Bzrk Apocalypse (15 page)

depressed cheek met, then clambered upside down onto the finger.

“No,” Anya said. “No. Nyet. Is not happening.”

“I promise you, Anya, I won’t lay any wire. I will not make any

changes in your brain.”

“Your promise,” Anya sneered.

“Yes, my promise,” Plath said. “I can’t just let you walk away. I

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have to maintain surveillance.” She leaned toward Anya and stretched

a finger up to the older woman’s eye.

Anya swallowed in a dry throat. “So you will watch me. You will

tap into my eye and see everything that I see.”

“It’s the only way,” Keats said, though he didn’t sound too sure

of it. He pressed his lips together and stole a worried glance at Plath,

who revealed no emotion.

Look how hard she’s gotten
, Keats thought.

When they had first met, he’d marked her down as a spoiled little

rich girl, probably a snob, who would condescend to him, look down

her nose at him.

But that had not been true. She had been anything but a snob.

But even then, early days, he’d noticed that effortless authority she

carried with her. That was, without question, a product of wealth and

privilege. Plath would admit that much. A billionaire’s daughter sim-

ply had an air about her that could not be faked by a working-class

kid like Keats.

Part of him was proud of her in an uncomplicated way. He wanted

to say,
Well, look at you, all grown up and in charge
. But part of him

was small enough to focus on their relationship rather than BZRK.

He was in love with her. He believed she loved him back. But how sta-

ble could a relationship be when there was this much of a difference

in their circumstances? My God, the girl basically had a private army.

Anya let Plath touch her, just below her left eye.

Plath held the contact for a few seconds as her biot scampered off

and began the journey to the optic nerve.

From now until Plath let her go, Anya’s sight would be shared.

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MICHAEL GRANT

Plath would see what Anya saw. In the bathroom and bedroom, too,

inevitably. The idea made Keats’s skin crawl, but this was BZRK.

Fighting for freedom. Saving the world.

Yeah, but hadn’t they done that when they stopped the Arm-

strongs from controlling the president? And when they stopped

Burnofsky’s gray-goo scenario? Hadn’t they already won?

Then how was it they were still trapped in this paranoid universe

where they used the names of dead or made-up madmen? How was

it that they were still taking orders from an invisible character called

Lear?

The thought was out of his mouth before he could check it. “Why

are we still doing this?”

Wilkes snorted. “Pretty blue eyes asks the right question. Why

are we still doing this?”

“Because we haven’t won yet,” Plath said. But she didn’t quite like

that answer. “It’s not over yet.”

“How does it get to be over?” Keats asked. “How will we know it’s

over?” He had been leaning forward, now he drew back. “Look, isn’t

this about the knowledge, really? Once we know how to make nano-

bots and biots, how do we ever unlearn that? It’s like nuclear bombs,

isn’t it. How do you stop it spreading once the technology exists?”

“When the last of us is dead, it’s game over. For us. Right?” This

was the first time Billy had spoken. “I mean, it’s a game, right? Biots

versus nanobots. Take over the world. Isn’t it a game?”

“No, it’s real,” Plath insisted. “The Armstrong Twins are real, and

we’re real, and Jin was real.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Billy felt the weight of disapproval. “Yeah, but

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games
are
real. That’s what you don’t get, with respect to you, Plath.

Games are real to the people playing them. While they’re playing.”

No one said anything; after all, Billy was just a kid. But Keats

couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just heard something important,

that Billy had blurted out the truth.
It could be real, and dangerous,

and deadly, and yet still be a game
, he thought.

When was a game over? When you lost.

Or when you won and went off in search of a new game.

Biot versus nanobot. That was the game. But now, according to

Plath by way of Lear, a new level was being revealed. Something out

there could kill biots remotely. Dead biots meant madness. It meant

killing yourself on an escalator in Saks.

So why bother to blow up a boat? If you could generate then kill

biots, then why what seemed so much like manipulation? The Arm-

strong Twins would not hesitate if they could kill Plath and him.

So why wasn’t he dead?

Because the game was somehow more complicated than that.

The video played again, looping. Keats watched the faces watch-

ing Nijinsky. They watched in surprise as he stared and spoke to the

air. Then in shock as he threw himself down the escalator. Horror

as he fed the silk scarf into the mechanism that choked the life from

him.

Then, Keats picked up the remote and rewound.

“Enough!” Wilkes yelled.

“Wait,” Keats said. “Don’t watch Jin. Watch the people around

him. That woman. The one with the ink.”

He advanced it in slow motion, focusing on the woman.

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MICHAEL GRANT

She pulled out her phone and glanced at it. Checking e-mail? Or

checking the time?

She stole a glance at Nijinsky.

“She’s looking at Jin,” Keats said.

“He was a good-looking dude, maybe she—” Wilkes began, but

then she fell silent, because now was the part where Nijinsky started

to lose it. The people nearest were shooting him irritated or con-

cerned looks. The woman was not. She was half smiling, watching

. . . waiting.

Waiting.

“She knows,” Keats said.

He cut to the next video, the horrific one showing Nijinsky on the

escalator. There was a woman just a dozen steps behind him.

“Fuck! It’s
her
,” Wilkes said.

Now everyone was leaning toward the screen, checking the dress,

checking the shoes, the hair, comparing them to the first images.

“Yes,” Plath confirmed. It’s the same woman. Jin got to this place

by running, then hurling himself down the escalator. And she
fol-

lowed
him? What kind of person follows a crazy man?”

Now, again, Nijinsky fed the scarf into the escalator.

But this time they watched the woman behind him—the shoul-

ders, the hair.

She stepped past and over the strangling Nijinsky. Not panicked.

Calm.

