BZRK Reloaded (4 page)

“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

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.”

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 is 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 U.S.
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, and 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.

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.

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.

“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 McClure, 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 cot 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.
“Was it us?” Wilkes demanded. “Was it us? Was it Caligula? Did
Lear order Ophelia killed? Jesus Christ!”
After a while Wilkes said, “Okay, blue eyes, you can let me go.”
He did. She smashed the cupboard one last time and headed for
the door. Nijinsky’s arm shot out, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her
to him. She struggled for a minute but finally collapsed, sat on his lap,
and let him put his arms around her.
He spoke past her spiky hair, his voice quiet, calm. “I don’t know
if you’ve seen the news in the last hour,” he said.
Heads shook in the negative.
“The president’s husband is dead. Supposedly he slipped in the
bathtub,” Nijinsky said. “I think that’s most likely bullshit.”
“Why would anyone want him dead?” Plath asked.
Wilkes was listening for the answer. For Keats it all meant very
little: the American’s first gentleman was not on his radar.
“I doubt anyone wanted MoMo dead,” Nijinsky said. “I think the
other side screwed up. I think they’re having a very bad wire.”
Plath was the first to grasp what he was saying. “You think she
did it? The president?”
“It has occurred to Lear,” Nijinsky said, pushing Wilkes off and
standing up stiffly, “that controlling the puppeteer is almost as good
as controlling the puppet.”
“We’re going after Bug Man?” Wilkes said. Her incredulous
expression hardened into a feral look, which in turn brought out an
almost canine laugh.
“If you can’t wire the target, wire the twitcher,” Nijinsky said.
“When do we go?”
“This is mostly on the Washington cell,” Nijinsky said. “But Lear
wants us to be ready. In case they call for help.”
“So we just sit on our butts?” Wilkes demanded.
“No, we go. We go. As soon as Vincent can go with us,” Nijinsky
said, and doubted the words even as he spoke them.
The group broke up. Plath stayed behind just a moment to talk
to Nijinsky. “Do you still want me to go to the reading of the will?”
“You have no choice. It’s dangerous. But you have no choice. Caligula will have your back. You think the lawyer will co-operate?”
“I know what my dad’s will said. But who knows? Who the hell
knows anything in this world?”