Plastic Smile (Russell's Attic Book 4) (18 page)

Simon and Rio exchanged a glance.

“Hey.
Hey.”
I snapped my fingers at them. “I’m over here.”

“Cas,” Rio said. “As I have told you, this man is on your side.”

“I’ll determine that, thank you very much,” I said.

They looked at each other again, as though surprised I wasn’t just going to take Rio’s word for it. Rio shrugged slightly and said, “She is her own person. It seemed important.”

“Over. Here,” I repeated.

“Cassandra,” Simon said, “the more you can keep blocked, the better it will be. Whatever we tell you will start breaking down those barriers. Even my presence here, it’s not—it’s not good for you, but I don’t see the alternative.”

“Well, if you don’t give me some answers, I’m just going to have to remember as much as I possibly can,” I said.

Simon paled. It was disturbing. Not that I
wanted
to remember—I definitely didn’t; I hadn’t from the beginning—but I also hadn’t expected my threat to have so much of an effect.

Someone hit me. “You see? That is what it means, to have effect.”

I hit them back. “I understand now,” I told the corpse.

I tried to keep my face blank.

“Can you tell one of us instead?” Checker ventured the question from the side of the room. “If Cas would trust us to be, um. An advocate? For her?”

I knew Checker was only trying to help, but I wasn’t fond of that idea, either. “Rio,” I said. I pointed at Simon. “I need to know who this guy is. To me. Broad strokes aren’t going to kill me, and I need to know.”

Rio glanced at Simon, whose mouth was pressed in a tight line. “You and he knew each other,” Rio said. “A long time ago.”

“Less broad than that,” I said impatiently, when he didn’t add anything else. “I’m not going to let you do
anything
if no one tells me what the hell is going on.”

“This has to do with what Cas can do, doesn’t it?” Pilar said.

I whipped around to face her. She tried to back up but ran into the wall. “I’m sorry! It’s just, it makes sense. You guys and Dawna, you all have these, like, superhuman powers, and we know some of them involve memory, and—that can’t be a coincidence.”

“We’re not the same,” I ground out.

“How do you know?” Checker asked.

Show each other what you can do.

Good girl.

“You’re talking coincidence,” I sneered at Pilar, over the noise in my brain. “Well, isn’t it a hell of a coincidence that I would
happen
to run into Pithica years later if they had something to do with—”

My brain screeched to a halt. Pithica…they hadn’t known what I could do, at first. They had only been interested in me because I knew Rio.

Because Rio had been trying to take them down. Had been tangling with them for a long, long time. Since before I had met him.

Or maybe
exactly
since I had met him.

Call me Rio.

Fuck.

“Rio,” I said. “How did we meet?”

“I can’t tell you that, Cas.”

He saved me.

Had saved me from where? From somewhere I had known people like Dawna and Simon, from people who had mind-wiped me to keep me from remembering them?

From people who had broken my ability to do real mathematics and left my computational prowess in its place—a poor substitute for a human mathematician, but an excellent bonus for a living weapon?

Pithica had originally been a government project, or at least linked to a project codename. We knew that much.

Halberd and Pithica,
something echoed and chanted in my head.
Halberd and Pithica…

Halberd was—what? Another project? A missing piece of my life? I opened my mouth to ask, but the question strangled me. Dawna’s prohibition against learning more about Pithica meant no matter what guesses I had, I wouldn’t get any of them confirmed. “God
dammit!”

“Cas?” Checker said, his voice shot through with worry.

“I think Pilar’s right,” I said. “I think I was—associated with Pithica, or something like them, and I think—I think they did this.”

“It makes sense.” Pilar was babbling a little. “I mean, considering your amnesia—how many bad guys could there possibly be with real-life psychic powers? It would be totally weird if there were a bunch of unconnected sets of people walking around with the ability to muck with people’s brains, wouldn’t it?”

“Pilar,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Good job. Now shut up.”

“Okay. Right. Okay. Sorry.”

I turned back to Simon. “Somehow, in the past, you and I were both connected to Pithica.” Maybe we’d decided to turn renegade and fight them, and that’s how we’d hooked up with Rio. I was feeling it out, but it made sense. “We got out, but before we did, they fucked me in the head. Of course, you’re not going to confirm or deny this.” If I thought he would, I probably wouldn’t even have been able to say it, thanks to Dawna. Pithica had fucked me twice now.

