BZRK: RELOADED

She had made scrambled eggs of Benjamin’s brain.

That was some of her father’s intelligence in evidence. She was smarter than the brother who had died. He wondered if they had killed the wrong McLure child. Stone was a stolid, dutiful type, his sister on the other hand . . .

The result of Sadie’s wiring had been severe mental disruption. Benjamin had screeched and babbled and generally made a fool of himself, straining the physical barrier that connected his own head to Charles’s—very painful—and caused the unfortunate incident of the glass bottle, the results of which were still so obvious on Benjamin’s face.

The membrane, the flesh, whatever the word was for the living intersection between Charles and Benjamin, had been strained and torn. The central eye, that eerie, third eyeball that sometimes joined with Charles and other times with Benjamin, and at still other times seemed to decide its own focus, was red-rimmed, the lower lid crusted with blood that still seeped from a deep bruise.

At the end Plath had let Benjamin live when she might well have killed him. Burnofsky wondered whether at this moment Charles thought that was a good thing or not. How many times must one or the other of the Twins have pondered the question of what happened if one of them died?

Their heads were melded. Some areas of their brains were directly connected. They shared a neck, albeit a neck with two sets of vocal cords. They had two hearts—one apiece—and had a sort of two-lobed stomach that fed out through a single alimentary tract.

Each had an arm. Each had a leg. And there was the third leg as well, a leg that dragged like so much dead weight. As a consequence they moved with extreme difficulty and usually chose to get around in a motorized cart or wheeled office chair customized to fit their double width.

Charles tried again. “We have important matters to discuss, Benjamin. We are on the cusp of completing Phase Three of our plan, brother, don’t you grasp that? Don’t you see how far we have come? But we must deal with this crisis. Bug Man’s incompetence may upset everything!”

“It wasn’t you,” Benjamin snapped. “It wasn’t you. It was me. It was me she humiliated.”

“Look, we’ll deal with the girl when we get an opportunity,” Charles soothed. “Of course you feel violated. Of course you’re angry. But—”

It was part of the strangeness of dealing with the Twins that when they spoke to each other they could not look at each other. They had never made direct eye contact in their lives.

“You think I’m being irrational,” Benjamin said, sounding rational for the first time in several minutes. “But you don’t understand. This cannot be tolerated. If we can be humiliated this way, then we will lose credibility with our own people. Do you think our twitchers aren’t talking about it?” He stabbed a finger in Burnofsky’s direction. “Do you think Karl isn’t smirking?”

In fact, Karl Burnofsky was smirking, but he hid it well. His sagging, whiskered face and rheumy blue eyes did not appear to reflect any pleasure.

It occurred to him that this was his opportunity to speak. He said, “Perhaps a vacation. Some time off. We have come a long way. You’re both tired. Deservedly so, the weariness of a long battle.”

Charles shot a sharp, suspicious look at Burnofsky. “Are you out of your mind? This thing with Bug Man and the president, for God’s sake, target number one, the purpose for which we lost so many good people. The woman has to give Rios the go-ahead.”

“She did,” Burnofsky said. “The initial go-ahead, anyway. I can show you the video. She finished cleaning up the blood and went to her pad, pulled up the ETA mission, and approved it. Rios has long since started planning counter-attacks on BZRK. The president has scheduled a meeting with him to discuss raiding McLure, blocking their accounts, arresting individuals on suspicion of terrorism. I am confident she will give him free rein; Bug Man has succeeded in that. And gentlemen, wasn’t that our goal?” Burnofsky puffed out his cheeks in a sort of world-weary gesture. “Bug Man screwed up, but—and it’s a very big but—he did accomplish the goal. We own the president, and we control ETA, the agency that will deal with any nanotechnology information.”

“Damn, Karl, you might have told us,” Charles chided, but he was too happy to be genuinely angry.

“This thing with Monte Morales, it’s a blip,” Burnofsky said. “It’s a bump in the road. And you’re . . . tired.” He tried to send a meaningful look to Charles without it being intercepted by Benjamin, but of course that was a physical impossibility.

What he wanted to say was, “Look, your twin is losing it. If he goes, you go. Get him out of here. Get him some rest.”

