BZRK Reloaded (29 page)

Over the ship’s loudspeaker he said, “Attention. This is Admiral
Domville, Royal Navy. This ship is sinking. Abandon ship. Abandon
ship. There is no time to launch lifeboats, abandon ship immediately.”

Finally, he keyed the radio and called out to the Hong Kong
Police, who were calling frantically for the ship to stop all engines
immediately, “This is the Gemini. The rudder is blown. I’ve ordered
the scuttles opened but I fear the ship won’t go down quickly enough.
I’m ordering everyone over the port side. You must sink this ship.
Repeat, this is Royal Navy Admiral Edward Domville in temporary
command of this vessel. You must sink this ship if you are able.”

The Doll Ship was turning in a long, steep arc into Victoria Harbor, the heart of Hong Kong.
Domville had an informed layman’s understanding of the effects
of an LNG leak and the likely results. The wind was dampened here,
closer to land, which was unfortunate. Wind would be good.
The simple fact was that if the Chinese could not sink the ship,
it would hit land, very densely populated land. The LNG might not
escape. Then again it might, and if it did it would expand through the
streets and alleyways of Hong Kong until it was ignited.
The better alternative would be to ignite the gas at the source of
the leak. The result would be a blowtorch, but that was better than an
explosion.
Domville sighed. He reached inside his jacket to the buttoned
inner pocket. He drew out a six-inch-long, pale yellow tube bearing
the red logo of Montecristo cigars. He twisted off the red plastic cap
and tapped the cigar into his hand.
“Pia,” he said, looking down at his friend, “if you’re in heaven this
is good-bye. If you’re in hell, I’ll be seeing you shortly.”
He cut and lit the cigar, and strolled out onto the deck.

The president’s limo was a tank in all but appearance. You could
shoot bullets at it all day. You could hit it with a rocket-propelled
grenade and it would roll right on.

The limo had secure communications, its own oxygen supply, and
a stock of the president’s own blood for an emergency transfusion.
The driver was a former navy SEAL with more medals than even
he could keep track of. There were Secret Service in the front seat, in
the backseat, in an SUV in front and a second SUV behind. Every one
of them would take a bullet for the POTUS.
There was no person on Earth better protected.
And yet . . .
Ginny Gastrell was worried, very worried, about her boss.
Gastrell was fifty-six years old, six feet tall, a former forward on
the women’s basketball team at Duke University, and looked a bit like
Camilla Parker Bowles. She had been married three times, divorced
three times, and had no children or hobbies. She was loyal to the president, even more loyal to her party, and most loyal to herself.
Helen Falkenhym Morales had a paper script on her lap. In the
end the White House speech writers had had to write something for
her. All she had produced herself was ranting nonsense.
Ronald Reagan had shown the early signs of Alzheimer’s while
still in office.
Woodrow Wilson was completely incapacitated after suffering a
stroke that was covered up by his wife.
Even Lincoln was known to suffer from depression.
But this was different. This was very different. Something was
wrong with the president. And now Ginny Gastrell was playing the
role once played by Mrs. Wilson and to a lesser extent by Mrs. Reagan. Gastrell was deliberately shielding the president from exposure.
That video, that goddamned video from those Anonymous
creeps. That had been the straw that somehow broke Morales’s back.
Helen Falkenhym Morales—Mother Titanium, some pundit had
tagged her. Tough. Fearless. Determined. Brilliant.
Look at her now. Look at her now.
The president was crunching the papers slowly in her fist. Crunch
and release. Crunch and release.
It would be better once MoMo was good and buried. That was it,
that was the thing that had derailed the president.
All she had to do was sit there in the front pew at the National
Cathedral. Listen to the various speakers. Nod along. Then give one
speech, the eulogy.
Then things would go back to normal.
No, they won’t, a voice in Gastrell’s head whispered. The boss is
crazy. The boss has lost it. You should be briefing the vice president.
Agnelli was a spineless idiot, but he was better than a crazy person.
One lousy church service.
One lousy speech.
“Come on, boss,” Gastrell whispered under her breath. “One
hour and we’re home free.”
As she glanced out of the window she saw the crowd lining the
street to see the president drive by. And she saw the sign: we know
you did it.

