How to Save the World

by Tam MacNeil

  They’re clinging to the side of the mech, way too close to the seeping darkness that are the shinigami. They don’t have faces, or eyes, or anything like that, but Sean doesn’t want to look into that darkness. He doesn’t want to see what’s looking out.

  “Can you get that thing assembled or what?” Mad screams.

  “Almost there,” he shouts back. He finishes with the barrel, checks it over one last time. “You ready?”

  “They’re like three feet away from you,” she shouts, but she’s grinning, raises the optics, takes the reading, the most dense area of sound, the place where the siren song is the loudest, the epicenter.

  He lowers his head to the scope, feels the way the stride of the mech has changed since it hit the water, how it’s slowing as it goes deeper, anticipates, calculates, knows. Squeezes the trigger.

  There's no recoil, but feedback screeches into his earpiece. He pulls it off without thinking, just trying to save his ears. Mad too, scrabbling at her ears. The mech lurches suddenly to a stop. The shinigami, too, stops. For an instant the world is still and all he can hear is the rushing of water out of the mech and the waves smashing against the metal, and the distant sounds of screams. Then the world ripples before him. The darkness of the shinigami contracts, dilates, contracts again. The sky closes up over them and the last shinigami is gone.

  The old one vanishes. Like a dream, like a hallucination. One moment present and in his mind, the next, an echoing emptiness where a colossal presence used to be. His heart is broken in his chest. He is sobbing, teeth tight around the comms.

  “What the hell just happened?” says the voice in his ear. Then muttering. “Something… no, more like an EMP. Jesus Christ. Well I don’t know.” More muttering, words he can’t make out, words not intended for him. Words that don’t matter. “Pilot, return to the Tank.”

  His head is much heavier than it should be. It is so difficult to raise his eyes to see the displays, and the displays aren’t working right, they’re fluttering and flickering. Everything he touches is wet, and the moisture running into his mouth is tainted by salt. His mouth is thick with mucus and his nose is running. He wants to sit, to hold his head in his hands, because his chest aches and the old one is gone, all the kindness is gone, and the world is just iron and diesel again, and somehow he is still alive in it.

  “Pilot, you’ve lost power, you’re going to have to run manual till it restarts. Return to the Tank.”

  The Tank is miles away. He pushes against the frame enclosing him, but only the parts of him that are no longer human are strong, and the cage he is in, it will hardly move. Whatever else he is, he’s human, he has been fighting and he is tired.

  “Pilot,” the voice says again. Then, “No, sir, something’s not right with the mech but I can’t tell from here. He should be able to do manual. No, vitals are good.”

  “Pilot.” Another voice. Cool, calm. Whatever is still human, whatever it is in the body that remembers, it remembers this voice. It is the voice of a god, of the man who made these mechs, of the saviour of humanity. Of Marshall. “Return to the Tank.”

  He must move. He must return. He is hungry and he is thirsty and what strength there was in him is gone and the cage is so heavy he can’t push hard enough to move his feet. But the voice frightens him. It is the voice that says, try the shocks, and, give him some adrenaline, and, Cameron will like that. It is also the voice that commands others. He needs that voice to tell others to feed him, to water him, to give him sedatives and painkillers so that he will be able to sleep.

  He comforts himself by thinking about the next battle. When the shinigami return, the old one will be with them. It always is.

  But he is not patient, and his heart is broken, and he does not like being alone.

  Eleven

  “Holy shit,” Mad whispers.

  He looks at her. Looks back to where the shinigami were. There’s a sort of scar in the sky, darkly glimmering, but the monsters are gone, and the people who were called to the water are screaming for help and he doesn’t feel the pull of the shinigami any more, even though his ears are unprotected.

  “Art is going to be thrilled.”

  She grins at him, that wild, careless grin, like this is all she wants from life, to be perched on the hip of a stalled-out mech, fighting monsters at six in the morning. That coffee must have kicked in.

