Authors: Michael Grant
No one had the slightest affection for the place, with its peeling
paint, filth, and stink of grease from the deli downstairs. But it was
what they had. A place. A spot.
Without it they were just three teenagers—including one certified nut—a gay male model, a crazy person, and a Russian scientist.
Somehow within the safe house it was possible to believe they were
significant. Out alone? Plath and Keats in a cab on the way to the
airport? The others in a rented van?
Ridiculous, that’s what they were.
The cab drove past the Tulip. Keats looked up at it and whatever
tiny flame of hope he’d held on to flickered like a tired candle flame
in a breeze.
Plath and Keats wore theirs in their heads. In specific, Plath had
two biots—P1 and P2. Keats had one biot in his own head—K1—and
K2 in Plath’s brain, working—whenever he had a spare moment and
could focus on it—on strengthening the aneurysm wall.
The flight from New York’s La Guardia Airport to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport took only an hour. The problem
was that Sadie McLure was a recognizable person. If she were spotted
there would be media, there would be people sneaking video of her
and uploading it to the web.
But she was not, despite all the incredible media focus on the terrible crash of her father’s jet and her own near miss and the hundreds
of casualties, as well known or recognizable as a major movie star. A
little effort at camouflage, a minimal change of hair color and perhaps a baseball cap, should do the trick.
Plath and Keats sat in row 14, just behind the wing. The plane
was three and three: three seats on the starboard, three seats to port.
Keats took the aisle seat, and Plath took the window seat (they
had an empty seat between them), where she could pretend to be
asleep and pull the brim of her baseball cap down over her eyes and
go unnoticed.
It worked.
Until she had to go to the bathroom. And even then the cap and
the dark glasses would have worked had not a particular passenger
also been on his way to Washington, to deal, as it happened, with the
flip side of the same problem.
When Karl Burnofsky looked up he saw, and slowly recognized,
none other than Sadie McLure.
Plath went into the bathroom, peed, washed her hands in the tiny
sink, and squeezed out of the door. A passenger, an older man with
a ragged, Keith Richards face, was very impatiently waiting to get in.
He pushed past her, practically knocking her aside.
He reached across her as if desperate to grab a paper towel, and as
he did his hand brushed against her neck.
Plath returned to her row. She slid past Keats and sank into her
seat and stared out of the window at hard glittering lights below and
the trailing edge of the wing. It looked cold out there in the night.
She had a book to read, but she wasn’t reading it now. Keats
had a book as well, but he just gazed moodily down the aisle. They
knew better than to talk about anything of importance. Nijinsky had
warned them.
Keats summarized his life. Brother in a mental institution. Parents indifferent, glad to have him gone, no matter how thin the excuse.
In love with a girl who had two billion dollars and had told him flatly
that she did not love him back. And two biots. One in Plath’s head,
trudging back and forth building the wall of titanium. The other in
his own eye, sitting there, watching red blood cells surge beneath its
feet.
Death or madness.
He stole a glance at Plath. He wanted her, but more than that he
wanted her to want him. He wanted her to need him.
And why? Because he was so reliable? Because he really could
save her? No. He wasn’t fool enough to believe that. She had more
resources than he did. She was probably smarter. She was certainly
too beautiful for the likes of him.
And yet . . .
And yet.
Seven rows back Burnofsky smiled slyly to himself. What were the
chances? And what an interesting problem. He had Sadie McLure,
the daughter of his old friend and nemesis, within his reach. Had
her dead to rights.
The Twins would forgive Burnofsky anything if he could deliver
The McLure, dead or alive. Yes, the plan had been to use Thrum
to use McLure to get to BZRK. But that plan had been laid in place
before Sadie McLure had invaded Benjamin’s brain.
Charles would be upset if Burnofsky altered course suddenly to
go after Sadie. But Benjamin? Oh, Benjamin would love nothing more
than to have Sadie McLure in his power.
Obviously Sadie was being sent to Washington because Lear
knew his Washington cell had been obliterated. The New Yorkers
were being brought in to take over. Their mission was obvious: take
back the president.
Burnofsky smiled at the thought that he was playing chess with
the mysterious Lear. Burnofsky moved a pawn, Lear moved a rook,
Burnofsky moved a bishop. And Burnofsky’s king was half mad.
Well, he thought, most kings are at least half mad.
When they landed, Sadie would go one way and he would go
another. She and the boy with her would in all likelihood go far out
of range. He could lose them. He had some limited ability to track
nanobots, but it was sketchy and imprecise.
