BZRK (BZRK 1)

“Shh,” Keats said. “People.”

There was movement near the Dumpster. Plath fell silent. A new visual had opened up. So strange. Like a window inside a window. Like picture in picture on a TV, except that this picture was black and white and grainy, as if the pixels were all an inch on each side.

Then she remembered: the raw feed from the optic nerve was upside down. She reversed it mentally, as well as she could, anyway, but still it made no sense.

She drew back the probe. Twice more she stabbed, and then she had it. Not clear, still grainy, but wider in scope, less like she was looking at the world through a straw.

She was seeing an eye. The very eye she was looking through.

She was looking in a mirror, that was it.

Her stomach was tied in knots. Yeah, it was a mirror, or the high-tech equivalent of a mirror, and now the eye swept across the mirror, no longer looking at itself. Looking at a face.

A face like no other.

“It’s them,” she whispered voicelessly.

Keats held her close.

Bug Man and Burnofsky got the same message on their monitors at the same time.

One-Up missing. Kim and Alfredo dead. UN locked down.

You must take your targets.

CBA

CBA. Charles and Benjamin Armstrong.

Bug Man and Burnofsky.

Both had reached their targets.

Two armies of nanobots were in place. One on the Chinese leader, one on the American.

Kim’s nanobots were in place on the Indian, Chauksey. Alfredo’s little army was still two jumps away from Prime Minister Hayashi. Those forces were immobilized for now, until they could be repurposed to a new twitcher. That would take time.

Dietrich wasn’t good enough to reach the Japanese in Bug Man’s estimation. But assuming One-Up was on track, they might still take the American, the Brit, and the Chinese.

Bug Man took a gamble. Time to make it clear he was more than just a twitcher. His game could extend into the macro. He keyed a message to Twofer.

Suggest: take Dietrich off Jap give him Indian.

No reply. But that was okay.

Victory was still within reach. The unknown was whether any of the targets were defended. In a fight One-Up could handle herself, and so could Burnofsky.

Even if only Bug Man and Burnofsky prevailed, the world’s two greatest powers would be subtly but inexorably bent to serving the wills of Charles and Benjamin Armstrong. Whatever had happened or was still to happen to the others, it wouldn’t matter, not if he and Burnofsky succeeded.

Of course in a perfect world, Bug Man thought, in a perfect world, Burnofsky and all the rest would fail and only Bug Man would triumph.

But that was an ambitious dream.

Time to begin the wiring of the president of the United States.

He laughed out loud at the thought.

The Twins would kiss his ass this time. They would bow down before him.