Vincent held his breath. He had heard her and understood and all at once he was completely up in that shadow world, disoriented.
“Tell him,” Keats said.
“He may —” Wilkes said, but stopped herself. “Nah. Blue eyes is right. Tell him.”
“Vincent, we cauterized a part of your brain,” Plath said. “I feel it. I feel something missing.”
“Daisy …Daisy . . .” Wilkes sang in a low voice and laughed her heh-heh-heh laugh.
“You were damaged,” Plath said. “We …We did our best to fix you. We need you.”
“You burned a hole in my brain.”
“Yes,” Anya Violet said. He recognized her, knew her, suddenly knew the taste of her lips and the smell of her hair. “Because they’re the good guys and they needed to win.”
Vincent did not hear the sarcasm. “To win the game?”
Plath nodded, and now there were tears spilling from her eyes. He knew her, too. “Yes, Vincent. To win the game. We had to try and save you. We needed you. We need you now. To win the game, to wire Bug Man.”
Vincent’s eyes narrowed. “Wiring is the win?”
Plath shot a desperate look at Keats, who looked for a moment as if he might be sick, but then clenched his jaw, nodded once, and said, “That’s right, Vincent. The wire is the win. But we’re going to need to send Wilkes and Plath in, too, for a complete wiring, and we can’t do that unless Bug Man’s forces are destroyed. So for you the ‘win’ is disarming him.”
“Kill his nanobots, Vincent,” Plath said. “Then lay some scrambling wire until we can get more biots in his brain.”
“Thank you,” Vincent whispered.
His three biots looked up at the clinging nanobots. And just then, all dozen nanobots stirred.
Bug Man sat wet and naked and freshly shaved from wrist to face and shakily donned his gear. He keyed the visuals for the nanobots guarding his nasal passage. They were fine and functional. Same with those in each ear.
Left eye, okay.
No contact with the other eye.
He switched visuals to the chiasm, an eye entry usually led here. Twelve screens opened in a snap. Hanging above/below his nanobots stood two identical biots and a third, similar but slightly longer.
Bug Man enlarged the visuals, not quite able to accept what he was seeing. It was hard telling one biot from the next, it was almost more instinct than recognition, but as the disturbing insect/human faces came into wavy focus he knew.
Vincent.
A thrill of fear went through Bug Man.
Back from madness? Vincent was back?
Twelve nanobots against three of Vincent’s biots. Four-to-one odds. Against most twitchers that would be more than enough. Vincent was not most twitchers. The last time he’d faced Vincent the odds were heavily in Bug Man’s favor and he’d barely come out on top.
He felt defeat coming. He was exhausted. He was frightened. He was eaten up inside with the loss of Jessica.
Bug Man had one small hope: he had to focus on killing one biot, ignore the rest, all it would take is that single kill and Vincent would be out of it again, this time, he fervently hoped, forever.
He platooned all twelve nanobots together. They would move as one.
One punch, that’s all he would get.
The twelve nanobots released their hold and pushed off into the cerebrospinal fluid, descending on Vincent like a mailed fist.
Halfway there Bug Man saw the two original biots move aside. They each crouched down and folded their legs, a clear sign that they were out of this battle.