Follow her? Yes, that would be the right move. Do his best to stay
with her. He had placed twelve nanobots on her neck during their
brief encounter at the restroom, but it was a crude, inert transfer. He
was not at a twitcher station, and nanobots were not biots; they could
not simply be controlled with thoughts. What he had done was to use
what they called a “packet.” A packet was about the size of a single
grain of table salt. Twelve nanobots packed tightly together and covered with an adhesive. He kept two of these with him at all times.
One under his left pinkie fingernail, one under the right. It was one
of these packets that he had “accidentally” wiped onto Plath’s neck as
he passed her.
But if he lost her now he might never be able to activate the nanobots.
Burnofsky played it forward in his mind. He would be met at the
airport by a limo. The driver would be an AmericaStrong thug with
instructions to drive him to the Crystal City Hyatt to meet Bug Man.
The driver would follow Burnofsky’s orders, but would he be able
to track whatever limo or cab or bus Sadie McLure took? BZRKers
tended not to be fools: they would take steps to throw off any pursuit.
The jet touched down and taxied to the gate.
The passengers clicked off seat belts and stood en masse. Burnofsky stood.
There had been no time for Burnofsky even to get a drink on
the short hop from New York to DC. And he badly needed a pipe.
He had the address of a place in Washington …No one claimed it
was as nice as the China Bone, one of the world’s great opium dens,
but it was apparently the very best place to find a pipe, or indeed
whatever you wanted, in Washington. The rumor was that two congressmen, the secretary of education, and the White House doctor
were regulars.
The plane’s door opened. Keats hauled his bag down from the
overhead locker. Plath hauled her own down as well. They did their
best to act as if they didn’t know each other, Sadie and the boy, but
no close observer—and Karl Burnofsky was quite a close observer—
would miss the tiny clues. The way they refused to make eye contact.
The way he moved reflexively to help her when her bag slipped but
stopped himself. The indefinable energy field that vibrated between
them.
Oh, they more than know each other, Burnofsky thought. There’s
some powerful something going on there.
The plane emptied and Burnofsky followed docilely behind them.
Would they have a car waiting? He didn’t see one.
Now it was either off to the cab stand or the bus or . . .
No, they were heading toward the car rentals. No way. That
wasn’t going to happen, was it? They were too young to rent …Unless
of course they had fake IDs.
Damn it. That would make things awkward.
A husky black man in dark livery carried a sign that read belvedere. That was Burnofsky’s fake name for this trip.
“Give me your card and wait here,” Burnofsky told the man.
Burnofsky followed Plath and Keats. Watched them stop to stare
in some bewilderment at signs indicating that car rental could be
reached on foot or by a shuttle. Saw them head off pulling their bags
behind them to reach the place on foot, no longer even really trying
not to know each other, though still not touching.
The boy reached up to rub his eyes. But it wasn’t rubbing, it was
a very special touch, and Burnofsky should have seen that. He really
should have seen what was coming next. But he believed he was the
predator, not the prey.
Suddenly they turned.
Burnofsky was caught off guard. His eyes were not sufficiently
bland, not appropriately disinterested. Gazes met. His first instinct
was to bluff it out, keep walking.
“Hey, there,” Sadie McClure said to him.
“I . . .” he managed to say before the boy, the blue-eyed naif,
stepped in fast, confident, and suddenly the boy’s hand was on Burnofsky’s throat, and Burnofsky was suddenly terribly aware of how old
he was, how feeble, and the boy, not cold-blooded but angry, pushed
his thumb right into Burnofsky’s eye.
“You know what just happened old man,” the boy hissed.
People were passing by on either side, hauling their luggage,
sleepy, weary, resigned, impatient, completely uninterested. And it
wasn’t like Burnofsky was being mugged. What could he do? Cry for
help? To whom, the police?
The AmericaStrong driver was far behind, out of sight, probably
grabbing himself a doughnut.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Burnofsky bluffed.
The girl wasn’t having it. “Yeah, and yet you’re not screaming
your head off for the cops, are you?”
“Let me ask you this,” Burnofsky said, switching tactics. “How do
you get your biots back?”
“By taking you with us,” the boy said, but Burnofsky could see the
concern on his face. The kid was new to this war. He hadn’t thought
it through. He’d just done the brave/stupid thing and not considered
that his biot was now a hostage.
