BZRK

They were coming to Keats.

The left foot stepped in Keats’s blood. Corpuscles surged up and around the biots, finding them even in the depths of the channel. The biots powered on through their creator’s own blood, red Frisbees clinging to spiky feet and clustering on biot bellies.

“Make him sit up,” Charles ordered. “Remove the gag.”

Instantly, rough hands grabbed Keats and hauled him almost to his feet before slamming him on his butt.

The feet were immobile. The biots rushed over and through blood to the end of the channel and turned the corner onto the toe, and Benjamin said, “I don’t feel right, brother.”

Keats stared up into the faces of the Twins.

He knew better than to be horrified by mere deformity. He’d had a teacher once with paddle arms no more than twelve inches long, a birth defect, and so he knew not to stare, and he certainly knew better than to shudder and pull back and lose for a moment his ability to take a breath.

But this was something out of a nightmare. This was no mere deformity. This was Satan playing with DNA.

Charles’s eye glared pure hatred at him. Benjamin’s eye was filling with tears. And the third eye, soulless, dead, devoid of spark, wandered before at last focusing on him. He saw the brown iris contract.

“You’ll tell me now where the girl is,” Charles said in a low voice.

Keats should have said something pithy and defiant. He didn’t. His mouth wasn’t working.

“You’re a handsome one, aren’t you?” Charles asked. “My brother and I have not had that particular advantage in life. Tell me, boy: What’s it like to have that face? What’s it like to have women look at you and admire you?”

“Speak up!” Sugar said. Her voice betrayed her own fear. And someone, Keats didn’t see who, buried a toe in his kidney and made him cry out in pain.

“Do you have a knife, Ms. Lebowski?” Charles asked.

“A knife? I … No, sir.”

“I do,” a male voice said. There came the snicker-snack sound of a Swiss Army knife opening.

“Promote this one; I like a man who is prepared,” Charles said to Sugar. “Give the knife to Ms. Lebowski. Ms. Lebowski, what part of a man’s face attracts you?”

“I … the … the eyes,” Sugar stammered.

Biots were on top of the shoe now. Too far. They would never climb that towering body in time to do any good.

“No, we can’t take his eyes, Ms. Lebowski. How would he be able to appreciate what had happened to his face if we took his eyes?” The faces, the eyes, scanned the surface of Keats’s face and focused at last on his nose.

“Will the girls think he’s pretty with his nose cut off, Ms. Lebowski?”

“Jesus … I,” she said.

“Let him feel the blade,” Charles said, his voice guttural now.

Sugar pressed the blade against the side of Keats’s nose. He could see it. He could feel it. His heart hammered in terror. He tried to twist away but powerful hands imprisoned his skull.

“No, no, don’t do it, miss,” Keats begged.

“Then tell me where to find the McLure,” Charles grated.

The knife would slice through flesh. It would cut his nose and hesitate at the cartilage but it would cut and cut away and his nose would fall to the floor, a useless piece of dead flesh and he would forever—

“Now!” Charles roared. “Tell me now!”

“I don’t know where—”

“Cut off his nose! Cut him! Do it!”

“I—” Sugar said.

“Cut off his nose or you’ll lose your own!”

“He’s a kid!” Sugar begged.

“I don’t know where she is!” Keats pleaded.

“Don’t hit me, Granddad!” Benjamin cried.

“Shut your mouth, Brother! Cut him now!”

But even as Charles bellowed, his body was jerked away. The Twins stumbled back, and through eyes filled with tears, Keats saw Benjamin flailing madly, swatting at something no one but he could see.

“Brother!” Charles cried.

It was a lunatic dance, two halves of the joined body struggling, staggering, slipping in the blood.

The Twins stumbled back into the desk, which scooted away so that they fell hard on their behind, and Keats felt the impact through his biots and the blade slid away from Keats’s nose, and Benjamin, in a child’s voice, kept saying, “Communists!”

Then Charles roared in frustration. He swatted at his brother’s head but couldn’t reach. He swatted with arms too short to reach across the width of his own body and shouted, “Control yourself! Control yourself!” as he lost the last of his own control and now flailed, tried to pull himself up and ended in knocking the whole desk over.

Pens and phone and dog treats and a soft-drink bottle all slid to the floor. The touch-screen desk lay on its side, still displaying the battle inside the president.

Charles got his hand on the drink bottle, holding it awkwardly by the fat end, and jabbed it now, hit his brother’s face with it, and blood gushed suddenly from Benjamin’s mouth even as he kept yelling, “Communists! Communists!”

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

Charles bashed his brother’s mouth. A tooth bent inward and gushed blood. The lips were jagged and red.

“He’s going to hurt Benjamin,” Sugar said. “We have to stop it.”

She moved fast, whipped out plastic ties, the same as the ones that held Keats, grabbed Charles’s hammering hand and using her full weight, pushed it down.