BZRK

“Yep,” Sadie said curtly. Enough condolences.

“Nanobots,” Ophelia said. “There are two branches of nanotechnology: the biological and the mechanical. Coffee?”

Sadie was dressed. “I guess a Scotch would be out of the question?”

A different smile appeared, not the room-lighting one, a more quizzical, challenging one. Ophelia could do a lot with a smile.

“Sorry. Yeah. I’m under age,” Sadie admitted.

Again a new smile, this one sad, worried. “There are no children or adults with us. But I don’t think we have any Scotch.”

Sadie said, “It was my dad’s thing. Scotch. He said it helped him to stop thinking at the end of the day. Once I came into his libratory— that was his made-up name for it because it was books and a microscope and …” She stopped talking.

Right into it; she had walked into remembering and feeling, and the goddamned tears were coming. Do not remember all of that, she told herself. Do not remember Dad in his ridiculous libratory, kicked back in his ancient leather chair with his feet up and a crystal tumbler in his hand, frowning up at his dusty old chalkboard covered in incomprehensible scribbles.

She would interrupt his concentration. To play the piano, which was also in the libratory. Or to show him a drawing. Or just to stand there because if she did, he would grab her and there would be a mock-ferocious struggle and she would end up letting him hug her.

Splattered into the concrete at the stadium. Burned in a greasy fire. And Stone with him. Her decent, funny, gentle brother.

“Coffee would be good,” Sadie said.

Ophelia led the way to a kitchen. It was clearly a kitchen without a housewife or househusband. It was the kitchen of indifferent individuals who parked their tea or cookies or chips here or there. The coffee machine had a full pot, but no one had scrubbed that glass pot out probably since the day it was first purchased.

They sat at a round table. Sadie took her coffee black. Ophelia with milk and sugar. The mugs were anonymous. The coffee was bitter.

“It’s called a bindi,” Ophelia said. “The thing you’re staring at.”

“Okay,” Sadie said. No point denying that she had been staring at the jewels that sparkled from Ophelia’s forehead. “From India, right?”

“Yes. It’s somewhere between a tradition and a fashion statement. It was a gift.”

“It’s very pretty.”

Ophelia didn’t seem convinced that Sadie was being sincere. “So. You know about biots. You know that Grey McLure created that technology. And he gave us access to it.”

“Why?”

“Because we need it,” Ophelia said. “There was a long history between your dad and a … well, between Grey McLure and the Armstrong Twins.”

Sip. “I’ve heard of them. There’s something wrong with them, right?”

“Clean so far.” This was Renfield, coming in, pulling a chair out, and sitting a couple of feet back from the two females.

Ophelia’s smile this time was pained, and a little embarrassed. “Renfield has two biots on you.”

When he had blindfolded her. Of course.

“You’ve had biots aboard before,” Renfield said. “One of them dropped a Teflon fiber on your cochlea.” He shrugged. “It wouldn’t cause any problems, but I’ll remove it, anyway.”

Sadie had grown accustomed to knowing that microscopic quasi-spiders were traveling around and through her body. Her father’s biots, and most recently the medicos. But it was unpleasant thinking of this boy’s eyes and ears strolling around inside her brain. The irritation was lessened somewhat by the fact that he had a bit of booger clinging precariously to one nostril. It gave Sadie an advantage over the cocky Eurotrash.

“The scans would have shown nanobots on your skin,” Ophelia said. “But they can quite easily hide inside you. For that we need to take a closer look.”

“Or not. If they’re hiding out,” Renfield said. Then he did a very strange thing. He quickly pinched off the hanging booger.

Sadie stared at him. He looked past her.

Guilty.

“You can see what I see,” Sadie said. She stood up, suddenly furious. “I was focusing on your nose, and you saw it.”

“A biot can sink a probe into the optic nerve, or even into the visual cortex,” Ophelia said. “It’s hit-and-miss. Sometimes you get a pretty complete picture. Sometimes—”

Sadie slammed her good hand down on the tabletop. It made a loud noise and caused her coffee to jump. Then she stabbed a finger at Renfield’s smug face and said, “Get out of my head.”

“You don’t give me—”

“Do you like the feel of hot coffee on your—”

“Calm!” Ophelia cried. “Calm. Calm. Renfield? Stay out of her senses. That’s not necessary to your job.”

Two things were instantly clear: there was rank with these people, and Ophelia, as soft-spoken as she was, outranked Renfield.

And Renfield was conceiving a powerful dislike of Sadie. That, too, was clear.

“What else can he do in my head? Can he read my memories?”

“No,” Ophelia said, still in her calm, calm, calm voice. “We can’t really read memories. But we can locate them. It’s like … Well, think of it like this: we can find it the way you can search a book for a particular word. But we can’t then read the whole book. We can find the location of an idea. Then, we can spin a wire and just lay it on the surface, or we can belay off a pin that’s jabbed into the brain, or we can plant a transponder.”