talk,” Dawna said, with a regretful smile. “Ms. Russell, I have to say, it truly has been enjoyable having this dialogue. It is so rare that I can discuss our goals in so frank a manner with another open-minded person. I hope you’ll at least think on what I’ve said here.”
“Oh, I’m sure I’ll think about it,” I answered. “But don’t get your hopes up.” The retort felt good. As annoyingly logical as her arguments had been, I had survived our talk and was still instinctively blowing her off. That had to be a good sign, right? And I still had my layer of obfuscating mental arithmetic going, too. Maybe my slight resistance to her was helping.
“You really do have quite a false impression about what we do,” Dawna told me with patient exasperation as she stood up. “I assure you, my insights into human nature do not work quite the way you seem to think they do. We just finished a very civil conversation, don’t you agree? And you feel no different than you did before.”
It was true. I felt a small spike of self-doubt.
“Please question your assumptions about us, Ms. Russell. I don’t know where you got such ideas, but we are not the monsters you think we are. We’ll speak again shortly.”
And with that, Dawna Polk smiled at me and left the library.
Chapter 25
“What did
she do?” asked Arthur in a low voice after the guards had—politely, as always—ensconced me back in my cell next to him.
“I’m not sure.” I frowned. “She…talked to me. And I guess I talked back. We had a conversation.” A few hours ago the idea had been terrifying, but it didn’t seem so bad anymore. After all, nothing had really happened, had it? I couldn’t figure it out.
“What about?” Arthur asked.
“You know, Pithica’s out to save the world, all the crap Courtney told us already.” I didn’t mention Rio. No need to get Arthur on his high horse again.
Arthur leaned back against the wall, staring at the ceiling. “Think it could be true?”
I felt the same spike of niggling self-doubt as during my conversation with Dawna, along with anger at Arthur for reinforcing it. “I don’t know,” I snapped.
We lapsed into silence. The guards brought food and water. The light didn’t change, but I tried to sleep.
The sound of the metal door at the end of the cellblock woke me from a not-quite-doze against the wall. I registered a couple of soft thumps and the clack of rifles against the floor—I jerked awake, scrambling to my feet.
Rio stood in front of my cell like a larger-than-life dream, two black-clad guards sprawled behind him, unconscious or dead. Instead of his tan duster, he wore black fatigues matching the uniform of Dawna’s troops, complete with the same assault rifle and sidearm. He pulled a small explosive charge from a pocket of the vest, packed it into the lock on my cell, and took a step back; the lock blew with a pop and a clack of metal, and Rio gave me a friendly jerk of his head as if to say,
come on already.
“Him, too,” I said as I pushed the cell door back, nodding at Arthur.
Rio glanced at Arthur, then back at me. “He could be theirs by now.”
“She never talked to him,” I said quickly. “Only—only me. Rio, he’s coming with us.”
If he had hesitated, I would have started breaking Arthur out myself, but one thing I loved about Rio was that he never wasted time arguing or wavering. Less than five seconds later, Arthur was out as well, and we hurried after Rio down the cellblock. I paused briefly as we stepped over the fallen guards to relieve one of his M4 and sidearm; Arthur did the same with the other body. They were dead, I noticed. Definitely dead.
Rearmed, we followed Rio into the corridor at a quick trot. “Security system?” I asked.
“Compromised,” he said. “We should be clear until after we’re out.”
“Subtle of you,” I observed, a little surprised—“subtle” didn’t usually describe him.
“This was a trap, Cas,” Rio explained without turning back to me. “The Lord’s wrath has patience.”
Oh, hell.
How could I have been so stupid?
Dawna had already told me this was all about Rio. Interring us here had nothing to do with me or Arthur or recruiting us to Pithica—we were only bait to catch their bigger fish. Which meant, fuck, Rio had played right into their hands by coming after me…
…which, apparently, he knew, and he had figured out a way to get in and out without them realizing the time had come to spring the ambush. I imagined the hammer of Rio’s vengeance would fall on this place once we were well away.
Rio unlocked the door to a dim stairway and gestured us down ahead of him, farther into the sub-basement. “You have a way out?” asked Arthur nervously. Rio didn’t deign to answer him.
We descended two more levels and were heading down another featureless corridor when Rio raised a fist to stop us. “They know I’m here.” He had pulled a small device about the size of a cell phone out of a pocket and was examining it. “They have pinpointed us. Three groups closing in.” He looked at me. “Are you up for this?”
I hefted the M4, puzzled he had to ask. “Of course.”
“Stay here. You’ll get in our way,” Rio instructed Arthur, tossing me a pouch of grenades.
Arthur tried to sputter something in response, but Rio and I were already charging.
It wasn’t even a contest.
There is something beautiful about the high-speed math of a gunfight. I’ve heard other people opine that gunfights are confusing and disorienting, but to me, they always happen with perfect clarity: every bullet impact leads back to its source, every barrel sweeping through with its own exact trajectory. A firearm can only shoot in one possible direction at a time, after all. I could always see exactly where they aimed as if the predicted flights of the rounds were visible laser beams, and I could always move fast enough to step easily out of the way.
The M4 pulsed in one hand, Rio’s grenades becoming fragmenting islands of destruction as thrown from the other. I fired as I ran, every muscle in my body coordinating in a precision dash to send my projected path leaping between the ever-changing, ever-crossing lines of danger. One shot, one kill.
I had thirty rounds in the M4. I didn’t need them all.
