Bzrk Apocalypse (13 page)

“You were the pathway.”

She smiled. She tilted her head, looked closely at him, making eye

contact, taking her time in responding.
Smart
, that’s what he thought

of her on first impression. That she was smart. And not bad if you

liked older women. And she was on his bed. . . .

“I’m a lot of pathways,” Lystra said.

“So, George said—”

“Do you like George?” she asked.

“Not really,” Bug Man said.

“No, you wouldn’t. George isn’t really like us, is he?”

“Like us?”

“George is so serious. He never plays games. You and I, we like to

play. We enjoy the game
as a game
.”

“Do we know each other?” Bug Man asked. Alarm bells were

going off in his head. He recalled George’s furtive eyes.

“In a way. I’ve played you at different times in different games,

yeah. I use several online identities. But you’re better than I am.

101

MICHAEL GRANT

Quicker reaction time; very, very good at taking advantage of terrain.

And an amazing three-dimensional thinker. I can see why the Arm-

strong Twins hired you: your natural abilities, yeah, and your total

lack of moral core.”

Bug Man wasn’t sure he liked that. On the other hand, he wasn’t

sure he could argue the point. Was he without a moral core? He

frowned, considered it, shrugged it off—figuring that if he couldn’t

think of a good counterargument, maybe it meant she was right.

So he said, “Thank you. George said you weren’t part of BZRK.”

“Hmmm. Well, at that point I wasn’t sure we should meet, you

and I. Yeah. You’ve extracted the sample?”

“The cells? Yeah, I got the Pope’s cells out. They’re with my nano-

bots on the Pope’s sleeve.”

“Yes, which goes to the laundry where it will be intercepted by

someone working for . . . well,
us
.” She said the plural pronoun mock-

ingly. As if it made no sense.

The alarm bells were going crazy now. Bug Man almost felt the

floor tipping beneath him. Lystra laughed, almost as though she

could read his mind.

“Ah, suspicion begins to form, yeah,” Lystra said. “See how quick

you are? That’s why I like you. I’m done with you, I mean you’ve done

what . . .
we
. . . wanted you to do. You harvested the cells. And I

thought maybe, yeah . . . we . . . would just kill you now.”

Bug Man froze. The playful tone was more frightening than a

threat. An overt threat might ring false, might be a bluff. But this

woman was not bluffing. She could have him killed.

“Here you are, though, a young man without a place to go. So

102

BZRK APOCALYPSE

very many people, yeah, want you dead.”

His throat was dry, and the first words came out in a rasp. “What

do you . . .” He swallowed, tried to get some moisture going.

“What do I want?” She sighed. The sigh was melodramatic and

false. “Do you know the difference between us, Bug Man? Aside from

the obvious—gender, age, race. We both know none of that’s impor-

tant. The real difference between us is that you are a superb game

player
. Whereas I am a game
designer
.”

“Yeah? What game?”

“This one. Yeah. The game I call BZRK. Nanobots and biots. On

the one side, twisted idealist freaks who would deprive humans of

free will in order to give them all contentment. On the other hand . .

.” She let it hang, then added a superfluous, “Yeah.”

“That’s the Twins’ game,” he said dully.

The not-very-convincing mask of friendliness disappeared so

suddenly and so completely that it must never have been there. He

had the terrifying impression that the skin on her face had shrunk so

that bone and teeth and the hollows of her eye sockets were all sud-

denly outlined and shadowed.

Her eyes glittered. “Oh, them,” she said, striving to regain her

jokey tone and failing. “They have
their
game. Mine is better. More

levels.”

He noted that she no longer used the plural. Not
our
game.
Mine.

She stood up suddenly. “Get dressed. I’ve decided. You’re coming

with me.”

“But . . . where? Why am I—?”

“Where? Oh, places with tall buildings. New York City. And then

103

MICHAEL GRANT

cold, cold places. As cold as it gets this side of the grave. But what do

you care, Bug Man?” She sounded weary now. “Don’t you want to

see how the game plays out? Don’t you want to know what it was all

about?”

He shook his head slowly. “Games aren’t about anything. Games

are just about the game.”

She leaned down and laid a soft palm against his cheek. “See?

That’s why I like you, Anthony Bug Man. You and I are going to be

friends. Or I can have George put a bullet in your head.”

“Friends,” he said.

And Lear smiled.

104

TEN

Nijinsky was shopping when it happened.

He was at Saks, the big one, the flagship store on Fifth Avenue.

Christmas was coming and he had nephews. But he was shopping

more for himself than for them. He liked shopping. It was a Zen thing

for him. He had an eye for style, which had been useful in his life as a

model but was entirely neglected in BZRK.

Saks was already in full Christmas swing, decorated in a fantasy

of silver and white; the storefront windows were dioramas of highly

stylized snowmen appearing in Russian-themed settings. There were

delicate flights of abstract snowflakes arched across the ceiling, and a

restrained seasonal sound track played unobtrusively.

Nijinsky lifted the leg of a pair of slacks, felt the weight of the

wool, ran sensitive, knowledgeable fingertips along the crease and

then inside the waistband.

And to no one he said, “What?”

He froze, just stood there, seeming to stare at a mannequin

dressed in a sleek but uninspired Canali suit.

“The hell?” Nijinsky said.

“Are you finding what you’re looking for?” It seemed an almost

105

MICHAEL GRANT

philosophical question, but of course it was just a salesperson, a

woman, blonde, well put together but with tired eyes.

He stared at her now, just as blankly as he’d stared at the man-

nequin. “Something . . .” he said.

“Are you all right, sir?”