We appreciate your loyalty.

“Will you let me help you now?” asked Simon.

I almost laughed. “Help me? By doing what, screwing around with my brain on top of whatever fun mutilation someone else already did? Yeah, that seems like a good idea. And you and I might have worked together against Pithica, but that means nothing. I’ve worked with a lot of people who were scum of the earth. For all I know we were allies of convenience.”

Simon sucked in a breath as if I’d stabbed him and wrapped his arms around himself again. “It wasn’t convenience.”

I raised my eyebrows at Rio to see if he’d confirm that, but he gave me a half shrug, as if to say,
what do I know about human relationships.

Well, true.

“Please,” Simon said. “This isn’t going to go away. I’m not going to—to damage you, I promise. I can help you repair—”

“I wonder if the person who scraped all my memories out said that to me beforehand, too,” I said maliciously, just to see him wince. “Isn’t Pithica all about making the world a better place? They were probably making me a shiny new person, just like you want to.”

“Cassandra—”

“
Stop calling me that,”
I said.

“Cas,” he amended. “This is serious. The symptoms you’re having are going to keep getting worse. Please, you have to let me help.”

“No. I don’t.”

There are limits here,
babbled one of the voices.
Limits such as death.

“You don’t understand,” Simon pleaded. “You could die.”

“I understand perfectly,” I said.
Such as death.
“What
you’re
not understanding is that I am
fucking done
with people reshuffling my neurons. Pithica, Dawna Polk, you, anyone else.”
What is death, except utter unending unconsciousness?
“I’ll find another solution.”

“I don’t know that there is one.” Simon had started to sound panicked. “Cas, I know what happened to you; I know your mind; I can—this isn’t something you can snap yourself out of!”

“She’s right,” I said, jabbing a thumb at Pilar. “I have superpowers too. I’m as good as you
or
Dawna Polk. I can fix LA, and I can fix my own goddamn brain. I’ll figure it out.”

The room stopped dead, as if the whole world had jarred out of step and left our little tableau frozen.

I can fix LA,
I had said.

“Cas?” Rio asked, with the moral weight of centuries.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit,
shit.

I’d been planning to avoid Rio for
exactly this fucking reason.
Because I was absolutely fucking terrible at keeping my mouth shut.

Rio considered me. “You.”

I pointed at Checker and Pilar. “You two. Out.”

Checker opened his mouth like he was going to try to protest, but Pilar shushed him and hustled them out of the room.

I turned back to Rio. It was no use trying to lie to him after a slip-up like that; he’d see right through it. “Are you going to try to kill me?” I asked.

Simon jerked and almost fell off his chair. My gun hand twitched a little, as if I wanted to defend myself, even as another part of me wanted to laugh. The idea of going up against Rio was too absurd.

“No, Cas,” Rio said. “I would not harm you. But I am going to stop you.”

Fuck.

Chapter 18

Rio didn’t
insult me by trying to ask me any questions about how I’d done it. I wasn’t going to answer, and he, apparently, was not willing to attempt the application of his…usual methods.

I made Simon leave with Rio. He kept swiveling his head back and forth between us as if he wanted to plead with me but was forcing himself not to because he knew it wouldn’t do any good.

Smart man. Or maybe just telepathic.

I found Checker and Pilar out in the Hole, watching a feed of the living room from one of Checker’s security cameras.

“We should abort,” Checker said immediately. “If we reprogram the hack—”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “What are you talking about? You’ve seen the statistics! This is working, and nobody is going to stop us—not Rio, not anybody!”

“I—I think I’m with Cas,” Pilar said. “If we’re making a difference—Cas, as long as you’re sure this guy can’t, um—”

“He
can,
that’s the point,” Checker said shortly. “You don’t understand; you haven’t been in this world long enough. There are times you cut your losses and run, and when someone like
him
targets you…”

“Since when have you been the cut and run guy?” I said. “You’re only saying that because you were against this from the beginning.”