Vincent endured the assault by water. It was not the first time he’d
been on the receiving end of a desperate attempt to dislodge him.
And he had never been beaten.
He grabbed onto the fine hairs on Bug Man’s chin.
That name, Bug Man, how had it come to him? The gloomy creatures in his alternate universe? Had he heard it from them?
Bug Man. It meant something to him, but he couldn’t quite place
it. He just knew that this Bug Man was the game space, he was the
terrain, and he was the opponent as well.
The razor was an opportunity, not a threat. As the horizon-wide
blades descended he raced his biots to the end, to the plastic framing,
and leapt aboard.
The razor swept down and down but then rose dizzyingly through
the air before touching down again. This touchdown left Vincent able
to jump free higher up Bug Man’s face, up above the water storm.
From there he was equidistant between eye and ear. There would
be enemy forces in the eye, but his opponent couldn’t twitch as long as
he was showering. This, too, Vincent knew. He had played this game
before and he had won.
He had beaten a guy named …What was his name? The first one?
He had beaten . . .
And then, up against Sailor099. No, wait, that was a different
game. Not this game, that one had swords.
But he had won. And then …another.
He shook off the mental confusion. Play the game. Focus.
Vincent’s instincts told him that if he could get past Bug Man’s
outer perimeter of nanobots he would have a free walk most of the
way down the optic nerve. Unlike biots, nanobots were not always
alert. They were machines, and when they were not being controlled
or running on some program, they were as inert as toasters.
He could picture them clearly. Nanobots. No problem. Nanobots
could not kill him; he was invincible.
Vincent found three nanobots waiting but off-line at the back of
Bug Man’s eye. He crippled them without any effort.
A faraway voice said, “I’m going down the shower drain!” but it
meant nothing to Vincent.
Neither did a male voice yelling “Sadie! Grab onto something,
anything!”
Vincent knew these sounds meant something important and in
some vague, distant way he even understood the words. But he did
not care. That was another world. He was back in the game, down
where he belonged, down where he was alive. He was a wolf, alert,
nose sniffing, ears twitching, looking for prey, craving prey.
“The water stopped,” the distant voice said. “I’m—one of mine is in
the drain. Aaaaarrrrggh! Damnit! I don’t know how far down I am. My
other two are still okay, but one is way down south. Long walk back.”
“Get out of the drain, just make it out of there,” the male voice
soothed. “This is over for you. Let Vincent handle it.”
Vincent recognized that word, that name: Vincent. He nodded,
yes, let Vincent do it.
“I can do it,” Plath said.
In the macro Vincent frowned. But his attention was on the vital
intersection ahead, the optic chiasm where the optic nerve connections crossed over to their opposite hemispheres. That’s where an
enemy would lie in wait, the crossroads. Yeah, how often had he battled here? Hah!
Left eye, right eye, it didn’t matter, if you were headed for the
deep brain you came this way. And whoever you were, whatever you
were, however good you thought you were, Vincent was better.
Bring it.
And there they were, just where they should be, clinging upside
down hoping to drop unexpected from above. Yes, of course, because
a novice twitcher would be thinking in terms of up and down and
imagining that the surface beneath his biot’s legs was the “floor” and
might not see them “up” there like bats on a cave ceiling.
Vincent heard a laugh and thought it might have come from
him.
The nanobots were inert, off-line. Twelve of them, each with Bug
Man’s exploding head logo. Vincent felt disappointed: he wanted the
game, not a cold-blooded job of destruction.
If he just kept moving he could pass by leaving no trace and be
deep into wiring possibly without ever being seen. He hesitated. What
was the object of the game? To destroy nanobots or to take over control of the brain?
The question confused him. That he didn’t know the answer
meant something was wrong with him. He remembered game, he
remembered the desire, he remembered tactics and even strategies,
but things were missing, too.
There was a sound, fist pounding. Frustration. Why didn’t he
remember the object of the game? He had played the game many
times and always won, so he must have known the object of the
game.
It was as if he could reach toward something with his hands but
when his hands were close enough to touch it disappeared. It was
present only as an absence. It was like something that always moved
out of sight no matter how you turned your head to see it.
His biots froze in place.
He blinked his eyes and focused on a tense, drawn face in front
of him. It was not a biot face; it was in that other place, one of those
slow, gloomy creatures.
“I think he’s seeing me,” the face said.
“What did you do to me?” Vincent asked Plath.
“Pay attention to Bug Man,” Wilkes said, very agitated, “Dammit,
don’t let him get you.”
Vincent held his breath. He had heard her and understood and
all at once he was completely up in that shadow world, disoriented.
“Tell him,” Keats said.
“He may —” Wilkes said, but stopped herself. “Nah. Blue eyes is
right. Tell him.”
“Vincent, we cauterized a part of your brain,” Plath said.
“I feel it. I feel something missing.”
“Daisy …Daisy . . .” Wilkes sang in a low voice and laughed her
heh-heh-heh laugh.
“You were damaged,” Plath said. “We …We did our best to fix
you. We need you.”
“You burned a hole in my brain.”
“Yes,” Anya Violet said. He recognized her, knew her, suddenly
knew the taste of her lips and the smell of her hair. “Because they’re
the good guys and they needed to win.”
Vincent did not hear the sarcasm. “To win the game?”
Plath nodded, and now there were tears spilling from her eyes.
He knew her, too. “Yes, Vincent. To win the game. We had to try and
save you. We needed you. We need you now. To win the game, to wire
Bug Man.”
Vincent’s eyes narrowed. “Wiring is the win?”
Plath shot a desperate look at Keats, who looked for a moment as
if he might be sick, but then clenched his jaw, nodded once, and said,
“That’s right, Vincent. The wire is the win. But we’re going to need
to send Wilkes and Plath in, too, for a complete wiring, and we can’t
do that unless Bug Man’s forces are destroyed. So for you the ‘win’ is
disarming him.”
“Kill his nanobots, Vincent,” Plath said. “Then lay some scrambling wire until we can get more biots in his brain.”
“Thank you,” Vincent whispered.
His three biots looked up at the clinging nanobots.
And just then, all dozen nanobots stirred.

