Root of Unity by SL Huang

Author:SL Huang [Huang, SL]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: superhero, superpowers, contemporary science fiction, Thriller, action, Adventure, math, mathematical fiction
Publisher: SL Huang
Published: 2015-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

My hard-faced agent friend had said her name was Jones. I didn’t know whether to suspect that of being an alias or not—she didn’t look like a Jones, but then, would a Fed pick such an obvious fake name? I didn’t suppose it mattered.

She left me to wait locked in a small room sitting at a metal table. The place lacked the classic one-way glass so popular on television and in police stations, but I was sure hidden eyes were watching from cameras I couldn’t see. I put my head down on the table and tried to sleep, but every time I started to drop off, I jerked awake with the sensation that something large and dark was watching and waiting for me. Fucking unconscious mind.

I supposed I should have been spending some time figuring out how to escape, but I was too goddamn tired. And besides, with Arthur and Pilar and Halliday and Checker all snarled up in this, I rated the probability of being able to walk anonymously away at something very close to zero.

How had we ended up working with the government? Oh, right. Arthur.

After leaving me to sit and glaze over for a few hours, Jones came in and leaned against the wall across from me. “Cas Russell,” she said.

Well, fuck. Not that there had been much chance they would miss that. Even if Halliday had kept her mouth shut, which she probably hadn’t thought to do, it was a very small leap for them to start making a few phone calls about me to certain disreputable people. If only I were a six-foot-tall white guy—they would’ve had a list of names way too long to check. Being a foot shorter, brown, and female meant a few questions in the right corners would get them a correct ID, even from people I’d never met.

Unfortunately for me.

Jones blew out a breath. “Now what’s your real name?”

Okay, that wasn’t what I had expected. “What do you mean?”

“You must think I’m an amateur.”

“It seems you’ve been asking around about me,” I said with pleasant sarcasm, mentally upticking the likelihood that she wasn’t really a Jones herself. “I don’t know what I can possibly contribute.”

“You really want to do this?” Her stance became more aggressive. “Right now we don’t give a fuck about you or what you get up to in your spare time. But you’re a fingernail’s width away from going from ‘witness’ to ‘perpetrator.’ So how about we begin again, and either you start acting like we’re on the same side in this Halliday mess, or I’m going to go ahead and say we’re not.”

I measured my breaths, thinking as the landscape shifted. I’d assumed I was about to have the book thrown at me. But if Jones was telling the truth, I was in a lot better shape here than I’d presumed. If the Feds only cared about me in reference to Halliday, that might be a very good thing indeed. “Cas Russell is my real name,” I said cautiously.

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