  He starts disassembling the sonic gun, setting it carefully back into the case that Mad’s still gripping. The mech makes a noise, a weird, metallic groan. It turns away from what had been a battlefield, it starts moving toward the shore. It’s moving slow, moving like something’s not right with it, like something’s been knocked off-line by the proximity to Art’s little gadget. He looks up at the cockpit in the chest. The windshield is smashed, hanging out on one corner. Mad looks up too, then at him.

  “No,” he says.

  Mad grins at him. “Art would want pictures of the interior."

  She climbs. God, she’s so fast. “Art’s going to be pissed!” he shouts after her. But he follows when she throws the rope down.

  The windshield is already broken, Mad smashes out another section big enough to grab and heaves it aside so both of them can get in. The cockpit is weirdly spacious. Mad pulls out her phone and starts taking pictures. They won’t be great. Even with the light coming in from outside and the brilliant head’s-up displays flickering on and off, there’s not much light. He doesn’t even notice the pilot at first, not till something moves in the corner of his vision and he jumps and looks over at it. Two arms, two legs, a head. It’s sort of strapped into place, and suspended in a kind of cage, not touching the floor. Sean goes to it.

  It’s breathing. It’s sobbing.

  “Holy shit,” he whispers. “Mad, look.”

  She comes over.

  The pilot is armored in a sort of parody of the mech’s armor, the same dull red, the same globe of a helmet. The pilot’s strapped inside a sort of wire frame, arms are both bound to the arm controls, his legs bound to the leg controls. The helmeted head sags against the collar that holds his neck pinned to the cage around him. Sean realizes, sort of bit by bit, that the pilot is trying to move, to push against the controls.

  “Jesus,” Mad says. She looks at Sean, assessing him, maybe reading his face. “They aren’t supposed to put people in these any more.”

  Sean goes to the pilot. He fumbles with the helmet. It’s strapped on under his chin, between that and the neck straps it’s no wonder the pilot is having trouble breathing. He undoes the first band and hears the pilot gasping, making these noises that are almost words. There’s something about the sound that twists like a fist in his chest. Calm down, he tells himself, calm down. But the sound is like a voice that he knows, and he hasn’t heard that voice in so long.

  He gets the second strap undone and pulls the helmet up. It fits snug, like a motorcycle helmet, and he’s careful when he pulls it up. Under that the pilot is wearing a sort of mouth-guard and muzzle with metal-clad vents. He unhooks it and pulls it away. The mask peels off like a scab, a relay plate, mouth piece, and earpiece go with it. Sean can hardly bear to look at the pilot, afraid he’s made a mistake, afraid the ghosts in his head have gotten out. But they haven’t.

  He’s panting, pale hair grown long, soaked with sweat. He doesn’t look up, doesn’t look at all, just stares. His eyes aren’t how they used to be, one is blue and one is green now, and they’re haunted and hollow and staring.

  Sean’s gone numb, completely numb. “Oh no,” he whispers. Then he leans close, hands shaking. “Oh no, oh no. Alex, Alex, it’s me.”

  Mad turns to him. “You know this guy?” Then she hisses in a breath. “Wait, Alex… like your Alex? Alex Beridze? The other half of the Fifty?”

  He hardly notices her, hardly hears her. Alex’s face is a mess of snot and tears and sweat and his eyes, his eyes are wrong. Sean pulls off his hoodie and wipes the crap off Alex’s face with it. Alex sighs and he sags where he hangs. “
Oh god, babe,” Sean says, trying not to hear his own voice cracking. “Oh god, what happened to you?”

  He can hear Mad talking, talking into the comms in her ear. “Art, you hearing me?”

  Yeah, Mad, Arts voice in his ear too, since they share the line, I hear you. What’s going on?

  “We’re still at the mech. Gonna need extraction, fast. We got something. You’re not going to fucking believe it.”

  Come on, Mad, we’re already trespassing, don’t be stealing shit too.

  “There’s a live pilot in here, Art.”

  Silence.

  “It’s Alex Beridze.”

  A pause, just for a beat. The Arrow’s on its way.

  Sean throws aside his hoodie and starts undoing the straps that hold Alex into the pilot’s cage. As soon as the next one is undone and his shoulder’s free, Alex jerks forward, straining against the ties that hold him in place. The mech groans, one of the arms moves just a little. Like he’s trying to move the dead mech manually, like he’s trying to get out. Like he would tear free of those straps if they were not so strong.

