S. L. Huang - Zero Sum Game

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Chapter 37

It took forty-eight hours for most vital services to get restored inSouthern California, and almost two weeks for Los Angeles to approachsomething akin to normal. Twenty-nine people died and hundreds wereinjured during the rioting; the number of people who died from the EMPknocking out medical devices was several times that. Whatever numbersgame Pithica thought they were playing, they had a lot to do to make upfor this one.

And they wouldnt be able to. At least not for a good while. Wed madesure of that.

I still wasnt sure whether we should be proud of what wed done or not.I tried not to think about it too hard, and to remind myself every sooften of what Pithica had done to people like Reginald and LeenaKingsley. And to Courtney Polk, the client I hadnt been able to rescuein the end.

I also tried to remind myself of how much I liked winning. Im not goingto lie; that helped.

We didnt manage to contact Checker for several days, since Arthurrefused to let me steal a working satellite phone from the aid workersrebuilding the infrastructure. It turned out that Dawna, never havingmet Checker, had completely misjudged what he would do and probablynever would have found him anyway. After Rio had dropped him off at hiscar, Checker had driven non-stop; as soon as he had hit a town where thelights were still on, he had gone, not to break into an electronicsstore in the middle of the night, but instead to a well-groomedresidential neighborhoodwhere he had knocked on a reasonablypleasant-looking door, asked if they knew what was happening in SouthernCalifornia, and told them that he needed emergency access to a computerwith a network connection. Then he had offered all the cash wed senthim off with up in payment for the use of said computer. The very nice,middle-class family who lived in the house had been impressed by hisearnestness (and the offer of so much money), had felt he was reasonablynonthreatening, and had invited him to set up in the living room withone of the parents work laptops. I gathered that theyd even made himpancakes and bacon for breakfast and offered for him to stay in theirspare room until LA was sorted out.

Checker, not sure whether Pithica was still after him, politely declinedthe offer (although he did admit to accepting their college-ageddaughters number on the sly, which might have made her parents lessinclined to trust him, had they known), and then sold his car to a chopshop for some quick capital and set himself up with a fake ID and sometemp work in small-town Arizona while he waited for us to contact him.It turned out he was a remarkably street-savvy guy.

What were you going to do if you never heard anything? I asked,curious.

Cry my eyes out that Cas Russell apparently met an ignominious andgruesome death at the hands of her very stupid plan, he answered.

I laughed and then told him about Rios deal. Despite what we had done,we would be safe enough from Pithica in the future. Checker said hed beon a bus back to LA as soon as he could find a line that was running.And now that its safe for me to use a credit card again, Im going tofill a suitcase with laptops to bring back with me.

Leave it to you to black-market circuit boards during this time ofcrisis, I said.

Cas Russell, what do you think of me? I need to repair the Hole. Asuitcase full of laptops is barely a start.

I didnt mention that by meeting up with some old clients at some oldhaunts, Id taken five jobs in getting people black market electronicsin the past three days. Disaster was good for business.

The official explanation for the EMP hit the airwaves during the weekafter the event, and was some hand-waving about a solar storm. Iwondered what Pithica had done to pull that off. It kind of impressed methat they had done it, considering the dire straits they had to be inafter what wed pulled. But they were about helping humanity to the veryend, and apparently that included cleaning up their own mess to somedegree, which to them meant at least making sure nobody started bandyingaround the word terrorists or could point to a nuclear attack as anexcuse to start a war with someone. The country ran fundraisers and RedCross drives to help the poor Angelenos struck by such a freaky naturaldisaster, but world politics as a whole suffered no more than it hadfrom the last bad hurricane.

Arthur was severely concussed enough that he stayed with me for a fewdays in my apartment in the Valley. Since the concussion was my fault, Ididnt mind waking him up in the middle of the night to ask him how manyfingers and who was president. In return, he tried to nag me abouttaking it easy until my chest wound healed completelysomething aboutadrenaline not being a substitute for proper convalescencebut I mostlyignored him. When he felt well enough, he took advantage of the massivechaos in the city to go in and report at a police station that hedwoken up in an alley with short-term amnesia and realized he was thevictim of a crime. He filled out a police report on what had happened tohis office while claiming not to remember any of it and was supported inall ways by his obvious recent head wound. The LAPD, swamped with adevastated and fracturing city, quickly filed the case away underunsolved gang-related violence.

By then a horrifically tortured man had shown up in a hospital and beenidentified as the sole survivor of the office massacre on Wilshire.Considering that he couldnt stop gibbering madly about an Asian devil,and that no bodies had ever been recovered from the Griffith Parkshooting despite the wildly conflicting witness reports of the violencethere, Arthurs and my composites got shuffled off the most wantedboards. I wondered if the surviving Pithica man had any inkling that heprobably owed his life to Rio magnanimously getting the police off mytrail.

As for Rio himself, I tracked him down a little over a week after theEMP disaster. We met in an empty subway stationthe trains still werentup and running, and the station was deserted, though someone had stoppedby with copious amounts of spray paint and already graffitied over everysurface. Gotta love LA.