Bzrk Apocalypse (21 page)

The Hounds came for Mr. Stern as he was picking up his morn-

ing bagel at Montague Street Bagels in Brooklyn. It was a short walk

from his home, and the McLure Security car and driver would be

waiting across the street.

There were twenty thousand self-replicating nanobots aboard

the Hound piloted remotely by a tech in the bowels of the Tulip. The

Twins watched on their eternal monitor. The nanobots themselves

were of course not twitcher run. They had been programmed by

the Twins via the app. These nanobots had been given a simple set

of instructions: to multiply as soon as they encountered a source

of carbon. To continue to do so for exactly forty minutes. Then to

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commit mechanical suicide and stop.

As Stern was crossing the sidewalk the Hound swept down Henry

Street before executing a sharp right onto Montague.

Stern bit into his bagel. The cream cheese oozed from the sides

and he licked a dollop before it could fall away.

And then he heard something strange. Like a ceiling fan, but

with blades going very fast. He even felt the downdraft and looked up

to see its source. The Hound was just six feet over his head.

The nanobots fell in a cloud, like dust.

Stern ran to the car, still clutching the bagel. The driver saw him,

started to jump out to open the door for him, then saw the urgency on

Stern’s face, so just released the lock and started the engine.

Stern reached the door just as he began to feel a burning sensa-

tion on his scalp.

He piled into the car and yelled, “Some kind of drone!”

The driver turned around and blanched visibly. “Jesus, boss!

Your head!”

Stern reached past the driver and yanked down the visor mirror.

In the narrow rectangle he saw that his scalp was red with blood.

“Drive!” Stern shouted. “To McLure Labs!”

“What’s happening?” the driver cried.

Stern tried to answer, but at that moment the nanobots had

chewed through his cheek and were tearing into his molars, and the

sound that came out of the security man was not decipherable as any-

thing but a cry of agony.

The driver yanked the car into traffic, leaned on the horn, and

forced his way past a parked UPS truck.

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SEVENTEEN

Caligula found himself almost nervous. How strange. Plath was just

a girl, after all.

He remembered the first time he had really met her, in a small but

vicious battle at the Tulip. He’d liked her. He’d thought he saw some

inner strength in her, but it had never occurred to him that she would

end up running the New York cell of BZRK. Vincent had seemed bul-

letproof—an odd concept for Caligula to think of. But Vincent really

had seemed indestructible.

For a while after Nijinsky’s fall from grace Caligula thought Lear

might place the burden of leadership on him. But no. Of course not.

Caligula had his purpose in life, and it was not shepherding a gaggle

of kids. He was useful to Lear, but only as a killer. And less and less

useful at that. Lear had found other ways.

Nijinsky, poor bastard. A clean bullet would have done the job.

No need for what he endured. No need for that cruelty.

He wondered what Plath would ask of him. Would she ask for

his help in bringing Burnofsky in so that he could be infested with a

new biot?

He hoped she would not ask him about Lear.

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17

MICHAEL GRANT

But of course she asked about Lear.

“It seems absurd to call each other Caligula and Plath,” Plath said.

Plath had picked the meeting place, and she was waiting for him

when he arrived. It was public but not: a dark booth in a dark bar. It

was against the law for her even to be sitting here across from him.

But there was a law for regular minors and then there was a very dif-

ferent law for minors who could hand a fistful of hundred-dollar bills

to a concerned bartender.

It amused Caligula that she had even found this place. It was

classically male, a dive bar in a pricey Manhattan neighborhood. An

easy walk from the safe house, which showed caution. After all, Sadie

McLure had changed her hair, but she could still be recognized if a

paparazzo spotted her. She had minimized the odds of that. Smart

girl.

He took in the surroundings as he did every few minutes, check-

ing for changes in personnel, in position and posture. There were a

couple of hipsters at the bar imagining themselves as latter-day Ker-

ouacs. A tired-looking woman who was almost certainly a hooker.

Three loud businessmen saying things like, “So I told him, ‘That is

not something I’m comfortable with.’ I mean, maybe he doesn’t give a

shit, but I do.” After a few more drinks they’d be complaining about

their wives and their kids.

But that’s not who Caligula watched out of the corner of his eye. It

was a woman, thirty-five maybe, in an inexpensive business suit with

slacks, sensible shoes, and khaki raincoat. She had brown hair cut

short, but not so short as to be fashionable. She ordered something he

didn’t overhear but that caused the bartender to look wary. It came

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clear and fizzy in a tall glass: sparkling water.

If she wasn’t some kind of cop, she was doing a very good impres-

sion of one. She confirmed the impression by avoiding looking at

Caligula. It was a fact of life that any normal person would look at

him.

Had it come to this? Were even the cops on the trail? It was one

thing being shadowed by Armstrong people and by Plath’s security

people. It was a different matter entirely when secrecy was so compro-

mised that FBI or intelligence or even NYPD were watching.

Things were coming to an end. One way or the other. But wasn’t

that what Lear wanted?

“It does seem ridiculous,” Caligula allowed.

“Call me Sadie.”

“Call me Caligula.”

That earned him a wintry smile.

He did not lean toward her. He had not shaken her extended

hand—she would understand why. Caligula might be a part of BZRK

in his own way, but you simply did not trust people armed with biots.

A fleeting touch was all it took to send the tiny little beasties toward

his brain.

He was nursing a beer in a tall, sweating mug. He casually dragged

the mug across the table, left to right, leaving a trail of water behind.

A barrier to the tiny bugs.

