BZRK (BZRK 1)

A woman in the shooter game, just a housewife by the look of her, drew a knife and jabbed it straight for Noah’s face. He twisted the glove, causing his avatar to dodge, and flicked his right finger experimentally. His gun fired. The round hit a passing car, shattering its window.

And suddenly, the unmistakable, ear-shattering noise of a chain saw. Real world. Not game.

He shot a look down, and oh my God, it was spinning, and now the teeth were just grazing the wood of the chair leg, with splinters flying and sawdust cascading.

The left! Three crudely mechanical robots, not so different from his own avatar, came rushing across the sphere, and that wasn’t as important as the way a cab’s window was rolling down and a gun appeared and Noah twisted his glove and fired and the shooter’s very, very realistic face suddenly had a neat round hole in its forehead.

And the tiny buglike creatures in the other game, the left game, fired what looked like cute little beam weapons at—

“Goddamnit!” The electric shock again and stronger this time.

The little robots fired again and once more his face was convulsed, but now

he’d missed the big man who came rushing out of an alley with an axe and swinging it and his avatar crumpling and the chain saw shrieked as it bit into the chair leg.

“Stop it!” Noah screamed, but he had no time for screaming because he had to propel his Nano avatar forward while stepping back from the axe coming down again and the little bugs spraying something at him and—

“Jesus!” as the shock seemed to blow his consciousness apart while the chain saw screeched as it bit fully into solid oak, and he could feel the splinters and feel the wind coming off it.

And then, the calm descended.

The shrill sound of the saw seemed now to come from a great distance.

Noah unsaw everything beyond the frames of the monitors.

He unfelt the fear.

He detached himself from the chair and the Velcro and the pinching of his nose and ear and unremembered his brother, and stopped feeling or thinking …

He leapt, came down behind the closest of the tiny robots and stabbed it with his needle-sharp leg and fired into the face of the man with the axe while racing across the sphere and flexing his spider legs and flying and pivoting to land on a bumpy gray wall that instantly attacked him with sticky fuzz balls and another shock and he kicked off a graffitied New York City wall and fired in midair and the businessman with the machine pistol never even aimed died with a bullet through his neck, arterial blood pumping.

Another shock! But it was happening to someone else. Some other Noah’s cheek was twisted in spasm, and some other eye was blinded by tears.

And the chain saw had ripped its way all the way through the chair leg; it was catching on the last half an inch, but that, too, was someone else’s problem.

Noah was batting away fuzz balls and pushing his way through a crowd and a spray of acid, and suddenly both monitors went blank. And up came that disturbing logo.

Noah was first aware that he could barely see for the sweat and tears in his eyes.

And then he felt the pinch of the clips, even as Dr. Pound removed them.

And the silence now that the chain saw was switched off.

Noah sucked in a shaky breath. He looked down at his right leg. The saw was all the way through the chair leg, with the other three legs bearing the weight. And a red line had been drawn on the quivering muscle of his calf, not deep, just enough to draw blood.

Dr. Pound moved with calm deliberation, removing the head band, ripping apart the Velcro.

“I can imagine you’d very much enjoy punching me in the face,” Dr. Pound said.

You have no idea, Noah thought.

But the emotion faded, pushed aside by stronger feelings and needs. Pride. Curiosity. The rush of survival.

“How did I do?” Noah asked.

Dr. Pound sighed. To Noah’s amazement, he laid his hand gently on Noah’s sweat-matted hair. “Young man. I’m not meant to know your identity. But the family resemblance is unmistakable.”

“You knew Alex?”