BZRK (BZRK 1)

The slow-motion battle inside the president’s brain had turned into vicious three-on-one combat as nanobots ripped at a wounded biot. Pieces of the biot were coming loose—legs, bits of body, twirling slowly away, joined by shreds of cut-up nanobot.

Charles stared at Sugar Lebowski. “You let … Are you suggesting …” Charles’s face could grow red without having the same effect on Benjamin. But it meant the heart they shared was beating harder and faster, and this in itself caused Benjamin’s eyes to grow wide with confusion.

“They may be here,” Sugar said in a ragged half whisper. “I mean, right here.”

To which Benjamin said, “Remember the GI Joes we got for Christmas?”

The wire was formed by spinnerets derived from spider DNA. A cluster of tiny retractable spigots extruded strands of fiber that then were twisted into cable.

Of course the result was not spider silk but a more complex structure that adhered like silk but conducted the minute electrical charges of the brain along a superconducting element.

The wire could be simply stuck to the surface of a brain structure, or it could be pinned. Pinning was just what it sounded like— a pin (a biot could carry a dozen) with numerous barbs was stabbed into the brain matter like a piton holding a climbing rope. Each pin would contact a different neuron or cluster of neurons.

In a careful, cautious wiring, each pin would then be sampled to get an idea of what memory or function was involved.

Plath didn’t have time for that. No time to sample, no time to refer to brain maps or to pass the data through computer analysis.

She had time only to stab and rappel with the wire and stab again. She had planted fourteen pins and strung seven wires so far.

She had scattered her transponders. And she had also strung some random surface wire. There was no way to know what effect it was having, if any, because it was exactly what you didn’t do if you wanted the subject to be unaware of what was happening. There was no subtlety or art involved. This wasn’t wiring as Vincent or Bug Man might do it: this was amateur work. Panicked, terrified amateur work. Her biots were racing without a clue or a plan.

P1 stabbed a pin deep and lit up all barbs. It attached wire and scampered away as fast as its spinnerets could produce wire. Stopped and stabbed again.

And then it occurred to her: Why just A to B lines? Why not keep the wire running from pin to pin to pin? Like a cat’s cradle.

So now, from her fragrant Dumpster hiding place, she stabbed and crisscrossed wire, with both biots nearly drained of fluid. Soon she would have to stop and wait for the silk glands to reload.

But for now she ran and leapt and stabbed and listened to the sounds of running feet in the alleyway and shouted voices as far too many people searched for her.

Vincent said, “V3 is in bad shape.”

“I’m almost there, Vincent, pull back if you can.” Nijinsky was hustling them down the street, putting distance between them and the security magnet of the UN.

“Later they’ll remember us,” Vincent said. “You need to look to your macro security, Jin. They’ll find you.”

“Goddamnit, Vincent, focus on keeping your biots alive.”

Vincent shuddered. Nijinsky saw it, a sort of spasm that twisted the impassive features into a human expression of fear.

Nijinsky was sick inside. His biots were running so fast he was in danger of getting lost. His light organs couldn’t glow far enough ahead. It was like driving at a hundred miles an hour on a dark, back-country road with dim headlights.

Vincent stopped moving.

“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Vincent cried. “Oh, oh, oh.”

The hollowed-out look in Vincent’s face told Nijinsky all he needed to know.

“No, no, no,” Nijinsky cried, and put his arms protectively around Vincent as Vincent’s eyes filled with tears and he began a low, soft moaning.

TWENTY-NINE

“Yeah, fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!” Bug Man cried.

The dead biot—so very dead, split into two barely connected pieces, dead, and floating legless, dead, through the fluid—was a miracle.

He had lost half his force doing it, and the chiasmic chamber was dotted with legs and sensors and wheels and unidentifiable pieces of circuit and metal skin. The Bug Man logo floated by one of his screens, but none of that a mattered: he had killed one of Vincent’s biots.

It froze him for a moment.