by Tam MacNeil
He feels Rak’s eyes on him and holds quite still.
“Cameron,” Art says with perfect calm, “I came here because you said you wanted to talk about what happened in the harbour. Do you?”
“You know I make everyone who works for me sign a non-disclosure agreement, Art,” Cameron says. “All of my valuable materials are similarly protected.” He looks at Marshall who nods, once.
“It would be unethical to produce combat materials that could be used against the country,” Marshall says. “It’s so easy for things to fall into the wrong hands. You won’t be able to get anything from what you took. We can shut it down remotely. It’s better for everyone if you return it.”
Art’s smile is bleak. “I think we’re done here,” she says. She gets to her feet.
“You really want me to take my security information to the RCMP?” Cameron asks. “Because that’s the next step. I monitor those mechs very closely. We know two of your people were in there. We know they tampered with the equipment. We know your aircraft was involved in the removal of some of the materials. And, if we trust the Sun's photographer, we know the identity of one of the people involved.”
“I am not prepared to make any statement as regards that photograph," Art says. "Furthermore, I have a doctor who will confirm that there was a live human pilot in that mech, though I am not prepared to disclose how we came by that information."
"The police are not stupid," Cameron says softly.
"Neither is the media. And we all know how your funding relies on public opinion."
"You think rumors of a live pilot are going to finish my funding?" he laughs.
"I think an interview with the pilot would. Now, if that doesn't trouble you, and it shouldn't if the pilot is what you say, you just go ahead and chat with the RCMP.”
“You’re going to have a hard time proving anything,” Cameron tells her. “And I’d hate to have to go after you for slander as well as theft and trespass.”
Art gets to her feet. “Goodbye, Cameron. This was pointless. Don’t waste my time again.”
She goes, Rak follows but pauses at the door.
“Sean,” he says softly.
Sean knows he should keep his mouth shut. He knows he shouldn’t give Cameron the satisfaction. But he’s never been the man he ought to be. He looks at Cameron.
“You told him I was dead. Why’d you do that?”
Cameron’s smile is slow and vicious. “Because it made him docile.”
He is halfway across the boardroom table before Rak’s got one arm and Art has the other and they’re pulling him back and Cameron’s laughing.
“Better take him to a hospital,” he calls after them. “And get him checked for rabies.” He gets up, comes around the conference table while Art and Rak are pulling him down the hall, toward the elevators. “When you get a stray off the street you never know what they’ve got, but there’s always something wrong with them.”
They bundle him into the elevator and then out through the lobby, walking fast enough that the security guards turn to look, and touch their earpieces. Sean doesn’t care. Doesn’t care that he’s making a scene, or that Rak is pleading with him to calm down. If Art wasn’t in her suit, he could probably break free, but the augmentation is tough and he’s not getting out of her grip till she lets him go.
“That was unfuckinghelpful, Sean,” Art snaps. They get out of the building and the summer heat is like a blow to the face. She pulls open the door of the SUV and shoves him in. “Unfuckinghelpful.” She gets in beside him and Rak piles in after. “Jesus wept, what is wrong with you? Am I really going to have to explain to the RCMP that you tried to assault Cameron in his own goddamned boardroom? You want our lawyers to have even more to do? Because charges of theft and trespass and endangering the public really aren't complete without adding intimidation to the list?”
“He said-”
“I heard what he said,” she roars over him. “And you know as well as I that he was baiting you. You were thoughtless, Sean, and I expected better of you. It’s not just the investigation. Every security guard in that building has a gun. We don’t know where Chen is. If you had hit him-”
“I know ok? I know.” He slumps against the door and the seat.
“If you had hit him you might have been killed,” Art finishes.
He swallows. “I know,” he says. He looks at them both, both glaring at him, and the car is gliding out of the parking lot, and picking up speed. Rak’s the one who sighs first. He spreads his hands.
“Sean, I’ve packed up a lot of bodies in my time. I’m tired of it. I don’t want to see you through plate glass and I don’t want to see you in a morgue, got it?”