He was not all right. Nijinsky had four biots. One was in Burn-

ofsky, in his eye, tapping the nerve and watching the computer upon

which Burnofsky was busily typing. The others were in their crèches—

holders for dormant biots—in the basement of the safe house. All

were out of range, so that rather than seeing detailed pictures of what

they saw, he was seeing something more like two open picture-in-pic-

ture displays with vague shapes, fuzziness, lack of detail. Like looking

through a very dirty window at a poorly lit scene.

Except that now, suddenly, there was
another
window. And this

one was perfectly clear.

A new biot.

He looked around then, frantic, searching for an explanation. A

fit, attractive middle-aged man was trying on an Armani blazer. Two

children and their nanny killing time, the kids playing tag around

hanger racks. An attractive woman with ornate ink peeking out of

her décolletage. Clerks. An older man; a store display designer care-

fully placing a hat on a mannequin.

“Sir?” the blonde saleswoman prompted.

Nijinsky shook his head. “No. I don’t think I am all right.”

The saleswoman said nothing to that.

And then, a second new window, as clear as the earlier one.

A clear biot’s-eye view of the interior of a glass tube. He could see

the curvature, the texture—like stretch marks somehow—because

106

BZRK APOCALYPSE

nothing was entirely smooth down at m-sub level.

Without so much willing it as thinking it, he turned the two

new biots. They moved, obeying his will. And both biots now saw

his opposite: six-legged; insectoid, but with dangerous tail stingers; a

spider’s spinnerets; and the disturbing biot rendering of his own eyes,

a nightmare twisting of his own face.

Biots. Two of them. And suddenly he understood.

He had seconds left.

“Excuse me,” he said to the saleswoman. “I believe I’m about to

go mad. You may want to move away.” He pulled out his phone and

opened his messaging app. Who? Who should he tell?

Should he even bother? Plath had pushed him aside. Why should

he help her now?

He keyed in her phone number, hit the button for text, and typed.

There was a sudden rush of liquid rolling down the inside of the

tube. It was no more than a droplet in the real world, but it was as big

as a house in the m-sub.

“Ah,” he said, as the acid engulfed both his new biots.

The next thing he said was also, “Ah,” but this time he shouted it.

And the next “Ah” was screamed.

And the next twenty or so.

He broke into a run—frantic, terrified, still clutching the phone

with its typed but unsent message.

“No! No! No!” he shrieked as he raced to the open escalator and

threw himself down it. Threw himself, as if he was trying to fly. Arms

outstretched, face forward.

He hit the steel steps, and his face exploded in blood. He climbed

to his feet but was pulled off-balance by the moving stairs and

107

MICHAEL GRANT

pirouetted down until he landed again, hard.

But not hard enough to kill himself.

Nijinsky swung around, off the bottom of the escalator, and this

time he had a plan, a mad, desperate plan, one he could barely hold

on to. He tied his long scarf into a knot as he descended a second,

upward-bound escalator.

People ran out of his way, bounded up the steps to avoid him.

They yelled things like, “What the hell, man?” But mostly they just

got out of his way.

Nijinsky knelt on the stairs. Rising, rising, and lay the end of his

silk scarf on the step before him.

Five seconds.

Four.

A wild, giggling shout rose from his throat as the end of the scarf

was sucked into the escalator. The shout ended abruptly as the relent-

less mechanism devoured the scarf, tightened it around his neck,

slammed his bloody face into the steel, chewed up his left hand, cut

off his air.

He could no longer speak. No longer scream. Blood filled his

head, and still the noose tightened.

His windpipe was crushed. Blood now seeped from his eyes and

ears. The phone fell from his fingers and lay with message unsent on

the steel serrated edge of the escalator.

By the time some bright shopper thought to push the emergency-

stop switch, Nijinsky was dead.

The message on Plath’s phone was from Nijinsky.

It read,
2 new biots.

108

BZRK APOCALYPSE

But she had muted her phone and would not see the message

until later because she was meeting with Stern. Again.

Plath did not ask Keats to join her this time. She would discuss

the Tulip with Mr. Stern, but she would mostly be asking him what he

had discovered about Lear.

Attempts to learn about Lear counted as treason within BZRK.

Treason led to bad things, and she did not want to implicate Keats in

that.

Of course, Keats had a biot in her brain. If he was very curious he

could make the long trip out into an ear canal and listen in.

She didn’t think Keats did things like that. It would be out of

character. But in this new world she had entered such things had to

be considered. In this new world the human body was not a singu-

lar object—it was an ecosystem. It was a Brazilian rain forest full of

flora and fauna, from creepy, crawly mites to big, fat balls of pollen to

Dr. Seuss–like fungal trees, to a hundred different types of bacteria,

all the way down to viruses. None of it strictly human. The average

human body had far more nonhuman cells than human ones, though

they comprised only a fraction of the weight—about five pounds in

most people.

You moved differently through the world when you truly came

to accept that fact. When you knew that you were crawling, covered,

congested by nonhuman life-forms. Sometimes you couldn’t quite see

the line between yourself and the world around you.

All about her on the sidewalk were other ecosystems, each body

a similarly complex environment. Each body in turn a small part of

a larger system. A system called New York. Or, more inclusively, the

human race. Formerly meaningful divisions had lost some solidity.

109

MICHAEL GRANT

What seemed solid in the macro was so much less so down in the

meat.

The meeting with Stern followed all the rules of spy craft. They

set up the meeting using text messages. They both spent an hour

throwing off any possible pursuers. Their phones were off and there-

fore impossible to track. If she were being followed, then it was very

professionally done.

And yet when Plath arrived at the steps of the public library in

Bryant Park, there was a man sitting across the street in the window

of a hotel café, sipping a latte and making no effort to go unnoticed.