by Tam MacNeil
Somebody knocks on his door again the next morning and he jerks awake. For a second he’s disoriented, shaking, reaching for a weapon but there’s nothing under the pillow and there’s nothing on the floor by the bed. Then he remembers.
There’s not a lot of light in the room, a white band of it seeping through under the window blind, that’s all, but it’s enough to illuminate the contours of a space that's getting familiar. He puts his head back down in the bed that’s so soft it feels like it’s going to swallow him whole. It smells like industrial laundry, and like old cigarettes. He wonders if they’re ever going to kick in the door.
“Sean?” a voice calls, all muffled but loud. He knows the voice, a little. Mad. “You in there? Or did you take off? Because I really would like to not be standing in the hallway having a conversation with your door like a goddamned chump.”
They could have let him bleed out and they could have kicked the shit out of him and taken him back to Cameron, but they didn’t. They could have left him on the streets and they could have kicked the door in, but they didn't do that either. And now he’s slept under their roof and he’s eaten their food and he didn't try to get away. He knows the rules. He owes them, and you never leave a debt unpaid.
He heaves himself upright, even though his head feels like a bowling ball and his eyes feel like they’re full of broken glass. He pulls on the pants that Simone found him to replace his blood-soaked jeans, and goes to the door. He unwedges the chair, unhooks the chain, unclips the flap, turns the bolt. Opens the door.
“Yeah what?”
Mad steps back, looks up at him. She’s dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with the image of a car air-freshener on it and the words I’m fresh! emblazoned across her chest. In Vancouver she’d blend right in to the background and you’d never really see her.
“You hungry?” she asks.
He doesn’t want anything except to crawl back into the big, soft bed and pull the blankets up and lie in the dark until the apocalypse is over and the shinigami have won. But Mad has asked him a question, and when the boss asks a question it’s because the boss wants something. He doesn’t know Mad, doesn’t know what she wants, so he doesn’t know the right answer. He doesn’t say anything. It’s better to be instructed than to be wrong.
“It’s a simple question, Sean. You hungry?”
She sounds ticked, so he has to say something. “I don’t know,” he says.
Her frown deepens. She narrows her eyes at him. “Ok. Fine. I’m hungry. I’m going downstairs for breakfast. I know there’s not a lot of food in there and I figure you’ve probably eaten it all by now. So. Are you coming?”
So yes, the answer next time she asks him will be yes. “Ok,” he says. He supposes they will feed and water him, and probably provide training facilities and weapons for the work he’s been recruited to do. They’ll want him fit, if he lies around here crying much more he’ll start losing muscle mass and flexibility. It occurs to him that he should be doing exercises for his leg. They might throw him out if his fitness declines and he doesn't think he wants that. He waits for instruction and Mad looks at him again.
“So go get your key,” she says real slow, like he’s stupid or he’s drunk. He’s not stupid, and he only wishes he was drunk. The fact is, he didn’t look for a key when he came into the room. He didn’t really think he’d be allowed to come and go. He’s not used to the idea.
He goes back into the room, finds it in a tiny paper folder on the counter of the kitchenette. He puts it in his pocket and goes back to the door. Mad’s watching him closely, like she’s trying to read something in his movements. Then she looks up at him and says, “Is this how it’s going to be with you? You need, like, instructions to do everything?”
He looks at her and says nothing. The hallway is empty, painted a poisonous kind of dark purple, black trim, gilded mirrors by the stairs. She shrugs. She starts walking and he follows.
“Because needing somebody to tell you what to do? It’s going to get old fast. You’re an adult human being, you know. You should try thinking for yourself.”
Yeah, because last time I thought for myself everything went so fucking well. He thinks it but he doesn’t say it. You don’t talk back to the boss. Never.
They go down the stairs, which are wooden and old; they creak and snap underfoot. On the landing he catches a whiff of coffee and of toast and something greasy frying. His mouth fills up with saliva and he really hopes he’s not just here to keep her entertained while she eats.