“I can handle Bug Man,” Burnofsky said. “Jindal will be here running the daily operation. I can go to Washington and supervise the wiring of the president personally. If I do have to take it over, I can do it without relying on signal repeaters. Meanwhile, Rios is moving immediately against BZRK in DC and New York. BZRK will be effectively taken out, in this country at least. We’ve been probed by Anonymous, but we’re confident they’ve been shut out. We have substantial control of the FBI, we have some assets in the Secret Service. Our overseas targets are being well managed. So . . . honestly? Now’s a good time for a break.”

Charles looked hard at Burnofsky, reading his thoughts. Charles knew his brother’s stability was tenuous at best.

“You’ll go to Washington yourself?” Charles asked, seeming oddly deflated. “You’ll take charge?”

“I will go. I will oversee the wiring. I’ll touch base with Rios. And I’ll deal with Bug Man.”

Benjamin frowned. Then his eye brightened, and the third eye seemed to join in sympathy. “The Doll Ship.”

“It’s in the Pacific. Somewhere near Japan, heading toward Hong Kong to pick up a very nice haul of Korean refugees, and one moderately good twitcher,” Jindal reported. He had deemed it a safe moment to speak up. Jindal was a true believer, a Nexus Humanus cultist, wired and, in the favorite Nexus Humanus phrase, “Sustainably happy.”

A sucker, in Burnofsky’s view. A fool. A middle manager with delusions of importance.

The mention of the Doll Ship soothed some of the anxiety from Benjamin’s face. Charles, too, softened a bit.

“The Doll Ship,” Benjamin said, and his bruised mouth smiled.

Sick bastards, both of you, Burnofsky thought. Sick, sad, screwed-up freaks. It would be good to get them out of the way for a few days.

He had work to do.

THREE

“Rrrraaaaarrrrrgh!”

Vincent bellowed like a beast.

Like a lion at feeding time.

Plath put her hands over her ears.

“Rrrraaaaarrrrrgh!”

The sound was muffled, but the doors and walls of the safe house were flimsy and sound carried, especially at night.

Plath was due to start receiving her inheritance: at the very least, she decided, she could pay for a better safe house.

She took her shower. It was an awful little bathroom; no one ever cleaned up, and the mildew was eating the tile grout.

She could imagine it at the nano level. That was the start of the madness, the thing that softened you up and prepared you to lose it entirely. Like Vincent. Like Ophelia, probably, poor girl, wherever she was. Like Keats’s brother, Kerouac. It began with that terrible parallel view. Down there. Down where human eyes were only supposed to squint through a microscope’s lens, not walk among the alien flora and fauna.

Mildew. The bacteria on her own hands. The colored footballs of pollen. The mites. The soap and pounding hot water slicking it away, but not all, never all. The beasties were with us always.

I don’t want to end up like Vincent.

Keats’s biots were inside her head. So was one of her own. He was repairing her aneurysm, and she had one biot on board, as the jaunty semi-nautical phrase went, and another in a petri dish soaking up nutrients

She could have gone off to find Keats’s biots, down there, down in the meat. Her biot—P2 as it happened—was resting comfortably on the back side of her left eyeball. Occasionally she would move her biot as a dutiful lymphocyte came oozing along to clean up whatever this alien monstrosity was.

Had she wanted to, she could have had her own biot help Keats. But a biot face . . . Well, it was bad enough to know precisely, exactly, what vermin crawled the surface of Keats’s skin. She didn’t need to see the bizarro-world distortion that was his biot’s face.

She liked his face quite a lot. The too-blue eyes had at first seemed almost feminine, but a gentle face did not signal weakness, at least not in Keats.

As for his mouth, well, she had always liked that, the quirky little dip in the middle made him look wryly amused. How would he look when he was where Vincent was now?

Not madness. Not that. Death is better.

A lousy, filthy, depressing, badly lit bathroom. But a good water heater at least.

She closed her eyes and aimed them up into the spray. Take that, my demodex. Hah, I bet a few of you lost your grips and are now sliding down my cheeks. Hah! How will you like it if you go swirling down the drain?

Soap, soap, soap, everywhere. Shampoo and soap and Purell. No one showers like a twitcher, she thought, and realized that was an aphorism that very few people would understand.

A voice made her jump.

“Showering off the shame?”

Wilkes. She was using the toilet.

