BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

Benjamin said nothing, just stared at the terrified girl with the

sprinkling of freckles. At long last, in a dreamy voice, Benjamin said,

“I’ve thought of having Burnofsky wire me.”

“What?”

“But it wouldn’t work, would it. Do you know, Charles? Because

when you wire a brain, you can only connect those things that are

already there. What is there in my brain, in my memory, that could be

tapped for happiness? For joy? When that evil girl, that spawn of Grey

McLure, was in my brain, what was she wiring together? Old hates

and new. Old pain and new pain. Emptiness, brother, you know it’s

true, emptiness. That’s what she made me face. That’s what I couldn’t

pretend away. Wherever she stuck a pin she hit sadness and rage and

pain. And nowhere happiness.”

“There were good times,” Charles said weakly.

Benjamin made a small laugh. “Do you know what memory she

tapped into? Certainly not what she had hoped, but there it was, the

memory of that day, that morning, when Sylvie and Sophie Morgenstein awoke.”

Charles bit his lip and closed his eyes, remembering now as

well.

“How they screamed,” Benjamin said. “Not because they saw us, but because we had made them into us. Pretty twins sewn together. They saw the horror of the rest of their lives stretching out before

them. They saw the horror of being us.”

“They were in pain,” Charles said. “They were startled.” “I was never so happy again as at that moment,” Benjamin said. Charles remained silent. How could he argue? The memory was

clear to him as well. The feeling of …what? Revenge? Yes, revenge.

Not just on the Morgenstein twins, but on everyone who had ever

sneered or mocked or shrieked.

Revenge.

The word must have filtered into Benjamin’s brain because now

he took it up. “Revenge on all of them. On our father and mother. On

life. On God.”

Then Charles swallowed in a dry throat. “Those tactics are no