BZRK (BZRK 1)

Later Keats and Plath cooked pasta. It wasn’t an old family recipe, just some sauce from a jar. Plath used the massive pot her mother had once used to boil crabs, right here, right absolutely here in this very kitchen in a very different world.

And they had a dinner, all of them, Vincent and Anya, Nijinsky, Ophelia, Wilkes, Keats, and Plath. They drank a

nice Barolo. They passed around the freshly grated Parmesan. And it was normal if by normal you meant a horrible parody of normality.

Nijinsky had somehow found enough clothing of Plath’s father to look quite modelish again. And Wilkes kept her sudden digressions into hostility under control. And Anya looked at Vincent with loving eyes while he ate mechanically. And Ophelia somehow found her repertoire of smiles that made them all feel better.

And still it was the most desperately sad meal Plath had ever had.

It was Keats who broke the code of silence and asked Vincent, “When does it start?”

“Tomorrow,” Vincent said. “Our British cousins are in the city. They’ll be taking—defending—their prime minister. We have our president. And …” He paused, glanced at Anya as though not sure whether he could speak freely in her presence. Something reassured him, and in accepting reassurance, Plath thought something inside Vincent twisted and writhed a little bit, too, and he said, “And we have a little surprise for the Armstrong Twins.”

Every fork except Wilkes’s stopped moving.

“I won’t lie: they hit us pretty hard. We believe now that AFGC has targeted our president, Keats’s prime minister, the Chinese president, the Japanese and Indian prime ministers. Five targets. But the Armstrong Twins hit our Chinese and Indian cells very hard. So we’re probably going to have to give them up. And that’s very bad.”

“The Japanese cell is very tight, and they don’t seem to have been hit. So we’ll leave the Japanese PM to them. Same with our British cousins.”

“God save the king, eh?” Wilkes said to Keats.

“Or at least the prime minister. Even if he is a Tory,” Keats answered.

“Nijinsky and I are the first team on President Morales. Wilkes and Ophelia run counterforce for that,” Vincent went on.

“What’s counterforce?” Plath asked.

“There are three ways to stop a twitcher,” Ophelia explained. “You can beat him down in the nano. You can incapacitate him in the macro: in other words, kill him. Or you can wire him. Wilkes and I will be looking for the twitchers. They’ll use multiple locations near the UN Building to avoid having to use signal repeaters.”

“Their repeaters are junk,” Nijinsky interjected.

“We have word from Lear—possibly from a mole inside AFGC—that one of the locations will be inside the UN.”

“Inside the building? What, inside the UN itself?” Plath asked.

“Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation,” Ophelia said. “They still run more than four hundred gift shops in airports, in train stations in Europe, and in places like museums. And in the basement of the UN.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Keats said.

“That’s what we think,” Vincent confirmed. “So Ophelia and Wilkes are going to see if we can’t at least disrupt them there. Maybe expose them so they have to withdraw.”

“What about Keats and me?” Plath asked.

Vincent glanced guiltily at Nijinsky.

Nijinsky frowned, sensing that something bad was coming. He said, “They aren’t ready for—”

But Vincent cut him off.

“Lear has ordered … and I agree … that we need a counterattack. Something to throw them off. It has to be something real, with a real chance of success. The other side isn’t stupid—we can’t just wave our hands in the air and distract them.”

Nijinsky put down his wineglass with a little more force than necessary. “What are you sending them into?” He was seated directly across from Vincent.

Vincent took a sip of wine, stalling. Then, with no more emotion than he might have in announcing that tomorrow’s weather would be rainy, he said, “We’re going after the Twins directly.”

“May I speak to you in private, Vincent?” Nijinsky said through gritted teeth.

“My friend Jin thinks I’m sending you two on a suicide mission,” Vincent said, staring hard at Nijinsky, who glared back.