  “Hey, it’s ok, I’ll get you out,” he whispers. “Just relax for a second. I’ll get you out.”

  It’s not just that he doesn’t want the mech to start moving, it’s that Alex red-faced, because he’s clenching his teeth so hard Sean thinks he might shatter them, because Sean’s afraid he’s going to break his own bones trying to get out of the harness. “Stop, Alex, stop.”

  He frames Alex’s face with his hands. It’s the first time in over a year that he’s touched that skin; it’s pitted and scarred and it’s feverishly hot. He only gets a second to touch it before Alex snaps at him, teeth bared, and Sean has to jerk his hand back while Alex pulls against the restraints like he’s trying to lift something, till all the chords in his neck are standing out. Then it’s over, and he hangs limp again. Limp and silent and panting. A line of drool drips from his slack mouth to the grating cockpit floor.

  And now Sean can see what Alex was doing. On the back of his neck, where the sweat-soaked hair parts, he can see the metal O of a port that must go deep into Alex’s body or his brain. The other end sits just below the headrest, where the neck-strap held him in. It’s covered in a slick of yellow lubricant and streaked with blood. There’s another one, partially separated, under his shoulder, and Sean’s got no doubt there are more.

  “Mad, he’s trying to get off the thing. Give me a hand here.”

  She hurries back over to him, head turned just slightly, watching Alex like he’s a stray dog. “What…?” she starts and then stops because she can see it too. “What the fuck is that?”

  “Ports,” Sean says. He takes the little knife out of his back pocket and starts trying to pry up the tongue on one of the restraints. “They’ve got him plugged in to the cage.”

  “Nice HCI,” she mutters. “Sean, wait, before you do that, we don’t know anything about this tech, you take him off that the wrong way and who knows what’ll happen to him. Or the mech. If it goes over, we all go into the bay.”

  “Mad, look at him.”

  Alex is hanging there, vacant eyed, gasping. Mad grimaces. Sean works the tongue of the restraint free and unbuckles it. Alex jerks his arm up and shouts as his shoulder and his forearm come unplugged. Then he hangs away from the port, still trapped in the harness, sobbing for air.

  “Oh holy mother,” Mad whispers, her face screwed up with sympathetic horror, her hands frozen in mid air. “Oh Christ.” She sounds like she might be sick.

  “Come on, I gotta get him out of this thing. You helping or what?”

  She goes, grim-faced, to the other side, starts working at the straps. Sean gets Alex’s shoulder free, feels the muscles tense under his hand. “Easy,” he whispers when Alex tries to jerk away from the port. “Easy.” Alex clenches his teeth, eyes tight closed, and drags his shoulder free. Sean’s not convinced it hurts less that way. When Mad frees one of his legs he looks at Sean, moves slow, like Sean had told him to, till the port comes undone.

  “I thought they were supposed to be self-driving after the DND said no more pilots. I thought Cameron had some kind of remote interface,” Mad whispers. She’s staring at Alex, her lips and mouth white. “This is some sick shit. Even for Cameron this is sick shit.”

  “Almost there,” Sean says, because he doesn’t want to think about it, doesn’t want to call it what it is. “Come on, help me with the last couple ports.” She nods, and they get working on his other leg. A few minutes later, the air stirs up. Sean can hear voices and the sound of little engines coming and going with the wind, and they both know what that means. It’s either the Arrow or the press. Only one of those options is good.

  “Gotta hurry it up,” Mad says. She looks up at Alex and gives him a wincing kind of smile. “Sorry honey.”

  Maybe he hears, maybe he doesn’t; his eyes are closed tight. Two more ports, but it seems like Alex lost his voice a little while ago and all he can do is gasp and grimace.

  Sean can hear the low, rhythmic humming and knows it’s the Arrow’s engines, and never felt so glad for the damn thing. They unplug the last port, the one in the small of his back, and Alex crumples down. He kneels on all fours on the grille that covers the floor, head hanging like a dog’s, body arched in a spasm that he thinks might be vomiting, but nothing comes up. Then Alex sighs, rolls down onto his side and lies panting and Sean goes down after him, hands not quite touching the shuddering body there. “Come on, get him up,” Mad says. “Let’s get him the hell out of here.”

