BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

Maybe some of it, most of it, all of it, was false.

He had told her that it was not. Vincent had sworn that he only made her more suggestible to co-operating on the building of new biots, that he would never …That that sort of thing was not BZRK, not what they fought for.

Did it matter?

Anya sat in her one chair remembering, and while remembering thus was unable to work on the formula she’d begun to complete on the sketch pad, covered like a college chalkboard with obscure symbols.

There was a knock at the door.

Her eyes flew open. She waited a few seconds for the unsteadiness in her voice to calm. “Yes?”

There was the sound of a lock. The door swung inward, practically halving the room. Nijinsky stepped in.

Anya didn’t like him. He was beautiful and perfect and not interesting to her. And she knew that his relationship with Vincent was deeper than her own. She was jealous of him. It annoyed her somehow that he had chosen a Russian nom de guerre. The Chinese American model didn’t have a Russian soul, he was not a Nijinsky.

“Dr Violet,” he said politely. He glanced at the sketch pad, quickly at her, then resumed his usual mask of indifference. “I wanted to talk to you about …well, whether you’ve had any strange feelings lately.” Nijinsky raised his eyebrows and made a slight, wry smile.

“Why don’t you tell me what you mean,” Anya said curtly.

“Okay. I mean that Vincent still has a biot inside you.”

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She nodded. The idea was not a surprise to her. “So, a little Vincent still crawling around in my hippocampus or wherever. A little biot controlled by a madman.” She had to laugh. “Wasn’t there a song? The lunatic is in my head?”

Nijinsky’s brown, almond eyes went cold.

She noticed and shook her head derisively. “Ah, I see, we aren’t supposed to say that kind of thing about Vincent, are we?”

“He cares about you,” Nijinsky said. “He saved your life.”

“Right after he endangered it,” she snapped. “I’m not sure that counts as a net plus.”

Nijinsky said nothing.

“Where are the others? His other biots? You used a singular in describing the one he had in me.”

Nijinsky nodded. “One is dead. One is in a dish, rebuilding, healing. The other one I’m carrying. It’s right here. He tapped his forehead lightly.

“And so you and I both get to keep a little piece of him.” Anya was tired of sparring. “No. I haven’t noticed anything. If anyone is wiring me I’m not noticing it, and if a …mentally unbalanced …twitcher were doing it, it would be clumsy enough for me to notice. So, I very much doubt that Vincent is even aware of the biot inside me. If he is, it’s as a series of hallucinatory images that probably mean little or nothing to him.”

Nijinsky nodded. “I haven’t seen any activity at all from his biot.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, his knee almost touching hers. In a straight man she would have suspected a flirtation.

“What’s on the pad?” he asked bluntly.

“I’m not stupid,” she said. “I know you have surveillance in here. I know you’ve already seen and investigated.”

He shook his head. Then he hung his head down and shook it again. “No, actually. We don’t have the manpower for that, I’m afraid. I mean, yes, we have a camera in here, but aside from making sure you haven’t hanged yourself or tried to dig a hole through the wall . . .”

“It’s what I was working on before you and your charming crew decided to destroy my life,” she said, but the bitterness was false and sounded it. Vincent was not something she could regret.

“Biot?” he asked.

“Biot version four,” she said. “Fourth generation. What you use now is version three. Or threes with various upgrades.”

“Okay,” he said cautiously. “Do you want to tell me?”