Zero Sum Game (17 page)

“Enter the wonders of technology,” Steve continued. “Someone, somewhere, found a way of refining this ability and sharpening it. We don’t know how. Before, a person like Dawna Polk might have had the potential to lead nations and inspire millions. Instead, she has been altered. Enhanced. She can observe the slightest movement of your face, take in the smallest quickening of your breath, phrase a question in exactly the right way, and whether she reads it from the twitch of your eyebrow or you voluntarily tell her yourself, she will know exactly what you are thinking. More than that, whatever ideas she plants in your brain, you will walk confidently into the world determined that they are your own. She is, for all intents and purposes, a telepath, capable of taking any information you know and molding you to her will in whatever ways she desires, and as far as we know, her abilities are absolute and have no defense.”

Absurd,
I told myself, trying to ignore the cold trickle of sweat on the back of my neck. This was absurd. I took in a breath to deny his story categorically, to announce my complete disbelief in anything so fantastical—but then something in the back of my brain clicked, so suddenly it jarred me, and the world shifted, maybe flipping upside down or maybe clarifying instantly to an impossible sharpness…

I had no idea what I knew or why, but some spark deep in my memory, perhaps in the subconscious web of interrelated knowledge we call instinct, had connected and fit together and God help me but I believed him. More than believed him: I knew with freezing certainty that he was right.

Dawna Polk was a fucking psychic.

Fuck.

“That is Pithica,” our narrator concluded. “They employ other agents as well, of course, who have been so indoctrinated by those with these mental powers that they are the most fanatical of followers, but people like Dawna Polk are at the heart of what they do. Our organization opposes them. I tell you this because you need some basic understanding of our dilemma here.”

“What dilemma?” said Tresting.

Steve spread his fingers, pressing against the stone table top. “The only reason we are able to exist is that Pithica does not know that we do. They
cannot
know. We have only managed as much as we have against them by taking swift and thorough measures against anyone who might reveal us to them.”

Oh,
shit.
I straightened where I sat, every nerve ending firing to alert status.

“You, either as targets of Pithica or as people who have…interacted…with them—” Steve’s mouth twisted on that word—“are an obvious liability to us, now that you know of our existence.”

His calm tone hadn’t changed. In fact, he spoke like someone who did not care one whit that we had chosen this meeting and this location, someone who didn’t even care if we walked away from the park today, because no matter where we went, dispensing with the danger we posed would be as trivial as flicking an annoying fly from his arm.

My hand tightened on my weapon beneath my coat, and Tresting shifted beside me, rebalancing himself on the grass. If it came to a fight here and now, I would win, but killing Steve would mean nothing. Who else from their organization was here? How far could they reach?

“However,” Steve continued, turning to focus on me alone, “It is also of utmost interest to us how you managed to walk away from Dawna Polk with the knowledge that she was something other than what she presented. That is…astounding, in a word. Almost unbelievable. It would be a great asset to our task if we could discover how you were capable of such a thing.” He leaned forward on his elbows, pressing his fingers together and addressing me over them. “If you will agree to cooperate with us fully, in all ways, we will help you, along with Mr. Tresting and anyone else who has been involved in this with you, to disappear and start a new life elsewhere.”

“Strong-arming our intel, then? No quid pro quo?” I spoke more lightly than I felt. “What if we don’t want to enter your demented witness protection program?”

“Please believe me when I say that if either of you sees Dawna Polk again, you
will
give us away to her. Knowing that, what would you have us do?” He spread his hands, as if to say,
sorry, but there you go.
“The offer to help you disappear is an exceedingly generous one. You will have to be removed entirely from civilization, and be overseen by some of our own people on a constant basis to ensure you will never attempt to contact Pithica on some embedded suggestion from them. It will be an unspeakable consumption of our resources, and is not generally an opportunity we extend. I strongly suggest you take it.”

“You usually just kill people, huh,” said Tresting. He sounded offhand about it, but the words crackled at the edges, and I was getting to know him well enough to hear the outrage under his casual tone.