Definitely: when she got her inheritance, it would be time to generously agree to pay for a higher-class rental somewhere. Anywhere. Just because they were crazy didn’t mean they had to live like animals.

“Oh, that’s a loooong silence,” Wilkes said. “You didn’t do it, did you?”

“Not your business, Wilkes,” Plath snapped.

Wilkes had an odd laugh. Heh-heh-heh. “That’s confirmation. I can’t believe after all the looks and the Bella Swan lip biting—and poor Keats awkwardly adjusting his jeans any time he sees you bend over—that nothing happened. Jeez, Plath, what are you holding out for?”

Suddenly, the shower curtain was pulled back and there stood Wilkes in a faded High School Musical T-shirt. Her spiky hair was less spiky, her strange tattoos almost green in the light of the cheap fluorescent bulb.

“You have a nice body,” Wilkes said. “He’s going to like that. You know, if you ever actually . . . Turn around, let’s see the butt.”

“Wilkes, I say this with affection: drop dead.” Plath pulled the shower curtain closed again and heard Wilkes’s laugh. Heh-heh-heh.

“If you don’t want him can I borrow him?”

Plath was about to yell a heated “No!” But that would just egg Wilkes on. And anyway, it’s not as if Plath had the right to say no. And not as if Keats would ever say yes to Wilkes.

“Don’t stay in there too long,” Wilkes said on her way out. “Scrub all you want: you can’t get them all.”

Something you HAVE to see. That was the message Farid sent, using all-caps for HAVE, not his usual style, that.

Farid Berbera was not a member of BZRK. Farid Berbera was a member—if you could even use that inaccurate term—of an older organization. Anonymous had been around since Farid was a kid. He was no longer a kid, although at seventeen he wasn’t quite a grown-up, either. Not in the eyes of his father, the acting Lebanese ambassador to the United States. Not in the eyes of his mother, the public relations assistant at that same Washington, DC, embassy.

And truthfully, not in his own eyes, either.

Farid Berbera, tall, thin, amazing black hair, unfortunate nose, and eyes like Sal Mineo—he’d had to look that up, Mineo was way before his time—was scared.

Farid had once hacked the computers of the Food and Drug Administration because the FDA was stalling a pot-based therapeutic drug. That was not why he was scared.

“Have to see?” ChickenSteak had written back. “If this is some dumb LOLcat . . .”

Farid had hacked the computers of the American Cancer Society because they had supported the FDA decision. Also not terribly scary.

He had hacked the computers of an online dating company that was selling confidential customer data, and the Randall–Georgia Institute for being anti-gay, and he’d hacked the system at Safeway’s corporate headquarters because . . . well, he forgot why, exactly.

Safeway had not frightened him.

But today, for the third time in as many days, he had hacked the Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation. AFGC, best known for operating gift shops in airports. Also, however, known to be much more involved with weapons technology than with collectible figurines.

He was intruding on AFGC because other hackers had made their way into the systems of the cult Nexus Humanus, and there had found a surprising number of connections—personnel and finances—between Nexus Humanus and AFGC.

Why would a weird cult be so closely involved with a maker of snow globes slash missile guidance systems?

Farid had expected AFGC’s system security to be tight. It was beyond tight. It was paranoid. It was not a surprise that no one had made it through before. Even drawing on the skills of half a dozen of the best hackers in the world, Farid had not made it past the bland public face of AFGC. Until he began looking at subsidiaries of AFGC.

AmericaStrong, a division of AFGC, was a security company run by ex-CIA, ex-Special Forces types. It should have been the best-protected element in the system, and they were good, but they had grown a new problem: a link to a U.S. government agency, the Emerging Technologies Agency, ETA.

And ETA? Well, they tried to safeguard their system, but US government networks had been Anonymous’s doormats for a generation now.

So it went like this: ETA to AmericaStrong, AmericaStrong to AFGC, and pow, kiss my ass, he was in.

And now Farid almost wished he wasn’t.

He typed into the dialog box open on the left third of his screen.

LeVnteen34: You guys seeing this?

Of course they were seeing it. He knew they were seeing it. But did they know what it meant?

86TheChickenSteak: That’s the SecState.

They were seeing video. Remarkably bad video, distorted, gray scale with sudden flares of unnatural color. But that was indeed the secretary of state.

