Plastic Smile (Russell's Attic Book 4) (22 page)

Halliday was wrong.

“One by one,” a woman said. “That’s the only way any change ever comes.”

“She said it was a Bahraini girl,” Arthur continued, inexorable. “Had the math world all a-buzz. Sonya read the papers with everyone else, couldn’t wait to see what the gal did when she grew up. Then the girl drops off the face of things. Sonya said she forgot about it altogether, maybe mentioned it once in a while with colleagues, idle curiosity. And she says the next time this got brought up in passing, after she met you—she said she knew, all of a sudden.”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Yeah, gut feeling. That’s never wrong.”

Arthur ignored my sarcasm. “She went and did some research. The girl, seems she dropped off the planet when she was still just a kid. Disappeared. Sonya poked more and…well, party line is the girl went off to some boarding school and then died a few years later, but Sonya don’t believe it. She always figured…well, she figured you was keeping your silence for a reason, ’s why she ain’t mentioned it to us. And Checker…” Arthur hesitated.

How’s that fancy school of yours?

Fine.

“Just now Checker, as soon as he heard, he looked it all up, and he says Sonya’s onto something, that those records, they’re all fishy. Faked files, not a lot, just fishy enough that—he thinks she could be right.”

“She’s not,” I said.

“Russell, if she is…ain’t just about knowing your name. If she’s right, then…then you got a mother and sister, still alive.”

All you do is study!

Because I’m smarter than you are.

“She’s not right,” I said again, louder.

“We could look them up,” suggested Arthur, very softly. “See for sure—”

“No.”

“You could have family out there. Can’t ignore that.”

A man in a suit and brimmed hat, face in shadow, briefcase in hand—tall, so tall, like the giants in stories, his voice low and gravelly—“Is this your daughter?”

“Watch me,” I spat out, loudly enough to drown out the voices in my head. “I’m very good at ignoring things.”

“Russell—”

“LA’s going to go nuclear.”

I hadn’t meant to say it. Hadn’t decided yet whether I should share.

“Say what?” Arthur asked.

“It’s Rio.” The words tumbled out, misshapen and desperate. “Like you said. He’s trying to stop the brain entrainment. He…he’s setting up the city to implode.”

I updated him on what I’d learned since we’d last seen each other. I left out the part about killing Miguel and his friends.

Left out how I’d shot Vance, too.

“Well,” Arthur said, when I’d run out of words. “What we gonna do about it?”

I didn’t think I’d ever been so grateful to him.

The alcohol was metabolizing out of my system, but I was starting to get my focus back. There
was
a next step here—brainstorming with Arthur and Checker and Pilar, and solving this. We’d done it before. We could do it again.

My fingers touched skin, pale and soft, and so fragile. Human frailty. I would make him hurt for this, take vengeance for them as no one had done for me.

How to start? Mathematics gave me so many options.

I came back to myself. My hands were over my face, and my breath hitched raggedly against them.

“Hey. Hey, Russell. You okay?”

“I think I’m losing my mind,” I whispered. I couldn’t solve anything if my brain went out from under me. I needed my brain. Without it…

Oh, Jesus. Without it, I was going to lose.

I’d thought I could push through it. For fuck’s sake, I could handle a few scary memories. Going to pieces over the shadow of a nightmare—it was childish.

The Fox screamed, a wild, unearthly sound—

I jerked.

My hands pressed against my eyes, my fingers a crisscrossing spider web trying to keep my brain inside my skull, keep me sane. Useless.

“Tell me,” Arthur said gently.

“They’re pushing me out,” I mumbled. “The memories. Like I’m going to wake up one morning and be someone else, someone who is—” My jaw clenched so hard it locked; I pried it back open. “I’m not that person. Whoever she is. I can feel her. She’s—she’s not
me,
Arthur. I know it sounds crazy, but I swear it’s true. And I keep—I keep losing track…” My grip on reality was slipping; I would dissolve into the abyss and be nothing but scattered atoms, emptiness…

I didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to die.

Arthur moved closer to me and wrapped an arm around my shoulders, pulling my head against his shoulder the way a father might with his child.

