BZRK

“Yes, and more to come,” Nijinsky said.

“Not tonight,” Plath snapped, and was gratified that Keats nodded in support of her.

“Got that right,” he said.

Nijinsky waited, letting the silence calm them both down. Plath felt like someone had rubbed her entire body with sandpaper. Like she’d been shot up with speed. Like a screaming rant was at the tip of her tongue just waiting to be released.

Ophelia came in. “She’s under control,” she said without elaboration. She was carrying a bottle and a tray of mismatched and not-very-clean glasses. She set them down in front of Nijinsky. He poured a whiskey for himself and for Ophelia. He looked speculatively at Wilkes, Keats, and Plath.

Plath accepted a glass. Following her lead, so did Keats. Wilkes joined last. She snatched the glass angrily.

“To Renfield,” Nijinsky said.

Five glasses tapped and five shots went down with varying degrees of gasping and coughing. The liquid fire spread through Plath’s stomach and radiated out through her body.

“I hope he is with his God,” Ophelia said.

Wilkes shook her head, but still said, “He wasn’t all bad. Just kind of a dick.”

But something was off about her cynicism. A false note. And Plath saw her turn away quickly to hide some emotion.

“Now,” Nijinsky said briskly, “as bad as this has been, we have big things to deal with. With Vincent at half strength we need you two trained and ready. Your biots are being kept dark and cold. Below a certain temperature they become dormant. You may still experience flashes, but you should be able to sleep. So. Go do that. Sleep for a few hours. Then training starts.”

“What if we don’t want to train?” Plath demanded. “What if we just want the hell out of this asylum?”

Wilkes made a sardonic sound. “Honey, you are already all the way in. There is no out for you.”

Nijinsky did not dispute that. He said, “Go. Sleep.”

Plath wanted to sleep. It was dark in the room. The window was too dirty to see through, and even though she guessed it must be morning out there, somewhere, only a faint gray penetrated to highlight peeling paint on the high ceiling.

She could feel her biots, still, as a sort of nagging presence in her brain. Like a child crying in another room. But at least she was no longer looking out through their eyes.

She felt numb, almost dead inside, and raw and angry outside. She wanted to smash her fist into the wall. She wanted to sleep. She wanted to throw open the door and just run, run right the hell out of this horrible place. And she wanted more of the whiskey.

She wanted her mother. And her dad. And her brother.

And she wanted the boy in the next room, because even if her mother and dad and brother were still alive, they would never be able to understand what had happened to her.

But he would. Maybe. Keats.

They had set it up this way, of course, Vincent and Jin. Probably not through some grand conspiracy, they had just known that two terrorized teenagers given poets’ names would reach out to each other.

She wondered if his door was locked.

She wondered if she tapped, just softly on the wall, would he hear her? So softly it wasn’t even a tap. So softly she could deny it?

She barely touched knuckles to wall.

A louder but still quiet tap at her own door.

He had come. Instantly. He’d been lying awake, too. He’d been waiting for her summons.

But still, she could just … not. She could just not respond. And he would go away, because he wasn’t a guy who would push at her, was he? How could she know? She’d known him a few hours and barely spoken.

But she knew.

Plath got up and went to the door. She composed her face and opened it.

Keats stood in sweatpants, bare feet, and a T-shirt. “I’d like to talk to someone,” he said. “I’d like to talk to you, I mean.”

Again, she liked him, because what he had done was pretend she hadn’t tapped on the wall. He was letting her deny that neediness if she chose to.

“Come in. I’d show you around, but there isn’t much to see.”

He took the sole chair. She sat on the edge of her bed. She was in a man’s T-shirt, legs bare, socks on her feet. He was probably seeing too much—the T-shirt was white aside from a faded logo. And he was noticing, but she didn’t care.

“What have we got ourselves into?” he asked.

We.

Ourselves.

Plath had no answer. Words seemed too small.

“I guess we’re not supposed to tell our real names,” Keats said.

She shook her head. No.

“I’m from London.”

“I love London.”

“You’ve been?” He smiled shyly, delighted to find something they had in common.

“My mother was English.” She watched to see if he noted the past tense. He did.

“Wish we were there?” he asked.

She let go of a small, abrupt laugh. “God, yes. Or anywhere.”

“Euro Disney?”

The suggestion was so perfectly absurd she started giggling. And that brought a smile, a real one, to his lips, and his blue eyes lit up even brighter than before.

“Really, any of the major theme parks,” she said through laughter. “I’d go see the giant ball of twine in Kansas.”

“Is that real?” he asked.

Suddenly serious she said, “Dude, I no longer feel qualified to say what’s real and what isn’t.”