She leads him into the restaurant that’s right next to the checkin desk of the hotel. It’s mostly empty. The patrons that are present, a bleary-eyed couple and a woman in a suit reading a newspaper with a huge front page spread of the ruined condo building, are sitting near the windows in the least secure position in the place.
Mad glances at him and for a moment he thinks she’s reading him again, the way she did before. She grins.
“How about that one?” she asks, pointing to the little table for two that’s been squeezed in between the service counter and the kitchen door, almost as if it’s an afterthought. It’s got a good view of the windows and the door, and anybody coming out of the kitchen will have to turn to look at the table.
He nods. She lets him have the seat against the wall. The one with the view of the door and the windows. The safest spot in the place. He can’t tell if she knows it and she did that on purpose, or if she wants him cornered. Could be either, but Sean would rather be cornered than have someone sneak up behind him.
She orders them both coffees and passes a menu to him.
“I don’t have any money,” he says. The envelope of cash was in his kit bag, and that’s long gone.
“Get what you want,” she says, shrugging. “This place is Art’s.”
He remembers the woman in the full-body brace, the suit that moved her. Mad is not the boss, she is the lieutenant, a Chen to a Cameron. No idea where Simone fits in the hierarchy. Or the other guy, the one who was waiting in the SUV. He takes the menu but puts it down.
“Already know what you want?” she asks.
“Pancakes,” he says. They’ll fill him, and that full feeling will last.
“You didn’t even look at the menu,” she says.
“Don’t need to. Every breakfast place does pancakes.”
She grins. “Seems odd that a guy who can’t do anything for himself would have a favourite breakfast item,” she says. She’s fixed him with that look again, the one that means she’s assessing him. He doesn’t like it. “Can you read?” she asks.
“I don’t like reading.”
“But you know how.”
He shrugs. “I can read enough.” Nobody’s ever asked him that before, it never mattered, except to Alex, who loved books, who thought he was missing out on something. He taught Sean how to sound out words and how to read signs and maps, and used to send him such filthy text messages that he learned to read without moving his lips in case someone saw what he was saying. “Alex taught me,” he says and it comes out softer and sadder than he hoped it would.
She looks down at her coffee and then back at him. “You guys worked together a long time.”
He nods. “Almost ten years. Two on the street, just about eight with Cameron.”
“That’s a hell of a long time,” she says. When the waitress comes back Mad orders for them both, the pancakes for him, the Montreal smoked meat hash for her.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” she asks after the waitress goes.
He nods.
“How did he find you? Cameron, I mean.”
“He was a john. A regular,” Sean says and a minute after he sees the blood run out of Mad’s face.
“But you were a kid when you started working for him.” She looks upset, mouth pinched and white and down-turned, forehead all wrinkled up. Maybe she didn’t know he’d done that kind of work. He doesn’t want to upset the new boss.
“Look,” he says, “if you’re worr
ied about it, I’m not sick. I got tested last year.”
She waves one hand. “No, Jesus, no I don’t care about that.”
He sits back, not getting it, not sure what the problem is.
Mad licks her lips and takes a drink of her water. “Why were you on the street? What happened to your family?”
Nobody asks him questions like these. He hasn’t thought about being that little for a long time. It’s incredible, how difficult it is to be a child and be smaller than everybody else. He doesn’t really want to talk about it, but he shrugs like it doesn’t matter.
“I stayed with my mom till I was about ten, but her boyfriend was a creep.”
She sighs, closes her eyes. It occurs to him that he could kill her now; it would be so easy. Just kill her and return to Cameron, tell him all about Annex, tell him they put him up to this. And Cameron would pet him and tell him he was stupid and he should have come home sooner. Cameron would punish him for what he did, sure, but he’d take him in again and things would be familiar again. Not difficult and weird like this.
