Zero Sum Game

Chapter 24

When Dawna finally came, she came for me.

Two of her black-clad troops arrived in the cellblock and courteously requested I accompany them. I glanced at Arthur; his expression was heavy with worry.

I took the barest of moments to glance out from behind my shield of tedious arithmetic to evaluate the weighty, locked door at the end of the cellblock and wonder if I could jump the guards (probably) and get Arthur and myself out and through the door in one piece before an army of troops arrived (unlikely). As much as I preferred to go down fighting, committing suicide via an almost zero-probability escape attempt appealed to me about as much as bashing my brains out in the cell did. Waiting for a more opportune time was the obvious answer…though it might be hubris to think I could survive even one interview with Dawna and stay an intact person.

I stepped up the arithmetical white noise in my brain, filling every neuron with a mess of calculation, so much I had trouble juggling it all.

The troopers took me down several cinder block corridors and through a few more heavy metal doors, and then up a lengthy ride in an elevator that opened into a well-furnished hallway of what appeared to be a luxury estate. We stepped out. The carpet was so thick under my boots that it not only muffled all sound of our passage but had its own spring, and the paramilitary troops looked strangely out of place against the spotless decor and tastefully framed paintings.

They led me down several plush corridors before finally ushering me through a shining set of carved double doors and into a library, where one gestured for me to sit at a long table. Rows of stacks spread out to either side, every shelf filled with hardcovers in pristine condition.

“Please wait here,” said one of the troopers, a woman with a stark military haircut. “In the meantime, we have been instructed to remind you, with apologies, that your friend’s continued well-being is contingent upon your choices.”

“Yeah, I get it,” I said. I wondered how far Dawna thought she could push me using that leverage. Hell, she probably already knew exactly how far. I peeked at the math around me again—the probabilities bounced into a much more favorable array, tantalizing me with escape, but I still believed that Dawna’s threat was good and that they would hurt Arthur very badly if I tried. I wasn’t ready to risk that.

I sat in the comfortable, well-upholstered chair and waited, counting the time, overflowing my brain with pointless mathematical grunge work. My chaperones retreated to the door but stayed in the room, presumably prepared to shoot me or tell on me if I tried anything.

The small part of my mind that wasn’t cycling through repetitive NP-hard and EXPTIME algorithms wandered. Why the heck did Pithica have a library here? What was this building to them? Like in the hallways, the decor here struck me as luxurious but impersonal; maybe the room was only for show—though why anyone would need a library for show, I had no idea.

“It’s not a pretense,” said an articulate female voice. I jumped, reflexively stepping up my arithmetic mental scramble. Dawna had entered the room, the thick carpeting muffling her elegant stilettos. She stood with her hands clasped behind her back in a light approximation of parade rest, wearing a crisp business skirt and blouse. Her gracefulness made me feel positively trollish as a human being. “I have a library here because I enjoy books,” she continued with a small smile. “I have a particular proclivity for first editions.”

“Ironic,” I said, my voice coming out a little croaky. “I think Courtney Polk’s at least on her third.”

Dawna turned and nodded to her guards; they about-faced and left the room, closing the doors softly behind them. She stepped over and sat down across from me, folding her hands in front of her on the table. “Courtney…” She pressed her lips together. “When I found Courtney, she was…broken. Beyond depressed. Drugs, pills, no job and no skills to acquire one.”

“So you got her a spot as a drug mule,” I said, chugging through another Riemann-Zeta root as I spoke. “Great upgrade.”

She smiled slightly. “The cartels put up a good front, but on the whole we’ve defanged them. In almost all ways, they work to serve our ends now, not theirs. In working for them, Ms. Polk was truly working for us.”

“Wait, you took over the drug cartels?”

“Yes,” said Dawna. “Eventually we’ll phase them out entirely, of course, but for now they provide us with means, in many ways, of accomplishing our objectives. Their resources, the networks they have in place already—they have been very valuable to us.”

