BZRK (BZRK 1)

Burnofsky wondered why he had given the kill order to One-Up. She didn’t need it. She knew a wire job this rough and ready, this tenuous, needed to be terminated.

It occurred to him that he wanted to take the burden of guilt on himself. That he often did that. Maybe if One-Up were older … But a seventeen-year-old girl should have some deniability for murder.

How in hell had it come to this?

Burnofsky remembered—how many years ago had it been—when he and young Grey McLure had worked together. Back in the day. No

w Grey was dead. And Burnofsky had made it happen, even if it was Bug Man who had done the actual deed.

He slipped the flash drive containing security codes—CCTV access, computer access, door passes for the United Nations Building—into his pocket.

He raised the pipe and lit a match.

Twenty-seven twitchers to take over the world. Half of them nothing but messed-up children.

Yeah. Well. What …

Oh! Oh, yes.

Oh, yeah …

Burnofsky lay back, forgetting the pipe still dangling from his hand, and laughed softly, happily to himself.

ELEVEN

“Who are you?” Sadie asked.

Noah shrugged. “They said not to tell anyone my name.”

They looked at each other across the shabby room. The walls were a water-stained green. The ceiling was pressed tin with a repeating wreath pattern that wrapped around the place where a light fixture must once have hung. The couch was cracked brown leather, and there was a rectangular glass coffee table decorated with rings left by cups and mugs. A disappointingly empty bag of hot-and-spicy Doritos sat next to an equally empty soda can.

There was a TV. CNN was on, but muted.

There was a computer. Someone had left it on a game site.

There were cameras, but neither Sadie nor Noah saw those because they were no more than nail holes in the crown molding.

Sadie was seated in a deep, badly upholstered Morris chair. Noah had just walked in and looked a bit lost. She had a mug of green tea. He had a camouflage backpack that he pushed against the wall so as not to trip anyone.

Sadie was sharply alert, despite not having slept at all, and Noah was blinking too much and breathing too hard as a result of not having slept enough.

Morning had cast a gray shadow behind the pulled-down blinds in the tall windows.

Sadie saw the inexpensive luggage, the jacket that had definitely not come from any of the shops on Fifth Avenue, the sneakers, the arguably cute and definitely authentic bed head, the tentative mouth, the alarmingly blue eyes.

She had noted the English accent. She knew—from her mother, from her mother’s British friends, from several visits to London—that English accents came in a wide range of types, from “My ancestors cleaned out stables” all the way up to “Your ancestors cleaned my ancestors’ stables.” Noah was definitely on the stable-cleaning end of the spectrum.

That made her inclined to like him. Or at least to think that it might be possible to like him.

For his part Noah saw a girl doing her best not to look like the sort of girl who was probably comfortable ordering around grown men and women. A girl with servants, he thought, you could see it in her look. Not haughty. Not a bitch. But also not even a little bit shy about looking him in the eye and allowing her judgment to show clearly.

She thought he might have some potential. She also expected to be disappointed.

He thought she would never agree to go out with him.

She liked his eyes.

He liked her freckles.