Bzrk Apocalypse (25 page)

beauty. A work of art. It screamed “speed” just sitting there.

She shed her parka, stuffed it into the very minimal storage space

behind the cockpit seat, and slid into the leather chair. The pedals

were where they should be. The yoke was awkwardly placed by her

lights, but she could live with it. The displays were elegant and won-

derfully easy to read.

She closed the canopy and realized the hangar doors were shut.

So she climbed back out, scrounged around until she found a remote

control, and climbed back in. It was just as good the second time. She

had to fight the urge to run her fingers over the displays. Beautiful. If

Rolls-Royce, Tesla, and Porsche teamed up to make hovercraft, this

would be it.

There was an autopilot, but she couldn’t imagine trusting herself

to a computer—not at the speeds this thing moved, not on the most

treacherous terrain on planet Earth. But she turned on the automated

warnings as well as, after some hesitation, the impact-avoidance

system that would take control if she was in immediate danger of

crashing.

“You wreck this thing and your future will be very much in

doubt, Imelda,” she told herself.

Then, finally, she fired up the engines.

It was noisy but not deafening in the cockpit. She felt the surge

of suppressed power as the twin jets throbbed. The sleigh rose on a

cushion of air.

She keyed the remote, and the hangar doors slid open. Beyond

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the doors was whiteness, white on white as far as the eye could see.

She punched her destination into the GPS, released the cable tie-

downs, and slid toward the gap at walking speed then running speed

and was just hitting fifty knots by the time she blew out of the build-

ing, keyed the doors over her shoulder, and rocketed out onto the ice.

Oh, yes.

She smiled and held it at fifty knots until she had played with

the controls for a while and come grudgingly to trust the forward-

scanning radar.

The ice here was rippled but with no rises over eighteen inches.

The sleigh’s jets adjusted automatically to push more air into the

cushion as she reached obstacles.

Very soon fifty began to feel slow. Boring. Despite the fact that

the ice was flying by beneath her. In her rearview mirror she saw a

vortex of ice crystals, a shimmery white contrail.

“Well, in for fity, in for a hundred, right?”

She punched it, and the sleigh took off like a rocket.

“Oh, yes,” Suarez said. “Ah-hah-hah!”

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TWENTY

Plath was still asleep when they struck.

One from Keats, two from Wilkes, two from Billy. Five busy biots

raced up through her eye and into her brain.

They had planned. Wilkes and Keats would focus on ripping up

wire in the places where Keats had found it. Billy would go hunting

for the intruder and call for help if he found something.

“It’s mostly all up in here,” Keats said. “Hippocampus and some

Broca’s area.” Amazing how quickly one could learn something as

esoteric as brain architecture when life and death were involved.

The three of them were downstairs in the darkened living room.

Hopefully Plath would not awaken and come down to find out why

Keats was not in her bed. If she did, they would know it: arteries

would start pumping faster as she woke and began to stir.

“Go ahead, Billy. But if you find something, don’t fight it. Call us

for help.”

Billy had a Coke by his side. He was dressed in a Washington

Nationals jersey many sizes too large and slumped down to look cool,

with the result that he looked even younger than he was—a small,

round head and solemn face in a pile of rumpled clothing. None of

them had anything to do with their hands.

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MICHAEL GRANT

“There’s the first wire I found,” Keats said to Wilkes. Down in the

meat he was pointing it out to her nearest biot.

“It’s encrusted,” Wilkes said. It’s been there for some days at least.

Maybe longer. Meaning maybe we pull the wire, but the neurons have

already made it redundant.”

The wire was crisp and clean, only a few molecules in circumfer-

ence. But neurons had grown over and around it in places, like kudzu,

vines twining sensuously around the metal of the wire.

“Maybe,” Keats admitted. “But I won’t have that in her brain.”

That made Wilkes smile. A genuine smile, not her usual cynical

leer. “Pulling it up, sir. Aye, aye, Captain. Pulling it up.”

