How to Save the World

by Tam MacNeil

  Alex swallows. His face is serious now. “Sean, you gotta stop talking like this,” he whispers. “You know we can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s Cameron. He’s an asshole. If he finds out about you talking like this… You’re gonna get hurt.”

  “I don’t care,” Sean says, lowering his voice to match Alex’s. “I’m not fucking that guy any more.” He’s getting mad now. Didn’t want to bring it up, since he knows Alex doesn’t want to talk about it, but now he’s mad and he wants to say something about it. “I’m not going to let him fuck you any more either. I don’t like what he did to you. Nobody should have done that to you.” He’s glaring at Alex like it’s his fault or something.

  Alex sighs. “Sean-”

  “You looked so bad, it scared the fuck out of me. I thought you were going to die.”

  Both of them are silent for a while. Then Alex looks down at his coffee. “Me too,” he says very quietly. He takes a deep breath and looks up at him. “I tell you, Sean, what he did? I thought he was going to kill me. I….” He closes his eyes for a moment and Sean doesn’t move, hardly breathes. “He’ll never let us go, you know that, right? We can’t just walk in and tell him we’re quitting. He’s got money and power and now with the shinigami and the mechs everybody needs him. We’ll never be able to get away.”

  “We can.” Sean answers. He’s been thinking about it for a while. “It’s what we’re good at. It’s what we’re best at.”

  Alex looks at him for a long time, blue eyes steady. “One in the head,” he says. He says it very softly.

  “Problem solved,” Sean agrees. “I’ll spot. You shoot. We’ll get a cheap flight to Mexico after. There’s tonnes of work out there.”

  Alex breathes out a shaky kind of breath. He nods then, frowning hard. “Ok,” he says softly. “Ok.” He ducks his head. “I don’t want to fuck him any more either.”

  Two

  The thing about Vancouver is that it’s all glass. The place looks like the kind of thing that belongs in china cabinets in old folks homes, pointless and delicate. But Alex likes it, maybe best of anywhere he’s been. It’s home.

  They take a cab to the safe house on just off Broadway and Cambie, in a quiet, treed neighborhood, the kind of place where there are people with babies and big trees and cars that aren’t flash but are clean and they run. They haven’t talked about it since that conversation in the airport, and a part of Alex can’t help hoping Sean’s going to change his mind, and another part of Alex is really hoping he won’t.

  They throw their stuff on the groaning bed and on the floor. They don’t have much. Everything of value gets dropped at safe-houses or drop points, but if you travel without luggage you attract attention so they always carry a couple bags with random crap in them. Sean sits down on the edge of the bed and pulls an envelope out of his pocket. He opens it up, and Alex can see the green of American money stuffed in there.

  “Where’d you get that?” he asks. Sean looks up and grins at him.

  “It’s left overs. From Vegas. And some other stuff that I picked up while we were traveling.”

  Sean always did have quick fingers, and people keep their wallets accessible in airports. Still, even he hadn’t noticed Sean was pickpocketing, which is saying something. Alex sits down beside him. “How much is in there?”

  “Couple grand,” he says. He doesn’t say, It’s enough but Alex knows that it’s true. His mouth has gone a little dry. They’re really doing this. Sean looks at him. “Where do you want to get set up?” he asks.

  Normally they’d go to a prearranged location with the safe-house weapons, and spend a couple hours getting the gun and the scope set up. But word will get back that they’ve been at a range with a weapon they don’t have clearance to be using, so that’s out. He’s not doing this without setting up first, wouldn’t trust himself or the scope, wouldn’t know what to expect from the gun. Alex gets up and goes to the closet where the weapon safe is.

  “We could go up some of the hiking trails,” he says, punching in his code. The M40 is still there. He smiles. Of all the guns he habitually uses, this one is actually his favourite. The stock is silky wood and there’s something beautiful about the way the dark grain glows. He pulls it down and looks it over, then takes it over to the little table in the corner of the room and starts taking it apart, remembering the pieces, reading the gun like braille. Nobody's tampered with it since he used it last. Seems like nobody ever does. Sometimes he pretends it's his. “We could go in the early morning. It’s what, Wednesday? Mid week. Even in summer I bet it won’t be too busy out there.”

