Chapter 74: Mind Games

“The Animus Hunter again, eh?” Otto's eyes reflected the dimmed, sourceless white glow of Etemenos as neon blue. “You've almost got me wishing your catgirl would pay you another conjugal visit. Feeling neglected?”

Jack tried to muster a glare, but he was just too damned tired. He didn't even bother correcting Otto about the nature of Ellie's first visit. “Ellie's got better things to do.”

“Like?”

Saving Chloe, Jack thought.

Not that he was at all sure what, exactly, they were supposed to save her from. Rhetta Ferrill, who Ellie had seemed to know personally? Errard Zelph, who seemed to want to chat with Jack for no reason he could figure out?

Zelph, who for all his implied menace and his bureaucrat's face, would have made a better politician than the president? Jack had spoken with the man four times in that theatrically burned Etemenos chamber, who the hell knew how many words, and he still didn't think Zelph had said a single thing that meant anything.

Maybe the son of a bitch really was just hard up for conversation.

Jack sighed and flopped onto his bunk.

“It's rude not to answer a question,” Otto said.

Jack doubted the gesture he responded with made him seem any more polite.

Otto chuckled. “So what does our boy Errard want with you, anyway?”

Jack knew he wouldn't get any sleep until he found some way to shut the oligarch up. “The hell should I know?”

He could hear Otto's sneer. “Is puzzling out the Senate's lapdog beyond even your formidable abilities as an intelligence officer, Colonel Hughes?”

Damn right it was.

Jack's eyes snapped wide open and he focused on Otto.

The oligarch raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Maybe you can understand what the hell he jabbers about,” Jack said. “If I knew, I could – well, I dunno what, but it's better than being a sounding board.”

“Probably,” Otto said.

Then he laid back and closed his eyes.

Jack could have strangled him. Could have tried to, anyway. Bad enough Otto spent most of the time one step out of a coma, but for him to rouse himself enough to pretend to give a shit, just to shoot down Jack's hopes?

Dirty pool, even for Otto.

“Wake up,” Jack said.

Otto shrugged but didn't open his eyes. At least he was listening.

“You used to love playing this kind of game. You got something better to do?”

“Game?” Otto cracked an eye and a wry grin that turned to a snarl as he spoke. His voice, though, never wavered. “I played the 'game' so well, we're going to die in here. I played and lost, and it wasn't a game. It's a little late for me to climb inside Errard Zelph's skull.”

Jack slumped back on the bunk.

He'd just started to drift off when Otto said, “So what does Zelph want with you, anyway?”

“I thought –”

“Isn't like we've got anything better to do.” Otto would be grinning.

Since Jack had shut up, Otto had “won” their argument. Now he didn't have to admit defeat to indulge his curiosity. Jack wanted to believe he'd played the oligarch, but if he had, Otto would've noticed – and stayed silent. The only way to win against Otto was not to play. Worst of all, Jack couldn't rule out the possibility the whole conversation had been the oligarch's way of reminding him.

With a sigh, Jack said, “I told you, I don't have a clue what Zelph wants. He asks questions he either knows the answers to or knows I don't. Then he repeats them. It's like talking to a Principle-damned broken AI.”

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“Give me an example.”

“I dunno, it's –”

“Then why did you waste my time in the first place?”

Jack had to hide a smile at the disgust in Otto's voice. The oligarch was at least half himself again after their fistfight. Whatever game he'd been playing, he'd either won or forfeited. Or maybe he was just coping.

“Fine,” Jack said. “He asked me if I knew where Chloe was.”

“You told him to kiss your ass, I expect.”

Jack nodded.

“Did he?”

“Otto!”

The oligarch chuckled. “Just checking. It would fit the evidence.”

“Then I wouldn't have to take this grief asking you,” Jack muttered.

Otto went on as if he'd never thrown the jibe. “Did he keep asking after you told him off?”

“He read my mind, Otto,” Jack said. He didn't like to think about the experience, even if it hadn't been as bad as his Civil War training led him to expect. For all he knew, Zelph wasn't still pulling his strings.

Abruptly, he shuddered. “Do you think he could still be in there? Listening? Maybe making me do shit I don't even realize?”

