BZRK

The biots erupted through the platoons of nanobots that now added the goo of macrophages to their difficulty unraveling themselves.

Aftershocks, spasms, as Anya’s nerves tried to gain control.

V1 was down. Legless now. Immobile.

Vincent saw it, turned V2 to grab it with his pincers and kicked backward, hauling V1 after it, macrophages eating into it still.

Bug Man stared in horror. He was down to twelve active visuals. Maybe three or four of the blind nanobots were still functioning, but he had a choice now: take a few seconds to replatoon them or just send them all pell-mell after the retreating Vincent.

The tectonic shock—Bug Man still had no idea what had caused it—had made a mess of his forces.

“Looking a little rough there, Anthony,” Burnofsky drawled. “Maybe time for a little macro help of our own, eh?”

That decided it. No way Bug Man could let Vincent escape. He’d started with a twenty-four-to-two edge. He would never live it down if he lost now.

Mass attack, Bug Man ordered. A banzai charge. A solid wall of nanobots. They surged toward the retreating biots.

But they’d have to leg it. The cleverness of summoning the macrophages was clear now: the spongy, brainless monsters made it impossible for him to switch to wheels.

Race on: wounded biot, pulling its twin away, versus nanobots.

Bug Man knew he would win the race, would eventually catch up, even without wheels. But how many of his nanobots were still functioning? How many would be tripped up? Was this a banzai charge or a kamikaze attack?

“Tell them to shoot Vincent,” Bug Man said, grinding out the words.

“You tell them, boy genius. You give the kill order.” He held a phone to Bug Man’s ear.

Macrophages ate into Vincent’s biot flesh as he motored backward, dragging his other biot. The nanobots would catch him. He was moving too slowly. If he dropped V1 …

And if he didn’t …

Renfield’s biots would turn the tide. Where were they? What the hell was keeping Renfield?

Vincent turned to see, and there was Renfield, on his back, arms splayed wide, head lolled to one side. Vincent could see him. Renfield would not be rescuing anyone.

There was a shoe blocking Vincent’s field of view.

Then a gun jabbed his ear. Cold steel.

“Freeze, motherfucker,” a stressed voice said. “And I mean all the way down in the meat. Or die.”

Plath still had the gun in her hand. She had never fired one before. The noise—so much louder than in the movies—and the kick—so much more satisfying than she’d have guessed—had surprised her.

And the horrifying fact that it had worked.

She had aimed, squeezed the trigger, and sent a lead projectile through the air to smash flesh and bone.

The man she had shot now sat in a pool of blood flowing from his groin. She had made that happen.

And yet even as she stared in horror her head was filled with the nightmarish vision of awful, lurching, spiderlike monsters, grainy and gray, and tumbling madly around on a plain that had tilted up without warning.

Vincent was facedown. A man in a blood-splattered parka held a gun to his head.

Keats took her arm, squeezed hard, and propelled her toward the door.

Renfield lay in a dark-red lake.

Dead and dying men sagged against equipment. Smoke filled the air. Anya Violet was crawling through blood.

Then, in the doorway, a man.

He was smallish, maybe five feet eight. He was stocky but not fat, and dressed with great care in a deep-purple velvet blazer, collared shirt, sage slacks, black leather boots. On his head was a top hat. The hat was a sort of faded version of the blazer, with a wide gold band and a jaunty feather.

He was craggy, tan, sardonic, and amused, and his eyes were black at the bottom of deep valleys. He might be forty or he might be sixty, and he carried something with him, a feeling, an aura, a dark truth that swirled, invisible but felt, and undeniable.

Sadie knew without being told.

Caligula.

FIFTEEN

He had a pistol in his left hand. In his right was a short-handled axe. The axe looked strangely like a child’s notion of a Native American tomahawk: it had a painted handle with what looked like leather strands hanging from it. The blade was liquid red.

There were three surviving TFDs when Caligula walked in.

The first spun, raised his weapon, and fell backward with a hole through his forehead. The sound came afterward. A huge bang.

A second AFGC man had a bullet through his windpipe and the third, attempting a belated and futile escape, stopped when the axe appeared as if by magic in his back. The down and nylon poofed out around it.

Caligula stood in front of Anya so she couldn’t crawl any farther.

“No,” Vincent gasped. “Not her.”

Caligula looked around and said, “Anyone else?” He pushed Anya with his foot so that she fell onto her side.

He went to look down at Renfield. “Shame,” Caligula said. “I liked him.”

He pulled the axe from the spine of the gibbering, terrified TFD whose legs had stopped working altogether. And shot the man in the head.

Then with four powerful chops he hacked through Renfield’s neck. No evidence of biots could be left behind.

Plath would have thrown up again, but her belly was empty.

Caligula pulled a black plastic trash bag from his pocket, dropped Renfield’s head into it, tied it off, and handed it to Keats. “Carry this. Don’t drop it.”

“What the hell—” Keats demanded.