BZRK: Apocalypse (BZRK 3)

Nijinsky turned cold eyes up to her. He had not fared well in the last month. While Keats and Plath were both tanned and rested—well, as rested as they could be, given the fact that their boat had been blown up—Nijinsky had become increasingly frayed and ragged. His clothing was no longer perfect. His hair was at least two weeks past its optimum. He was still by any normal standard a spectacularly handsome, well-turned-out person, a tall Chinese American with a graceful way of moving and a sad, sympathetic smile.

The changes would be visible only to someone familiar with his previous level of perfection. But the signs were there, even more visible in the red-rimmed eyes, the stress lines above the bridge of his nose, the grim tightening around his mouth. And of course the sour smell of a body oozing alcohol residue through its pores.

“It’s been a busy month,” Nijinsky said. “Sorry you two missed it.”

“Lear agreed I should disappear for a while,” Plath said calmly. “I’m known.”

“Yes. And Lear agreed that I should get stuck with the shit work.” He shrugged and tried on an insincere smile. “Well, here’s where we stand. Vincent is about seventy percent.” He looked at Vincent and asked, “Fair?”

Vincent nodded. His cold gray eyes focused, then lost focus. “Fair.”

“Billy is thoroughly qualified for missions down in the meat. He has two biots. Wilkes is still Wilkes, God help us all.” This he said with a certain wry tone that was very much the old Nijinsky.

“What else could I be?” Wilkes asked, framing her face with her hands.

“Anya remains a bitch,” Nijinsky said, trying to sound jokey about it and not succeeding. “The president is dead, long live the new guy, President Abbott. The country is freaked out, but we are still not under surveillance—as far as we can tell. The Chinese premier just had a very sudden illness, and we know he’d been compromised by the Armstrongs. So, it’s possible the Chinese government is … aware.”

“And Burnofsky?” Keats asked.

Nijinsky shrugged. He looked away, not avoiding Keats, but seeing that weirdly colored window inside his brain. He had a biot resting on Burnofsky’s optic nerve. The biot was tapped into visual input from Burnofsky’s right eye.

“At the moment he’s working,” Nijinsky said. “I can’t make out what’s on his monitor—I have a pretty good tap, but you know what it’s like.”

They all, all except Anya, did know what it was like. Tapping an optic nerve was a bit like watching an old-fashioned TV in a thunderstorm back before cable, when the picture could be wildly distorted and never entirely clear.

“Has he been in touch with the Armstrong Twins?” Plath asked.

Nijinsky nodded. He tapped a cigarette out of some exotic, foreign pack and lit it. “Four days after that ship went down in Hong Kong. By the way, Lear is sure that was an Armstrong thing. Some kind of messed-up human zoo. By that point I was done wiring Burnofsky. I sent him back in. But nothing face-to-face. Wherever the Twins are now, they aren’t talking to Burnofsky in person; it’s all video link.”

“Do you have a biot in his ear?” Plath asked.

“No.”

There was pause while everyone absorbed this. It meant Nijinsky could see what Burnofsky was seeing, but could not hear what he was hearing.

“Why not?” Plath asked, deceptively quiet.

Nijinsky blew his smoke toward her. It was not a subtle gesture. He resented being demoted and didn’t mind if she knew. “Because I was using my other biots to train Billy, here.”

“For a month?”

Nijinsky shook his head. “Fuck you, Plath.”

Keats’s eyes narrowed angrily, but Plath remained cool. “A lot has been asked of you, Jin. And you’ve endured a lot.”

“Endured,” he said, sneering at the word. “Yes, I’ve endured a lot. A lot of enduring has gone on.”

“Why not have Anya generate a new biot and use it?”

Billy and Wilkes were watching the back-and-forth between the two, like spectators at a tennis match. Vincent was elsewhere in his mind. Keats was keeping still, irritated by Nijinsky, but accepting that this was up to Plath to handle.

“Why not generate a new biot?” Nijinsky mocked. “When you play Russian roulette, you put one bullet in the gun and spin the chamber. Click.” He mimed shooting himself in the head. “A one-in-six chance you’re dead. Two bullets? That’s a one-in-three chance. Three? At that point it’s fifty-fifty. You know why not, Plath, so don’t give me that hard look. Vincent barely survived the loss of one biot. Keats’s brother is shackled in a loony bin for losing two biots. You want to hear what Burnofsky’s hearing? Tell Wilkes to do it. Or do it yourself, Plath.”

Plath nodded. “Okay. Fair enough.”

“What are we doing?” Anya asked wearily. “What is this all about anymore? The Armstrong attempt to control the president is obviously ended. And it seems the same is true of the Chinese premier. The Twins are in hiding. Burnofsky has been wired and switched sides. Bug Man is gone. What are we doing? Are we playing a game? If so, what is our next move?”

“They still have the technology,” Plath said. “They will try again. In some other way. They won’t give up.”