JoeyBo316: That’s the Oval.

86TheChickenSteak: Oval?

LeVnteen34: The Oval Office.

There was a pause at that before Chicken typed,

86TheChickenSteak: Thefuckwhat?

The video ended in static and jerky images. Farid opened a second video file. Papers on a desk. Some kind of briefing book, but the resolution was way too weak to make out individual words.

A third video was from the point of view of someone standing at a podium speaking to a room full of people. The fourth seemed to be nothing but a blank wall.

JoeyBo316: Like someone’s wearing a camera.

Farid disagreed but didn’t want to embarrass Joey. The aspect ratio was all wrong for any kind of camera. But he didn’t want to prejudice their opinions, better to let them see what they saw, and react.

It was the fifth video, more desk, only this time something happened.

JoeyBo316: Replay.

Farid replayed. He did it more than once. There was no getting around it: they were watching someone put on glasses. Not from outside, but from inside.

From inside the person putting on glasses.

86TheChickenSteak: Jesustitty. We’re looking out someone’s eyeballs.

It wasn’t until they had dredged through many, many more videos—walls, desks, something that was probably a pillow, lots and lots of images so jumbled and low-res they were indecipherable—that they reached one of the most recent videos, the one Farid had saved for the end.

It showed the recognizable face of Monte Morales, the first gentleman.

Recognizable at least until two hands, a woman’s hands, pushed that face under the water.

FOUR

They did not have Vincent in restraints. The sedatives they’d obtained were working for now, and Nijinsky couldn’t bear having Vincent tied up.

Nijinsky stood looking down at Vincent as Vincent stared at the butcher-wrapped sandwich on the paper plate beside the snack pack of corn chips.

“You have to eat something,” Nijinsky said.

Vincent sat in a plastic chair. It was one of those molded things with spindly chrome legs. The chair was beside a bed in a narrow room that held little else unless you counted cockroaches.

Not a place to rescue your sanity, Nijinsky thought.

“Come on, Vincent, have a couple bites. The alternative is a feeding tube, and no one wants that.”

Vincent stuck out one finger. He slid it into the gash formed by cutting the sandwich in half. He stuck his finger into that gap and seemed to be feeling the edges of the ham and cheese and lettuce and tomato. It was almost obscene.

“Here, let me unwrap—” Nijinsky leaned forward to pull back the paper.

The growl from Vincent was like something that might come from a leopard defending its kill.

Nijinsky backed up.

For a moment regret found a way to show itself in Vincent’s eyes. He had serious eyes, Vincent, deeply shadowed by a thoughtful brow. He wasn’t a large guy—Nijinsky was taller—but Vincent always seemed older than his twentysomething years, more serious, more impressive. Vincent was a young man who tried hard to blend into the background but never would.

Nijinsky—his real name was Shane Hwang—was a completely different creature. He was Chinese American, elegant, manicured, model handsome—in fact, actually a successful model.

Vincent lost focus, blinked, looked back at the sandwich.

“Don’t go too far away,” Nijinsky said softly. “We need you. We are in trouble, Vincent. We need you. I sure as hell need you. Lear knows it, they all know it. You’re you. I’m not. And, so, listen, just try to eat.”

He didn’t say, but thought: And I don’t want to be you, Vincent.

He let himself out of the room and winced at the sound of the key as he locked the door behind him.

The others were waiting in the shabby, depressing common room that Nijinsky hated. They all looked up at him. Plath. Keats. Wilkes. All that was left for now of the New York cell of BZRK.

Forty-eight hours had passed since the disaster at the UN. Just two days since Vincent lost his mind and Ophelia lost her legs and BZRK lost, period.

Wilkes had gotten out with a concussion, one ear still ringing, and some superficial burns. She was an odd girl and wore her oddness defiantly. Her right eye bore a tattoo of dark flames pointed sharply down to reach the top of her cheek. A gauze bandage covered a vicious burn on one arm. With a red Sharpie she had written FUCK YEAH, IT HURTS on the bandage.

On her other arm was a tattoo of a QR code. If you scanned it, you went to a web page where a similarly defiant message waited.

Somewhere much more private was a second QR code. If you made it that far, you might learn more about Wilkes. About a high school where the football team had been accused of rape. Where the alleged victim had walked through the halls of that school one night tossing Molotov cocktails.

