BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

“So, I want to give Ms Thrum something to watch, Mr Stern. I want her and the Armstrongs to be unsure which side I’m on. I made it clear that I trusted you, so they’ll be watching you. I want you to start looking for a person who calls him- …or her- …self, Lear. For all I know it’s not a real person, or may be several people, but he, she, or it, is running BZRK. Spend some money on that search. Let Thrum see that you’re looking.”

She heard a soft, satisfied chuckle. “You’re capable of deviousness, Sadie. Your brother …I loved him because he was the boss’s son. But there’s more of your father in you.”

She fell silent at that and covered the silence by bending down to select a bottle of conditioner and appearing to read the ingredients label. Memories of her brother, Stone, had come rushing back. How had he been at the end? How had he felt knowing that the plane he was in would crash?

He had been brave, she was sure of that. She pushed away a sob and sucked in a sharp breath.

“In my father’s study, on the shelf, there’s a copy of Alice in Wonderland

. In the spine, there’s a key. It goes to a safe deposit box at UBS, the bank, in Manhattan. My father said I’d remember it by thinking of You Bullshit Bank. You B.S. The box number is 0726, my mother’s birthday. They’ll ask you a verification question. It won’t matter what the question is, the answer you give is ‘pepperoni pizza.’ In the box are bonds worth two hundred million dollars. Let Ms Thrum watch the fifty she knows about. We’ll use the two hundred she doesn’t to keep BZRK going and to find me an escape route.”

“Aren’t you worried I’ll take the money and run?”

Her answer was bleak, not glib. “I have to trust you. I don’t want to, honestly, because I’m scared. I’m in a trap.But I have to, I have to trust someone. So it’s you.”

“And the boy,” he said.

“We’ll see about that,” she said. “Don’t follow me and don’t try to protect me. I know you’ll want to, but don’t. Caligula …the man in the fanciful hat? He’ll …he will resent it. Find me an escape route.” She started to walk away, hesitated, then over her shoulder added, “Something near the beach, in Africa.”

Billy the Kid had spent the night after the massacre at the foster home where he had not been in the three weeks since joining BZRK. He could think of nowhere else to go, and he felt hollowed-out and stretched very, very thin.

The man in the foster home, Daddy Tom as he liked to be called, let him in without a word and said nothing as Billy trudged wearily to the bedroom he shared with a boy named Marshall.

Daddy Tom smirked as Billy came in, but to Billy’s relief he didn’t insist on seeing what was in the bag. In the morning an only-slightlyrested Billy walked out onto cold streets beneath threatening clouds.

He needed to think, and he needed to figure things out. Everyone from BZRK Washington was dead. They hadn’t really liked him anyway, and the feeling was mutual. The Washington BZRKers kept telling him they’d let him play the game, but they never did. He heard about biots, he knew what they were, they’d let him see some very weird video. But they had not given him a biot.

It was in online gaming forums that he had first heard from someone calling himself Lear. Billy had posted some impressive numbers, and he’d let it be known that he was a foster kid, unconnected, sick of where he was, looking for …well, looking.

Joining the Washington BZRK group had set off an uproar, with some of the others demanding to know what the hell was going on if they were down to recruiting children.

Well, they were all dead, weren’t they? And he was the one walking around with their credit cards and their phones and their pads. So much for being a child.

The others had died like newbies. They had barely gotten off a shot, like this was the first time they’d ever really played an FPS game. They’d been surprised and they had panicked.

Newbies.

And he was the child?

Suddenly he saw that house again in memory, the common room

with the twisted tangle of bodies on the floor and blood all over the walls and the stink of urine and feces. He threw up thinking about it and looked up to realize he was throwing up within sight of the White House. How weird was that? It made him feel …well, something made him feel …strange, sick, like he wanted to be even sicker. But no, he wasn’t having any of that.

He stopped and sat on a park bench and searched the phones for Lear. Lear was the big boss, right? Well, didn’t Lear owe him now? Who had killed all those phony cops? Not the so-called adults. Billy. Billy the Kid.

BANG! Hole. Smoke. Blood.

That was new, that’s what still made him feel wrong: real blood. And real death, which was so much dirtier than the gaming version. A car went past, horn blaring, and he realized he’d stepped into

traffic, like he had lost consciousness or whatever, like his brain had

stopped functioning.

He reached the far curb, shaking. His lungs felt congested. The

wound in his side burned with fresh pain. He had put some Neosporin and Band-Aids on it and managed to sleep with a couple of Advil.

But now, walking, walking, the scab that had formed was chafing. He