How to Save the World

by Tam MacNeil

  For a moment, a long moment, he can do nothing. His hearing comes back as if water’s running out of his ears. Alarms whooping. Sirens. More explosions, but distant, small, as if on someone’s TV. The wind, unobstructed, whips into the apartment. Debris hails down. It is the only movement in the whole place. Rubble in the place where Sean had been.

  And then Alex is moving, hauling chunks of concrete from the heap, seizing twisted rebar and heaving. Someone makes a ragged noise, a scream broken by coughing. He drags off another chunk of concrete and uncovers Rak. A fine layer of grey dust turns him weirdly white, the redness of his gasping mouth as bright as blood in snow. He’s pinned. Alex heaves off another piece of concrete, and then another. He twists, squirms, struggling out from under the rubble, tearing his clothes and skin to get free.

  Alex wouldn’t have freed him first if he’d known, but he didn’t, and he’s glad to have another pair of hands. They work silently, together, the concussion of other explosions, of sirens, of distant battles punctuates the work. “There,” Rak says suddenly. He grabs Alex’s arm and points. A steady drip of scarlet blood on the ash-grey dust and concrete. It takes time to uncover what’s underneath.

  It’s bad. It’s very bad. Sean is not mashed into a pulp. He is not purple guts and grey brains spilling. But he is quite still, dust coated, mouth slack, and twin pieces of rebar have passed right through him. One enters his chest and passes out just under his arm, the other through the thigh. That is the one that is bleeding enough to drip drip drip like a tap stuck open. Femoral artery. The iron bar is the only thing preventing a bleed out.

  “Aw, shit,” Rak whispers. He looks at Alex, really looks at him, and Alex can’t tell what he’s trying to see.

  Sean groans. He coughs and draws in a gurgling, growling kind of breath. He’ll be trying to move soon. No. Alex knows what it is to wake up and find the world has become a nightmare. No. Rak is talking to someone, finger on the comms in his ear, Mad, Mad is Simone ok? Is she? Thank god. Ok. Yes. Sean’s down. Bad, yeah. Yeah, I’ll look after Alex. We need her up here.

  Alex hears his name but he doesn’t really listen. He kneels on the rubble. Sean’s dark hair is grey and gritty with dust. This morning it was almost red in the sunlight. He touches Sean’s face and Sean groans.

  “It’s just a bad dream,” Alex whispers. “Go back to sleep.”

  Sometimes he forgets that he’s an unknown to the others. Sometimes he forgets that Sean’s the only person on earth who trusts him. So he’s surprised when Rak tranqs him. Shouldn’t be, but he is.

  He wakes up in a hospital bed, in a large white room, and he is alone. There’s an antiseptic taste in his mouth and someone’s put a fat, beige bandage over a cut on his face, but he’s still in his dust and sweat covered clothes. The sweat’s gone cold, but hasn’t dried. He hasn’t been here long.

  He goes to the door and finds, to his surprise, that it simply sighs opens for him. Beyond there is a lab, off of which doors go radiating like the spokes of a wheel. Near the centre of the room are a collection of people he knows. Art is standing, wearing her exo-suit, her arms crossed over her chest, her business suit streaked with dirt and sweat and utterly ruined. Simone, looking unhurt, cool and calm, leaning over Rak, who’s seated with one arm extended so that she can work a needle through a split in his skin. And Mad, arms folded, her lower lip chewed ragged, her face in a hard frown.

  “I’m telling you guys,” Rak says, looking at Art, “he got me out, not the other way around. If there is a security breech, it's not him."

  “I don’t know. I wonder if Cameron thinks Marshall’s defecting over,” Mad says quietly. She looks at Art too. “Is he?”

  “Marshall is not welcome here,” Art says. Her voice is steady and firm, and Alex feels a swell of relief. “He knows that. Cameron knows that. Marshall crossed a moral event horizon when he started doing human-computer experimentation without ethical oversight, and Cameron knows what I think of that. He didn’t come looking for Marshall. He hit the hospital and the domestic sections of the tower.”