“We do not take it lightly. Ever.” Steve’s face tightened, his jaw bunching. “We exist in subterfuge and obscurity. We only act when our hand is forced.”

“Real gentlemen,” said Tresting.

Steve folded his hands on the table. “You will tell us what you know about Pithica, and you will disappear,” he informed us, his calm, charismatic tone as ominous as a death knell. “Whether you do either of those things voluntarily or not is your decision, but they both
will
happen, one way or the other.”

“Wow,” I said. “You and Pithica deserve each other.” I hadn’t moved yet, but the adrenaline was slamming into my brain, shutting away the revelations about Dawna Polk to deal with later and focusing on how to escape our current situation alive. The smartest thing to do might’ve been to accept their offer and play along, discover what we could, and then escape from the imprisonment they were calling protection. But I was a terrible liar—and besides, I didn’t feel good about our chances once we entered their custody.

The next obvious solution was to take out both men and run. But the minute I did, we couldn’t stop running. We’d have to dodge this organization’s crosshairs for the rest of our lives. Could we take Finch and his boss hostage instead, use them to negotiate for getting ourselves off the target list? Unfortunately, I had the distinct feeling their employers had a broad definition of “acceptable losses,” even when it came to their own.

My jaw clenched, and the metal of the Smith & Wesson dug into my palm. There had to be a better option.

Tresting had his head cocked to the side, still seemingly casual. “I’m thinking you’re an international group,” he said to Steve. “Banding together to protect the global power dynamic from Pithica’s influence, or something. Off the grid, not even answerable to the people who set you on this crusade of yours. Am I right?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more about us,” said Steve, still far too calm, “regardless of whether you take our offer. The less you know, the less you would be able to give away. Now, I must have an answer.”

“Well, you see, that’s a problem,” said Tresting, and I felt a surge of good will toward him. Did he have a plan? Maybe this working together thing wouldn’t turn out to be so bad after all.

The man called Steve sighed. “Please don’t make this difficult, Mr. Tresting. Not to be callous, but it’s not even your decision.”

“Oh, I have a problem, too,” I said immediately. “Right here. Problem. You look up ‘problem’ in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of me putting a gun to your head, which is what I’m considering doing in about three seconds.”

“Did I not make myself clear? If you don’t—”

“Oh, you were perfectly clear,” said Tresting. “Perfectly. Only, see, this here’s the problem. Just a little one, but—I got a guy on the outside, who knows everything we know, including about running into Mr. Finch here. If he doesn’t hear from us, bam, it all goes public. Everything, including you gents.”

Steve twitched. “You’re bluffing.”

“Willing to take that chance?” said Tresting.

“If you begin throwing Dawna Polk’s name and face around openly, we will be the least of your problems.” The ominous edge in Steve’s voice had turned darker, more deadly. “Besides, Mr. Finch has been with you since you discovered our involvement. You never had the opportunity—”

“He did make a phone call, Boss,” interrupted Finch with a wince. “And she ID’d me from Courtney Polk’s house. It’s possible they made us there.”

His boss gave Finch a look that promised repercussions would come later and took a deep, steadying breath before moderating his tone. “I told you our offer extends to the people with whom you’ve been working. Believe me, whoever this is, we can find him, too, and he can disappear along with you both—in whichever manner you choose.”

I ignored the very real fear settling in the bottom of my stomach, and decided to follow my other gut feeling, which was telling me to get out of here now. “Points for creepy,” I told the guy whose name wasn’t Steve, pleased with how unconcerned I managed to sound. “We’ll think about helping you, but it’s sure as hell not going to be on those terms. We have your phone number already—don’t call us; we’ll call you.”

“You’re making a mistake.”

“If I had a nickel for every time someone told me that,” I mused. “Bye now.”

I glanced at Arthur, but for once we seemed to be in complete agreement. I hopped off the picnic table and we backed slowly away. Finch and his boss watched us go, not moving from the table. Their tranquility was unnerving. It meant they didn’t have to be worried.

