BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

“Wow,” she said. “It’s …Okay, it looks about twenty feet in diameter m-sub.”

“About as big as a grain of table salt,” Burnofsky said.

“It’s…It’s nanobots. Like, a lot. Maybe ten or so. They’re all intertwined and covered in goo.”

“Yeah. Goo,” Burnofsky said, and laughed.

“Back away,” Keats said urgently.

Plath shook her head. The movement twisted the ground beneath her. “They aren’t moving. Burnofsky doesn’t have a controller. They’re just stuck there.”

It took them a few seconds to realize what had happened, and then Keats grinned at Plath. “You mean we just captured a dozen nanobots? I’ve got to believe that will be useful.”

Nijinsky drove from New York down to DC. Down the Jersey Turnpike. Night traffic, cars zooming past the rented van, his eyes bleary, attention fading, eyes peeled for a Starbucks because he needed a serious jolt of caffeine.

A triple cappuccino. Yeah. That would get him most of the way. He was fantasizing about it. Imagining the foam, the bitterness underneath it . . .

There was a loud bang. Not the first, but still startling. The madman shackled in the backseat kicked at the seat and growled.

Strange, Nijinsky thought mordantly. He would have pegged Vincent as a quiet sort of crazy. Not a kicker. Not a growler.

Anya Violet was beside Vincent, occasionally laying a soothing hand on his arm, saying little.

Wilkes rode shotgun. She seemed nervous.

“I don’t like going through Maryland,” she muttered.

“It’s not a very big state,” Nijinsky said.

“Big enough,” Wilkes said. “This is where I come from. Where I had my …you know.”

“Ah,” Nijinsky said. “I forgot it was in Maryland.”

“What was in Maryland?” Anya asked.

Nijinsky shot a look at her in the rearview mirror. “Not your concern, Doctor.”

“Arson and attempted murder,” Wilkes said with relish. “Arson. True. Attempted murder? Not true. I had a sort of disagreement with the football team at my school.”

“Disagreement?” Anya asked. She was bored, ready for a story.

“They thought they could rape me and I couldn’t do anything because I was just the freaky chick and who would believe me? They were right that no one would believe me. But they overlooked the fact that I could set the bleachers in their gym on fire. And also their locker room.” She smiled a dangerous smile. “Yeah, that was our disagreement.”

Anya asked from the dark backseat, “Did you get them?” There was a hard edge to her voice.

“I wasn’t out to kill anyone. Like I said: the attempted murder charge on me is crap. Arson, sure. Molotov cocktails. You know … Hey, you would, right? Weren’t they a Russian invention? Then you probably know: you get wine bottles and fill them with gasoline and stuff a rag in.”

No one said anything. So Wilkes added, “The trick is you have to break the bottle after you light the rag. That was the hard part, actually. It’s easy to get them burning, but it’s not like in the movies where stuff just blows up. They’ll just burn like a candle unless you throw them and smash them.”

“Yeah,” Nijinsky said, because he couldn’t think of what else to say. He was fully awake now. That was good.

“I kind of had to side-arm them up against the metal bleacher support poles. Easier in the locker room because they had barbells. Those broke the hell out of the bottles.”

“Good for you” Anya said, garbling the r sound with her Russian accent. “Take back what is yours: pride.”

Nijinsky glanced up in the rearview mirror and saw her smiling. Was he the only sane one in the van?

“Anyway, I’m not popular in Glen Burnie, Maryland,” Wilkes said.