BZRK

And Renfield showed Plath to her room and Keats to his. They were adjoining but not connected.

Plath’s room looked like a miserable, run-down hotel where a drunk might spend his last days. Keats’s room looked not unlike his room at home, except that it could do with an England poster. The rooms were identical.

“How long do we stay here?” Plath asked.

“There is usually a period of observation and training,” Renfield said. He was looking her up and down in a way that implied it didn’t need to be a lonely time for her.

“What is there to observe?” she asked. “I’m sure you have biots on me.”

Renfield did a sort of aristocratic nod, not exactly a bow, but an acknowledgment. “Not me, personally, at the moment,” he said.

“They can read my thoughts?” Plath asked. Asked and answered, but she wasn’t convinced.

“No.”

“See what I see?”

“Yes. And hear what you hear, depending on where they are placed and whether they are equipped for hearing large sound waves.”

Plath struggled a bit with that. Keats blushed.

Renfield actually seemed to experience a moment of fellow feeling. “You get used to it.”

And he was, at that moment, seeing the grainy, gray-scale images he was getting from a rather bad connection in Keats’s eyes. His biots were running yet another check for nanobots: couldn’t be too careful.

He was seeing his own proud expression as Keats looked at him. Then Keats’s quick glance at Plath’s chest. Then the refocus on her face. The quick glance away when Plath looked toward Keats. And then a bit longer than necessary on Plath’s neck, cheek, ear.

Yes, the young prodigy there was smitten with Plath. Or at least checking out the possibilities. Renfield considered resenting the fact. After all, if anyone was going to be spending quality time with the prickly young thing, it should be Renfield himself. It’s not as if he was exclusive with his other friend.

But then he remembered that Keats was Kerouac’s brother. There was a great debt there. Renfield would honor that debt by looking out for the youngster. But in a way that didn’t allow Keats to have … quality time … with Plath.

There were limits even to debts of honor.

A few minutes later, Keats lay on his cot, staring up at the ceiling. He should be afraid. Instead he was overwhelmed by the thought of her. Just a wall separating them.

Could they read his thoughts?

Maybe not. But they might be looking through his eyes and that was close enough. What about when he went to the toilet? Jesus.

Had Alex gone through all this?

And more, obviously.

But Alex was a soldier, tough as they came, and Noah was not. Noah was a kid whose only training was in video games, footie, and the arcane art of barely scraping by on schoolwork. He had been in three fights in his life, the first when he was nine and an older boy had called his mother a MILF. That had cost Noah a black eye and a torn ear. The other two had involved eruptions on the football field and had ended when teammates pulled him back.

War? That was Alex, not Noah.

Not Noah: Keats. He supposed he’d have to look the poet up. Three poets suddenly in his life: Pound, Plath, and Keats. Did poetry drive people mad, was that it? And Kerouac. Not a poet, but another writer.

What a strange way to be following in Alex’s footsteps.

Would his brother notice when Noah missed his scheduled visit? Would some part of him guess where Noah had gone? Would he be proud? Or would he yank on his chains and shriek a mad warning about the nano and Bug Man and BZRK?

At some point jet lag reached for him and dragged him down hard and fast and he fell asleep.

Plath, pacing her room, did not.

Could they read her thoughts? She tended to believe they could not. But that didn’t mean they weren’t watching her pace.

If they were reading her thoughts like a Facebook page, these would be the status updates:

I am completely alone. I feel scared, also liberated.

Renfield is an asshole.

Ophelia and Renfield are playing Good Cop/Bad Cop to gain my trust.

I chose “Plath” for myself so they chose “Keats” for the boy with the blue eyes. That was deliberate: they want us to be a team.

My arm hurts like hell, can I get an Advil or six?

What next?

Across town, in the Tulip, Charles and Benjamin Armstrong used very old-fashioned tools to organize their thoughts: 3 × 5 cards.

Coordination, fine motor skills—and gross motor skills, too, for that matter—had always been difficult for them. Each had an eye. But a single eye does not allow for depth perception.

Each had an arm. But writing sometimes requires two arms, one to hold the paper in place.

The Twins had struggled to master writing. Keyboards and pads were easier. But Charles and Benjamin valued the pain of overcoming difficulty. Life had always been hard for them. Anything physical had been difficult and sometimes humiliating. On the day many years earlier when the seventeen-year-old Twins had smothered their grandfather with a pillow, they’d had great difficulty coordinating the action.

Old Arthur Armstrong had raised the boys on a diet of paranoia and reckless self-indulgence. They had loved him in a way, and he had been proud of them.

He had asked them to end his pain-wracked life, and they had agreed, but only on condition that they immediately inherit Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation.

Arthur had beamed with pride. He had raised them right: if they were to kill him then, by God, they had a right to demand a payment.