  He nods. She gets moving, grabs his hoodie and goes toward the Arrow. Sean collects Alex, picks him up like a he’s corpse, cradles Alex’s head against his shoulder so his neck doesn’t loll like it’s broken. Alex is easy to lift, far too light. He never was a big guy, but he was always strong. Now he’s gaunt, more bones than muscle, and his breathing is shallow and ragged with pain, his eyes squeezed shut.

  Twelve

  The Arrow is small but there’s a little medical bay, and Sean lays Alex out on the cot there. He grabs one of the grey wool blankets from the compartment overhead and smoothes it down over him. In the harsh overhead lights, Alex looks worse than before. He’s gaunt, starved, his face, which looks like someone sliced it up with the lid of a can, is white. The ports weep a thin, clear fluid, and his lips cracked and torn and a foam has collected in the corners of his mouth.

  Simone will probably kill him for it, and Sean knows he shouldn’t do anything that might interfere with medical stuff, but he digs out a bottle of water from one of the cabinets and cracks the top. He props up Alex’s head and holds the bottle to his shredded mouth. Alex’s eyes open to slits. He drinks. Sean expected him to sip the water, but he drinks it fast, guzzling it, until the contents of the whole bottle are gone and he’s lying there panting, eyes closed.

  “Thank you,” he whispers. “Thank you.”

  “Yeah. You want more? I can get you some more.”

  Alex doesn’t answer. Sean feels like there’s got to be something more he can say, some way to reach him. It’s Alex after all. They’ve know each other forever, fucked and killed their way across most of Europe. But if Alex knows who he is, he's not showing it.

  Sean puts the cap back on the bottle and tosses it in the trash, and Alex watches all his movements through those narrow eyes, as if Sean is an animal that somehow got put in here with him, as if the hands that twist the bottle cap might be a weapon used against him. When Sean looks at him, he looks eyes-front again.

  Mad comes back. She’s toweled the sweat out of her hair and it’s standing up at all angles. “How’s he doing?” she asks in a low voice.

  Sean shakes his head. “No idea,” he says. She shifts from foot to foot. Mad doesn’t do tender concern, never has.

  “Simone’s ready for him. I told her what we knew.”

  “Thanks.”

  She puts her hand on his shoulder. The contact’s brief, but he’s grateful for it.

  “You go
nna be ok if he starts acting up?”

  He nods. Alex’s in pretty pitiful condition. He was a monster when he was piloting the mech, but Sean can’t help wondering now how much of that was pain, how much was programming, and how much was Alex. "Yeah, I think it's fine."

  She nods and heads back to the cockpit. Alex’s eyes follow Mad when she goes and then revert to staring into space. Sean sits back down on the edge of the med bed. He touches Alex’s hand and Alex’s eyes flick down, then to Sean’s face, then forward again. Keeps looking at a spot on the ceiling, staring through and into space for all Sean can tell.

  Sean remembers something about that kind of habit. Anti-interrogation training. Some IRA guys when they were in Galway on a job. You watch, one of them said, but you don’t listen and you don’t let them see you looking. You just keep staring and you just keep thinking and you let them run their goddamned mouths.

  Sean lowers his head, doesn’t want to look at the staring eyes, the lean and hungry face. “Alex,” he whispers. “I thought you were gone. I shouldn’t have…” he can’t say it. There was so much blood, gunfire, the mech crushing the apartments as if they were made of sand and the fact is he should have been holding on, but he wasn't.

  They get back to the Annex fast; it’s not like there’s a hell of a lot of traffic over this part of the sky. Back there, where the mech’s standing like a ship that ran aground, and where SysCorp agents are going to be doing a frantic media song-and-dance when they realize they’re missing a pilot, sure it’s busy. But here on the landing pad on top of the Annex, the air is free of circling helicopters, and Sean can carry Alex out of the Arrow and past Art, who’s standing in the exo-suit at the door, and who falls into step beside him as he passes.