But somebody put Chen in the building and gave her orders to kill Alex, and Sean’s never going to let that go. But Mad doesn’t know that. He can’t figure out why she trusts him like this.
“Anyway, after that I worked at a place near Main and Hastings for a couple years.” Stealing wallets, moving drugs, distracting cops, other things, worse things, awful things. That was where Sean pushed the guy and he went, arms whirling, down the concrete stairs and landed with his head wrong and his brains everywhere. First time he ever killed somebody and he didn’t even mean it. It’s something only Alex knows about. Knew about.
He clears his throat. “Then I met Alex and we stuck together, watched each other’s backs, you know? Then Cameron. January, eight years ago. Drove up in his beautiful car. It was end of January. Fucking miserable. We both knew him and he…” he shrugs. “By that time me and Alex had gotten into lots of cars like that.”
He supposes he ought to be grateful, but it’s hard to feel gratitude, and he finds himself resenting looking for the feeling.
“Anyway, after a couple days he offered us a place to stay. Hot showers and hot meals and work and so we took it. January sucks on the street.”
“Christ, Sean.” Mad puts down her coffee and closes her eyes again.
He doesn’t care much for pity. Mad’s face is practically a billboard for it.
“I don’t want your sympathy,” he says. “Cameron murdered Alex. I want a gun. That’s all.”
Mad opens her eyes and looks at him. “Sean, nobody in Annex is a killer. We’re not after Cameron. We want to shut down the mech program.”
Sean swallows his disappointment. Last night he’d spent a fair bit of time thinking about how it would look to see the aftereffects of a bullet passing through that head.
“Look,” he says quietly. “I don’t understand what you want from me. You said you wanted help taking out the mech program, and I’m good with that. I want to hurt Cameron as much as anybody. But I don’t get what’s going on.”
She blinks at him.
“I mean, you ask a lot of questions, but you don’t care about my health and you haven’t asked about how I shoot or what setup I prefer, or anything. You know Alex was the better shot, right? I used to spot. Don’t you think that matters?”
She puts her coffee down and looks at him. “Sean,” she says quietly. “We’re going to be working together, and I have an interest in you. I know your reputation, and I’m happy with what I’ve heard. Now I want to know about you.”
He laughs. “Bullshit,” he says, but he says it as nice as he can.
The waitress brings breakfast. The pancakes are as big as the plate, swimming in butter. The maple syrup is cloyingly sweet. He only stops shoveling the food into his mouth to take a pull of bitter coffee and wash it down.
“Good?” Mad asks him. He looks up at her and nods. She’s picking at her food, like she’s lost her appetite, but after a bit of watching him, she gets eating. Once she starts she gets to it. Well, it takes calories to run a physique like that. They eat in silence for a while, till Sean’s cleared his plate and his belly is pushing against the waistband of his pants. He looks over at Mad. She’s halfway through a heap of potatoes and meat. She sees him looking.
“Still hungry?” she asks.
He looks at her. He doesn’t know if he can say yes or not. She frowns at him, chewing. “I’m not asking you anything else, just if you want some. Be honest.”
He nods. “Yes.” He says it a little cautiously.
She smiles a little. She pushes aside the little condiment caddy and moves her plate over to his and scrapes some of the hash onto his plate. He starts eating. The meat is not quite like bacon but sort of, and anyway it’s delicious.
“Don’t lie to me, ok?” Mad says then, and her voice has changed. “Not about anything. I can’t stand it.”
He looks up at her and realizes that her mouth is tight and pinched again and her eyebrows sloping. She’s angry and this is exactly what he didn’t want to happen. He stiffens a little where he’s sitting. He can get out, get through the kitchen if he has to, but this really isn’t the optimal position if he needs to run. But his thigh hurts still where the bullet went in, and running’s going to be hard and painful. He hopes he doesn’t have to run.
“Sean, look at me.”
He does.