Keats saw her two biots going at it, working well together to

pull up the encrusted wire. The pins were sunk deep and completely

overgrown. It took two biots straining to draw them slowly out of the

brain like fence posts being pulled up. They came free but were still

tangled in strands of neurons.

Wilkes had to tear the strands away, breaking actual brain con-

nections in the process. To biot “ears” they made a sound like someone

squirting water through their teeth and tearing denim.

No way to know whether these were just redundant cells track-

ing the wire or whether they had some legitimate purpose. Was she

ripping away some cherished childhood memory? Probably not, prob-

ably these connections were just reinforcing the wire, but the human

brain was astoundingly complex. BZRK had very sophisticated brain

mapping, but still it was largely a crapshoot.

Gee, sorry about that, Plath, I just wiped out your memory of

nursery school.

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BZRK APOCALYPSE

Keats was doing the same around the corner. There the wire was

fresher, less overgrown. His biot stood at right angles to hers in the

almost gravity-free liquid environment.

In the macro Billy said, “Can I ask a question?”

“Of course,” Keats replied.

“Why are we doing this?”

“Because someone has messed with Plath’s head, that’s why.”

Keats obviously thought that was the end of it. But Billy pressed. “But

isn’t everyone’s head messed with? I mean, stuff you see, or how you

were raised. Stuff people did to you.”

There was something, maybe several somethings, behind that

tremulous
stuff people did to you
.

But this was not the time to examine Billy’s demons. “That’s all

natural, this is . . .” He was at a loss for words. “It’s wrong, that’s all.”

Billy fell silent after that. But Keats could see that he wasn’t con-

vinced by Keats’s halfhearted effort to justify what they were doing.

Keats went on about his business, tearing out wire, pulling pins. So

did Wilkes, but now she took up the same line of questioning.

“Yeah, blue eyes, but we aren’t doing this with her okay any more

than whoever laid the wire down, right?” In the meat they were at

right angles, here they sat facing.

“She’s not able to—”

“So we’re
making
her do it. Right? I mean, we’re unwiring her

even though she obviously isn’t totally psyched about it.”

“Come on, guys,” Keats said. “It’s not the same. Someone wired

her brain.
Hacked
her brain. Took over her brain. Now we’re fixing it.

It’s not that difficult to understand.”

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MICHAEL GRANT

Wilkes began to argue, but then Billy yelled, “I see something!”

His two biots had emerged from a brain fold to see a furtive shape

disappear just beyond the reach of illumination.

“Nanobot?” Keats demanded.

“I don’t know. I can’t . . . I think it sees me. It’s running! He’s fast!

He’s got moves, he’s got moves, man! 3D moves!”

“Stay with him, we’ll catch up,” Keats directed.

Billy was in the game now, racing as fast as his biots would go

across a terrain of eerie hillocks, pulsing red worms as big as car tun-

nels, static sparks, and always the lethargically circulating fluid that

slowed his every movement. His quarry disappeared into a shallow

fold and Billy followed.

“Ahhh!”

“What?”

“Shit!”

Billy jumped out of his seat, knocking over his Coke. His fingers

moved as though he was using a gamepad. His eyes seemed to dart

after objects he could only see in the m-sub.

Billy’s first biot was down and minus two legs on the left side

before he knew what hit him. He twisted both biots to see, and there,

undeniable, unmistakable, the enemy: a biot.

“It’s a biot!” Billy yelled. “It’s a biot-biot-biot!”

“Don’t let him get away!”

“One of mine is down! I’m— he’s fast!”

The alien biot had raced up a vertical surface then pushed off, som-

ersaulted, and dropped down behind Billy’s remaining mobile biot.

The foe was vertical and swimming downward. Billy made the

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mistake of believing he was safe until the biot landed, but the biot

spun in midfall and fastened two pincers onto Billy’s eyes.

“I’m blinded!”

In the macro he instinctively rubbed his eyes, shook his head. In

Billy’s brain the second window was blank, showing no picture. Like

a TV tuned to a dead channel.

