BZRK

Was he thinking the same things about her? Right now, this minute?

She could imagine the pictures, the fantasies in his head. He was a boy, after all, so yeah, he thought about her. In some very specific ways no doubt. Which was fine, so long as whatever he thought of her, however she looked, whatever he imagined her doing, it had nothing to do with dangerous human-eyed mutant insects down—

Footsteps. Loud, not concerned with nighttime.

A loud knock—a banging, really—on her door.

“Up. Now. Up and dressed.”

She recognized the voice. Caligula.

She rolled out of bed, stumbled to her clothing, dressed with shaking hands, and stepped into the hallway. Keats was there before her.

“What’s happening?”

He shook his head, mystified. They found Vincent and Wilkes in the common room. Anya Violet sat in a corner, meek, wary, diminished.

Caligula said, “Is this everyone?”

Vincent said, “Ophelia is visiting family. Jin is out.”

Caligula smirked. “Yeah, he’s quite the party boy, isn’t he?”

“What’s going on?” Vincent asked, impatient. Plath noticed the way he avoided looking at Anya. And she noticed that Anya’s lipstick was smeared a little, and that some of it, a trace, was left on Vincent’s cheek.

“The Beijing cell was just hit,” Caligula said. “Two escaped, everyone else dead. The Delhi cell barely escaped a team that went after them, three dead there. Armstrong is coming after us. Trying to take us out before the main event.”

“Do they know this location?” Vincent demanded. He was on his feet. All business now.

“Let’s not wait around to find out,” Caligula said. “Grab your bugs, leave everything else. You have two minutes.”

“All of you, get your biots,” Vincent ordered.

Plath and Keats ran, along with Wilkes, to the upstairs lab.

“Grab any crèches up there,” Vincent shouted after them.

It wasn’t two minutes but closer to five before they were ready. Plath had her groggy biots crawling into the safety of her own ear, walking through pollen and dust and around tiny hairs the size of bamboo.

In her pocket she had a crèche—two of Ophelia’s dormant biots.

“Well, that was kind of like two minutes,” Caligula said dryly. “Now, we don’t know what’s outside. I’ve got a car waiting. But we don’t know. So here.” He handed a gun to Plath. “You did okay with one of these last time.”

“I don’t want—”

“I don’t give a goddamn what you want,” Caligula said. He noted the gun in Vincent’s hand. “Rule number one: no one accidentally shoots me. I will resent it.”

In the end there were no AmericaStrong TFDs waiting out in the New York City night. They crammed in the back of a long black limo and drove out of the city toward Long Island.

Caligula sat in the front next to the driver. Vincent tapped on the separating glass and said to Caligula, “I’ve contacted Ophelia. You want to pick her up?”

Caligula considered. With his hat off for the drive Plath could see that his long hair was a fringe, and that the bald spot on top was split by a livid, jagged scar running back to front.

“She have a car?” Caligula asked.

“Yes.”

“Tell her to get on the nearest highway. Doesn’t matter what direction. Just tell her to keep moving until we can reach her.”

“Don’t you have anyone you can send to bring her in?” Vincent asked.

Caligula turned in his seat. His smile was incredulous. “I’m not Five-O, Vincent. I can’t just send Danny and a squad car. Anything from pretty boy?”

Vincent shook his head curtly. The glass partition rose again.

“So, having fun so far?” Wilkes asked Keats.

He managed a faint smile. Then he turned his head and looked out of the window. They drove through darkened Brooklyn.

No one seemed to want to talk except Wilkes.

“Anyone else hungry? Doughnut places are open. We could buy a dozen assorted.”

No one answered.

“Raised doughnuts, not the cake ones,” Wilkes said. “I don’t really like cake doughnuts, although I will eat them. But for one thing, in a cake doughnut the hole is all crunched up. I believe a doughnut should have a true hole.”

She let that sit for a moment, smiling at Keats. Then said, “I like to stick my tongue in the hole.”

Keats looked a little panicky.

“How about you, blue eyes?” Wilkes asked innocently. “Do you like to stick your tongue in the hole?”

“I’m not hungry,” Keats said defensively.

Wilkes blinked theatrically, doing a double take. “Is that true, Plath? You should know him well enough by now to know whether he likes to stick his—”

“Wilkes,” Vincent said wearily.

“What? If he doesn’t, I’d be happy to train him,” she said, and laughed her odd heh-heh-heh laugh, cracking herself up. Then she looked out of the window and began digging a sharp thumbnail into the flesh of her arm. Repositioning and doing it again. And again.

Plath met Keats’s eyes and saw that he had noticed it, too.

Each of them living with the fear in their own way. Anya Violet practically defining a separate space as she refused even the slightest acknowledgment of the others. And Vincent tapping into his phone, face blank, eyes glittering, the corners of his mouth tugged downward even more than usual.