BZRK

One thing was sure: that was Vincent he’d seen leaning in for a kiss. AFGC owned some bad video of Vincent, junk, but good enough that Bug Man had spent hours watching it on a loop, trying to suss out his opponent. Trying to see what the dude was about. The video showed Vincent walking to a taxi. That was all of it, but Bug Man had watched it probably fifty times.

Now he leaned forward in the twitcher chair, muscles straining, teeth gritted. Vincent. Right there, now. Real and big as life. And Bug Man with a crap repeater killing his communication.

Burnofsky was at his elbow. “They’re working on it, Anthony.”

“It’ll take three minutes just to patch in a replacement unit,” Bug Man raged. “You’d better damned well hope Vincent takes his time.”

“You have visual again,” Burnofsky remarked.

He could watch the screen over Bug Man’s shoulder. He saw what Bug Man saw, and so he didn’t need to be told that this was low-res video, glitchy as hell.

“Yeah, I’m going to take Vincent on with this,” Bug Man said with savage frustration. “I’m pulling back out of range.”

“First thing he’ll do is check on his wire,” Burnofsky predicted.

“He won’t find anything wrong there,” Bug Man said. But in his head he was going over it all again. His nanobots were well away from Vincent’s elegant web of wires and transponders. But Vincent had something eerily close to psychic ability when it came to sensing an enemy. It would take so little to alert him.

Bug Man executed a simple reverse. It would move all twenty-four of his nanobots—fighters all, no spinners—in a precise move-by-move reversal, back down into the woman’s brain. It wasn’t the best way to move, but with lousy communications it was the best he could do.

The screen split into twenty-four smaller screens. Three of them were totally dark—probably optics that had been blocked by fungus. Fungus was always an issue, little mushrooms that were unfortunately sticky. Or maybe one of them had picked up a macrophage along the way.

Bug Man enlarged one of the best-quality visuals. He saw images of half a dozen nanobots walking backward, retracing their steps. Back along the optic nerve, like daddy longlegs in a tunnel. He switched to rear-facing views. Even lower res, and he didn’t dare burn up battery by switching on all twenty-four light arrays to clear things up.

Right now Vincent could take his handicapped army apart. This repeater issue had to be solved. In a couple of days he’d be inside the brain of the president of the United bloody States, and he didn’t want to be watching visuals more degraded than a beat-up Game Boy.

“Just got news. It’s going to be a while,” Burnofsky announced. “They don’t have a backup on-site. It’s on its way, but it’ll be twenty minutes. Not three.”

“Twenty minutes?” Bug Man felt the blood drain from his face. No, this was not possible. He was not going to get his butt handed to him by Vincent. “Get some macro force in there,” Bug Man said.

“At McLure headquarters?” Burnofsky laughed. “If you have to lose some nanobots, lose them, Anthony. It’s not the end of the world.”

Bug Man pulled off his gloves, pulled off his helmet, and unwound himself from the chair. The nanobots would continue automatically returning to their earlier start point. They didn’t need him to do that.

“Oh, temper, temper, Anthony,” Burnofsky said. He was laughing.

“You want to get your balls cut off by Vincent, be my guest.” Bug Man jabbed his finger at the old man. “I don’t play this game in order to lose. When communication is up, ninety percent minimum, give me a call. Maybe I’ll still be hanging around.”

“I’ll need to take a few cells,” Anya said.

They were in a lab, Noah—Keats, had to remember that— supposed it was a lab, anyway. He’d never been in a lab before and didn’t know what they looked like except from films. But Dr. Violet was wearing a white coat. And most of the equipment was white and chrome. And the floor was stainless steel, as were the walls.

So: a lab. Or maybe just a steel room with some unfathomable pieces of equipment, the only familiar part of which was the syringe in Dr. Violet’s hand.

It had a tiny little hook on the end of the needle. Wait, that couldn’t be right. And there was no plunger, just a needle, really and—“Ow!”

She had stabbed it into the pale part of his arm, and now there was a tiny gobbet of his own meat stuck to the end of the needle and a small but enthusiastic bleeder.

“That’s the only part that isn’t automated,” she said with a distant smile. “Also the only part that hurts.” She handed Keats a Band-Aid.

Dr. Violet set the syringe on a small stainless-steel holder. She then took a windowed plastic bag from a drawer, tore it open, and withdrew something rectangular, the size of a phone, or a little smaller. It was white, smooth, sleek with rounded edges. It looked like something from an Apple store.

She pressed the only button, and the rectangle opened like a blooming flower. A light came from within.

“It’s called a crèche,” Vincent said. “Each crèche holds two biots. Or will, once they’ve grown.”

Dr. Violet deposited the piece of human flesh within the petals, pressed the button again, and it closed.

Plath did not cry out in pain when it was her turn. But she’d had warning, unlike Keats.

He wondered what her real name was. He wondered if he’d ever know. Susan? Jennifer? Alison? He had the feeling everyone but him knew it.