by Tam MacNeil
Rak has nothing. All he can do is stare at Simone and think how it must have been, hands over head, waiting for the noises to go away, and how it was his fault, and he didn’t even make down to clean up his own mess till well after it was over. All he wants to do is fix this, and there’s no fixing it.
“Guys,” Mad says suddenly, “I don’t think Alex should see us fucking around like this.”
Art sighs. “You’re right. We need him stable and calm.”
“I’ll get him out of the building for a while,” she glances at Art. “I’ll keep him safe. And when we come back, I need to have a place to put him.”
“I can set up another apartment,” Rak says. For a long moment nobody says anything and now he’s sure he’s past redemption, if they’re taking administrative work away.
“Fine,” Art says. “But I’m revoking your armory access and I’m locking down your computer access. I’m sorry, Rak.”
He nods. He tries not to show how bad that stings. “I get it,” he says. “It’s fine.” It's not, but it'll have to do.
Mad goes back into the room where Sean is lying and she’s cold with rage. She stands for a minute just inside the door because she wants to get herself together, and because Alex is slumped on the bed, head on a corner of Sean’s pillow, his arms making up for the lack of pillow, crossed under him, maybe asleep. When she starts moving again, he opens his eyes and then jerks upright, winces, and rubs at his neck.
“Sorry,” she says. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
He shakes his head a little, and she’s not sure if he’s shaking out the cobwebs or telling her not to worry.
“He’s going to be out for a while. Come on, let’s get some lunch.”
His mismatched eyes flick back and forth, almost like he’s checking exits or looking for observers or something. “I don’t have money. Or shoes.”
“The company is going to buy us lunch. And,” she looks down at him. “I can probably score you some shoes from somebody on the second floor.” All the admin staff would have been evacuated. She’ll just help herself to a likely pair of gym shoes from under somebody’s desk.
“What do you want?” he asks.
She tries to look bright and friendly. She remembers how Sean was when he first came to the Annex. How everything was transactional, how he kept a mental tally of everything she ever bought him, every favour she did him, and studiously, carefully, meticulously paid each debt back, even sliding five bucks under her door after she bought him a jug of milk.
“I want to get you out of the building,” she says.
He looks at Sean again and then at her and nods. “Ok,” he says.
“There’s a good place not far away. You like sushi?”
His smile is slow and shy, and it changes him completely, softens all the scars, and those unnerving eyes. “Yeah,” he says. “Actually I do.”
She takes him to Mizuna, the place at the far corner of the street. Alex walks close to her, and his eyes roll a little. It’s a lot of stimulation for someone who’s been in and out of something that she suspects is uncomfortably like a sensory deprivation chamber for almost a year. But with the battle at the Annex, and the yellow tape around the debris fall, and the police and everything else, well, it’s not so weird for someone to be staring all over the place today, so nobody pays them any attention.
“Hey,” she says, “if you get freaked out and want to go back to the Annex, you just say ok?”
He doesn’t answer.
“Rak’ll set you guys up with a new place, so don’t worry about that. You’re safe there.”
“Real safe,” he says. It startles her. She looks at him. Well, he’s not wrong.
“Maybe not as safe as we would have liked,” she admits, “but that was pretty crazy. Even for Cameron.” He looks back at her, then around again, and she realizes he’s trying to orient himself.
“The water’s that way,” she says gently, pointing. “See? You can kinda see the North Shore mountains in the reflections.”
He breathes in a big breath.
“What are you thinking?”
“That the Tank is twenty two kilometres that way and that it’s slack tide and now’s the time the shinigami are most likely to attack, if they attack from the water. If they attack on the land, Grouse Mountain’s the most likely target. Probably after sunset.”
“All that in your head right now?”
He nods.
“No wonder you’re so quiet.”
She leads him into the little restaurant, smiles back at the ogyakusama! and then someone yells, “Oh, it’s Mad!” and she knows that grandmotherly voice.
“Hey Kitty,” Mad says.
“You guys ok?” Kitty comes bustling out from behind the sushi bar, reflexively grabbing menus as she goes. “We heard the explosion. Thought it was an earthquake at first, but then we saw all the dust.”
“Yeah, we’re all right. A bit shaken up.”
“What happened?”
“Couldn’t say,” she answers. “How are things in here?”
She rolls her eyes. “So quiet since the explosion. I think it scared everybody away.” She nods at Alex and then at Mad. “Any more coming for lunch today?”
“Just us,” she says. Kitty hesitates for just a second, then gives her a look that says, I’m sure you could do better than this guy.
Mad grins. “This is Alex, by the way. New coworker.”
Kitty’s expression changes. “New to the job and there’s an explosion in your building?” Kitty asks. “Now that’s a bad way to start. But I promise you it only happens once in a while.” She grins at Alex who doesn’t appear to understand this is a joke. Then she shrugs and leads them to the table. It’s one of the quiet ones, away from the front of the restaurant where things are usually busier. Mad comes here enough that Kitty knows she prefers solitude when she can get it. “Maybe you want to have beer lunch today?” she asks. “I can’t see your boss complaining.”
Alex shakes his head.