“Your objectives,” I repeated. “Which are?”

She raised her eyebrows. “World peace. Didn’t Courtney speak to you?”

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “She did mention that.”

“Well?” She opened her hands, inviting. “What do you think?”

I factored another integer. What did I think? I thought this wasn’t at all how I had expected this interview to go. I had been anticipating—

“‘Brainwash’ is such an ugly word, Ms. Russell. Come, you’re an intelligent person. Why would I waste effort forcing you into something you will so easily see the logic of yourself? All I want is to explain what we do here. Once you understand, I believe you’ll want to join us voluntarily.”

“You locked us up,” I pointed out.

“See it from my perspective,” she said reasonably. “You and Mr. Tresting have been operating on the assumption that we’re some sort of monstrous conspiracy, when nothing could be further from the truth. I admit you even started causing some trouble for us. I wanted the chance to explain to you what we’re truly about.”

“And if I don’t agree to drink the Kool-Aid, then are you going to let us go?”

“Well, it hardly makes sense to do that if you’re going to work against us, does it? Not when our efforts are bettering so many, many lives.” She spoke simply, articulately, earnestly. “Ms. Russell, we lift countless people out of poverty and starvation every day. We’re bringing down violent crime globally, effecting drastic change in cities that have never known any other reality. We’ve headed off nuclear crises and tamed dangerous insurgent groups into nothing, made brutal warlords impotent or helped raise up revolutions against them. Millions of people suffer less every day because of what we do—real, tangible people who can work and love and live their lives now—because of us.”

I shook my head, trying to dispel her magic, to wrap myself in my internal mathematics and use it to ward off her spell. “You kill people,” I reminded her doggedly. “Arthur and his tech guy tied a long list of murders to you. And you do brainwash people; I saw what you did to Leena Kingsley, and I’m pretty sure you brainwashed Courtney into killing Kingsley’s husband and making it look like a suicide. Oh, and you’ve tried to kill Arthur and me both. Not the best way to convince me you’re all sunshine and rainbows.”

Dawna inclined her head. “I won’t deny any of that. But I urge you—Ms. Russell, I believe you’re intelligent enough to perceive the larger picture. What we do—we use surgical strikes. Precision. One life, compared to the thousands more whom that one execution will save. Or a single government official changing his mind on an issue he doesn’t even fully understand, and thus averting tensions that would build to a world war within a year. We find the butterfly that would cause the hurricane, and clip its wings to save millions—can you truly tell me this is wrong?”

“And what gives you the right to decide who lives and who dies?” I challenged her.

“We all have that right, Ms. Russell,” she said sadly. “Every one of us. We are only unequal in the power we wield. Pithica has great power, as do I. I and others like me—we divine connections few can, and we have the strength to alter them. If I chose inaction, I would be choosing death for all those people I would otherwise save. Any decision I make condemns some and not others.” She leaned forward. “I can see what a rational person you are, Ms. Russell. You must see the logic here, that if I did not step forward, I would be making a choice in favor of all the suffering I could prevent, as surely as if I had caused it myself. So I would instead ask, what would give me the right to refuse that responsibility, when I can help so many?”

“No,” I said weakly. My head was spinning. Her philosophy seemed so logical, so mathematically correct, but it had to be inconsistent somewhere. It had to be. “No. That can’t justify what you do.”

She nodded as if she had expected that response. Hell, she probably had. “In that case, I would like to pose a question to you. If you regard aggression as so unjustified for any greater good—forgive me if I beg you to consider an inconsistency.” She waited a beat that was almost apologetic before plunging on. “You call us evil, yet you seem to accept the same behavior quite readily in your friend.”

I almost laughed. “What are you talking about?” Half of Arthur’s problem was that he wasn’t willing to be violent enough, even in self-defense.

“I was not referring to Mr. Tresting,” Dawna corrected gently.

A sudden sick feeling condensed in my stomach, and for the briefest moment my grasp on my internal mathematics wavered. “He’s not my friend,” I said, ignoring the something in me that didn’t like to say it out loud.

