BZRK: Apocalypse (BZRK 3)
Again, a glimmer! It was moving away, but it evidently needed light. So did Plath, so any hope of concealment was forgotten now, any hesitation set aside with the decision to chase.
She saw him! Or at least an impression of something moving. She was gaining on him. Gaining! Which most likely meant it was a nanobot. That at least would be a relief.
Please, God, if there is a God down here in the meat, let it be the enemy, the true enemy.
Suddenly the light ahead dimmed as if it had dropped into a crevasse. She charged ahead, caught up in the chase, adrenaline flooding her system with urgency, breathing hard in her bed, trying to remain perfectly still so as not to wake Keats.
Her biot raced; she saw the dip ahead and killed her illumination, rendering herself almost invisible while using the enemy’s light as a beacon.
She looked down, and there it was, waiting for her.
It was no nanobot.
She grabbed Keats’s head in her hands and held it still, just inches away from her, stared into his eyes, pleading and said, “Noah, help me. Help me, Noah.”
“My Stockholm lair. Yeah. Lair. Because the supervillain needs a lair, yeah?”
It was a nice hotel suite, a very nice hotel suite at the Stockholm Grand. Nice view out over the very civilized waterfront with bright-lit ferries and stately buildings. Multiple bedrooms, understated taupes and beiges and earth tones.
“It’s not all that …” Bug Man started to say before stopping himself.
“Not so lairlike?” Lystra asked, and laughed. “Well, I have a much better lair somewhere else. Far to the south, you might say. You’ll like it … if I let you come with me.”
Bug Man stood as awkwardly as one might expect a young man to stand when threatened with death.
Lystra laughed again and waved him to a seat. He sat on leather. It made a squeaking sound that might almost have been a fart.
“That was … um …,” he said.
“Did you just fart in my presence?” She was pretending to look fierce. But Bug Man had seen her true ferocity, and this wasn’t it. He relaxed a very little bit.
Lystra went to a sideboard and poured an amber liquid into two heavy crystal glasses. She handed one to Bug Man.
He sniffed and recoiled.
“It’s Balcones True Blue. Lovely whiskey, that. Made with Hopi blue corn.” She took a single cube of ice with a pair of silver tongs, carried it to him, and dropped it in his glass. “You taste it now. Then you keep drinking as the cube melts, which lowers the proof. The flavor evolves. Each sip will be subtly different.”
Bug Man took a sip. It was fire in liquid form, and he started coughing, which made her laugh. It was a cruel laugh, and there, again, a glimpse of the harsh bone beneath soft flesh.
“My father used to let me drink whiskey with him,” Lystra said. She sat down opposite Bug Man. He glanced at her bare legs. She noticed.
“You miss your little love slave?” she asked.
“Jessica? You know about … that?”
“Yes, of course. You’re a rapist, Bug Man.”
He flushed. “No, I’m not. I never forced her to do anything.”
She leaned toward him, elbows on knees, drink cradled in both hands. “You programmed her. You took away her free will. You replaced it with your own. You enslaved her. And when you have sex with someone in that condition, it’s rape.”
He shook his head and took a drink just so he’d have an excuse not to meet her gaze.
“Rapist. Murderer. Terrorist. That’s you, Bug, by the standards of the wide world, yeah.”
Bug Man frowned. No, that wasn’t right. “I’m … no. No way. I’m a gamer. I’m just playing.”
“Buggy, Buggy, Buggy.” She patted his knee, and he felt his flesh creep. “If you were charged in a court of law, you’d be looking at life without parole in New York. In Texas, hell, they’d execute you, yeah. Electric chair in Texas? Let me Google that.” She pulled out her phone and opened the browser.