BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

looked under his jacket and saw blood staining his shirt. There were tears in Billy’s eyes, and he couldn’t explain why. The

pain was bad but not that bad.

The rain started then and he ran to shelter in an office building’s doorway. There were some people there smoking cigarettes.

He ignored them, and they ignored him. He continued thumbing

through the calls made and received on the phones but found nothing that looked like it might be either to or from Lear. Then he started

on messages. Also nothing.

That first phone had used 1111 as its password, which was just plain dumb, but breaking security on the second phone was more time-consuming. Any time he guessed wrong he was shut out for a while. It was going to take all day. Then, he knew the answer: 2975,

because on the alphanumeric keypad 2975 spelled out BZRK. “Smart,” he muttered sarcastically.

Of course no one was going to have “Lear” in their address book,

that would be too much to hope for. And unless they were complete

idiots they’d delete calls to or from Lear. But they could be slightly

less stupid and yet still forget to delete the number from their trash. The rain stopped and he headed off again. There was always the

fear that some well-meaning adult would begin to wonder what a kid

was doing standing with the smokers in the shelter of the building. The second phone also yielded nothing.

He had plenty of cash, so he bought a couple hot dogs and a Pepsi

and wolfed it all down in a steamy, overheated diner. It was well past

lunchtime, though you couldn’t tell from the gray-on-gray sky outside. And then, on the third phone, he had something. It was in the

trash, as he’d expected. A number. He Googled the area code, curious because it had a strange number that began with a plus sign. The

prefix was a country code, and the country in question was Japan. Time to make a decision. If he was still part of BZRK—and where

else did he have to turn to—then he had to contact Lear. So he composed a text.

DC got burned bad. But they didn’t get me. Billy the Kid. He hit Send.

Then he added, This is not my phone.

He hit Send again. And waited. Nothing.

He wanted to cry then because he had halfway convinced himself

that Lear—if this was really Lear’s number—would instantly respond

and come to his rescue. But nothing, and the diner was shutting

down, the cook had begun to clean the grill.

So Billy went back out onto the darkening street, heading toward

the big green space on his map app.

Rock Creek Park, as the name implies, runs along Rock Creek