BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

Ten minutes later he was outside, holding Jessica’s hand, wishing he had a warmer coat. It was a short walk to the Marriott, where they could get a cab without being spotted.

Bug Man felt wild. Like a kid skipping out on school. He felt free. Even the cold wind accentuated his sense of having escaped something. And if Jessica’s hand was a little less confident in his, well, that was all right too, because he would win her over. He would make her …no, scratch that …he would convince her to love him.

And the next time when she made love to him it would be real.

Minako lay in her bunk, staring up at the wire mesh overhead, and at the shoes of the man up there. The monster …It was what she had to call them, no compassion anymore, they were the monster! The monster had made her feel awful things.

One minute she had been terrified and the next she had begun laughing hysterically and the next she was crying, sobbing, tears running unchecked down the side of her face and into her ears.

The monster’s faces had laughed and sneered, and the smiling one had congratulated the other one on discovering this wonderful new game.

How many squares were formed by the wire mesh floor above her? Count and multiply. One, two, three, four, five, six. She counted to fifty, noted that the fifty-first square had a little smudge of green paint; that would make it easier for her to go back if she lost count.

Fifty-two, fifty-three . . . At some point they had reached her motor controls and had made her right leg twitch painfully.

“Look! Look at that!” Charles had exulted.

“Hah!” Benjamin had said. “Do it again!”

So Minako had sat there spasming, her leg squeezing and relaxing, squeezing and relaxing, a human puppet.

“Imagine what else we could do,” Benjamin said in a voice that made Minako’s flesh creep.

“Alas, we must return to the more important business of helping this girl to let go of her fear. She is in need of our help, yes?”

Benjamin didn’t answer. But the wild jerking stopped, and a while later the confused memories began to play out again.

There were one hundred and seventy-eight squares in the mesh along the longer axis. Now to count to shorter axis. One, two, three . . .

She had suddenly remembered her father, as a huge, moon-size face looking down at her in her crib. There was a mobile of blue-andgold birds beside him. She had not understood his words. She didn’t yet understand any words.

She had found herself scrubbing her hands in the bathroom sink while her mother called to her to hurry up. In those days the OCD had been all about hand washing. That symptom had lessened, thankfully, but had been replaced by counting.

She saw disjointed, irrelevant visual memories—sand, a leaf, the bars on her playpen, her best friend from fourth grade, Akiye.

She heard audio memories, like a corrupted download that skipped from snatches of conversation to the sound of the wind to a barking dog to something that scraped to something else that pulsed.

A heart. Not hers, but so close. Her mother’s heart, as she had heard it in her mother’s womb.

They were opening her up like a book and reading her. Not that they understood, not that they saw in detail, for their comments were more general.

“That seemed sad,” Benjamin would say, and his brother would say, “Mine felt angry.”

They were leeches attached to her emotions, feeling what she felt in some way that was both distant and intimate, like being groped by someone wearing thick gloves.

And then—

“Gah.” said Benjamin. “The little pig has wet herself.”

She had felt the truth of it. She had wanted to start crying, but she had never really stopped.

“Disgusting. I can’t go on, not until she’s cleaned up. KimKim ta

ke her back to her lodge,” Charles had said.

“I need a rest anyway,” Benjamin agreed. “Min! I’ll have a cocktail. I’ve earned it, eh?”

KimKim had hauled Minako, shamed and defiled, back to the lodge. “Take a shower. Change clothes,” he’d said harshly.