Otto, helpful Otto, said, “Absolutely.”

“Principle!” Jack rubbed his forehead. He imagined he could feel the Animus Hunter's psychic presence. Could Zelph turn him into a weapon against Chloe?

“I doubt he'd bother, old buddy,” Otto said, “unless it was to spy on me. And in that case, why not just use the cameras every centimeter of this place can and probably has become?”

“Why do any of this?” Jack asked. “Why talk to me at all when he could just scan my head from half a world away?”

“First off,” Otto said, “I doubt he could scan you from out of line of sight. It's possible, but from what we saw during the war it's damned hard and only works on people you have a strong connection to. Maybe for targeting.”

“Maybe why he wants to talk?”

“It would work. But that just brings us back to the central question, why bother?” Otto stroked his chin. “What else did Zelph say?”

Jack wondered why Otto seemed to care all of a sudden. Sometimes, most times, talking to the oligarch frustrated him as much as talking to the Animus Hunter. “He wanted to know all about how I fell in with you again. About the Civil War. About my ship, for Principle's sake. I think the bastard's just crazy.”

“Could be,” Otto said, “but he's a nut with a hell of a lot of power. As such, it's worth exploring how, exactly, his mind works. Can you reconstruct the order of the conversations?”

“Why does that matter?”

“It might tell us what he really wanted to know,” Otto lied. Jack knew the oligarch was lying. He could guess it because Otto lied a lot. He could sense it because he knew Otto better than almost anyone alive, back to the days when most of his lies were a military genius's good, clean – bloodstained – bluffs.

But he didn't know why, and knew if he tried to understand he'd only hurt his head.

Jack recalled the order as best he could.

He and Zelph had talked about Chloe – it all came back to Chloe, of course, no matter how often Jack insisted he didn't know anything useful to the Animus Hunter. But the devil Otto would be looking for would be in the details.

Jack tried for those.

About the legality of mind control, and Zelph not giving a damn. About Jack not telling, which he was putting the lie to even now. Why would the Animus Hunter think he wouldn't?

Otto said, “Or why would he lie about what he 'knew' you'd do?”

And Jack was even more lost.

He bulled forward anyway. Zelph said he didn't have the personality for politics, or didn't have to, or something. He had taunted Jack about Ellie's connection to Avalon, how useless it was, and Jack had tried to punch him and failed. Otto, familiar with that sequence of events, rolled his eyes.

Except... “He got distracted before that,” Jack said. “The first time we talked, I mean. Like he saw something I didn't. Somebody contacted him, I guess? Maybe I said something important then.”

“Huh.” Otto rolled onto his back and drummed his fingers on the bunk beside him. “I wonder.”

I could do that on my own, Jack thought.

Otto waved him on. “Don't wait up on my account.”

Zelph mentioned the Mother Goose. “My ship,” Jack reminded Otto when the oligarch finally looked blank. “Said it was impounded, so even if I were thinking of trying to get away it wouldn't do any good.”

“Were you?”

“Always.”

“Heh.”

“And he said the president wasn't gonna step in at the last minute, either,” Jack continued. “He told me all about why I couldn't do a damn thing, like he thought I couldn't figure it out for myself. That make any sense?”

“That's it!” Otto sat up and smirked across the cell at him. When Jack didn't rise to the bait, he added, “You play dumb so well, Jack, you even fool telepaths.”

“Real funny.”

“Isn't it, though?” Otto lay back down. “Anything else? Did he ask you to do anything? Cooperate? Get your daughter to?”

“That's what I'm trying to tell you, Otto,” Jack said. “Bastard never asked me to do a damned thing!”

“Obviously he was playing you,” Otto said.

No shit, Jack thought. “To do what, though? I'm not much of a manipulator, but even I know better than to play pawns who can't even move.”

Otto didn't respond. The only reason Jack knew he was awake was the occasional roll of his fingers on the bunk's solidified silvery rim. Overhead, the lights dimmed – the night cycle starting – and he lost sight of Otto’s face, then Otto's outstretched arm, then, finally, even the drumming fingers.

It wasn't until he stopped hearing them that Jack gave up on his answer.