BZRK: Reloaded

But Captain McGrath, USMC, had been sent to Afghanistan when Minako was just three years old, and he had been killed in an ambush.

Minako had his picture beside her bed. But she did not really remember anything about him. Just the picture.

She had reached step number six hundred and forty-five when she saw the two men returning. Each carried two heavily weighted plastic shopping bags from the grocery store. The bags bulged with rice wine, French Cognac and cigarettes.

Six hundred and forty-six . . .

Six hundred and forty-seven . . .

Almost there. But now, if she turned to shore, she would walk directly into the two men. It would look deliberate.

Minako felt a stab of panic. She really needed a good count. It had been a bad day. And if she didn’t get her number the Unspecified Bad Thing would happen.

They had come back too quickly.

Sic hundred and fifty-two . . .

Six hundred and fifty-three . . .

Just forty-eight more steps.

“Hey, girly,” the Asian man said. He was speaking accented English. Minako spoke English fairly well, her mother had insisted, and of course her school as well.

“She’ll do,” the Caucasian man said. He spoke with a Russian accent.

The two men moved apart. Their arms spread out a little—awkward with the heavy shopping bags.

Minako’s first reaction was confusion. What were they doing? She was so close to finishing her steps.

Six hundred and sixty-one . . .

Forty more steps and she would have her 701.

“What’s your name, honey?”

In Japanese she said, “I don’t understand,” and made a shy little shrug of apology.

They were only twenty yards away now, and she was still thirtyfive steps away, and suddenly they swept toward her. No choice, she had to break and run, she took one more step—number 678—and broke stride, started to run, and hit the sand, facedown.

The one from the boat had come up behind her and shoved her. There was sand in her mouth. She cried out, but her voice was masked by the sound of the waves.

She tried to roll over but there was a heavy weight on her back.

“Stop fighting,” a man’s voice said, far too near her ear. “No one is going to hurt you. You’re going to the happiest place on Earth.” There was something sardonic about that last phrase.

Minako opened her mouth to scream again, but a rag was in her mouth and a roll of duct tape made a tearing sound as it went around her head once, twice, tangling in her hair.

A second set of hands had her legs.

“We could have ourselves a time before we take her in,” suggested the Asian one.

She screamed into her gag.

“No one bothers one of the villagers.” The voice of the one from the Zodiac. The one who had shoved her down. The one now sitting astride her back as his mate wound the tape around her ankles. His cigarette ash fell on her cheek. “Don’t be a stupid boy, KimKim.”

“Zoob, I’m just saying . . .” the one they’d called KimKim said.

They wound the tape efficiently around her wrists. The one named Zoob searched her pockets, found the cell phone, switched it off, and stuck it in his jacket pocket.

The Russian laughed. “You’re just saying? Listen, stupid boy: we grab a villager, that’s what they want, yes? Good. So if the mate finds out that we also picked up cigarettes and Cognac on the way, well, we can make him happy, da? ‘Here, Dragoslav, have a bottle, have two packs.’ No problem, right? But you don’t mess with the villagers.”

Zoob hauled Minako up off the sand as if she weighed nothing. He casually tossed her over one shoulder and walked to the Zodiac. He set her in the bottom where water sloshed several inches deep.

“Get this straight, KimKim, before dig your own grave. This isn’t the merchant marine,” Zoob said as they gunned the outboard engine. “This is the Doll Ship. There are rules that you can break … and maybe you get some extra punishment duty. But. But there are other rules that if you break, you find yourself trying to swim ashore from twenty miles out with six feet of chain around your ankles.”

The young one thought that over. Then said, “Nah.”

But nevertheless, Minako had made it to the ship unharmed.

What they had done instead was ignore her outraged protests and pleas. For six days she had been in this place, and all they had done was show her videos from some group called Nexus Humanus. And she’d been given reading materials, also from Nexus Humanus. Mostly she’d been told about her benefactors—Charles and Benjamin Armstrong, the Great Souls.

And she had been assigned a “lodge” in Benjaminia.

The steel sphere that was Benjaminia had nine levels. Each level was a steel catwalk that went all the way around the sphere. Level 5 was the largest. The circumference of the sphere was 125 meters at that point.

But Minako was not assigned to level 5—a prime number. She was given a lodge on level 4. Four was not a good number for her. Worse yet, her lodge was one of fourteen lodges on her level. Each lodge was a slightly wedge-shaped space—wider at the outer edge where it met the nickel sphere and narrower where it opened onto the connecting catwalk.

There was a raised metal IKEA bunk bolted down. Beneath that bunk, a desk and chair. There was the sort of tiny bathroom you might find on a boat—a toilet, a sink you could barely fit your hands into, and a shower that used the entire bathroom as a stall.

The bathroom was the only place where there was any privacy. The rest of the lodge was open metal grille below and above. Minako could look up and see the soles of the shoes of the man who lived up there. When she looked down, she saw the girl who lived beneath her on level 3.