BZRK (BZRK 1)

Alex nodded, satisfied with himself, then kept nodding harder and harder, until his whole body was vibrating almost like some kind of seizure. The shackles rattled the bed. The whole cell seemed to vibrate in sympathy.

“Berserk!” Alex said, louder now and louder still until he was shouting it.

“Berserk! Berserk!”

“Jesus,” Noah said, hating himself for reacting, for letting his horror show.

“Once he starts on this, it’s over for the day,” the guard said wearily. He grabbed Noah’s arm, not unkindly. “Goes on for hours with this berserk shite of his.”

“Berserk! Berserk!”

Noah let himself be led from the cell.

“Berserk!”

When he heard the door locked behind him, he felt a wave of sickness and relief. But it didn’t stop the sound of his mad brother’s cries, which followed him down the hallway, drilling holes into Noah’s reeling mind.

“Berserk!”

“BERSERK!”

TWO

Stone McLure wasn’t model handsome. Not one of those, one of those guys who looked pretty. Even though he was just seventeen, Stone wasn’t really for girls. He was for women.

Women would look at him and let their eyes slide over his face and those shoulders, because, you know, women don’t stare the way men do. They just need a glance. And then, having memorized him with a glance, they would regret their marriage, regret their age, regret their sweatpants and faded Abercrombie T-shirts, regret that they were carrying a plastic bag of groceries in one hand and a twenty-four pack of Pampers in the other.

Stone pulled his earbuds out.

“Where are we stopping first?” he asked his father.

“We’ll refuel in San Francisco and pick up a second pilot. Then I have a brief meeting in Hokkaido, and it’s on to Singapore.” He said it without looking up from his work.

Earbuds back in.

Stone had curly dark hair and eyes like polished green marble with golden threads woven through. He had a brow that seemed designed by God to mark him as honest, a strong nose, a complexion that had surely never been marred by so much as a freckle, let alone a pimple—what pimple would dare?

He looked a bit like his father, Grey McLure—and most of the world knew Grey’s face—but Grey had the signs of weariness and wariness that came of being a billionaire of the better sort. A billionaire who had made his money with science and innovation and in all the ways you’d hope a billionaire would make his money.

They were sitting just a couple of feet apart in the back of a Cessna Citation X, Grey facing aft, Stone facing forward. It was a private jet, yes, but no more ostentatious than was absolutely necessary in a private jet. There was no hot flight attendant in a teasing uniform. No flowing Champagne. None of that. Grey’s jet was about business. And his son was learning that business.

Grey was drinking coffee from a mug that said FAIRLY DECENT DAD. See, a mug that said WORLD’S BEST DAD would have violated the Grey family’s style, which was self-deprecating, wry, and utterly devoted.

Grey was tapping away at his pad and sipping and tapping and frowning a bit from time to time.

Stone was reading a book on his own pad, not maybe paying as much attention as he should, because in his ears were the buds and through them came the raw, hoarse voice of Tony Kovacs.

Being here with my surroundings,

Seeing all I’m looking at,

Evolution winking at me,

My face forms a smile.

Earbuds out.

“So this would be a flight measured more in days than in mere hours,” Stone said, and stretched his legs.