I thought about what Checker had said, that Arthur had an obsession with fixing people. I decided I didn’t care. Fuck, our current conflict notwithstanding, I considered myself Rio’s friend and had for years, and he’d never pretended his concern for my welfare extended an inch beyond religious obligation. People had all sorts of reasons for helping each other. It didn’t change anything.

In fact, it made me feel better about the logic of it all to think Arthur might have a fixation with hard luck cases as one of his axioms. His concern for me made a lot more sense that way.

I leaned my forehead against his shoulder. The fabric of the button-down he wore was slightly rough, like canvas, and smelled of clean sweat and old leather.

“You have twenty-three seconds,” said a voice, and I jumped—

Arthur felt me flinch.

“I don’t like to say it,” he said softly, “But maybe…if you got no other options…this Simon guy, he might be able to help you.”

My stomach twisted like I wanted to be sick.

“I don’t know,” Arthur admitted. “God knows I understand why you don’t want to talk to him. But this…might be he’s the one you need.” He sounded despondent, as if it were his failing I had no other option. “He says he won’t do nothing you don’t want him to, right?”

“And you believe him?”

I felt Arthur shrug slightly. “He could’ve already, and he ain’t. Guess that’s a point in his favor.”

I pulled upright and sat back against the wall. “It doesn’t matter. Even if he got a signed agreement from me every other fucking second—it doesn’t matter.” The fear loomed, a black, ugly cloud, and I struggled to confine it to words, to articulate it so Arthur could understand. “I’d be letting him into my brain.
Letting
him. There’s no way I can know what the fallout from that could be—there’s no way I could ever, possibly, in a million years, understand it well enough to say I’m okay with it. And what if he does something accidentally? Or that he
thinks
is the right thing, and…” The words felt disconnected, floundering, islands of meaning with no continuity between them.

“I get that,” said Arthur, and Jesus, it sounded like he did.

“Too many variables,” I murmured.

“Thing is…what if it’s the only way?”

The impending nightmare settled on me like a thousand dusty cobwebs, stifling. Doing nothing, continuing on, descending into madness until I lost myself—it wasn’t an option, was it? Especially if I wanted to be functional to do what I really needed to, to save the city I’d signed up for protecting only to lead it toward its downfall.

Or even if I only wanted to save myself.

Then why did part of me still want to cling to that suicidal dive instead of submitting to Simon?

“Sometimes a thing’s needed,” Arthur said. “Like what we got going right now in LA, nudging people’s brain waves. A little help ain’t no bad thing. Not even for you.”

I tensed away from him. I didn’t want to think about Simon
helping
me as being in any way parallel to the brain entrainment. One was a benign crime-fighting measure; the other was the most personal violation.

What I was doing wasn’t the same. Not the same thing at all.

But what Arthur had said…sometimes a thing was necessary.

I hated it when he had a point.

“I can be there, if you want,” Arthur continued. “Make sure nothing goes wrong, or happens on accident. If this guy’s aboveboard, he ain’t going to be throwing nothing my way, right?”

Rio was the more logical choice, given his immunity, but I didn’t want to see him right now. I twitched my head in something like a nod.

“You got a number for Simon?” Arthur asked gently.

I didn’t, but I was more than certain Rio would send him to meet me, even if he was currently trying to screw me over in every other way.

“We gonna get you taken care of, Russell,” Arthur said. “And then we gonna go and fix the rest of it.”

I let him help me up.

I should have known it would never be that easy.

Chapter 22

Arthur got
a call as he was helping me back to his car.

“Hello? Justin, hey, did you get her—” He listened for a long minute. “Easy, kid. Uh—gonna be there as soon as I can, but it might be a few minutes, I got someone else with an emergency right now. Can you call—”

“Go,” I said. “It’s okay.” I was a fucking adult. I appreciated Arthur trying to support me, but I’d feel worse than stupid if he tried to treat me like spun glass above kids who actually needed him.

Now that I’d made the decision, I just had to go through with it. I could do it by myself. I wasn’t a coward.

Arthur covered the phone with a hand to turn to me. “I ain’t all right with you going to this guy alone anyway, Russell. Just in case, you know? Even if you feel like you gotta do this, you should have someone with you.”