“Not so easy to do, is it?” Burnofsky laughed his rasping laugh.
“Throw me over your shoulder here in the airport? Carry me to the
rental car?”
“Or just keep you trapped long enough that I can do some interesting wiring. Or blind you,” the boy said.
It was Burnofsky’s turn to flinch. It wouldn’t be easy, even with
acid and claw, to cut the optic nerve, but it wouldn’t be impossible,
either. And if the boy knew some anatomy there were easier ways. An
artery that could be punctured, for example.
He would have to take his chances. He would have to break and
run. He was carrying his own special hydras and a portable twitcher
control; he couldn’t have them pawing through his things.
One problems with that: he was old and slow.
“No!” Burnofsky cried suddenly. “I won’t let you steal my money!”
He shrugged, and winked at the boy, then he bolted for the door.
The McLure girl and her friend easily kept pace, but now that
Burnofsky was yelling, people were paying attention. A middle-aged
woman made a vague gesture, as if she was going to get in the middle
of it, but thought better of it and instead yelled, “Someone needs to
help this man!”
A businessman looked on skeptically.
Burnofsky made it out the door with the two kids right behind
him. Traffic whizzed by, buses, cabs, limos, and the noise level rose,
which made it harder for Burnofsky’s hoarse voice to carry. There
was a police car parked a hundred yards away, looking in the wrong
direction.
A shuttle bus was bearing down.
Limos glided by.
“Grab a taxi!” the boy shouted to Sadie McLure.
“They’re trying to rob me!” Burnofsky cried, but few heard and
none seemed to care.
The boy pressed close behind him and pushed his knee into the
back of Burnofsky’s knee. Burnofsky lost his balance, the bag swung
forward forcing him to step into traffic and the boy wrapped an arm
around him, hauled him back and to the inquiring, anxious face of
a passerby said, “My uncle’s recovering from a stroke. Hardly knows
where he is.”
“Get the police!” Burnofsky yelled.
“Now, uncle, you know that’s nonsense.”
Burnofsky was beginning to get really afraid. Then he had an
inspiration: maybe no one would rush to rescue an old man. But there
was another way. “Sadie McLure! Sadie McLure! It’s the girl from the
Stadium Massacre! It’s Sadie McLure!”
Yelling a celebrity’s name had more effect than yelling “Help,” but
it drew only eyeballs, not offers of assistance.
Then Burnofsky saw the burn line. It was right through his field
of vision. He knew what it would look like to the boy’s biot. Down
there, down in the nano, the biot had laid a trail of acid. Only a few
cells in width and at most a millimeter long, but it was there, a blur,
like someone scratching a diamond on a windowpane.
If the goal was to scare him, it had succeeded. Irrationally,
perhaps, but he could not work without sight. It could finish him. In
any event, no one was helping him anyway.
Burnofsky stopped yelling. He stopped struggling.
“Stop it, stop it,” he said.
“I was going to see whether I could burn ‘BZRK’ into your eyeball,” the boy said.
A limo came tearing up in reverse, fishtailing as it rushed madly
against traffic and screeched to a stop.
Keats didn’t need an invitation. He yanked open the door and
threw Burnofsky in. He slid in beside him. Plath was at the wheel.
“You stole this car?” Keats asked breathlessly.
“Borrowed,” Plath said, and hit the gas pedal. “The driver
was wrangling some luggage and talking to his passenger. In two
minutes the cops will have the plate number, so we need to get
somewhere fast and switch cars.”
Keats pulled out his phone and opened the map app. “You’re
coming up to Interstate 385. Go east. East! It takes you into the
city.”
They merged into fast-moving traffic.
“What do you two young fools plan to do with me?” Burnofsky
asked.
“Search you for a start,” Keats said. He thrust his hands into
Burnofsky’s pockets and came up with a wallet and a phone.
“Power the phone off,” Plath advised.
“No,” Keats countered, “He may get interesting calls. We just
need to turn off his GPS.”
Keats next flipped open the wallet. A driver’s license in the name
of Richard Belvedere. The picture matched the man seated beside
him. There was an American Express card in the Belvedere name,
too, but two other credit cards were in a different name: Karl Burnofsky.
To Plath he said, “What do you like, Belvedere or Burnofsky?”
He saw Plath’s eyes in the rearview mirror. She said, “My father
knew a guy named Burnofsky. The name stuck with me because I
always picture someone burning.”
“I’m going to text Nijinsky.”
