Keats ran on two surfaces. On concrete blocked by bodies. On a sheet of ripply glass over honeycomb. He felt like he was flying. He felt like he was racing against himself. He covered meters and micrometers, saw skyscrapers ahead, one measured in hundreds of feet, and one likely no more than three.
He plowed straight through two guys walking side by side and looking down at
their BlackBerries. He kicked through an A-frame sign advertising a Chinese menu. He could hear his pursuers panting into headsets, “It’s the male, it’s the male! Heading west down Forty-third!”
And that was not good because it meant there were others playing the game of Catch-a-Keats.
A body to his right, crossing the street, practically hurdling the cabs as they blurred past.
It’s the test, he realized with a shock of recognition. Dr. Pound’s test. Only he had no weapons.
Wham!
Keats went flying into a wall, bounced, hit the ground face-first, skinned hands and knees and cheek and they buried him in bodies, knees in his back, arms twisting behind him, plastic handcuff ties cinching his wrists.
An SUV screeched to a halt, bumped up onto the curb, its wheel inches from his face.
“Let me go! Let me go! Get off me! Police! Police!” Keats yelled, but then a rubber ball was forced into his mouth. Duct tape went swiftly around his head locking the gag in place.
They picked him up and threw him roughly into the backseat.
The crowd at the UN was going to be run through security, that much was definite. What looked like a major terrorist strike at the UN? That meant everyone on the plaza was getting ID’d and eyeballed by suspicious cops. Already Nijinsky was hearing people mutter about 9/11.
Mounted police were moving in, ready to chase down any runners. The horses clip-clopped and snorted. Tall-seated men with visored eyes looked down at Vincent and Nijinsky and the various demonstrators—and security people pretending to be demonstrators.
That wasn’t good. Both BZRKers had fake IDs—good ones that would pass casual scrutiny and even make it through a superficial computer check. But a deeper check would reveal them as fake. And that would be trouble.
But nothing like the trouble down in the nano.
The president of the United States, Helen Falkenhym Morales, was a battleground.
The Secret Service, upon learning of the situation at the UN, had moved her out of the reception into a safe room at the same hotel. An entire wing of rooms, as well as the rooms below and above the president’s safe place had been emptied.
Plainclothes agents with pistols were joined by armored agents with submachine guns, nerves all a-twang, and God help the chambermaid who wandered inadvertently into that perimeter.
But it didn’t matter.
The cluster of nanobots, platooned, was right ahead. Bug Man had sent his spinners scurrying away to relative safety. If he lost his spinners he lost, period.
“Banzai,” Vincent said, just loudly enough for Nijinsky to hear, and sent his biots rushing into the nanobots.
The nanobots were spreading to left and right in the vast chamber of the chiasma. The fluid environment slowed V3 and V4 a little, like running into a headwind. But it also meant Bug Man couldn’t drop wheels and ramp up his speed, which left the biots the faster of the two.
Bug Man would try a pincer. He would pull back the center and send the wings around like the claws of a crab.
Vincent wasn’t having it. He charged until he was at the midpoint between the scurrying wings, noted that the nanobots on the right were slipping and sliding, gaining weak purchase on tight, slick terrain, and pivoted toward them.
V3 and V4 each stabbed a nanobot in the com-stack. That was better than ripping them open: it was faster and it would leave Bug Man wasting time trying to restore visuals.
The biots clambered right up over the two blinded nanobots and sat atop them. The biots were longer, so their tails and heads hung off fore and aft, which meant two useful things: Bug Man would have to climb up over the legs of his own blind nanobots to get at Vincent— a notoriously difficult move, especially if you were platooning.
And by climbing atop the useless nanobots, Bug Man’s visuals would be confused. Nanobot sensors would have a hard time making sense of the tall pile of arms and torsos.
But that wasn’t slowing the Bug Man down. He had a move of his own. Two nanobots ran up and stopped just out of reach of Vincent’s stabbing and cutting arms. Then two other nanobots used the stopped nanobots the way a gymnast uses a mini-trampoline to vault.
Two nanobots came soaring down at V3 and V4, lances out.
“Heh,” Vincent said to no one. “Nice.”