BZRK: Apocalypse (BZRK 3)

“I have to ask …”

“What?” She frowned, wishing he would go away and let her adjust to this feeling of emptiness. She felt nauseous. She felt as if she might at some point throw up. She felt not herself, like this was not her body, like she was a head transplant attached to some new torso. Alien.

“I have to ask what you told Caligula.”

“Caligula? Nothing. I can’t text him or call him.”

Keats wanted to heave a sigh of relief, but it might have seemed as if he hadn’t trusted her. Then …

“I told Lear.”

His blue eyes snapped up to hers, and his brows lowered. “Told Lear what?”

“That Caligula should do it.”

“What?” He grabbed her shoulders. “You gave the go-ahead to blow up the Tulip?”

She nodded. No emotion. Yes, she had ordered up an atrocity. No emotion. Yes, she had ordered mass murder. Nothing.

“Jesus, Sadie,” he said, and his voice broke.

She blinked, taken aback by his reaction. “It’s okay,” she said.

He released her, and now he was no longer looking at her, he was staring into the window in his mind where his biot’s visual flow would be. But the images were grainy and indistinct. The distance was too great. The biot he had in Caligula’s head was too far out of range for useful input.

“We have to stop him,” Keats said.

“Uh-huh,” she said indifferently.

What happened next was pure instinct, and he regretted it even as his hand was flying through the air, even as the flat of his palm connected with the side of her face with enough force to snap her head around and start the tears in her eyes.

When her eyes came back around there was emotion. Anger. Finally, anger.

“Listen to me,” he said, regretful but determined, too. “We have to stop him.”

“Don’t you fucking hit me,” she snarled.

“Good. You’re not dead yet, are you? I’m sorry about the slap, but you sound like you’re in a coma.”

“And who put me there?” she demanded.

“Lear put you there!” he said. “This has all been a game for him. We wanted to stop one evil, so we never even asked questions about whether the man we served was just as bad. Or worse.” He felt her attention slipping away and wanted to grab her but knew that would be wrong. So he leaned closer to her, bending down so that she could not avoid looking at him. “Madness like a bloody plague. All over. It’s all Lear. It’s Lear making biots and then killing them to drive people mad. Hundreds of dead already. The Pope went mad and attacked little children. Sadie, that’s his game.”

“The Pope?”

“Lear. Lear! And we have to stop him. We have to stop Lear!”

“The Twins,” she said, sounding vague.

“Yeah, them, too,” Keats said. “Come on.”

He grabbed her hand and yanked her along with him.

Wilkes stood up as they burst into the living room. Billy was absorbed in his phone.

“Caligula’s going to blow up the Tulip,” Keats said. “We have to stop him.”

“Blow up the Tulip?” Wilkes said. “I thought that—”