  Sean nods. “You want me to call Cameron and organize some kind of meeting, or you want to try and get him in Kits?”

  Alex hasn’t thought about it. He’s been trying not to think about it. But now he has to. He tries to treat it like a job, like any job. Who cares about the politics, all he has to do is squeeze a trigger. “No, don’t call. He’ll suspect something if we arrange a meet with him.”

  “Kitsilano then?”

  His house. They’ve spent a lot of time there and they know it well. But the yard is heavily landscaped, the shade could be troublesome, and even on a still day there’s wind coming up from the beach. Plus, there are security cameras all over the outside of the house, and a serious security system inside too, so there’s no getting in with a silenced pistol and then getting out unseen. The windows are the sort of super-thick glass they put in skyscrapers, and that could screw up the shot if he doesn’t hit the glass dead-on. He needs a clear shot, open space.

  Sean’s watching him. Waiting for his opinion.

  “Kits won’t work,” he says at last. “I want open space, outside if I can get it. I want to be up a couple floors. Nothing in the way, no tricky shots through a window or nothing.”

  “So the shop then. The walkway from the front door to the parking lot.”

  He nods. “Yeah. I think that’s probably perfect.”

  Sean yawns and leans back on the bed. “Tomorrow evening?” He turns on his phone and checks the weather. “Supposed to be sunny and dry all day. And pretty still.”

  “Yeah,” Alex agrees. The entrance of the building faces west and Cameron usually works late. The sun will be in his eyes. There’s a condo across the street that he’s been in before and he knows it’s got a good view of the front of the building. “Can we get into one of those condos? Like the actual suites? That’d be put us at about three hundred feet, and elevated. That’d be easy. And it’d be good cover. And lots of options for getting out afterward.”

  Sean looks at him. “Thought security was my job,” he says.

  “Just saying,” Alex answers. Something’s twisted up in Alex’s stomach and lodged under his sternum. This is it. After this, we’re going to get away from here, both of us. After this everything’s going to be ok.

  Sean shrugs. “You want into the condo, I’ll get you into the condo.”

  “Easy, right?” he asks.

  “You clean up pretty good, somebody’ll hold the door for you.”

  Alex laughs. It feels good. He feels careless and crazy and they’re going to do this thing together. They did fifty in a row and never fucked it up, not once. They’re good at this.

  “Gonna be easy, isn’t it?” Alex asks, because he wants to believe it, he wants to hear it.

  Sean lies back on the bed and sighs. “So easy. You’re gonna spend all day complaining about how boring it was.”

  Alex looks back at the rifle, starts putting it back together. He almost believes it, and that’s good enough.

  They’re too old to play at kids who’ve lost their keys or college boys surprising mom by coming home, so they pack the gun up in a courier bag and on the way back from setting up, Sean spends some of his money on flowers and a big foil balloon that says, Get Well Soon. They time it so they make the door just as a guy in a suit is coming out. “Surprising somebody,” Alex says. He’s a good looking guy and Sean
loves it when he smiles. The guy grins as if he’s in on the joke, and holds the door for them.

  There’s an empty suite on the fourth floor, overlooking the SysCorp parking lot and the main door, and Sean knows it’s empty because the owner’s been posting pictures of the food at her resort every morning for the last three days, and she posted them this morning too. There’s no electronic alarm, not that it would really matter, so it takes him basically no time to get the door open and for them to get inside.

  They throw aside the crap they brought and Sean goes right to the window and drops the blinds. Alex follows him over.

  The window looks east, over the gate, where the pro-shinigami protesters have a permanent protest line, and the parking lot, and the front door of the SysCorp building. He starts unpacking the rifle. The window’s is just about perfect, floor to ceiling, and it cantilevers open. There’s a good view of the front entrance, and even the colossal mech sheds behind the main building. The blinds provide enough cover that if anybody looks at the dark window all they’ll see is lowered shade.

  Alex grins at him, a slightly crazed grin, just this side of scared. “Gonna be so fucking boring,” he says and Sean grins back.

