BZRK (BZRK 1)

“It’s very pretty.”

Ophelia didn’t seem convinced that Sadie was being sincere. “So. You know about biots. You know that Grey McLure created that technology. And he gave us access to it.”

“Why?”

“Because we need it,” Ophelia said. “There was a long history between your dad and a … well, between Grey McLure and the Armstrong Twins.”

Sip. “I’ve heard of them. There’s something wrong with them, right?”

“Clean so far.” This was Renfield, coming in, pulling a chair out, and sitting a couple of feet back from the two females.

Ophelia’s smile this time was pained, and a little embarrassed. “Renfield has two biots on you.”

When he had blindfolded her. Of course.

“You’ve had biots aboard before,” Renfield said. “One of them dropped a Teflon fiber on your cochlea.” He shrugged. “It wouldn’t cause any problems, but I’ll remove it, anyway.”

Sadie had grown accustomed to knowing that microscopic quasi-spiders were traveling around and through her body. Her father’s biots, and most recently the medicos. But it was unpleasant thinking of this boy’s eyes and ears strolling around inside her brain. The irritation was lessened somewhat by the fact that he had a bit of booger clinging precariously to one nostril. It gave Sadie an advantage over the cocky Eurotrash.

“The scans would have shown nanobots on your skin,” Ophelia said. “But they can quite easily hide inside you. For that we need to take a closer look.”

“Or not. If they’re hiding out,” Renfield said. Then he did a very strange thing. He quickly pinched off the hanging booger.

Sadie stared at him. He looked past her.

Guilty.

“You can see what I see,” Sadie said. She stood up, suddenly furious. “I was focusing on your nose, and you saw it.”

“A biot can sink a probe into the optic nerve, or even into the visual cortex,” Ophelia said. “It’s hit-and-miss. Sometimes you get a pretty complete picture. Sometimes—”

Sadie slammed her good hand down on the tabletop. It made a loud noise and caused her coffee to jump. Then she stabbed a finger at Renfield’s smug face and said, “Get out of my head.”

“You don’t give me—”

“Do you like the feel of hot coffee on your—”

“Calm!” Ophelia cried. “Calm. Calm. Renfield? Stay out of her senses. That’s not necessary to your job.”

Two things were instantly clear: there was rank with these people, and Ophelia, as soft-spoken as she was, outranked Renfield.

And Renfield was conceiving a powerful dislike of Sadie. That, too, was clear.

“What else can he do in my head? Can he read my memories?”

“No,” Ophelia said, still in her calm, calm, calm voice. “We can’t really read memories. But we can locate them. It’s like … Well, think of it like this: we can find it the way you can search a book for a particular word. But we can’t then read the whole book. We can find the location of an idea. Then, we can spin a wire and just lay it on the surface, or we can belay off a pin that’s jabbed into the brain, or we can plant a transponder.”

“And what does that do?” Sadie demanded, glaring at Renfield.

“Wire or transponder, it connects two different memories or thoughts. It connects them in ways that the mind had not previously done. For example, we could locate your memories of a favorite pet. A cat, maybe. And we could link that memory to something you feared or hated.”

Renfield smoothed his hair back with his hand. “And every time you think, kitty, kitty, you also think, fear, fear.”

“Enough of those connections and you can alter the way a person thinks. You can create false fears. You can rewrite memories. You can create love or hate.”

Sadie, still refusing to sit down, said, “My father never would have done any of that. That’s obscene.”

“This isn’t McLure Industries,” Renfield said. “Your father gave us the tech. He didn’t run the show.”