Wilkes. The name was taken from a Stephen King novel.

As for Plath and Keats, Nijinsky kept telling them they had behaved brilliantly, especially given their inexperience. But the question hung in the air, unspoken, unspeakable: Why hadn’t Plath killed the Armstrong Twins when she had the chance?

For God’s sake, Plath who is really Sadie McLure, why didn’t you just do it?

Too precious to kill, are you, little rich girl?

Then what the hell are you doing in BZRK?

Don’t you know it’s a war, Plath? Don’t you know this is a battle for the human soul?

Why didn’t you kill, Plath?

And did Plath have the answer? She was asking herself that same question. What was she, Gandhi? Who did she think she was? Jesus? Saint Sadie of Plath?

“Vincent’s not coming out of it,” Nijinsky said. “Who’s got the bottle?”

There was a bottle of vodka next to the sink in the grim little kitchenette. It was frosted. They kept it in the freezer, usually. Keats was closest to the sink. He leaned back in his chair, grabbed the bottle by its neck and snagged a glass of sketchy cleanliness and swept them over onto the coffee table.

Nijinsky took the bottle, poured himself about three fingers’ worth. He drank most of it in a gulp followed by a gasp, then a second gulp, and put the glass down with too much force.

Hair of the dog, as the saying went. A little drink in the a.m. to take the edge off the hangover you’d earned in the p.m.

You’re the wrong person for the job. Become the right person.

“My brother hasn’t got over it,” Keats said. “My brother’s still chained to a bed at The Brick.”

“Kerouac lost three biots,” Wilkes said. “And he was already half nuts.”

“Screw you,” Keats snapped. “My brother was as tough as any man alive.”

“He was,” Nijinsky agreed, and shot a dirty look at Wilkes, who retreated, sulking. “Kerouac was . . . is . . . the real thing.” He poured another drink, shorter this time, held it up and said, “To Kerouac, who is a fucking god and still ended up screaming in the dark.” He tossed the drink back.

There was violence in the hearts of those in the room. Nijinsky bitter and furious and insecure. Keats damaged, resentful and wary. Wilkes already a headcase who had now killed and seen killing and watched Ophelia’s legs burn like steak fat on a grill and was itching for a fight.

Plath saw it all. And she heard the unspoken accusations: Why didn’t you kill the Twins?

“Jin,” she said. Just that. And Nijinsky at the sound of his affectionate nickname sucked in a sobbing breath. He looked down at the glass and carefully set it down far from himself.

“I love him,” Nijinsky said.

Plath couldn’t help her automatic glance at Keats.

“Stupid of me, caring about Vincent,” Nijinsky said. “Loving him. And no, I don’t mean like that. I mean, if I’d had a brother . . .” He looked at Keats, who did have a brother, and there were tears in Nijinsky’s eyes. “I mean if I’d had a brother, if I knew what that was like, that would be Vincent. I’d give my useless life for him. And I was too late.”

In a flash Plath saw what she had missed. She wasn’t the only person in the room haunted by What if ? and Why didn’t I?

“Maybe we could rescue Ophelia from the FBI . . .” Wilkes started to say. “She could . . . No one’s a better spinner than Ophelia.” She was pleading for a life and knowing better, knowing that decision would have already been made.

“You’re talking about a deep wire,” Nijinsky said, not meeting anyone’s eye.

“Yeah, deep wire. The deepest. Take some time and get all the way down in Vincent’s brain.” Wilkes sat up. “Ophelia could—”

“Damn it, Wilkes.” Nijinsky was pleading with her. Plath could see that he was on the ragged edge. He couldn’t think about Ophelia. “Ophelia was the best.”

His use of past tense did not escape anyone’s notice.

Wilkes’s face twisted. It was like someone had kicked her in the stomach. She jumped from her seat and walked on stiff legs to the sink. She turned on the faucet and drank straight from the tap. When she straightened up her head banged the cupboard door.

“Son of a bitch!” she screamed. She banged the side of her fist against the cupboard door. And then harder. Then both fists and on and on until it seemed she would beat her hands bloody.

Keats moved smoothly behind her, imprisoned her arms, and waited as she cursed him and struggled madly to get away.