BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

But she was not, despite all the incredible media focus on the terrible crash of her father’s jet and her own near miss and the hundreds of casualties, as well known or recognizable as a major movie star. A little effort at camouflage, a minimal change of hair color and perhaps a baseball cap, should do the trick.

Did, in fact, do the trick. For most people. Plath and Keats sat in row 14, just behind the wing. The plane was three and three: three seats on the starboard, three seats to port.

Keats took the aisle seat, and Plath took the window seat (they had an empty seat between them), where she could pretend to be asleep and pull the brim of her baseball cap down over her eyes and go unnoticed.

It worked.

Until she had to go to the bathroom. And even then the cap and the dark glasses would have worked had not a particular passenger also been on his way to Washington, to deal, as it happened, with the flip side of the same problem.

When Karl Burnofsky looked up he saw, and slowly recognized, none other than Sadie McLure.

Plath went into the bathroom, peed, washed her hands in the tiny sink, and squeezed out of the door. A passenger, an older man with a ragged, Keith Richards face, was very impatiently waiting to get in. He pushed past her, practically knocking her aside.

He reached across her as if desperate to grab a paper towel, and as he did his hand brushed against her neck.

Plath returned to her row. She slid past Keats and sank into her seat and stared out of the window at hard glittering lights below and the trailing edge of the wing. It looked cold out there in the night.

She had a book to read, but she wasn’t reading it now. Keats had a book as well, but he just gazed moodily down the aisle. They knew better than to talk about anything of importance. Nijinsky had warned them.

Keats summarized his life. Brother in a mental institution. Parents indifferent, glad to have him gone, no matter how thin the excuse. In love with a girl who had two billion dollars and had told him flatly that she did not love him back. And two biots. One in Plath’s head, trudging back and forth building the wall of titanium. The other in his own eye, sitting there, watching red blood cells surge beneath its feet.

Death or madness.

He stole a glance at Plath. He wanted her, but more than that he wanted her to want him. He wanted her to need him.

And why? Because he was so reliable? Because he really could save her? No. He wasn’t fool enough to believe that. She had more resources than he did. She was probably smarter. She was certainly too beautiful for the likes of him.

And yet . . .

And yet.

Seven rows back Burnofsky smiled slyly to himself. What were the chances? And what an interesting problem. He had Sadie McLure, the daughter of his old friend and nemesis, within his reach. Had her dead to rights.

The Twins would forgive Burnofsky anything if he could deliver The McLure, dead or alive. Yes, the plan had been to use Thrum to use McLure to get to BZRK. But that plan had been laid in place before Sadie McLure had invaded Benjamin’s brain.

Charles would be upset if Burnofsky altered course suddenly to go after Sadie. But Benjamin? Oh, Benjamin would love nothing more than to have Sadie McLure in his power.

The question then was: What was best for Burnofsky? Obviously Sadie was being sent to Washington because Lear knew his Washington cell had been obliterated. The New Yorkers were being brought in to take over. Their mission was obvious: take back the president.

Burnofsky smiled at the thought that he was playing chess with the mysterious Lear. Burnofsky moved a pawn, Lear moved a rook, Burnofsky moved a bishop. And Burnofsky’s king was half mad.

Well, he thought, most kings are at least half mad.

When they landed, Sadie would go one way and he would go another. She and the boy with her would in all likelihood go far out of range. He could lose them. He had some limited ability to track nanobots, but it was sketchy and imprecise.

Follow her? Yes, that would be the right move. Do his best to stay with her. He had placed twelve nanobots on her neck during their brief encounter at the restroom, but it was a crude, inert transfer. He was not at a twitcher station, and nanobots were not biots; they could not simply be controlled with thoughts. What he had done was to use what they called a “packet.” A packet was about the size of a single grain of table salt. Twelve nanobots packed tightly together and covered with an adhesive. He kept two of these with him at all times. One under his left pinkie fingernail, one under the right. It was one of these packets that he had “accidentally” wiped onto Plath’s neck as he passed her.

But if he lost her now he might never be able to activate the nanobots.

Burnofsky played it forward in his mind. He would be met at the airport by a limo. The driver would be an AmericaStrong thug with instructions to drive him to the Crystal City Hyatt to meet Bug Man. The driver would follow Burnofsky’s orders, but would he be able to track whatever limo or cab or bus Sadie McLure took? BZRKers tended not to be fools: they would take steps to throw off any pursuit.

The jet touched down and taxied to the gate.

The passengers clicked off seat belts and stood en masse. Burnofsky stood.

There had been no time for Burnofsky even to get a drink on the short hop from New York to DC. And he badly needed a pipe. He had the address of a place in Washington …No one claimed it was as nice as the China Bone, one of the world’s great opium dens, but it was apparently the very best place to find a pipe, or indeed whatever you wanted, in Washington. The rumor was that two congressmen, the secretary of education, and the White House doctor were regulars.

The plane’s door opened. Keats hauled his bag down from the overhead locker. Plath hauled her own down as well. They did their best to act as if they didn’t know each other, Sadie and the boy, but no close observer—and Karl Burnofsky was quite a close observer— would miss the tiny clues. The way they refused to make eye contact. The way he moved reflexively to help her when her bag slipped but stopped himself. The indefinable energy field that vibrated between them.