“Perhaps not,” said Dawna. “But you are his.”

The sick feeling intensified. I said nothing.

Dawna seemed to be waiting for something, gazing at me with her eyes slightly narrowed—I ensured my brain was still as occupied as possible with its mundane algorithmic litany, wondering what she sought, what she saw—but after a moment of silence she broke the tension and leaned back in her chair. “Ms. Russell, I would like it if you would trust me. I know it does not come easily to you, but perhaps I can help. I beg you, ask me anything. I swear I shall answer you honestly.”

I found my voice. “Like it would mean anything, that you promised not to lie.”

“True, you have no way of being sure of my word. However,” she added, with the slightest hint at a conspiratorial smile, “at least you will know what answer I choose to give you.”

Jesus Christ. I stared at her, my mouth dropping open slightly. She knew me better than I knew myself. As much as I was opposed to going along with her on anything, I was constitutionally incapable of not taking her up on such an offer. More information was always more information, no matter how little I trusted the source—after all, I would at least be able to file away the particular answers she chose to give me as the answers Dawna Polk would choose to give me. And that could tell me something, right?

Ridiculous. Was I honestly thinking about trying to match wits with someone who was literally psychic?

And yet, she was offering to tell me anything I wanted, and that meant I had to ask. I had to know.

Oh, hell.

“Fine,” I said, redoubling my brain’s furious churning through its mental mathematics as I tried to dispel the sinking certainty that I was about to play right into Dawna’s hands. I fancied I could feel the ground giving way beneath my feet, but I couldn’t stop myself. “To start off with, your high and mighty motives are all well and good, but I want to know what kind of game you’ve been running on me in particular. And why. You say that trying to kill me or locking me up is all for the greater good because I’d make trouble, but you’re the one who dragged me into all this in the first place, remember? If you own the cartels, why let someone you’ve brainwashed into being your pawn get captured by them? And why fake a contact from Rio to hire me to get her back out? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Ah. Yes, that needs some explanation. It was not a case of allowing Ms. Polk to be captured so much as it was engineering it.”

What? She had set it up?

“Yes. Courtney Polk—bless her, we already had her working for the cartels, and she was perfect for this role. You see, we needed someone who might conveniently be taken captive. And who might conveniently be worthy of rescuing.”

Be worthy of…

The pieces were starting to come together, even with half my thoughts busy at pointless arithmetic. “It was a test.” As I said it, I was sure. “Courtney didn’t know it, but she and the cartel, they were all your people all along. You were testing me.”

Dawna hesitated, almost as if embarrassed. “No. We, ah, we weren’t testing you.”

And suddenly I understood. “You were testing Rio.”

She inclined her head slightly.

They hadn’t cared about me at all; I was only another pawn. Somehow, the game had always been about Rio. “You wanted to see if Rio would rescue her,” I said slowly, feeling my way through. “You already knew he was working a cover. And when he didn’t…”

“You are unusual, Ms. Russell,” said Dawna. “You may not be aware of quite how much. The relationship you have with Mr. Sonrio is—well, in point of fact, you are the only person we have found who has a relationship with him. When I sent you in after Ms. Polk, we wanted to see how far he would go. For you.”

The puzzle was taking shape, fitting together as neatly as the Hamiltonian circuits I had going in the back of my head. “You told the cartel I was coming. You made sure I got caught. I thought it was too convenient.”

She smiled at me. “Truth be told, you were far more skilled than we had anticipated. That was when we first started to discuss recruiting you, as well.”

“Instead of just having extremely well-armed bikers kill me off afterwards?” I asked pleasantly.

Her color heightened a touch. “I must apologize for that. We mistimed that attack. It was meant to be another gauge of Mr. Sonrio’s response to imperiling you.”

Right. Though presumably they hadn’t much cared if I bit it, either—especially not after I had name-dropped Pithica to Dawna in the coffee shop. “So, all of this. Calling me in the first place. You were—what, studying Rio?”