“Shut up, Rak.”
“We’re all on the same side,” Rak says, dogged, ignoring the way Sean is ignoring him. “You’ve got to learn to follow orders and to fucking trust us.” He pauses. He’s rubbing at his knees. They must be hurting. He looks down at them, and then at Sean. “Listen, man. I’m tired of seeing my friends zipped into body bags. You need to listen when we talk to you.”
He never thought of Rak as a friend before. Doesn’t even know if he likes the guy. Still.
“Christ,” he mutters. “Look, I’m sorry. I’ll…I’ll try.”
Art looks over at Rak and shakes her head. “That’s a start,” she says.
He gets them to drop him off on Seymour street. When turns the key in the lock he finds it already open. Pushes open the door.
“Yeah, that’s what I figured,” Mad’s voice says. He looks around the door and sees that she’s sitting in his kitchen with a bottle of beer and a Janes open in front of her. She doesn’t look up, just flicks the page.
“What’s what you figured?” he asks, dumping his coat on the floor and going to the fridge.
“That you’d come here instead of going back to the Annex.”
He opens the fridge.
“Top shelf, beside the milk. I put a couple in.”
He grabs the beer, opens it, takes a long, long drink, even though it chills his teeth till they ache and his head throbs. He drains the bottle, reaches for the other one, opens it, closes the fridge door. When he looks at Mad she’s looking at him.
“What?”
She smiles a little warily. “That bad, huh?”
He nods. Throws the empty bottle in the sink and takes the other one to the table. “Got in a fight. Pissed Art and Rak off. Maybe ruined the lawsuit. I don’t know.” She whistles. “Yeah, so I’d kinda like to get shitfaced and forget about everything for a while.”
“Too bad somebody’s got a baby at home.”
“Maybe just a little drunk.”
“I’ll tell you when to quit.”
He nods.
“Who’d you get in a fight with?”
“Cameron. Almost. Didn’t quite get to punch him.”
“Shame.”
He grins.
“What’d he say to you?”
He drops into the chair. He looks at his hands and the vapor waving at the top of the bottle. Mad and him, they haven’t known each other very long, but they’ve always been honest with each other. It was almost the first thing Mad ever said to him. He knows he can trust her.
“He’s a fucking pig,” he says. It’s not what he said about Alex that’s bothering him, not the most anyway. “Mad, listen, you’d tell me if we were working for Cameron, right?” he asks.
Her eyes go real wide, she sits back, mouth curling up in weird sort of grimace. “Yes,” she says. She says it right away, with feeling, and he’s so grateful that she understands how much he needs to hear it. “Yes I’d tell you. You’d know. You’d know because I would never be here. Not if he was the,” she fumbles for something, looks at the ceiling for inspiration, “the king of the earth.”
He nods. He looks down at the beer. The bottle’s sweating in the heat. “Ok.”
“Did he tell you Annex was working for him?”
He grimaces. “No. Kinda.”
He sighs. “He… didn’t say anything, just…” he doesn’t understand how he does it, but Cameron can lead him around like a dog on a leash. He can’t explain how Cameron made him think that, but he did. He hates it. Mad sighs.
“Man, that guy and his head games. No wonder you tried to punch him.”
“I was so close.”
She grins, then gives him a very serious look. “I bet it pissed Art off.”
“And Rak.”
“Did you get the friends-in-body-bags speech?”
Sean laughs. “Yeah, I did.”
“Ooh, yeah, he’s mad.” She screws up her mouth in a crazy sort of duck-faced frown. “You know, that guy is a boil on Canada’s butt. Sometimes I think it’d be easier just to stop fighting his machines and just shoot him in the head, you know? Be done with it.”
He grins at her then. “You might be surprised how hard that is to do and what a fucking mess you make when you fail.”
“Ooh. Touché,” she says.
“What are you doing here anyway, Mad? I mean, I’m glad to see you, but…” he shrugs.
