That night Ila came back to the district looking gorgeous, and Hank came out of the car behind her.
"This Shawn lives here?"
"Yes," Ila said. "In the building behind."
"He was your boyfriend before." Hank looked at her sideways. "You're not going to start feeling sorry for him?"
"You're the only man in my heart," Ila said. "Shawn is a useless piece of trash. I hate him for what he did to me."
That last part, at least, was true.
The residents came running up before anyone had knocked on a single door. They would gladly help, they said. If Shawn tried to run, they would block his path — they knew every corner of this place, every stairwell, every yard.
In general, everyone alive in this world understood one thing only, and that thing was their own interest.
"Excellent," Hank said. "Help me catch him, and I'll share out whatever I find in his house."
They believed him instantly. Everywhere there was devastation, everywhere people had been hollowed out by greed, and here was a big man promising them a portion.
"This is my building!" the fat man shouted. "We're on the same side!"
"This whole damn building belongs to us now," one of Hank's men said.
"You're bandits!" the aunt shouted. "You've no right! We haven't done anything to you!"
The man kicked her down, hard, which was exactly what anybody should have expected. After that his people began to work through everyone in their path, breaking whatever they found and whoever they found next to it.
Shawn decided to tease them. He walked out of his own front door, sat down at the table in the courtyard, folded his hands, and asked how he could be of help.
"This puppy," Hank said. "Death is looking him straight in the face and he's still acting tough. Hand over the supplies, or all I leave here is your corpse."
"His parents evidently didn't teach him any manners," Shawn observed.
It is very funny that he was the one who raised the subject of manners.
Hank went red and shouted at them to grab him.
The bandits came at him from three sides and Shawn simply was not where their hands were. Someone must have taught him close combat, or the system had given it to him as a skill, or the world had simply decided it liked him. Not one of them landed a blow. He put every one of them down, and he did it brutally.
Then they stopped fighting fair and went for their weapons. One came in with an axe raised over his head — and at that exact moment a gas canister came arcing over the wall and burst, and the whole courtyard turned white, and nobody could see anybody.
An old friend had come to Shawn's aid.
"Looks like you're in serious trouble," Min said, out of the smoke. "Although I have to admit, the skills are impressive."
"What are you doing here?"
"Still selling guns."
Shawn brought him ice water, and Min received the glass the way a man receives a bar of gold. Nothing in the world was worth more than that at this hour of that night.
"But why here?" Shawn asked. "This isn't your territory."
Min explained. These bandits had been eating into his business for months. He had been tracking them for several days, saw them heading in this direction, and followed. Supplies had been short for a long time now — and Shawn, from what he could see, had considerable reserves in there. Without some very special connections, Shawn could hardly have pulled that off, could he?
Shawn looked at him. "And what is that supposed to mean?"
"No need to stare at me like that. I'm not going to pry into things that aren't my business." Min set the glass down. "It's just this. The bandits have been buying up purified water lately and hiding it — huge quantities of it. I want to team up and free all of it from them. I know that underground facility like the back of my hand. We take it, we store it here, and I handle the selling."
In this heat, Shawn thought, water really does become the main hard currency.
He thought about it for a while, and then said he agreed to work together. And then, being what he was, he named the split.
"Ninety percent to me. Ten to you."
"I have to eat too!" Min shouted. "How about eighty-twenty?"
Min knew perfectly well what that kind of arrogance usually means. A man that cocky is holding trump cards, and Min wanted to hold on to the hand that held them.
"I'll take the goods," Shawn said at last. "You sell the rest."
And that is how the two of them came to be standing outside the base.