  “Looking for Alex then.”

  “Why?” Mad asks. “Why does he care? Didn’t he want him dead a week ago?”

  Alex goes over to them; it’s Mad who detects him first, hardly turning, she meets his eye and frowns at him. Art says nothing. Simone glances up at him and her eyes are weird, almost yellow, he never noticed her eyes were like that before. Then she goes back to passing needle through flesh. Rak looks up at him and nods.

  “You were tearing your own face off ten second before the explosion. I had to put you down. No hard feelings I hope.”

  Alex nods.

  He feels lost. He doesn’t know what to do or where to go. These are Sean’s friends, not his, they aren’t people to him, just faces. He does not know what to ask, because all of the questions have an answer that he doesn’t want to hear. He looks from face to face. He can’t ask things of Art or Simone, or Mad, he owes them all too much. But Rak, well, he saved Rak’s life, and now Rak owes him. He looks at him again.

  Rak’s mouth twitches, a smile, maybe. “It’s not that bad,” he says. He jerks his head toward a door. “He’s in there.”

  Alex goes. Inside there is a plain room just like the one he woke up in, but in this one there is Sean. Two IV stands regulate a clear and a red fluid down into him and there are machines with monitors that twitch and jump and beep. Sean’s hands are slack on the blankets that someone has pulled up around him. He is sleeping, or drugged, or some combination of the two. He is not awake, and he is not screaming, and he is not dead, and that’s enough. Alex breathes in a little easier, something warm fill him up. Gratitude, maybe. Whatever it is, it makes him sigh as something comes unjammed in his chest.

  He goes over to the bed and covers one of Sean’s cool hands with his own. Sean’s eyes open. Green and glassy from the drugs. All the effort in the world goes into that little half-smile.

  “Hey,” he whispers.

  Alex smiles back. “It’s ok,” he says. “Just a bad dream. Go back to sleep.”

  Sean closes his eyes. Under Alex’s hand, his fingers flex a little.

  “Uh,” someone says. He looks and sees the Mad standing halfway between him and the door. She sways a little bit where she stands, like she’s not sure if she should step forward or back. “Are you ok? After all that?”

  He’s not sure what to make of a question like that, so he says nothing for a while. They stand quietly, shoulder to shoulder like comrades. Eventually, Alex finds he has something to say. “They came looking for me.”

  “Yeah.” She comes a few steps closer, near enough to be by the bed, but not crowding him. They’re silent for a long time. “A week ago they tried to kill you, and now this week they want to get you back. I don’t guess you know why, do you?”

  He can guess. He can guess it’s because he can talk to the shinigami, and he can guess it’s got something to do with Marshall leaving. And he can guess that’s why Dr. Sunil came, even though she’s not an operative. She would have been head of the program next, and Chen would have worked for her.

  But he doesn’t want to say anything that will make anyone take an interest in him. Not here in a hospital. Not with a doctor in the next room. Not even to an ally. He looks at her. She’s not looking at him, rather, she’s looking down at Sean.

  “Human’s aren’t supposed to pilot the mechs,” she says quietly. “But Androids are expensive to make and repair.”

  He thinks about the rebuilds. The endless rebuilds. He only knows by the scars, by what aches and what doesn’t, by what doesn’t get tired any more and what is unnaturally strong. He thinks about some of the conversations he heard, some of the things the techs said about him. He thinks of the things the old one said.

  “I am human,” he says quietly.

  She looks over at him. “I know,” she says. “You should never have been in that machine. And you’re never going back into it.”

  He nods at her. She’s righ
t.

  Twenty Four

  She has a hard time looking at him. His face isn’t right, and the scar that lines the hook of his jaw on the left hand side is ragged and ugly and she suspects skin grafts, a bad burn perhaps, or a separated mandible. Rak said he was clawing at his face to get the comms mask off, and she can se it now, raised red welts and scratches that broke the skin. His mismatched eyes only add to the sense of the alien about him.