“I’d love to," Mad says. "But the boss would totally complain. Tea?”
Kitty nods.
Mad waits to see which seat Alex is going to pick, and she’s not surprised when he choses the one with the back against the wall. She drops into the other chair and yawns. Then she leans across the table and grins at Alex. “Ten bucks says she thought I was dating you.”
That shy smile again, a little more obvious this time. “I don’t have any money,” he says. She makes a face and sits back.
“Why no to the beer?” she asks. She likes to poke and prod new things to see how they react, but in this case she is genuinely curious.
He shrugs, a small movement, but discernible. “I promised Sean I wouldn’t drink until I put on some weight.”
It surprises her. It occurs to her that she doesn’t know anything about the two of them together, how they might be. She imagines Sean fussing over Alex like a grandma, complaining about how thin he’s become, and she tries not to smile. “Good. You do look like you need a couple good meals.”
He ducks his head. A nod. “I didn’t eat when I was a pilot.”
“IVs?”
“TPN. And other stuff. I’m not really sure what all of it was.”
She makes a face. Simone once gave her TPN when she had a bad bout of food poisoning and couldn’t keep much down. She needs a lot of calories to keep her body running but the TPN took so long and was so unpleasant she really did consider just letting her body metabolize muscle.
Kitty returns and sets down a pot of tea and a couple cups. “Lunch special?” she asks. It jolts Mad out of the moment.
“For me? Yeah, sure.” She looks over at Alex. “Do you want, like, a menu or something?”
“The same,” he says to Kitty.
Kitty nods and heads back to the kitchen with the order and Mad raises an eyebrow at him. “You really want that or are you just having what I’m having?”
He smiles faintly. “Seems easiest.”<
br />
“Never matters what you want, does it?” she asks. She sees him start and knows she’s hit the nerve.
“No,” he answers. “It doesn’t.”
“What does matter?”
A flicker of confusion. He shakes his head a little. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
She doesn’t explain, she waits. People always fill in the spaces and the gaps, and that’s where they’re most interesting. What they do in the spaces between is how you know what they really are.
Alex reaches over and takes the teapot and smiles at her. He’d be good looking and charming with that smile, if it wasn’t for the scars. “Can I?” he asks. She pushes a cup toward him and he pours out some tea for her. Doing what he’s been trained to do, smiling, serving.
“Sean’s a shit disturber, and you’re a peacemaker.”
He freezes where he sits.
“No wonder you made a good team.”
He’s watching her, watching her like she’s doing some kind of strip-tease and her body is actually covered in scales. Like he can’t take his eyes off her because if he does he's going to miss something even crazier. He should be denying it, or admitting it. He should be cursing her out for reading him, or blushing and stammering because she’s just stripped him bare. But he stares. Just stares.
“What would you do?” she asks. “Without Sean?”
“Why would you ask me that?” he whispers, and she realizes he’s frightened. She didn’t notice it before, but she can hear it now.
“No reason. I’m nosy.”
He doesn’t move. Freaking out is already, apparently happening. And it’s tremendously discreet. She tries to think of something non-threatening to say.
“I think it’s kind of sweet how you guys have been together for so long. Art’s always going on about how we make our own families. ‘Blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb’ and all that. Well the Annex is kind of a family. Sean’s part of that, and you will be too eventually. If you want.”
He licks his lips and takes a breath. He looks at her. “If Sean dies I’m going to leave.”
She shrugs. “If Sean dies it’ll be a fucking tragedy,” she says. “But nobody’s going to stop you if you want to go. Ever.”
Silence.
“I’m serious. You know I couldn’t stop you. I know you could floss my teeth with a fifty cal from any vantage point in the city. I’m not crazy enough to fuck with that. But for the record, Sean’s not dying, he’s just sedated, and nobody’s keeping you at Annex. You’re free to go if and when you want.”
A long, long silence. She wants to fill it with more words, but she’s got nothing left to say, and the soothing patterns have either worked or they haven’t, and she’s either read him right, or she hasn’t, and now everything is up to him. She waits, looking at his mouth. It opens just a fraction.
“People who say that are usually lying.” He says it very softly.
She looks him in they eye, over the rim of her cup. His head turns just slightly, one eye closing just a little, as if he expects a blow. When she speaks, she matches the volume of his voice but she makes her voice warm and kind.
“I don’t lie. Ever. Not to anybody.”
Then she reverts back to her natural state, sits back, hangs one arm over the back of the chair. “Which means I will totally tell you if the colour of your shirt makes you look like you slept in a puddle of your own vomit, so only ask things you want the truth about.”
His laugh is tiny, silent, an exhalation through his nose. Maybe as much relief as anything else. Good. She leans forward. “I want the same deal with you as I have with Sean. Total honesty. You good with that?”
He nods. His eyes have started moving again. He’s taking in the restaurant, what he can see of the street, her expression, almost like he hasn’t been seeing it all this time. Kitty comes with their lunches and this time he nods at her. Mad says thanks and they get ready to eat. She realizes, just before she tucks in, that he’s looking at her now, looking at her face. “What?” she asks.
