S Huang - Zero Sum Game

I trusted one person in the entire world.

He was currently punching me in the face.

Overlapping numbers scuttled across Rios fist as it rocketed toward me,their values scrambling madly, the calculations doing themselves beforemy eyes. He wasnt pulling his punch at all, the bastard. I saw exactlyhow it would hit and that the force would fracture my jaw.

Well. If I allowed it to.

Angles and forces. Vector sums. Easy. I pressed myself back against thechair I was tied to, bracing my wrists against the ropes, and tilted myhead a hair less than the distance I needed to turn the punch into alove tap. Instead of letting Rio break my jaw, I let him split my lipopen.

The impact snapped my head back, and blood poured into my mouth, chokingme. I coughed and spat on the cement floor. Goddammit.

Sixteen men, said a contemptuous voice in accented English from a fewpaces in front of me, against one ugly little girl. How? Who are you?

Nineteen, I corrected, the word hitching as I choked on my own blood.I was already regretting going for the split lip. Check your perimeteragain. I killed nineteen of your men. And it would have been a lot moreif Rio hadnt appeared out of nowhere and clotheslined me while I wasdistracted by the Colombians. Fucking son of a bitch. He was the onewhod gotten me this job; why hadnt he told me he was undercover withthe drug cartel?

The Colombian interrogating me inhaled sharply and jerked his head atone of his subordinates, who turned and loped out of the room. Theremaining three drug runners stayed where they were, fingeringMicro-Uzis with what they plainly thought were intimidating expressions.

Dumbasses. I worked my wrists against the rough cord behind mybackRio had been the one to tie me up, and he had left me just enoughplay to squeeze out, if I had half a second. Numbers and vectors shot inall directionsfrom me, to the Colombian in front of me, to his threelackwit subordinates, to Rioa sixth sense of mathematical interplaythat existed somewhere between sight and feeling, masking the world withconstant calculations and threatening to drown me in a sensory overloadof data.

And telling me how to kill.

Forces. Movements. Response times. I could take down this idiot drugrunner right now, the way he was blocking his boys line of fireexceptthat concentrating on the Colombians would give Rio the instant heneeded to take me down. I was perfectly aware that he wasnt about tobreak cover on my behalf.

If you dont tell me what I want to know, you will regret it. You seemy dog? The Colombian jerked his head at Rio. If I let him loose onyou, you will be crying for us to kill your own mother. And he will likemaking you scream. Hehow do you say? It gives him a jolly. He leanedforward with a sneer, bracing himself on the arms of the chair so hisbreath was hot against my face.

Well, now hed officially pissed me off. I flicked my eyes up to Rio. Heremained impassive, towering above me in his customary tan duster likesome hardass Asian cowboy. Unbothered. The insults wouldnt registerwith him.

But I didnt care. People pissing on Rio made me want to put them in theground, even though none of it mattered to him. Even though all of itwas true.

I relaxed my head back and then snapped it forward, driving my foreheaddirectly into the Colombians nose with a terrific crunch.

He made a sound like an electrocuted donkey, squealing and snorting ashe flailed backward, and then he groped around his back to come up witha boxy little machine pistol. I had time to think, Oh, shit, as hebrought the gun upbut before firing, he gestured furiously at Rio toget out of the way, and in that instant the mathematics realigned andclicked into place and the probabilities blossomed into a split-secondwindow.

Before Rio had taken his third step away, before the Colombian couldpull his finger back on the trigger, I had squeezed my hands free of theropes, and I dove to the side just as the gun went off with a roar ofautomatic fire. I spun in a crouch and shot a foot out against the metalchair, the kick perfectly timed to lever energy from my turnangularmomentum, linear momentum, bang. Sorry, Rio. The Colombian struggled tobring his stuttering gun around to track me, but I rocketed up to crashagainst him, trapping his arms and carrying us both to the floor in anarc calculated exactly to bring his line of fire across the far wall.

The mans head cracked against the floor, his weapon falling fromnerveless fingers and clattering against the cement. Without lookingtoward the side of the room, I already knew the other three men hadslumped to the ground, cut down by their bosss gun before they couldget a shot off. Rio was out cold by the door, his forehead bleedingfreely, the chair fallen next to him. Served him right for punching mein the face so many times.

The door burst open. Men shouted in Spanish, bringing Uzis and AKsaround to bear.

Momentum, velocities, objects in motion. I saw the deadly trails oftheir bullets spray before they pulled the triggers, spinning lines ofmovement and force that filled my senses, turning the room into akaleidoscope of whirling vector diagrams.

The guns started barking, and I ran at the wall and jumped.

I hit the window at the exact angle I needed to avoid being sliced open,but the glass still jarred me when it shattered, the noise right by myear and somehow more deafening than the gunfire. My shoulder smackedinto the hard-packed ground outside and I rolled to my feet, runningbefore I was all the way upright.

This compound had its own mini-army. The smartest move would be to maketracks out of here sooner rather than later, but Id broken in here on ajob, dammit, and if I didnt finish it, I wouldnt get paid.

The setting sun was sending tall shadows slicing between the buildings.I skidded up to a metal utility shed and slammed the sliding door back.My current headache of a job, also known as Courtney Polk, scrabbledback as much as she could while handcuffed to a pipe before sherecognized me and glowered. Id locked her in here temporarily when theColombians had started closing in.

I picked up the key to the cuffs from where Id dropped it in the dustby the door and freed her. Time to skedaddle.

Get away from me, she hissed, flinching back. I caught one of her armsand twisted, the physics of the leverage laughably easy. Polk winced.

I am having a very bad day, I said. If you dont stay quiet, I willknock you unconscious and carry you out of here. Do you understand?

She glared at me.

I twisted a fraction of an inch more, about three degrees shy of poppingher shoulder out of the socket.

All right already! She tried to spit the words, but her voice climbedat the end, pitched with pain.

I let her go. Come on.

Polk was all gangly arms and legs and looked far too thin to have muchendurance, but she was in better shape than she appeared, and we made itto the perimeter in less than three minutes. I pushed her down to crouchbehind the corner of a building, my eyes roving for the best way out,troop movements becoming vectors, numbers stretching and explodingagainst the fence. Calculations spun through my brain in infinitecombinations. We were going to make it.

And then a shape rose up, skulking between two buildings, zigzagging tostalk usa black man, tall and lean and handsome, in a leather jacket.His badge wasnt visible, but it didnt need to be; the way he movedtold me everything I needed to know. He stood out like a cop in acompound full of drug runners.

I started to grab Polk, but it was too late. The cop whipped around andlooked up, meeting my eyes from fifty feet away, and knew he was made.

He was fast. Wed scarcely locked eyes and his hand was inside hisjacket in a blur.

My boot flicked out and hit a rock.