BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

Minako had counted the thirteenth step. And there was her mother.

She took another step, number fourteen, and her mother was gone. Like she had never been there. And of course, how could she have been?

Fifteen-sixteen-seventeen-and nothing, no mother, just the two scared but determined men glancing over their shoulders to make sure she was keeping up.

The first flight of steps counted nineteen, a prime. If the second flight was the same, that would be good.

One-two-three . . .

She counted to thirteen and—her mother, as real as anything she had ever seen, as real as real could be except that KimKim and Silver again stepped straight through her.

Minako froze.

The two men reached the bottom, noticed she wasn’t with them and Silver said, “What’s the matter, honey?”

“I . . .”

“Are you okay?” KimKim asked her in Japanese.

“I see my mother. I see her. Right there!” She pointed a finger at what was empty space to both men. “The thirteenth step. The same as the last time. The thirteenth step.”

Shaky, she took the fourteenth step and her mother disappeared. “There’s something …They did something to me. To my brain.”

KimKim took the steps two at a time to reach her. “That may be, Minako; that’s what they do. They do things inside your brain. You must ignore it. You must follow me and Sergeant Silver, and pay attention to nothing else.”

Minako sobbed. “I’m not good at that. I’m not …not good at ignoring things.”

“Yes, but you are a brave girl, and you will do it,” the spy said. He had taken her hands in his, an awkward embrace that pressed the chilly metal of his gun against her wrist.

The door at the bottom of the stairs opened. A crewman looked up, took it all in and looked shocked and confused. He saw Minako. He saw the pistol in KimKim’s hand. He saw Silver.

He hesitated.

“Keep your mouth shut and walk away,” Silver said. “Don’t volunteer for trouble.”

The crewman nodded once and pushed past them up the stairs.

“Will he tell on us?” Minako asked.

“Fifty-fifty,” Silver said. “Come on.”

They made it down the stairs and stepped out onto the helipad. The rain was coming down, but it was vertical, no longer horizontal. The swell was still heavy and the ship wallowed fore and aft, up and down.

“Not so much of a cross sea,” Silver commented. “And the wind is dying. Maybe an hour.”

KimKim led the way to the pilot/mechanic room, which was directly off the helipad and tucked beneath an exterior stairway. He stepped in without knocking.

The pilot was there, bent over a workbench, twisting something metal with two sets of pliers. He was a man in his thirties, with longish black hair falling back from a receding hairline.

“What do you want?” he demanded, and narrowed his eyes suspiciously when he saw Minako. Silver closed the door behind them and threw the lock.

“What the hell is going on?” the pilot demanded.

“What’s going on is that I have a gun,” KimKim said, helpfully showing the pistol. “So that means I talk and you listen.”

“I’m not scared.”

“Then that’s stupid, you should be scared.”