Less than a minute later we were striding through the carnage on our way toward another stairwell; I slung the bag with the remaining grenades over my shoulder and redrew my sidearm from where I’d stashed it in my belt, reaching down as we hurried through to snag some spare magazines for the M4 off the bodies.
Arthur picked his way through after us, looking vaguely sick. He stumbled to a halt. “Hey,” he called in a hoarse voice. “Hey. We need to stop.”
I turned back. “Tresting, what the hell—”
His words came out strangled. “She’s going to obliterate the whole building.”
I looked at him blankly. Looked, and noticed he had a cellular phone in his hand.
A phone. When had Arthur gotten a phone? I hadn’t seen him pull one from any of the guards…
He held it out to Rio. “She wants to talk to you.”
Rio’s face was unreadable. “Ah,” he said. “I see.”
“I’m sorry,” Arthur whispered to me. The hand holding the phone was shaking. “So sorry.”
Horror shorted out my brain. “No,” I said. “
No.”
“Cas—” tried Rio.
“You’ve been working for them this whole time?” I cried.
“No—it ain’t like that—”
“You betrayed us!” My M4 swung to point at Arthur. “You—!”
Rio placed a cautious hand on my weapon, shifting it off line. “Cas, it isn’t his fault. Dawna Polk did talk to you, didn’t she?” he said to Arthur.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, wretchedly. “I’m sorry, Russell.”
I had to restrain myself from hitting him.
“Give me the phone,” said Rio. He hit a button and held the phone out in front of us, raising his voice slightly. “Go ahead.”
I recognized Dawna Polk’s mellifluous voice on the speaker immediately. “I must say I’m impressed.”
Rio was silent.
“You evaded extensive security measures. We only knew you were here thanks to our friendship with Mr. Tresting.”
I wanted to scream.
“I hope you know that is a vast compliment, Mr. Sonrio. We were extremely prepared for your visit, and you still slipped in undetected. Mr. Tresting’s involvement was a contingency we never thought we would have to use. May I ask how you infiltrated us so effectively?”
“I’m certain you shall figure it out eventually,” said Rio evenly.
“As it seems you are also more effective than even we expected at evading capture by our people—”
I snorted.
“—we have been forced into our endgame rather abruptly.”
“Annihilation of your own base,” confirmed Rio. “Quite cold of you, Miss Saio.”
There was a short silence on the other end. “I’m sure you understand,” Dawna said after a beat. “You have been causing us a great deal of trouble. We would strongly prefer to talk you out of it, but failing that, we must cut our losses. I would regret the collateral damage, but it would be a fair trade for putting an end to the difficulties you insist on giving us.”
“You flatter me,” said Rio.
“Modesty does not become you, Mr. Sonrio,” she responded, a hint of a smile in her voice.
“Let Cas go.” I looked up at him in surprise. So did Arthur. Rio’s expression was as blank and flat as ever. “Let Cas go, and I shall enter your custody willingly.”
“I apologize if you were under the impression that this was a negotiation,” answered Dawna. “Please disarm yourselves and exit the building. All three of you. If not…well. I admit I do not know the technical details, but my advisers assure me nothing will survive the blast, not in a wide radius. I recommend you don’t take too long to decide.” She hung up.
“She could be bluffing,” I suggested weakly, not believing it myself.
“She could be,” said Rio, “but I would not doubt Pithica has the resources for such a move, however extreme. I suggest we operate under the assumption that she can and will carry out her threat.”
“What now, then?”
“She has outmaneuvered us. I believe we do as she asks.”
“You can’t turn yourself over to her!” I cried.
“Cas,” he said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “Trust in God’s plan.”
Nausea rolled through me. If God had planned this, He shouldn’t have been put in charge of anything, ever.
♦ ♦ ♦
They separated
Rio from us almost immediately and stuck Arthur and me together in one cell this time, back on our old cellblock. I refused to look at him.
“I’m sorry, Russell,” Arthur tried again pleadingly, once the guards had left us. One of them had taken up a post at the door, as before. The dead bodies were gone.
“The hell you are,” I bit out. I had been the one to insist he come with us. Rio and I might have made our escape if he hadn’t interfered.
Or maybe Dawna just would have brought the building down on top of us.
I pushed that thought away. “What did she offer you? Did she promise you money? A place in her new world order?”
He choked. “It ain’t like that. She just—she
explained.
They needed you, but they promised not to hurt you, I swear.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know if Pithica’s right, or if it—I don’t know any more than you do,” he said, anguished. “Could be they ain’t right or wrong. But some things ain’t gray in this world, Russell—some things ain’t.”
He wasn’t making sense. “Yeah, she brainwashed you,” I said sarcastically. “Seeing it now.” It didn’t make me any less angry.
“No, I’m telling you, that ain’t what—” Tresting implored me.
“When did she even talk to you?” I snapped.
He looked even more stricken.
The question had been offhand, irritated, but then realization hit me like a pile driver.
They needed you, but they promised not to hurt you, I swear.
And:
Nothing here. Searched the place top to bottom.
How did an extremely observant private investigator miss Dawna’s paramilitary army?
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered. Dawna had gotten to Tresting back in the town, and he had led us both into her hands in the first place, voluntarily. Because…
Some things ain’t gray in this world, Russell—some things ain’t.
“You son of a bitch,” I growled. “You were trying to help her get Rio.”
“Russell,” he begged. “I had to help—the man is—”
I did hit him then, so hard his head whipped around and his body smashed against the bars on the far side of the cell. Then I turned and gripped the iron bars in front of me as hard as I could so I wouldn’t turn back and kill him.