“And what, you don’t think he has a point?” said Checker. “Arthur told me what he said. I may not be religious, but I have a moral system, and I can’t believe I’m on his side on
anything,
but his reasons here make sense. You can’t tell me they don’t!”

“Why can’t both sides make sense?” Pilar was studying the ground like she wanted to disappear into it. “Why can’t what we’re doing be a little bit wrong but also be right? It’s not like life is black and white. I know you guys think I’m naïve on a lot of this stuff, and I am—I know I am—but you two are trying to draw lines where there just, there aren’t any. You’re so invested in what’s right or wrong always making some sort of nice logical sense, but real life is, it’s messy, and sometimes you can’t draw nice perfect boxes around it and know what to do.” She hunched her shoulders.

“Bullshit,” I said. “If there’s illogic involved we just haven’t defined enough axioms for the system. Or the proof is fallacious.”

Checker laughed. It sounded a little hysterical.

“Cas,” Pilar said. “Your friend, um, this guy—what’s he going to do?”

That was a very good question.

Rio didn’t know what our methods were. He did know about Yamamoto’s effort to rally LA’s criminal element, thanks to me—if he wanted to, he could tip them off and slingshot the entirety of Los Angeles’s underground around to land right on top of me.

But if he did that, there was the very real possibility I’d get killed. Speaking of logic, I didn’t think Rio’s differentiated between hurting me himself and weaponizing all of LA to do it for him.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess we’ll find out.”

“Then why don’t we wait and see?” asked Pilar. “Would it be so bad to—to see how things play out? As long as he’s not, um. Not threatening you?”

“Or us,” Checker added darkly.

“I told you, I talked to him about that,” I said. “Yeah, I vote for wait-and-see, too. Whatever he’s planning, I bet I can beat him.”

Checker mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like, “I didn’t sign up for this” and moved over to one of his computers. “Cas, there’s something else you should hear. It doesn’t sound like this is going to change your mind at all, but Rio and Yamamoto aren’t the only people noticing something. This popped up in my alerts earlier today.”

He clicked at the mouse a few times and then held down a key to turn the volume all the way up. A blustering man’s voice filled the room from the computer speakers.

“…and something’s going on in this city. You can feel it. Something is wrong here in Los Angeles, and I promise you, patriots, I will get to the bottom of it. Bombs aren’t the only way for the terrorists to strike against this greatest of nations. We’ve long known how vulnerable we are to a biochemical attack, but did our mewling, terrorist-appeasing President take even one step to prevent it? No, of course not. And now
you
and
me
are the ones paying for it. Let’s talk the water supply here in Los Angeles, for starters. Do you know how easy it would be for someone to…”

Checker dialed the volume down again until it was muted.

“I’ve heard that guy before,” I said. “Who is he?”

“Reuben McCabe,” Pilar answered. “Isn’t it?”

“Yup,” Checker said. “Radio host, political shit-stirrer, and professional troll. Cas, you probably remember him from the Arkacite mess.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Him. Likes to inflame people or something, right?”

“Understatement of the year. But this time he’s onto something. He’s always been on about suspected conspiracies, but now he’s revving it up, and he’s got specifics. He knows there’s been a change.”

“Does anybody actually listen to him?” I said. “He sounds like an idiot.”

“He’s a
charismatic
idiot, and yes, people listen—” started Checker.

“My dad loves him,” put in Pilar. “I mean, he says he could do without some of the, um, inflammatory tone and stuff, and he doesn’t always agree with everything, but he says McCabe is the only news person willing to say what he thinks.”

“The important point,” Checker said loudly, “is that in this case McCabe is right. Nobody in the mainstream is reporting on the drop in crime, other than mentioning it in passing and praising the mayor’s policies, because anything else would sound like a conspiracy theory. But McCabe doesn’t care, and he’s going whole hog on it. People are starting to pay attention.”

“So what?” I said. “What can they do? Complain about it on the radio? Let them.”

“Not just complain. I was listening earlier, and there are some militia groups who’ve been calling into his show and making noises about coming to town. Setting things right, that kind of talk. These are the type of people who take it upon themselves to patrol the border like it’s a video game, or stand their ground to Feds armed to the teeth. They’re dangerous.”