“I’ll call Checker, then,” I said wearily. “Go take care of your kids.”

He nodded reluctantly and spoke back into the phone to tell Justin he’d be there in half an hour, which I thought was ridiculously optimistic for the time of day no matter where he was going, but whatever. Then he insisted on calling Checker himself and waiting with me while I texted Rio. He probably suspected I would have chickened out otherwise.

He might have been right.

Checker had told me to come back to his place—Simon already knew where it was, after all, and there was no point in burning the safe house Checker and Pilar had been staying at. I drove to Van Nuys alone like I was driving to the gallows. As I walked inside, I couldn’t help swiveling my head, taking in the trees and grass, the slight scent of smoke from someone’s barbecue, the layers of mathematical data edging every stone and corner.

I couldn’t help feeling like I’d never see it again. Like this was the end.

My lungs twisted tight in my chest. I walked up to Checker’s door and knocked.

He was the one who opened it. I was grateful for that, and that he didn’t say anything really, just let me come inside. Simon was already there, sitting on the edge of the couch.

“So how does this work?” I said.

“It’s nothing—invasive. You don’t have to worry.” Simon gestured, and I forced myself to sink down across from him. He half-raised his hands as if he were about to lean forward and touch me, but thought better of it. “I’m just going to talk to you, and have you talk back. That’s all, I promise. You’ll be aware through all of it.”

Cassandra? Talk to me. Talk to me!

I shook the voices away. “I want to know what you’re doing,” I said to Simon. “Every step of the way. I want to know when you’re influencing me.”

“I…I can do that. It will be a little less effective, but I can, if you want me to.”

“I don’t care if it’s less effective,” I said. “Tell me.”

“All right.”

“Are you going to bring her memory back?” Checker asked.

The sun stabbing through clouds onto the cobblestones, the scent of roasted nuts and blood—
I clenched my teeth, trying to anchor myself.

“No,” Simon said. He looked faintly annoyed Checker was there and talking, but I didn’t give a fuck. “Cas, believe it or not, the amnesia is protecting you. You had some—uh—some trauma—”

“That you can’t tell me about, I get it,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “I could reverse your memory loss, but it might—it
would
kill you.”

“Peachy,” I said. “So this is just about shoring up whatever Dawna did to me.”

He shifted a little. “Essentially. I’m afraid that will mean reinforcing your—um—your mental blocks.”

“You mean making sure I can’t remember anything.”

“I’m sorry.” He looked it, too, his face drawn and strained. “I wish I could do more.”

I took a breath. Tried to be mature about it. If I was honest with myself, I wanted nothing more than to keep my prior self safely behind thick black walls, forever. If Simon had said we were going to let her out, I wasn’t sure I could have gone through with it. Whatever Pithica had done to me—whatever anyone had done to me, back in the distant past—I was better off not remembering.

The status quo was much preferable. Well, the status quo without going mad and dying.

“Are you ready?” Simon asked.

“Fuck you,” I said. “Of course not.”

His jaw worked a little. “I, I won’t start until you feel—”

“Simon, I swear to God, if you don’t get this over with—”

“Right, all right, I just wanted to make sure.” His breath hitched. It occurred to me that this seemed to be as unhappy a process for him as it was for me, and took some vindictive pleasure in it. “Try to relax,” he said.

“Fat chance of that,” I muttered.

Simon leaned forward.

Simon leaned forward—

My vision doubled, two versions of the man in front of me staring earnestly into my eyes. I recognized the second version from my dream, the nightmare in which every fear had coalesced. But this time I noticed he looked younger—

“No,” I said. “No—”

No—

“I have to.” Tears flooded his cheeks, his expression stretched with pain. “I have to—we have to—”

He reached for me, and resistance folded in my brain with a dying whimper, even as I fought to cling to it, fought to live…I didn’t want to go. Didn’t want to die.

“I’m sorry,” Simon wept, “I’m so sorry…”

And I ceased to want anything at all.

I jerked back and up, stumbling to stand, stumbling away.

“Cas?” Checker’s voice.

I’m sorry, Vala.

“Cassandra!” Simon leapt to his feet as well.