“Well, I knew it didn’t go great so I thought you’d want some company.” She takes a sip of her beer. “I got a text from Art that was all auto-correct: ‘The pucker’ or something. Exceptionally Canadian. I saved it. Her angry texts are my favourites.”
“Nothing beats ‘come taco my office now’,” he says. She laughs, warm and loud.
“Yeah, oh god, that one was comedy gold.”
He grins and drinks some more beer and they sit quiet like that for a while. He’s glad she’s here. Glad she knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t go back to the Annex after everything, that he’d come here. That he wouldn’t be able to face Alex, or what’s left of Alex, even though things are so much better today than yesterday. Glad he didn’t have to be alone. He thinks about Mad, looks back at her. He thinks about Chen, and about him and Alex, and the way he takes kids off the street and turns them into killers.
“I never asked you this before, but, you and Cameron seem to have a history.” He takes a drink. “What did he do to you?”
Mad avoids his eyes. “Yeah, I don’t want to talk about that,” she says. He nods.
“I’m sorry,” he says. It’s what she says to him when they talk about how things used to be.
She gives him a smile. “Thanks.” She raises her beer at him. “Me too.”
Seventeen
Mad cuts him off after his third beer, and they sit around talking till they’re both sobered up, then she goes back to her place and he walks to the little grocery store near Annex, picks up a few things, and takes two bags back to the apartment. It’s late enough now that there are almost no press left and he can slip inside without anyone bugging him.
He was right about the food, it’s been demolished. The remains of vanquished take-out litter the counter top like corpses on a battlefield. Alex has torn open the bag to get at the last grains of rice, eaten all the pickled ginger, and every package of soy sauce. He doesn’t even want to think about how much salt that is. Even the wasabi is gone.
“Oh,” Alex says, starting a little when Sean lets the door fall shut behind him. He sits unmoving on the couch while Sean unloads the groceries. Milk, bread, margarine, apples, peanut butter. Alex watches.
“Still hungry?” he asks.
Alex shakes his head just a little.
He shrugs, throws the bags into the cupboard and then comes over to the couch. And sees why Alex isn’t hungry. Wrappers, everywhere. He guesses Alex has gone through all of the remaining candy bars, and the rest of the noodles. Both cans of soup stand open. No bowls, just cans with their lids kinked up. Empty. He must have eaten them like that, cold and undiluted.
“Holy shit,” he says. He looks at Alex. Alex stares back at him.
“You said it was ok,” he says, quiet but certain. Maybe a little hurt.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d eat it all at once.”
“I didn’t drink the vodka.”
“Ok, that’s good.” He looks at the mound on the coffee table. “How you feeling?”
“Sick.”
“I bet.”
“No, it’s my head.”
He goes over to the couch and sits beside him. He wants to pull Alex over to him, but he promised Simone he wouldn’t touch him without asking first. She’d said it was important, because Alex has been a tool for others for so long. He’s broken his promise to her twice already. But he doesn’t really know how to ask. So he doesn’t, just looks at Alex. “You sure I can’t call Simone? She’ll probably just bring up some Advil or something.”
Alex shakes his head, and when he does a little trickle of blood goes running from his nose. “Uh, Alex?” he asks softly. Alex touches the blood, looks at his fingers, and sighs. He pulls a wad of tissue out of his pocket, it’s already spotted with blood, and puts it up to his face. He sighs again and lets his head rest on the back of the couch. He looks at Sean.
“It’s fine,” he says. “It’s been off and on like this for a couple hours.”
They sit like that a while, the TV flickering and nattering at them, Sean trying not to stare at Alex, but he can't help watching from the corner of his eye every time Alex checks the tissue or shifts where he's sitting.
Eventually Alex turns to look at him again. “It’s fine,” he says. “Tell me about what you were doing today. You said you have a job and stuff? Were you working?”
Sean nods. “Kind of,” he says. And that’s the moment where he decides to do what Mad does. He’s not going to lie to Alex, not about anything. “Art set up a meeting with Cameron and she asked me to come.”