She knelt by Nijinsky. Her hand shot out, took something.

“The phone,” Plath said. “She took his phone. The time signa-

tures. She sent the text.”

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“It’s an Easter egg,” Keats said. “Billy’s right: it’s all a game. And

that woman is an Easter egg. We are
supposed
to see her.”

Jindal could barely restrain himself. His first meeting with the

returned Twins had ended with his being dismissed like a disappoint-

ing schoolboy. Now they would have to listen. “We have confirmation.

Proof. They’ve hacked our network. Somehow they exploited a hole

in the AmericaStrong computer system and worked their way back to

us, back to core AFGC systems.”

Charles saw the meat of it immediately. “Floor Thirty-Four?”

Jindal shook his head so hard he couldn’t speak until he had

stopped. “No, that is walled off entirely. But the good—”

“Do they have our nanobot blueprints? Our technical specs?”

“Yes. And they’ve been looking at this building.”

“With an eye to infiltration or attack?” Charles demanded, while

Benjamin remained ominously silent.

“No way to tell. But gentlemen, there’s good news as well.”

Charles raised his eyebrow. Benjamin glowered at Jindal, as if

holding him personally responsible. “Good news?”

“The hackers have been hacked in return,” Jindal said. He was

giddy now, torn between excitement and fear. “We tracked them back

and found a way into some of their systems.”

“BZRK?”

“No. McLure Labs Security. That’s who’s been watching us.

McLure Security. Presumably at the direction of”—Jindal hesitated,

knowing the effect his next words would have on the Twins—“Sadie

McLure.”

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MICHAEL GRANT

“The little bitch,” Benjamin spat.

“Do we know where she is?” Charles asked.

Jindal shook his head, impatient to get to the one remaining piece

of good news. “No, nothing directly on BZRK. But we can now track

the movements of the main McLure Security folks, and if we follow

them, we’ll likely find a way back to Plath herself.”

“Bah,” Benjamin snorted. “No time. They’re planning an attack

here, that’s obvious. We have to hit them hard, now. Now!”

Charles looked queasy, but as Jindal watched, he could see wary

acceptance grow on the wiser brother’s face.

“We don’t have the gunmen we used to, thanks to that disaster

in Washington. But we have other means, as you know well. Massed

preprogrammed attack,” Benjamin said harshly.

Charles smiled faintly at that. He shrugged his shoulder. “Go

ahead, Benjamin. You know you’ve wanted to say it ever since you

came up with that name for the drones. Go ahead.”

For once Benjamin did not scowl. He smiled. And said, “Locate

Stern. And any other important actors in McLure Security. And as

soon as you have the location and Burnofsky is ready . . . I will release

the Hounds.”

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TWELVE

Down in the meat.

P2: soulless, mindless biot, Plath’s creature, Plath’s bizarro-world

daughter. P2 zooming across Plath’s eye, six legs stroking as Plath had

learned to do, like an Olympic speed skater.

The room was dark, shades drawn, door locked, a go away Post-it

note on the door. In the darkness, her eyeball—which in light could

look like a frozen lake—looked like some impossibly vast jellyfish, at

least here on the white.

Her eyelids—the onrushing “shore” lined with palm trees—

looked less benign, more like needle-sharp teeth.

Her eyelid swept over her, rubbing across her biot back, a slight

pressure, greater darkness; then it rushed away as though that row of

teeth had rejected the tiny meal.

Sadie, you need to ask yourself: Is this
you
?

That barb stuck. It stuck, and Plath could not shake it off.

Are you really, truly a person planning what would look like a ter-

rorist attack in Midtown Manhattan?

The World Trade Center was falling in her memory, and now

there was a musical track to go with it. An old, old song, a Beatles

song: “Piggies.”

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MICHAEL GRANT

It added a vengeful but playful note to the video atrocity.

How had she felt about that footage the first time she had seen

it, back in the classroom? She had been horrified. Sickened. She had

always been that way, always capable of being outraged by terrible

injustice. In school they had done a unit on World War Two, and as

part of that they had done a couple days on the Holocaust. She was

not Jewish. She was not part of any group that had been touched by

the Holocaust, but she’d been unable to sleep afterward, unable quite

to control the sickened hatred of people who could do that to other

human beings.

They had watched parts of
Shoah
in class—actual first-person

testimony from Holocaust survivors. She remembered vibrating with

the suppressed fury she’d felt. She remembered giving up finally on

any effort to control the tears.

She still felt that way when she recalled the Holocaust unit. But

she no longer felt horrified by the World Trade Center. Now it was

. . . what?

Beautiful, is what it was.

Is this you?

Was it really this easy to cross lines that should never be crossed?

Had the stress of this unasked-for war of hers, this BZRK existence,

simply washed away the part of her that cared about right and wrong?

Or. Or had she had some help?

Is. This. You?

Plath had three biots. She had sent P1 into Anya’s brain. It sat now

on Anya’s optic nerve, looking out through Anya’s left eye. It was a win-

dow open in Plath’s head, showing, at the moment, a bowl of soup, a

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rough hunk of baguette, and three slices of sausage. Anya’s hand low-

ered a spoon. Raised a spoon. Pause. Lower spoon. Raise spoon. Put

down spoon, hands to bread, tear off a hunk, raise it toward mouth.

Plath’s final biot, P3, was an enhanced model. Faster, with better

sensors, stronger. It was still in the vial attached to a chain around

Plath’s neck, staring at nothing—a very dull TV show of curved glass

wall, and not so much of that in this light.

The line is there . . .

Mr. Stern suspected she’d been caught up in something, and

needed some time to think it through more calmly. Plath had differ-

ent suspicions. Because, yes, she
was
thinking of attacking the Tulip.