BZRK: Apocalypse (BZRK 3)

“It’s the only way,” Keats said, though he didn’t sound too sure of it. He pressed his lips together and stole a worried glance at Plath, who revealed no emotion.

Look how hard she’s gotten, Keats thought.

When they had first met, he’d marked her down as a spoiled little rich girl, probably a snob, who would condescend to him, look down her nose at him.

But that had not been true. She had been anything but a snob. But even then, early days, he’d noticed that effortless authority she carried with her. That was, without question, a product of wealth and privilege. Plath would admit that much. A billionaire’s daughter simply had an air about her that could not be faked by a working-class kid like Keats.

Part of him was proud of her in an uncomplicated way. He wanted to say, Well, look at you, all grown up and in charge. But part of him was small enough to focus on their relationship rather than BZRK. He was in love with her. He believed she loved him back. But how stable could a relationship be when there was this much of a difference in their circumstances? My God, the girl basically had a private army.

Anya let Plath touch her, just below her left eye.

Plath held the contact for a few seconds as her biot scampered off and began the journey to the optic nerve.

From now until Plath let her go, Anya’s sight would be shared. Plath would see what Anya saw. In the bathroom and bedroom, too, inevitably. The idea made Keats’s skin crawl, but this was BZRK.

Fighting for freedom. Saving the world.

Yeah, but hadn’t they done that when they stopped the Armstrongs from controlling the president? And when they stopped Burnofsky’s gray-goo scenario? Hadn’t they already won?

Then how was it th

ey were still trapped in this paranoid universe where they used the names of dead or made-up madmen? How was it that they were still taking orders from an invisible character called Lear?

The thought was out of his mouth before he could check it. “Why are we still doing this?”

Wilkes snorted. “Pretty blue eyes asks the right question. Why are we still doing this?”

“Because we haven’t won yet,” Plath said. But she didn’t quite like that answer. “It’s not over yet.”

“How does it get to be over?” Keats asked. “How will we know it’s over?” He had been leaning forward, now he drew back. “Look, isn’t this about the knowledge, really? Once we know how to make nanobots and biots, how do we ever unlearn that? It’s like nuclear bombs, isn’t it. How do you stop it spreading once the technology exists?”

“When the last of us is dead, it’s game over. For us. Right?” This was the first time Billy had spoken. “I mean, it’s a game, right? Biots versus nanobots. Take over the world. Isn’t it a game?”

“No, it’s real,” Plath insisted. “The Armstrong Twins are real, and we’re real, and Jin was real.”

“Yeah, but …” Billy felt the weight of disapproval. “Yeah, but games are real. That’s what you don’t get, with respect to you, Plath. Games are real to the people playing them. While they’re playing.”

No one said anything; after all, Billy was just a kid. But Keats couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d just heard something important, that Billy had blurted out the truth. It could be real, and dangerous, and deadly, and yet still be a game, he thought.

When was a game over? When you lost.

Or when you won and went off in search of a new game.

Biot versus nanobot. That was the game. But now, according to Plath by way of Lear, a new level was being revealed. Something out there could kill biots remotely. Dead biots meant madness. It meant killing yourself on an escalator in Saks.

So why bother to blow up a boat? If you could generate then kill biots, then why did it seem so much like manipulation? The Armstrong Twins would not hesitate if they could kill Plath and him.

So why wasn’t he dead?

Because the game was somehow more complicated than that.

The video played again, looping. Keats watched the faces watching Nijinsky. They watched in surprise as he stared and spoke to the air. Then in shock as he threw himself down the escalator. Horror as he fed the silk scarf into the mechanism that choked the life from him.

Then, Keats picked up the remote and rewound.

“Enough!” Wilkes yelled.

“Wait,” Keats said. “Don’t watch Jin. Watch the people around him. That woman. The one with the ink.”