BZRK: Reloaded (BZRK 2)

and leap off the railing. The fall would be something close to a hundred feet, more than enough to kill her.

How long a fall? Two seconds? Three?

If only she could be sure it was not four seconds . . .

The loneliness choked her sometimes. Choked the air from her lungs. Her mother. Her friends. Her bedroom. Her things. All of it gone. All of everything that had ever seemed normal had been traded for this floating madhouse, these bright-eyed lunatics.

Fatima had seen her crying and come to stand outside Minako’s quarters, speaking from the catwalk outside. “No be sadness, Minako. Be happy. Be joy!” She pronounced that last word “yoy.”

“I don’t feel joy,” Minako had said. “Why would I? I’ve been kidnapped. My mother cries every night, I am sure. I can see her in my mind, I can see her crying for her daughter. I can see her eyes all red.”

“No, no, Minako. The world entire will be happy. Tu mama she is happy you. Happy you.”

“Don’t you miss your parents?” Minako had asked.

And a bleak, hollow look had come into Fatima’s dark eyes. “No?” She had said it as a question. Then, more confidently, “No. They are come, the Great Souls.”

“Who are these Great Souls?” Minako had asked.

“You have not look at photos?”

Minako shook her head. “No.”

“Yes. Toblerone, this is why. His sicking.”

“What is so special about these people?” Minako asked.

Fatima smiled mysteriously. “Very beauty. Most beauty men.” Then she said, “I have photo in my lodge.”

And if only the timing had worked out a bit better Minako might have had a chance to see what Fatima could show her. But before that could happen, the announcement came.

“Everyone assemble in the commons, wearing your cleanest clothing and happiest face!”

Fatima had yelped and run off, forgetting entirely her offer to Minako.

Minako had only one change of clothing, the Doll Ship was not known for its style. Women wore black slacks and powder-blue blouses. Men wore khakis and white shirts. Young girls wore a sort of school uniform: pleated skirt and white blouse. There were no young boys, a fact that only at that very moment dawned on Minako.

None of the clothing fit very well, but the laundry kept things very clean and very well pressed. Even the knee socks were ironed. Minako knew, because it was her job to work in the laundry.

A strange laundry it was in a belowdecks space between Benjaminia and Charlestown, with workers from both towns, all happy, happy to be doing laundry, sorting, loading into the big industrial washing machines, using the padded steam-iron machines to press trousers, all of it so very, very happy.

Except when a young man named Xander had evidently climbed inside one of the big industrial dryers. It must have happened at night when the laundry was quiet. He had set the cycle, pushed the Start button, and used a wad of tape to pull the door shut behind himself, triggering the dryer to start.

Minako had not found him, but she had been in the area when the first scream announced the grisly results. Proctors had come running and pulled the bloody, burned body from the dryer. Minako had seen it slip from their grip and hit the floor.

Suicide by dryer. So. Not everyone was happy, happy, happy you.

Ever since she had reached puberty and the obsessive compulsive disorder had worsened, Minako had suspected she was crazy. But it was impossible that these people could be genuinely happy, deprived of their families, taken from their homes, kept in an awful steel ball and made to do drudge work all day. Xander was the proof, wasn’t he?

Either they were mad or Minako was, and for the first time in Minako’s life she had begun to suspect that here, at least, she was the least crazy person around.

She changed clothing, acutely aware, as she often was, of a sense of being watched, even when she changed clothes. Even when she used the toilet or showered. There were no secrets aboard the Doll Ship. No need for secrets when everyone was so happy they sometimes locked themselves in a dryer.

She joined the rush of people down to the commons, the flat space at the bottom of the dome; there was no alternative, and she hoped, somehow, that these Great Souls would be rational. In any event she would get to see the men responsible for this place, the gods of this monstrous sphere. Maybe they would see that they had made a terrible mistake taking her and that she—she somehow being different than all these other people—should be returned to her home.

The word home made her throat tighten.

The Twins for their part could now see the ship through the plexiglass canopy. It couldn’t be mistaken for any other ship, there were few such LNG carriers: four huge spheres that looked like they’d been dropped into an oversize canoe. Two of the spheres actually carried liquified natural gas. This was the brilliant coup that allowed this Doll Ship—the second vessel to carry that title—to travel the world unsuspected and unmolested.