  “Told you.”

  While Alex sets up, he goes out into the hall and checks the exits one more time, then comes back and takes the binoculars to the window and looks out. The problem with Vancouver being all glass is that everything reflects the light everywhere, and SysCorp’s windows are reflecting the lowering sun back at him. There are a million possible perches for a counter-sniper to sit, but Sean doesn’t see anything.

  Alex finishes screwing things together and comes over. Sean cranks open the cantilever window a bit more and moves so that Alex can lie down flat on the floor. Sean gets the scope and settles down beside him, fixing on the square of pavement just beyond the SysCorp door.

  Sun’s starting to get low. People start to trickle out the doors in ones and twos, then groups of four and more, then slows to a trickle again. Cameron always leaves late. Alex settles as he waits. Sometimes he almost seems to hold the rifle like a lover. He's probably spent more time with a gun in his arms than anything else.

  Sean hears a popping sound, the clatter of glass. But he didn’t see Cameron and didn’t say anything, and he didn’t hear the crack of powder and he didn’t feel the recoil running through Alex’s body. He’s heard a gunshot, but he’s heard it from the wrong side.

  Then he hears Alex whisper shit, understands that it’s gone wrong. Both of them roll for cover, Alex goes left and he goes right. Not that there’s anything in the apartment worth sheltering behind, but anything’s better than being in front of a window. Alex’s lying on his side, protected by the window frame. He’s half-curled, his right hand holding his left shoulder. There’s blood.

  “Alex,” Sean whispers. He’s not sure if the bullet went through him or not, or where the shooter is, or if there’s another. Alex is on the opposite side of the window from him, might as well be on the fucking moon. “Alex.”

  Alex checks his hand. No rush of blood, no gush, no spray, just a smear like paint. Sean sees him bring in a big breath and exhale. “It’s ok,” he whispers. Artery’s not open, he’s not bleeding into his lungs. Hardly any blood.

  “Chen,” Sean whispers. “It’s got to be fucking Chen. How’d she know we-?” The pop of another bullet passing through the glass cuts off Sean’s question. He hears it strike the fridge and break something inside.

  “Jesus fuck,” Alex whispers. He squirms further from the window. Sean realizes there’s more blood on the floor than he thought. He realizes Alex’s breathing is coming a little shallow. Alex pushes himself against the wall and then sits up. Blood pours out of the sleeve of his coat and suddenly there’s a red-black lake on the carpet. Alex looks down at it. He laughs softly, and then he looks at Sean.

  “No, babe,” Sean whispers.

  Alex smiles and shakes his head. “You better get out of here.”

  But he’s such a fucking idiot, he’s never going to be able to do it without Alex, and even though he knows the sun is going to be in the shooter’s eyes, he also knows it apparently doesn’t matter because they nailed Alex from three hundred feet away. He’s just wondering how the hell he’s going to get over to Alex when the next shots ring out. Distant, these ones. Three little pops, as if a neighbor’s watching an action movie too loud. He dives across the room, rolling, coming to his knees close to Alex. His head is lolling on his neck, but he’s still breathing, still breathing a little. Sean tears open the stupid fucking leather jacket with all its stupid fucking snaps, tears the fabric of the Iron Maiden shirt Alex’s wearing, he’s gonna kill me, he loves that shirt, and there’s blood, so much blood. He’s got to get pressure on it, got to get Alex somewhere safe.

  More popping gunshots, and now the wail of a siren rising somewhere over the city.

  “Sean, you gotta go,” Alex whispers.

  He’s just opening his mouth to tell Alex to shut up, to get on his fucking feet, when the door crashes open. He looks up. Two women. One white, short hair Kool-Aid blue, the other tall and black, wearing a Kevlar vest. They’re both holding guns. They both look at him and Alex.

  “Well shit,” says the blue-haired woman.

  He’d be dead if they were Cameron’s. Maybe they’re some other group. He’d even take cops right now. Cops would take Alex to a hospital. They’d know first aid. “He’s bleeding out,” Sean says. “Help me.”

  “No, man, that guy’s done.” The blue-haired woman nods at him. “You’re the one bleeding out.”