“Yes.”

“And what did you learn?” I asked.

“He surprised us. He let you go.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I had to knock him out with a chair.” We looked at each other for a second. Dammit. “Fine. If Rio hadn’t wanted me to escape, I probably wouldn’t have. Okay, then why Rio? Why are you so interested in him?”

She scrutinized me for a hairsbreadth before answering. “We need someone like him.”

“Seems like you’ve got your own private army already,” I observed.

“Ms. Russell,” said Dawna delicately, “I am not sure you are fully aware of Mr. Sonrio’s skills. His ability to be effective—it borders on the unrealistic. He has destroyed entire governments. Leveled armies. Found and obliterated terrorist cells the intelligence agencies of several continents were chasing their tails trying to pursue. He has altered the course of nations. A lone man.” Her voice was calm, factual, and very serious.

Huh. So that was what Rio did in his spare time. I’d had no idea he was that impressive. I’m not going to lie: I was jealous.

I forced myself to chew over the math of a path problem, and didn’t answer.

“He has, on occasion,” Dawna continued, “turned his considerable skill set against organizations similar to Pithica. They did not fare well against him.” The corners of her mouth turned upward in a shadow of a wry smile. “You can see why we do not want to be his latest target.”

“I think the ship’s already sailed on that one,” I said.

“We are still hoping to change his mind.”

Change his mind. Fuck. If Dawna could say one thing with confidence, it was that she could change anyone’s mind.

Except—

Wait a minute. If they’d pierced Rio’s cover back with the cartel, and had known where he was, then why wasn’t he Pithica’s obliging tool already? He hadn’t known who Dawna was until she’d put the whammy on me; he wouldn’t have recognized her as a threat. She could have walked in and done her ESP thing on him without arousing the least suspicion. Unless—I felt my eyes widen.

Dawna smiled at me. “Your deduction is correct. My insights—those that help us relate so well to people—they fail us here. Mr. Sonrio is, as I am sure you know, a special case.”

Holy crap. They couldn’t control Rio. They couldn’t control Rio! Note to self: to avoid being vulnerable to telepathy, become a psychopath. No, bad plan, Cas.

“Hence all the experimentation,” I breathed. “You were trying to see how he’d react.”

“Precisely,” said Dawna. “Science would tell us what our intuitions could not.”

I cleared my throat, almost afraid to ask. “So, what did science tell you?”

“Our research could fill three textbooks,” she said, still smiling. “But I shall give you the short version. Our insights—we see people’s emotions. What they feel, what they desire; we see it and empathize with it. Mr. Sonrio’s psychology was simply foreign to us before, but we believe we now have a better understanding of him. He is not driven by emotion in the same way as others, but he does have…needs.”

No. No, no, no, no, no. Rio’s immune. You just said Rio’s immune!

“Ms. Russell, please; you insist on such a dramatic view of us! I assure you, all we wish to do is talk to Mr. Sonrio, as I am talking to you now. Discuss our views with him. His goals are so similar to our own; I think once he sees our point of view, he will agree to a mutually beneficial working relationship.”

If they got Rio…even discounting the insane accomplishments Dawna claimed he had to his name, I knew what Rio could do, what he was capable of that most people weren’t, and it didn’t have to do with his skills.

If Pithica got to Rio, I wasn’t sure anyone would be able to stop them.

“Ms. Russell,” said Dawna, that earnest passion back in her voice, “I know you haven’t yet been wholly convinced of our motives here. But don’t you think it could only be a good thing for Mr. Sonrio to have another check on his…inclinations? You know him—you know we would help him be a better man. As his friend, you must want that.”

Like all of Dawna Polk’s arguments, it seemed so reasonable, such a perfect compromise. But for some reason—perhaps because I’d known and trusted Rio for so long, and it was Rio I trusted, not a Pithica-aligned Rio—I couldn’t find myself agreeing. I wasn’t even sure why.

“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.