“That’s my rule. You don’t tell me what you think I want to hear, ok? You tell me if you think I’m being stupid. You tell me if you’re scared, or if something isn’t working. We’re going to work together and I’m going to need to trust you and I can’t trust you if you lie to me about stupid little things that don’t matter.” She laughs faintly, humorlessly. “You’ll tell me all about how Cameron fucking raped you, but you won’t tell me if you’re hungry. I can’t trust somebody who’s like that, Sean. You get it?”
His mouth has gone dry, so he takes a drink of water so he can swallow a half-chewed lump of potato. She’s staring at him. This is important, it’s about the job. He wants in on this, doesn’t want to lose the chance. He nods. “Yes,” he says quietly. “I get it.”
“Ok. So honesty.”
He nods. “Ok,” he says.
They go back to silence. It’s uncomfortable, but he knows to wait it out.
“Sorry if I freaked you out,” she says at last. She looks down at her breakfast and stabs at a potato with her fork. “I don’t like Cameron and … I’m not good at dealing with people. I wasn’t mad at you.”
She starts eating again, and he does too, clears his plate. The hash was good, but now his belly hurts. He drinks a little water to try to soothe it. He watches Mad finish her portion and scrape up the sauce with the side of her fork. He watches her and wonders about what she said. About trust and working together and honesty. He had that with Alex. It would be nice to have that again.
“You’re staring at me,” she says, not looking up.
Honesty. “I want to ask a question.”
“Sure.” She looks up at him, licks her fork clean. “What do you want to know?”
So much. There’s so much he wants to know. But this first. “Who the fuck are you? For real? Annex has been a pain in SysCorp’s ass for years. What the hell do you want?”
She grins at him, small white teeth, ferocious. “We’re the heroes, Sean. We want to save the world.”
“And what am I going to do?”
“What you do best,” she answers. “Training starts tomorrow,” she adds. “It’s guns. You’ll like it.”
Eight
Mad climbs the stairs back to her floor. She left Sean in the cafe, told the waitress to put everything on Art’s chitty. She figures Sean'll probably eat till he can’t move any more, and then go back to his room, or maybe as soon as she left he left too, to prowling around the city for a bit. She did try to make it clear that whatever he does is up to him, and she hopes he understands it.
She fee
ls worn out, wrung out, like she's done two days hard training back to back. She’d known the Fifty had been Cameron’s since they were kids and she knows Cameron well enough to know he’s twisted and things would have been bad for them, but Jesus. Jesus.
She’s just standing outside her door when her phone buzzes in her pocket. She opens her door, pushes into her place, familiar and bright and warm since it faces south and she’s up high so the summer sun’s not blocked by anything. She looks at her phone.
Art: How was breakfast?
She frowns. This is not a conversation she wants to have over text, but Art doesn’t talk on phones. It took about four years to get her even to carry a cell. And Mad can’t face going in to the Annex to talk to her face to face. She just wants to be alone. She closes the door behind her with her foot and goes to the couch, flops down.
Mad: He’s damaged.
Art: You’re surprised? You know Cameron. He had them for years.
Mad: Since he was a kid.
Mad: He doesn’t know how fucked up he is.
Mad: He can’t do anything on his own. Needs orders. Lies all the time, for no reason.
Art: I think that’s common in people who’ve survived.
Mad: LIES, Art.
Mad: Fucking lies. I don’t know if this is going to work.
She waits for Art’s answer, listening to the traffic going grumbling by, the occasional blare of a horn or siren.
Mad: You think Simone would know somebody?
Mad: Like a therapist or something?
Mad: Can we get him somebody?
Mad: It’s not fair, what happened to him. And he doesn’t even know it.
She puts the phone down. If she doesn’t she’s going to pour her heart out to Art. Art’s a good person, but she’s not equipped to handle this level of shit and corruption. Maybe when they’re looking for a therapist for Sean she should get one for herself too. Mad goes into the kitchen and puts the kettle on. When she gets back to the table, Art’s texted again.