  He looks down at himself. His jeans are red. He’s soaked. Blood is gushing from his thigh. But bandaging it would mean moving his hands from Alex’s shoulder and Alex has already lost too much blood. Another gunshot, loud, in the hall. With a coolness that raises the hairs on the back of his neck, the blue-haired woman turns and fires two shots back, and something heavy falls.

  “Simone, come on. We gotta get going,” Blue-Hair says.

  “We’ve got a ride,” Simone says. She comes into the room. They’ve got no fear of the counter-sniper who hit both him and Alex. He thinks of the popping gunshots. Maybe someone on their team looked after that problem; maybe they’re paramilitary. She extends a hand. “Come on, we can get you out of here.”

  He tries to get Alex’s arm over his shoulder, to lever him up. His leg hurts so bad he can’t make it work. “Sean,” Alex’s voice is a breath in his ear. “You’ve gotta go.”

  “He’s still alive,” Sean realizes that he’s yelling, trying to get his feet under him, “for fuck’s sake, help me.”

  “Simone,” Blue-Hair says it in a kind of a sing-song moan almost hidden in the sudden wail of the sirens. “They are co-o-ming.”

  Simone leans down. She puts fingers on Alex’s neck like she’s done it a hundred million times. “Good lord,” she whispers. “Here, let me-”

  That’s when the wall blows in. That’s when the mech comes through the front of the condo as if the concrete is paper; it tears open the wall, crushing the concrete and blowing glass to dust. It’s so loud he can’t even hear it any more. The floor breaks like ice under his feet. Simone grabs him and heaves him back but he isn’t holding Alex tight enough, should have been holding Alex tighter, wasn’t, and Alex goes down with the floor. The cloud of dust swallows him.

  Sean can’t breathe. Can’t move. Simone’s got him by the shoulders and she’s pulling him away, into the hallway and then down the stairs. And that’s where things get hazy.

  Three

  Sean doesn’t remember the rest completely, just in pieces. He remembers the hot summer wind scoring his face and throwing dust in his eyes, and how his leg hurt and he couldn’t put weight on it. He remembers Simone, her skin and curling black hair shimmering with glass and concrete dust. He remembers being hauled into the back of an SUV with the back seats missing, his leg extended out before him, and an Asian guy already in there, a gun in pieces on the floor b
y his feet.

  “First aid kit, Rak,” Simone had said, putting pressure on his leg where the bullet went in.

  Sean had stared at the ceiling. Never looked at the ceiling in an SUV before. Weird, all the little holes in the leather, like the car might need to breathe or something.

  His head gets right when they’re driving. It’s dark when they get to the old, brick building on Seymour street. It’s a hotel, or, at least, he thought it was a hotel. It’s got a sign out front that says it’s a hotel, and a front desk and everything, but the clerk at the desk just nods at Simone and Blue-Hair who have either side of him, and he opens a door. They go through a small, dirty hallway where old shoes have been kicked off and backpacks and bike panniers are sort of scattered around, and to an elevator. Everything hurts. His head is pounding. And Alex.

  “Hey,” Blue-Hair says, jostling him. “Stay on your feet.”

  The elevator whispers open, they lever him in and Simone pushes the button for the fourth floor. When the doors open its a different kind of room. An office. A big office. Exposed brickwork, a large aluminum desk like something from the 1950s. Lights that hang free of the ceiling. A long table of battered dark wood, and stools all around it. A woman wearing a… a thing, like one of those braces that people who’ve hurt their wrists wear, but for her whole body. She turns, and Sean can see that it’s the brace that’s moving her.

  “Thank god,” she whispers. She comes over to the table where they ease him down. Simone disappears, Blue-Hair sits down beside him, breathing hard. Sean can’t even ask the questions he’s going to want answers to when all this pain is past. He can’t raise his head and look at the woman in the strange suit, the one who’s so clearly in charge.

  “Just one?” she says.

  “Complications,” Simone says. “Mech deployment.”

  “What?” Horror and shock, and Sean remembers, sort of dimly, that it was a condo they were in and people live there. Lots of people died tonight, not just Alex. But Alex too.