“Maybe.”
“It was my fault I was there just as much as yours,” I said. “I came uninvited in the first place, remember?”
He exhaled sharply and unhappily. “Any idea why they want you?”
It was a good question. Two nights ago they’d tried to kill me with no questions asked, and now they had set a trap for me? The only good guess my earlier brooding had come up with was that this all had to do with my minimal ability to break away from Dawna’s brainwashing after the fact. Of course, considering how easily she had gotten to me during our meeting at the coffee shop, and how profoundly the effect had lasted before Rio’s insistent intervention, I didn’t have much hope of the supposed resistance helping me out now.
“I guess I’ll find out,” I said.
“Yeah.” Arthur was looking at his hands, still reflexively rubbing them against each other. “You know, you could’ve run, when they threatened me.”
“No, I couldn’t have.”
He glanced at me and then nodded, as if he understood what I meant.
Absurdly, I felt as if I had passed some sort of test. “Besides, you would have done the same for me,” I pointed out, embarrassed.
“Yeah, but I got a reputation for self-sacrificing idiocy to uphold.”
“Well. We all have our flaws.”
He huffed out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh, and any tension that had remained after the last time we saw each other slipped away. Arthur went to sit down on the floor, leaning back against the wall, and I joined him on the other side of the barred partition dividing our cells while I factored another hundred or so integers. Most of them were easy, but I’d just hit a frustrating one that might be a semiprime.
“What do you think’s going to happen here?” asked Arthur after a while.
“I think Dawna Polk is going to come talk to us,” I said. “And then we’re going to do whatever she wants.”
“You got a plan?”
The Euclidean algorithm flickered through each subsequent remainder, subtracting and dividing and subtracting. “Resist as much as I can, I guess.” Of course, Dawna could make me think I was resisting when I was doing exactly what she wanted me to do. We would both be her babbling lap dogs eventually.
What had Rio said? That the conversion would take time, if her goal went fundamentally against her victim’s personality? Months, even, for a result opposite to the person’s psychology?
What was my psychology? Axiomatic, probably, but I’d already witnessed her ability to rewrite those axioms to let me rationalize anything. I had no defense against her. Neither of us did.
“I ain’t never been one to consider suicide an appropriate solution,” said Tresting beside me, “but in this case…”
I snapped my head around to look at him. Killing myself hadn’t even occurred to me. “Well, I guess that’s one way to avoid her influence,” I managed.
“Avoid it, and make sure she ain’t never make me do nothing to my—to anyone I cared about. Or anyone else.”
If his main concern was being used as a tool to hurt others, then he was definitely the better person. “I…if you want to do that, I can make it quick,” I offered, the words dry in my mouth.
“Thank you,” he said quietly. “I’ll let you know.”
We lapsed into silence. Eventually I curled up on the cement floor and tried for some sleep. One of the guards brought us food and water every few hours, and Arthur was graceful about turning away when I needed to use the steel toilet affixed to the wall. The wait was humane, if tedious.
I noticed my chronic headaches had gone away. Instead of being a relief, their sudden lack only spurred my anxiety. The headaches had come on whenever I resisted Dawna’s influence—what did it mean that I didn’t feel them anymore?
Fuck. I buried myself in more mathematics. It was all I could do.
Busy with my constant stream of monotonous mental arithmetic, I didn’t bother to keep track of the time, but at least a full day had passed before the door at the end of the cellblock opened again to reveal a familiar frizzy-haired and freckle-faced figure.
“Hi,” said Courtney Polk, coming down the cellblock to face us.
Arthur and I stepped forward in our cells. “Hi,” I said warily.
The staggering number of question marks surrounding Courtney surged to the front of my brain. Was she in league with Pithica and Dawna? If so, how much through her own free will, and how much through Dawna’s psychic brainwashing? Had she really killed Reginald Kingsley, and if she’d done it under Dawna’s influence, how much could she be held accountable?
Who was she? Was she still my client? And if so, what on earth could I do for her?
“I’m sorry you have to go through all this,” said Courtney, waving a hand at the cells. “It’s for your own good and all, but I’m still sorry.”
“What do you mean, it’s for our own good?” I said cautiously.
“Well, my sister. She’s helping you.” The corner of her mouth quirked up in a friendly smile.
Arthur and I glanced at each other.
“Helping us how?” I said.
“Become better.” She spoke like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“That what she did for you, sweetheart?” asked Arthur.
Courtney’s smile blossomed. “It’s what she does, my sister. She’s amazing. The most amazing person in the world. I was so lost before she helped me.”
This conversation was surreal. “She’s not really your sister, you know,” I blurted.
Courtney didn’t seem bothered. “She is in every way that matters.”
“I didn’t see her helping when the cartel snatched you,” I said.
“Of course she did. Didn’t she hire you?”
I boggled. Well, I supposed that was one way of looking at things—if Dawna weren’t a freaking psychic.
“She couldn’t get me out of there herself, but afterward she came to get me as soon as she could,” Courtney explained.
I found my voice. “Let me drop a little knowledge on you,” I said. “Your sister can do pretty much anything she wants. She could have walked into that compound and walked you right out of the cartel’s custody if she’d wanted to, but for some reason, she didn’t. I’m sorry, but all you are is a pawn in some huge game she’s playing.” I took a deep breath. “Look, I said I’d help you. I’m still willing to.”
“That’s nice of you,” said Courtney delicately, in the same transparently fake way I might have if a high school student had offered to tutor me in arithmetic. “Really, I appreciate it. But Dawna’s fixing everything, just like always. No faraway island. No running away. And my life’s going to have meaning. Real meaning.”
“Doing what?” I said.
“Helping her.” The smile was back, her eyes sparkling.
Arthur cleared his throat. “Sweetheart, what does your sister want to do?”
“What else? Change the world.”
I bit back on an incredulous exclamation about vacuous truths. “Change the world how?” I pressed instead.
“Make it better. What else!” Courtney almost laughed at my slow-wittedness. “So many horrible things happen in the world. Like the drug cartels. But not just them. People doing awful, cruel things to each other, people starving, and war, and Dawna and everyone else are working to put a stop to all that. They’re doing so much good. And I’m going to help them, and I hope you will, too.”
“Wait. Let me get this straight.” My thoughts whirled. “Dawna’s goal is to make the world a better place?”
Courtney blinked at me. “What else would it be?”