  Just this side of Uncanny Valley, she thinks, and wishes instantly that she were a better person and didn’t think shitty things like that. She reaches over to touch his arm, half in penance and half because Sean’s all he’s got and he’s lying here like this, all machines and IVs and even though Simone's looked after him and all of this is supportive rather than critical, Alex doesn't know it. Seeing him like this, well it must be terrifying. He looks down at her hand, then he looks at her face again, like he doesn’t understand the point of the touch.

  “You wanna stay with him for a bit?” she asks.

  He does nothing for a moment, then he nods.

  She squeezes his arm. “I’ll get a chair.”

  She sees how he tracks her movements when she goes over to the far end of the room. He doesn’t turn his head, but his eyes follow her. She goes to the place by the cabinet and the cart, where the consulting chairs face each other and pulls one of them over to the head of the bed. He doesn’t move, but he’s looking at her.

  “Sit down,” she says. He does. Obeys. It bothers her. It bothers her that he only seems to do as he is told, as if he has no agency of his own. Sean was like this too, but it was never so severe. She wonders how much is training and how much is abuse and how much is silicon and chips. She wonders how much human is in there anymore and if they’ll ever know.

  “You and Rak been working together?” she asks. He nods. “Something about the shinigami, right?”

  He swallows; she sees his hyoid jump.

  “You know something about them, don’t you? Whatever it is, that’s what you were doing that day, that day we found you on the bridge.”

  He nods again. She licks her lips, thinks about Rak, and English Bay, and all the stupid, secretive shit that’s been going on between him and Sean these days. And Alex, coming out onto the bridge and standing there, no ear plugs, no nothing, at the Vanier park attack, and not ending up dead, and she thinks she knows. “When you talk to them, what do you say?”

  He shrugs. Then he opens his mouth, hesitates, looking at her as if trying to assess her. “Sean trusts you,” he says at last. She nods, encouraging. “I don’t.”

  Now she knows she’s got it right. She looks at him sitting there, as if he’s waiting for her to say something. Not doing anything, but watching her from the corner of his eye, like he’s trying to read her. “Why not?”

  “You’re going to tell the others aren’t you?”

  She wonders, for a moment, if he’s going to beg her not to. She nods.

  He raises his head and looks straight at her with those mismatched eyes. “I don’t want to be cut up again,” he says. It makes her stomach twist.

  “Ok,” she says. “I’ll tell them that too.”

  He nods and she turns, heading for the door, thinking of what Art said and how she wants to talk to Rak now, wants to know what he saw at English Bay, what he knows that he’s been keeping from them. She wants Art to tell her what they’re going to do, because Cameron’s people have been here and it feels like that attack was an act of war, and she doesn’t feel safe, not any more, and she can’t imagine what it’s like to be in Alex’s skin.

  She wants Simone to explain whether or not Alex is a human, because she doesn’t know, and she needs to know. One thing is a tool, the other isn’t. One thing she’s stolen, the other she’s freed from some kind of nightmare. In one reality she’s a thief whose actions are going to kill innocent people, and in another she’s a fucking hero. She doesn’t like not knowing what she is.

  She’s at the door when a soft noise makes her turn. He’s leaning over now, one hand on Sean’s forehead, the other covering Sean’s hand. He’s leaning close, and she can hear him whispering, You’re gonna be ok. These people are good people, like you said. They’re looking after you.

  He’s whispering the words as if Sean could hear him through the drugs, whispering them like a prayer. Human, she tells herself. A weight she didn’t know she was carrying comes off her shoulders. Definitely human.

  They’re all waiting in the consulting room. She must show it on her face because as soon as he sees her, Rak sighs. “Aw shit,” he whispers.

  “How long have you known?” Art isn’t shouting, not quite.

  “About a week,” Rak admits. He sneaks a look at Simone who is resolutely not looking at him, and that’s worse than anything else.

  “And did it never, in all that time, occur to you to tell us?”

  He looks back at Art. “I told Sean I’d keep it to myself. He asked, I agreed.”