“Ah, Nijinsky is in charge in New York, is he?” Burnofsky asked.
He laughed. “So: poor Vincent. No longer with us, eh? Bug Man will
be absurdly pleased.”
Keats sent the text.
He hauled Burnofsky’s suitcase onto his lap and unzipped it.
Inside were shirts, underwear, more toiletries and medications than
might be expected, an iPad, and a very old-school Xbox. There was
also a tin of Altoids that felt too heavy.
“That’s probably a nanobot controller,” Keats said, poking at the
wires and game console. “What’s this?” He held up the red-and-white
tin.
“I like to have fresh breath,” Burnofsky said tightly.
Something rolled inside the tin. Keats opened it and saw two
Duracell batteries. He closed the tin again.
Plath turned off the highway and plunged into the city of monuments.
Keats’s phone lit up with a message.
Hold him. Awaiting instructions from Lear. Jin.
Keats absorbed that, wondering what it meant that Nijinsky had
to ask for guidance from Lear.
“Let me guess,” Burnofsky said. “The male model kicked it
upstairs to Lear.” Burnofsky coughed, swallowed, and shot a wry look
at Keats. “Yeah, kid, I know the name. I’ll admit, we don’t know who
it belongs to. But yeah, we know about Lear. So melodramatic, don’t
you think? The whole noms-de-guerre thing? Taking the names of
madmen. Not very British, really, is it? More of a Hollywood thing.”
“Am I meant to be impressed that you know I’m English?” Keats
said. “I’ll say this: you have the whole stiff-upper-lip thing down. Very
cool under pressure and all that. Let’s see how you feel when you get
desperate for your next drink or your next fix.”
Burnofsky’s eyes glittered in the dark. He had swallowed reflexively at the mention of a drink. His coated tongue licked dry lips.
“I’ve known a few junkies, seen a few in my old neighborhood, and
God only knows how many drunks,” Keats said. “I know the look.”
Suddenly Burnofsky grabbed for the door handle. Keats let him:
Plath had locked it from the driver’s seat.
A police car, siren screaming, tore past.
Plath said, “We need to switch cars. Google ‘how to hot-wire a car.’”
“You’re serious?” Keats demanded. But he Googled it. “I’ve got a
YouTube.”
Plath pulled over suddenly and killed the lights. They watched the
YouTube. But first they sat through an ad for a new Avengers movie.”
“Looks good,” Keats said.
“Boy movie,” Plath said. “But save your pennies. I’ll get the tools
from the trunk.”
“Trunk?” Keats asked.
“The boot,” Burnofsky explained helpfully.
“We’ll need an older car,” Keats said. He scanned down the street.
They were in a residential neighborhood. Through the gap between
two houses he could see a slice of the Capitol Building, a bright ivory
dome.
Plath returned with the tools. “No wire cutter but there was a
Swiss Army knife. How about that old Toyota over there?”
It was not as easy as it had been on the YouTube video. But neither
was it terribly hard. Ten minutes later, they were in the Toyota, and
Burnofsky’s wrists were bound in electrical tape.
The phone chimed. Keats read the message. It was not from
Nijinsky.
Pick up “Billy” at 18th and Q NW. Then to Stone Church. Beneath
altar.
Keats gave Plath the address. “We’re picking someone up. Then,
there’s a church.”
“I wonder who this Billy is.” Plath said. “The survivor?”
“I’m going to guess another sociopathic gamer who will soon be
turned into a raving schizophrenic ex-gamer,” Burnofsky snarked.
“Like Vincent.”
They found the corner. It was a quiet space with three apartment
buildings and a couple of well-lit embassies across the road. There
was no one waiting but a mixed-race kid carrying a torn black plastic
garbage bag.
“Kind of young to be a homeless person,” Plath observed. She
rolled down her window. “Kid. What’s your name?”
The boy was wary. He looked up and down the street. “Who you
looking for?”
“Our friend sent us to pick someone up. The friend’s name is
Lear.”
That was good enough for the boy. “I’m Billy. Billy the Kid.”
“Of course you are,” Burnofsky said drily.
The boy started to get into the backseat, realized it was crowded,
and took the front seat instead.
“I’m Plath. That’s Keats. This is someone from the other side. A
prisoner.”
Billy turned to look, and Plath took the opportunity to check
out the boy in the hard greenish glow of a streetlight. He was a cute
kid, she decided. And by kid she meant he was, what, three years
younger than her?