“I never thanked you. For that first time.” Plath nodded at him, a

regal move that seemed natural for her. “You saved our lives.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. And waited.

“I need you,” she said.

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MICHAEL GRANT

“For?”

“Lear wants the computer servers in the Tulip destroyed.”

“They’ll have backups.”

She shook her head. “We don’t think so. They’re so paranoid

they keep several systems cut off from one another. We’ve had access

to many of their networks, but some of their computers are entirely

unreachable from the outside. No Internet links at all. No phone

lines. They might as well be something out of the 1980s.”

He nodded, accepting this as a likely fact. “It’s a large building.

They are well guarded. This is not a movie; I could not do it alone, or

do it even with your people.”

“How
could
you do it?”

“By destroying the entire building.”

She stared at him. He watched her eyes. Interesting. Her pupils

had expanded. A pleasure reaction. But then her eyes had narrowed,

and she had drawn away. Of course: she was conflicted.

“Destroying . . .”

“There will be natural gas pipelines in the basement. If you were

to fill some of the sublevels with that gas and ignite a spark, it would

very likely collapse the entire structure.”

“Like . . .”

“Like what, Sadie?” He knew like what. He had a pretty good idea

what was being done to her. He could guess Lear’s direction. But he

wanted Sadie to say it.

“Like the World Trade Center. Like 9/11”

“Yes,” Caligula said. “We could obliterate the building itself. It

would kill everyone inside. Which is what you would want, Sadie.

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BZRK APOCALYPSE

You would
want
all the scientists in there to die. It would set back

nanobot technology several years at least. It would be the practical

end of Armstrong Fancy Gifts. By the time they recovered, someone

else would have developed the same capacity. Someone perhaps a bit

less . . . visionary?”

There was a TV on over the bar. It showed what every screen in

the world was showing: the Nobel madness. Cut to the American

president’s suicide. Back to the Nobel madness. Cut to the Brazilian

president.

Plath was shaking her head. “No.”

“If you destroy the servers and let the scientists walk away—”

“It’s not just scientists in that building. There are regular people.

Clerks and janitors and people who just answer the phones.” She was

pleading with him to find a different answer.

“It would be mass murder. It would make you one of the great-

est terrorists in history.” He watched her eyes. She was repelled. She

was sickened. But she was not surprised. So that idea had definitely

already occurred to her.

And she did not get up and walk away.

Jesus Christ
, Caligula thought, this
is the new way, the new real-

ity.
Sixteen-year-old girls could be made into terrorists. They could

be wired for mass murder.

Plath, for her part, could see it in her imagination. She could see

that phallic monstrosity of a building collapsing into the fire that

raged at its base.

My God
, she thought,
it
could
be done
.

“We can’t do that,” she said. To emphasize her point, she reached

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MICHAEL GRANT

most of the way across the table and pounded it with her index finger.

“There have to be limits. There’s a line.”

“Do there? Is there?”

The table was lacquered wood. To Keats’s biot eyes, it was a bit

like an aerial map of someplace like Afghanistan. There were steep,

deep valleys below formed by the grain of the wood. But filling in

those valleys was the smooth lacquer finish. The result was a feel-

ing like skimming along over mountains, flying at the height of the

peaks.

The great problem with biots moving over large dis-

tances—distances measured in centimeters or meters rather than

millimeters—was finding your way. A biot’s view of the macro world

was fuzzy and distorted.

Caligula felt safe on his side of the table. There were two feet

separating his arm, resting on the edge of the table, from Plath’s arm

on the opposite side. A long run for a biot, and worse, a hard target

to keep track of. Then there was the wall of water left by Caligula’s

deliberate dragging of his beer.

But Plath, too, had been playing games with the tabletop. Seem-

ingly fidgeting pensively, Plath had picked up the saltshaker, picked at

some dried-on food, then put it down on the table.

She put it down toward the far left end of Caligula’s water obstacle.

From the point of view of Keat’s biot the saltshaker was the Tower

of Babel and the Empire State Building all rolled into one. He saw it as

a distant shape, a feature of the landscape like some impossibly sym-

metrical mountain.

He saw it from there. But he also saw it through the tap he’d

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BZRK APOCALYPSE

placed on Plath’s eye using his other biot. One of Plath’s own biots

was standing beside him there. Plath made her biot tap Keats’s crea-

ture and make a gesture meant to convey going around the saltshaker.

Biots could not speak to each other, so this was a primitive but effec-

tive way to convey basic signals.

On the table surface Keats’s other biot rolled farther left, mov-

ing at top speed, racing to get around the saltshaker and avoid being

slowed by the water.

Had Caligula noticed? That would be the question.

Keats cleared the saltshaker tower. He spotted the wall of water

off to his right but was well clear of it. Ahead, far in the distance, was

a wall of indeterminate color.

Keats’s first biot, K1—the one inside Plath’s brain—turned awk-

wardly to Plath’s P2 and made a gesture using two claws meant to

convey that he was closing in.

In the macro Plath was dragging the conversation out to give

Keats time.

Caligula drained the last of his beer and set the glass down just

behind the saltshaker.

Deliberate?

Plath’s P2 looked at Keats’s K1. A body shake that was the equiva-

lent of a headshake.
No, that didn’t get me.

But it had been close, very close. The glass—a rainbow-swirling

object so big it looked a bit like some rainbow-hued desert mesa—

came crashing down out of the sky. It sent vibration and water

droplets in all directions. One of them, an Olympic pool of water,

crashed behind him as he sped on.