  “Well that’s great. I’m glad you’re honest, Rak, but don’t you think this is just a little much?” She’s pacing, the exo-suit making little whirring noises. “Anything else you’re not telling us? Like, oh, I don’t know, the whereabouts of Marshal Campbell or where the next attack might come from?”

  He opens his mouth and then shuts it and knows, the instant he does, that he’s screwed up.

  “Oh my god no,” Art whispers. “What are you? A fucking double agent?”

  “No, no, I don’t, I’m not, Jesus, Art.” Rak puts his hands up before anybody can think to do something like soften him up with a fist. “No, it’s not where he is but, Marshall Campbell,” he glances at Mad. “That day at English Bay, I saw it. There was him and a woman, and he egged her on till she shot herself. He kept telling her he was going to do it too, but afterward he called for an ambulance and took off.”

  Mad’s face twists into a look of disgust. “So?” she asks.

  “In folklore the shinigami are the gods of lovers’ suicide,” Art says softly. “But I’ve never heard what happens when one of the lovers doesn’t kill themselves.”

  “It doesn’t happen. People don’t just ignore shinigami.”

  “Except when they do,” Mad says. “Like Alex.”

  Art’s head comes up. “Like Marshall,” she whispers.

  Rak knew she’d get it. “Maybe. I don’t have any proof. And I don’t know but I think the shinigami get stuck. But the fact is, he got his lover to kill herself, and then didn’t do it himself. And now we have a shinigami problem that he’s really involved in fixing, and he and Cameron are making a shit ton of money. So.”

  Silence.

  Art stares at him. “And you knew this. You’ve known this for a week.”

  Nobody speaks, but they don’t have to. The air is thick with unspoken disappointment and rapid downward revision of opinion. He looks at Simone again. She’s not looking at him so hard that she might stare right through the box of latex gloves on the trolley. “I had to earn Alex’s trust, guys. I wouldn’t have kept the secret if I had known how serious it was going to be. I thought it would help bring him round. He knows more than he told Sean, I thought this would help him trust us.”

  “You lied,” Mad says softly.

  “I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you everything.” He glares at her. “It’s not as if you don’t know about that.”

  Her head comes up. She glares.

  “Look, guys,” he looks from face to face but there’s no comfort anywhere. “Guys, I’ve worked for Annex for years. I got kneecaped getting pilot footage out of SysCorp. You know I didn’t do any of this on purpose.” He sighs. “Sean came to me and asked for help, do you know how rare that is? He's started to trust us." He looks from face to face but nobody's meeting his eyes. "He doesn’t ask me for anything. Never. I wanted to help. He said we needed Alex to trust us if we’re going to defeat the shinigami and I think he’s right.” He takes a deep breath. “Alex is the only one who can talk to them. Don’t y
ou get it? Before Cameron didn't care that we had Alex because he had Marshall, but now Marshall’s gone. That’s why Cameron wants him back so bad that he’s willing to do something like this. He hit the living quarters and he hit the hospital because he knew Alex would be in one of those places. He sent Chen."

  Nobody speaks, nobody moves.

  “I never imagined Cameron would do something like this. I mean come on, we’re not gangs, this isn’t a war.” He spreads his hands. “Come on, you guys. You know I’m on side.”

  “Do we?” It’s Simone, and it’s more terrible than anything Art or Mad could say to him. He gapes at her and she’s looking back at him as if she’s never seen him before, no warmth, no fondness.

  “Simone,” he whispers. “Of course you do.”

  When she looks at him her face is cold. “Is that why there were half a dozen armed men in here today? Is that why I spent part of my morning hiding with two nurses in the maintenance closet praying that today wasn’t the day I took a bullet in the back of the head?”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispers. He’d go to her and embrace her if he could, if that was how things were between them, if he thought it would do anything other than harm. “I never imagined Cameron would do something like this, Simone. You know I would never have endangered you on purpose.”

  Simone says nothing, she’s not looking at him any more and it’s awful. Art coughs quietly.

  “Ok, fair enough. None of us could have foreseen this. What happened today was an act of desperation, completely out of character for Cameron. My question is what do we do about this?”