BZRK

“Is it much farther?” Keats asked Vincent.

“At least an hour,” Vincent said. “If you can sleep, do it.”

Keats nodded and closed his eyes.

It didn’t fool Plath. Or at least she didn’t think it was real until Keats started snoring softly. Her immediate reaction was outrage that he could sleep at a time like this.

“I like your boyfriend,” Wilkes said.

“He’s not … whatever,” Plath said wearily. “You have one? A boyfriend, I mean?”

“Not a boyfriend,” Wilkes said. “There was this guy I would occasionally share a sweaty hour with. It was just sex. Comfort. Not love. That’s over.”

“What happened?”

“Got shot. I guess he, uh …” Wilkes shook her head angrily as her voice choked. “I guess he bled out. Because some stupid bitch ratted him out to the Armstrong Twins.”

She stared pure hatred at Anya. And Plath recoiled in shock as she understood. Renfield and Wilkes? No way. The arrogant young aristocrat and the tattooed tough chick?

Comfort. Someone to reach out and touch when night and fear closed in around you.

Wilkes dug her thumbnail again, and this time drew blood.

Ophelia drove Interstate 84 between Waterbury and Hartford. She had a gun on the seat beside her. She had two of her biots in her brain, sitting, doing nothing. She had to hope that the other two of her “children” were cared for.

She had to hope that the house of her grandfather, which she had just left, much to his surprise and concern, was safe from attack.

She had to hope Vincent and the others were well.

She had to hope that car pulling up parallel to her was not a problem. She had no illusion that she could somehow win a gunfight with a carload of TFDs.

“Na hanyate hanyamane sarire,” Ophelia said. It meant, roughly, that consciousness was eternal, not vanquished with the death of the body.

Which was no doubt very comforting to very enlightened people. For her part Ophelia did not feel particularly enlightened. She felt cold fear.

Nijinsky had danced hard and drunk hard, and now he was considering the possibilities among the three guys who had made serious efforts to hit on him. Well, the three who were even in the game. More had taken a run at him, various twinks, bears, muscle pups. But none of them were his type.

Nijinsky liked guys with an edge. With something dangerous about them. Punks. Anarchists. Homothugs.

He checked his BlackBerry then remembered the battery had died. It needed replacing, it wasn’t holding charge as well as it used to. Well, BZRK could survive without him for a night.

Now, back to the possibilities. One was at the bar, one was dancing, one was falling down as his legs buckled. Now on his butt on the floor, down amid knees and feet, he was clawing at his chest, at the two Taser prongs that had whizzed past Nijinsky.

The music was more than loud enough to deaden the zapping sound. Where the hell? Nijinsky crouched instinctively and spun like a parody of a guy trying to look ninja.

Something hit him hard in the back of the head. Hard enough to send him staggering forward. A woman, not big, just a woman who looked like a suburban housewife, strode right through the dancers who, when they spotted the gun in her hand, backed away fast.

Nijinsky felt dizzy. There was no pain yet, just something like the echo of a massive blow. A club or one hell of a big fist. He was stunned. Unable to comprehend.

He leaned back against the bar, knocking over a stool in the process. A pair of very tough bikers made to rush the blonde woman. She swung the gun toward them with an “I wouldn’t if I were you” look.

The music died. Now Nijinsky heard cries and shouts and voices yelling that someone should call the cops.

“My name is Sugar,” the woman said to Nijinsky. She pushed the muzzle of her gun directly against his temple. “If you even come close to touching me, I’ll blow your head off. Don’t want your nasty little bugs in my brain. Now walk.”

He walked. Staggered. Out the back door. There he was clubbed again on the back of his neck. It was a hard blow, and it should have knocked him unconscious. It didn’t, but he saw the opportunity and slumped, eyes closed, head lolling.

Rough hands grabbed him under the arms and tossed him into the backseat of a car. They handcuffed him.

“You sure it’s safe to touch him?”

“As long as he’s unconscious he can’t do anything with his biots.” Sugar, in the front seat. Nijinsky kept his eyes shut. His head on his chest. Regulated his breathing. No signs of consciousness.

“I’ve seen this guy somewhere before,” one of the men said.

“Billboards,” Sugar said. “He’s the model they use for Mountain Dew Extra.”

“Hey, yeah. I’ll be damned. The MDE guy. Huh.”

Nijinsky’s biots were already on the move, emerging from his eyeball to race down his cheek. A part of him thought: this powder I’m wearing has an interesting variety of shapes. It was probably basically talcum, although it came with an expensive name brand. It was strangely like rock flakes. All jagged and irregular. His biots clambered over a landscape of the weirdly sharp boulders.

Maybe next time skip the powder.

The car sped through the night. The biots sped across his skin to his lips. Here would be the tricky part. His head was swimming as the pain in his neck and head hit him full-on. Damage had been done to skin, muscle, and bone.

Oh, yes, pain. Oh, yeah, oh, shit. Don’t show it, Shane, don’t show any sign of consciousness.