Alex stops looking at him, eyes go forward, he looks at the TV, but Sean can tell he’s not really looking at it.
“He wants you back.”
Nothing from Alex.
“But Art basically said told him she’d go to the press about you being a pilot against regs,” he laughs, tries to make light of it. “And I almost got to punch him. So that was good.”
Alex swallows, his Adam’s apple bobs. He doesn’t speak.
Now Sean wishes he hadn’t said anything. That’s the other thing Mad does. Sometimes she just says, I don’t want to talk about that and they talk about something else. Maybe that’s what he should have done. He’s not good at this. He looks over at Alex, who’s got one hand full of tissue pressed against his nose and the other hand up at his head again, as if his head is pounding.
“I mean, it would have been better if I could have punched him. But I can wait till the moment is right.” He grins at Alex because maybe that’ll help, but Alex isn’t looking at him. “I’ll hold him for you,” Sean says. “You hold him for me. We can take turns.”
“Sure,” Alex says. He swallows again, and Sean suddenly realizes that Alex’s breathing has gone all screwy. Simone told him about this, about panic attacks and things.
“Hey, uh,” Sean says. He moves closer, careful not to touch. “I didn’t mean to freak you out. I’m sorry if I did.”
“It’s my head,” Alex says, and his voice is so small. “It really hurts.”
“Hey, Alex, I wanna… it is ok if I…”
Alex raises his head and blood goes running out of his nose, a lot of blood. Too much blood. It soaks the tissues and gets on his hand. Sean realizes he’s been swallowing it. He stomach clenches.
“Lemme see,” Sean says. He figures it’s close enough to asking and Alex nods and moves his hand. The blood’s running fast, way too fast. It paints his lips, his chin, his shirt. Alex coughs, he gags. Sean’s got it on his hands, thick and hot and there’s nothing normal about the quantity of it. And then he realizes the bandages on Alex’s arms are wet, he’s bleeding through, and the place where the neck strap rubbed his neck raw is beading blood like sweat. He tries not to show that he’s scared, tries not to panic. “I’m gonna call Simone. This isn’t right.”
“Yeah,” Alex whispers, closing his eyes. “Ok.”
; Sean goes scrambling for his phone, leaves streaks across the glass as he punches Simone’s emergency code. She picks up on the first ring. “Something’s happening,” he says and everything he was holding together for Alex suddenly breaks apart. “Alex is bleeding, all the ports, and his nose. Something’s wrong. Simone, seriously-”
Her voice is calm. “Sean, where are you?”
“The apartment.”
“I’m in the lab but I’m on my way. Talk to me. Is he breathing? Good. Is he conscious? Good. Getting into the elevator so I might lose you but I am on my way. Do you know what caused the bleeding? Ok. Keep talking.”
He tells her, confesses everything, the bad food, the not asking, the not calling for help when Alex’s head started hurting, being away when he should have been here. He’s holding the phone pinched between his shoulder and his ear and holding Alex’s lolling head up while he coughs and chokes. By the time she gets up to the suite, Alex’s eyes are closed and he’s limp against Sean, and Sean’s shirt’s covered in blood. “I can’t make it stop.” It’s all he can say. “He just keeps bleeding.”
Please fix him, please help him, please I just got him back.
“Jesus,” Simone whispers. She swears again in Finnish, and it sounds to him like she’s laying a mother of a curse on someone. She puts her hands on Alex’s head and closes her eyes. It doesn’t take long, he can see the blood slowing now, not gushing like water. She opens her eyes again, her eyes are the colour of copper wires, fading fast back to brown. “Jesus,” she whispers again and lets out a shuddering breath.
“I’m sorry Simone.” He won’t beg, not any more, not for anything, but he’s goddamned sorry for what he’s done. “I didn’t realize. I’m stupid. I’m sorry. I’m a fucking idiot. I’m so sorry.”
“You need to calm down,” she says. She puts a cool, dry hand on his arm, gently squeezes. “I don’t need you going into a panic attack, I think I've used up everything I’ve got on him.”