We headed onto the winding road. I saw a thick, knobbly stick by the side of the pavement and picked it up, twirling it experimentally. I looked back. Perfect. The picnic area was almost out of sight. Nobody on the path here would find someone tossing a branch that odd, and nobody back there would connect me with it. I twirled it one more time to build up the exact right centripetal acceleration and let it fly. Way back in the picnic area, barely visible now, the butt end of the branch smacked into Finch’s temple and bounced off at just the right angle to whack his boss across the ear. They both collapsed. “Might buy us some time,” I said to Arthur, who was starting to get the freaked out my-window-had-bars-on-it look on his face again.

His eyes went down to my chest, and widened. “Or not.”

I looked down to see the bright pinpoint of a red laser sight dancing there.

Oh, hell.

Chapter 17

“Please come
with us,” said a nondescript woman, appearing with an equally nondescript man right next to us.

“Laser sights?
Really?”
I said to her in disgust. “What is this, a cheesy action movie?”

She smiled slightly. “They are more for you than for our people. An incentive to accompany us, if you will. I’m sure it has been explained that we prefer not to kill you.”

“It’s just so hard to take you seriously now,” I said. I felt the breeze on my cheek and calculated wind speed, trajectories springing up in my head. Assuming the snipers were dialed in correctly…I casually rocked my weight back. The bright red light was several seconds in correcting.

“Thought we went over this with your boss,” said Tresting. “We ain’t coming, and if you try to force us, things will go bad for you people. Seemed like he got it.”

“He gave us no signal to let you go.”

Tresting glared at me.

“Oops,” I said. “My bad.”

“We would prefer it if you came with us. However, I have been authorized as to alternatives,” the woman informed us.

“I have an alternative,” I said. “Tell your snipers to back off, and they get to live.”

Tresting and I each got an additional laser dot joining the first. Two for each of us. Goody.

“I recommend you come with me,” said the woman. She didn’t have any visible weapon, but her casual clothes might have been concealing one, and the same was true of her partner. Both of them stood with their weight square and their hands free. They were ready for a fight.

Of course, so was I.

The last few hours had been nothing but subterfuge and conspiracies and deep secrets and threats in the dark. The fact that I finally had an enemy pointing a gun at me again was
glorious.

This was an enemy I could fight.

I took one last glance at the four dancing laser dots. To the close observer they stretched into slightly elongated ellipses, and the angle automatically backtracked for me, extending upward infallibly, four lines of sight to our four snipers. Excellent. I hoped one of the clowns in front of us had a high frame rate camera, because otherwise they were going to miss a spectacular feat.

“Well, I warned you,” I said. I slipped back a step and whipped both hands across my body and under my coat, drew before anyone could react, and fired two shots with each hand.

The red dots disappeared from our chests.

One of the passing hikers screamed.

Pandemonium erupted. The woman and her partner tried to grab us and to reach for their own weapons, but they never had a chance. Tresting gave the woman a vicious uppercut that dropped her like a sack of potatoes, and I brought my right-hand gun back down to the man and fired, but the gun didn’t go off, so I whipped my leg around and kicked him in the face instead. I gave Tresting a shout and a shove with my shoulder and we started racing down the lane. Pedestrians screamed behind us—someone yelling for help, someone else yelling for the police.

I shouted for Tresting to follow and skidded into the woods, realigning what I remembered of our arrival in my mind and pelting down through dry leaves in a shortcut to a parking area we’d passed. At least, I hoped we were aiming at the parking area—my memory wasn’t perfect, but I could estimate, and I drew lines and angles through the woods and
yes, there!
I stumbled out among the cars, shoving my guns back underneath my jacket, and dashed to a van with nicely tinted windows. I jacked it so fast that by the time Tresting scrambled up next to me the passenger door was already open with the engine thrumming to life. I pulled out onto the street toward the park’s exit before he had even gotten his door shut and tried my best to drive sedately despite my pulse hammering away at a hundred and sixty-three beats per minute (well, a hundred sixty-three point four, but who was counting).