Hesitation, and then, “Why do they call you “mad”?” he asks, and his head turns just a little when he does. That anticipatory cringe again. Nasty.
She smiles at him. “Because I am.”
He nods. Nods again. Looks at her and here it comes she thinks and the rush of vicarious joy that comes up is unbidden and as powerful as the tide. She will never forget the first time she did this too, questioned, called out an untruth, a half-truth. She will never forget the way it broke the strands that were holding her. “You don’t seem very mad.” He turns his head again, just a little, the old habits as binding as mortar.
“You have no idea,” she says, but she says it kindly. “So. Honesty. You and me. Is it a deal or what?”
He nods. The movement is coming easier now. His shoulders have relaxed. He shifts in his chair.
“Thank you,” he says. “I owe you.”
She blinks at him. “For what? For lunch? Company’s buying.”
His eyes again, softening a little. He looks down at the food before him then at her. “For rescuing Sean last year. He’s not broken the way I am. He talks about you a lot. And I know what I owe you.”
Mad closes her eyes. He could kill her with the balsa wood chopsticks and a packet of soy sauce if he wanted to. He is hands-down the most deadly person she’s ever encountered, even including Sean. She closes her eyes anyway. Maybe she’s playing a trust game with herself.
“You know,” she says, “I did this with Sean, this who-owes-who-what and I am not doing it with you too. You don’t owe me or anybody else at Annex shit.”
He looks steadily at her. Then his eyes flick a little, as if he’s calculating something. “I don’t know how to be if I don’t owe someone,” he says. He says it on his own, no prompting, and he doesn’t turn his head. She smiles.
“Yeah, neither did Sean.” She looks down at her lunch. She’s hungry and they’ve already had to deal with a shitshow today, she can’t afford to suddenly bonk out when she’s in the middle of a fight. She picks up a piece of sushi and stuffs it in her mouth. “We’ll work on it,” she says around the rice.
He nods. She thinks he looks pretty unconvinced.
“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ve got a system. Eat up.”
Twenty Six
Alex watches her as they walk back to the Annex. She watches the skyline and the door frames, all of it casually, all of it second-nature. He wonders if she’s looking for cameras or snipers, or maybe both. He scans too. His eyes may be mismatched but they’re good, maybe better than they used to be. Sees a few cameras, and plenty of places to position for a killshot, but nobody in them. He’s astonished by the warmth he feels, almost the burn of alcohol in his belly and his chest. He realizes it’s a sort of fierce affection for Mad. He walks close to her, on the street side, in case the trouble she’s looking for comes on wheels.
“You’re afraid,” he says. Speaking, just speaking whenever he wants, the way he does with Sean, it makes his chest tight but it seems to be allowed. And Mad seems to like to talk.
“I’m cautious,” she corrects. “I don’t like cameras. Try to keep away from them, but the goddamned bank across the road keeps changing the position of the cameras over the ATMs.”
“Why are you afraid of cameras?”
“I’m sort of in hiding,” she answers. “Anyway, It’s better if my family don’t know where I am. Things would get messy.”
He nods. He matches her shorter step as they pass the bank, so that she can be completely hidden beside him. About halfway down the block she glances up at him. “You’re sweet,” she says.
He smiles. He wants to tell her about Ava, wants to tell her so much that it hurts. He hasn’t thought about any of them, not for a long time.
“Alex?” she asks, the easy smile suddenly gone. “You somewhere else right now?”
“I had a little sister,” he says. His voice doesn’t sound like his own, does
n’t know where it came from. “Before.” This shirt he’s wearing is strangling him. “Long time ago.”
They’re nearly at the Annex, the light coming off the glass makes his eyes sting. Mad touches his arm the same way she did when he was standing beside Sean’s hospital bed and now he understands what it means.
“Thanks,” he says. She nods.
“Come on,” she says. “We’re almost home.”
They go into the lobby together. Mad checks her phone and then uses her card and they get into the only working elevator.
“Looks like Rak’s got a place set up for you.”
He nods. He’s starting to get a feel for the building, the constant state of disorientation is started to subside. When the doors slide open he knows the floor he’s on, even if the wind is gusting weirdly through the corridor, and a cordon crisscrossed by eye-wateringly yellow caution tape cover up the way to the apartment that is more or less gone now. Mad leads him through the little communal kitchen, every surface made grey with a thin coating of concrete dust, and down to another room. She uses her card and pops the door open. The inside of this place is almost identical, only the view is different. Now the windows look over rooftops and the room is full of the westering sun.
“Same as before, except basically no stuff.” She smiles apologetically. “There’s a bag of things from the gift shop, so at least you’ll have something to change into but there’s nothing left in the other apartment. Unless you like broken concrete. There’s lots of that.”
He smiles a little. “It’s fine, I don’t need much.”
He can’t really remember a time when he had things. Except his guns, his orders, maps and tickets, the bags they checked through at the airport to prevent suspicion, maybe a pack of cigarettes or a hip flask in his pocket. “It’s fine,” he says. He means it. It’s more than he deserves. More than he could have imagined even a week ago. He goes to the balcony door and opens it because he can, because the outside is his as well as the inside, because the air is warm and close and it is summertime.