“I see him!” Keats yelled. “Come on, Wilkes!” He grabbed her

hand in excitement.

Now three biots raced to catch the intruder. But the intruder was

no longer fleeing. It had taken up a position on what seemed like a

vertical surface and now waited.

Keats pulled to a halt. Wilkes’s two biots did the same.

“Three to one,” Wilkes said. Then, “Why does that thing look

familiar?” And then, “Fuck!”

Keats was already on his feet. He raced up the stairs, and without

bothering to knock, opened the door to Anya and Vincent’s room.

Anya was asleep.

Vincent was not.

Down in the meat Wilkes stood beside Keats. Now she and Billy

both joined him in the macro, staring at Vincent, who looked at them

calmly.

“You,” Keats said.

Vincent didn’t answer. Anya rolled over and opened her eyes.

“Billy,” Keats said. “Go get Plath.”

A message lit up Burnofsky’s phone, but he had muted it so there was

no chime.

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MICHAEL GRANT

It’s Bug. Bad shit happening. Crazy bitch I think is Lear. Going to

kill me and the whole damn world.

Ninety seconds later, a second message.

Are u there? Talk to me! I’m not playing.

Sixty seconds later:

Fuck! Do NOT call back. I’m using her phone. Can’t wait. I’ll try

again later.

Bug Man had barely erased the messages and slid the phone back onto

Lystra’s nightstand when the alarm on that phone went off.
Zeeet!

Zeeet! Zeeet!

Bug Man leapt for the door, eased himself out even as Lystra

stirred and reached blindly for the phone.

By the time she emerged he was wrapped in a blanket on the

couch doing a very poor job of faking sleep.

“Get up,” Lystra said, and pushed his foot. “It’s time.”

He pretended to yawn. “Wha—? Time for what?”

She grabbed a piece of glass fruit from a bowl on the nearby table.

She hefted it in her hand, judging the weight. Then she swung it hard

and fast, smashing it into Bug Man’s left eye.

“AHHH!”

Her free hand was on his throat, he could feel the pressure tight-

ening. He squirmed but did not lash out at her, did not try to hit her.

She took the glass fruit—it may have been a peach—and stuffed it

brutally into his mouth.

Bug Man tasted blood. She pushed harder, harder until his front

teeth began to splinter. He cried out, a muffled, frantic sound, and

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BZRK APOCALYPSE

suddenly she spun away and tossed the now-bloody fruit back in its

bowl.

“Who did you text?” she asked in a conversational tone.

“Whanh?” He couldn’t make sounds right, and spit splinters of

teeth out onto the blanket. Tears filled his eyes, the pain but more the

shock of the attack.

He felt with his tongue around the new architecture of his mouth.

“Who did you text, Buggy, come on,” Lystra said. “Was it some

girl?”

He seized on the idea. “Nuffing, jush shome girl back home. Jush

my girlfrien’.”

“Yeah, don’t do that again,” she said. “Now I have to password-

protect my phone, and I hate that. It slows me down. Turn on the TV,

go online to Vatican City feed.”

He couldn’t see to find the remote. Wouldn’t have had any idea

where to find a Vatican feed if he had, and in the end Lystra, making

disparaging sounds, did it herself.

“Now watch.”

Bug Man wiped tears and blood from his face and tried to focus.

The Pope, but not wearing his tall Pope hat.

Bug Man knew what was coming next.

“This is your work,” Lystra said approvingly. “The man is very

healthy, it seems. I couldn’t find a biological sample anywhere. But

you got me his cells.”

“My mouff . . .” He groaned and wept again, despairing. There

would be no happy ending for his life: he saw that clearly now.

Unmistakably. His lip was swelling. He swallowed more blood; it

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MICHAEL GRANT

hadn’t slowed yet. “Why ’o I haff to wash?”

“Why do you have to watch?” Lystra seemed puzzled. “I thought