BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

“It’s faster. It can jump. It has an improved rack for add-on weaponry. The legs are stronger.”

“Yes?” he asked, not nearly as cool as he wanted to sound.

“And it has a rather interesting penetrating proboscis, hollow of course, with a bladder. Mosquito-derived.”

“So it can suck blood?” He was puzzled.

“It goes the other way. The bladder can be filled with any number of interesting agents—chemical, bacteriological, viral—and injected. No more carrying sacks of germs with you if you want to plant something deadly.”

“We don’t do that,” Nijinsky said.

“Ah. Of course. I forgot: you’re the good guys,” she mocked. “Not for you, planting a bit of flesh-eating bacteria in some enemy’s brain.”

“There are limits,” he said.

“Just like you don’t wire people.”

He raised his head and looked at her. “Dr Violet, we will endeavor to remove any alterations made in your brain.”

She swallowed in a suddenly dry throat.

“We do things out of extreme necessity,” he went on, sounding sanctimonious even to himself. “Vincent wired you, as little as he could, just enough to—”

“I’m in love with him,” she said, and now her voice was no longer tight and controlled. “And your solution is to take that away from me? And then what?”

He looked quickly away, as if eye contact had become painful.

Neither spoke. His knee no longer touched hers. She wondered if his biots were now making the slow, laborious climb up the length of her thigh on their way to her brain. No, not likely: he could have simply planted them on her face, no need for subterfuge.

“What else?” he asked.

“The visuals are better. It will make wiring easier and more accurate. The downside? You feel pain when it feels pain. And God himself only knows what effect it has if you lose one.”

Nijinsky controlled his breathing, not wanting to signal his excitement. “Can you make them?” he asked.

“Version four? Of course I can make them, they’ve been successfully tested,” she said. “Get me to the lab and I can grow one in a few hours.”

Nijinsky nodded. Not an easy proposition. The McLure labs had been the scene of a bloody battle. A massacre. But Lear had been busy, and a backup existed.

“What if it wasn’t your lab?” Nijinsky asked. “What if it was a place with all the same equipment, the same samples or most of them, essentially the same data files, even better computers, and so on?”

That surprised her. “You have another lab in New York?”

“Not in New York,” he said, and offered no further explanation. She ran down a list of equipment. To each item Nijinsky said, “Yes.”

“Well, aren’t you clever little conspirators?” she asked sarcastically. “Yes, if everything is as you say, yes, I can do it. But why should I?”

“What do you want?” he asked.

“So many things,” she said with a hard laugh.

Silence again, as the truth seeped into her consciousness. The truth was a pain in her heart. “What do I want? Don’t. Don’t take him from me. Don’t send your bugs into me, and don’t cut the wires, and don’t find his last biot and take it from me.” Tears had already rolled down her cheeks. “It’s all I have of him.”

SEVEN

A short elevator ride for two billion dollars.

“Sadie. It’s good to see you,” Stern said. He shook her hand firmly.