He keyed the visuals for the nanobots guarding his nasal passage.
They were fine and functional. Same with those in each ear.
Left eye, okay.
No contact with the other eye.
He switched visuals to the chiasm, an eye entry usually led here.
Twelve screens opened in a snap. Hanging above/below his nanobots
stood two identical biots and a third, similar but slightly longer.
Bug Man enlarged the visuals, not quite able to accept what he
was seeing. It was hard telling one biot from the next, it was almost
more instinct than recognition, but as the disturbing insect/human
faces came into wavy focus he knew.
Vincent.
A thrill of fear went through Bug Man.
Back from madness? Vincent was back?
Twelve nanobots against three of Vincent’s biots. Four-to-one
odds. Against most twitchers that would be more than enough. Vincent was not most twitchers. The last time he’d faced Vincent the
odds were heavily in Bug Man’s favor and he’d barely come out on
top.
He felt defeat coming. He was exhausted. He was frightened. He
was eaten up inside with the loss of Jessica.
Bug Man had one small hope: he had to focus on killing one biot,
ignore the rest, all it would take is that single kill and Vincent would
be out of it again, this time, he fervently hoped, forever.
He platooned all twelve nanobots together. They would move as
one.
One punch, that’s all he would get.
The twelve nanobots released their hold and pushed off into the
cerebrospinal fluid, descending on Vincent like a mailed fist.
Halfway there Bug Man saw the two original biots move aside.
They each crouched down and folded their legs, a clear sign that they
were out of this battle.
Vincent would fight using only a single biot.
Bug Man’s mouth was dry. The water in his hair and on his body
was making him shiver with cold. What would they do to him if he
lost?
Twelve nanobots met the single biotin midair, except of course
there was no air.
With unbelievable speed Vincent’s biot snatched the first two
nanobots by their retracted wheels, paddled back with its remaining
four legs and smashed the captives into the second row of advancing
nanobots. In half a heartbeat four broken nanobots were sent drifting, and the odds had gone from twelve-to-one to eight-to-one.
Bug Man laughed in disbelief. This was some new kind of biot.
It was stronger and faster and he was so going to get his ass kicked.
But hey: never say die.
Bug Man instantly split his eight remaining nanobots into two
smaller platoons of four so that they could veer left and right, but
Vincent had seen this coming, too, and used the split force against
Bug Man.
Vincent’s biot reached the chiasmic wall, grabbed a single handhold and curled its body out so that the powerful hind legs were in
position, claws stretched as the first two nanobots struck.
Vincent missed!
“Yeah! Yeah!”
Instantly Bug Man was back from the dead, hah!
Two of his nanobots hit the biot’s midsection, stabbed, penetrated
deep, hah-hah-hah!
But they couldn’t stab again. Vincent’s biot wrapped them in its
legs, tangling them hopelessly, and began ripping the machines apart.
The detached four turned awkwardly, racing back to attack from
behind, but the slow circulation of fluid was against them and they
were just …a little …too slow.
It was like some ancient World War I aerial dogfight with Bug
Man’s four planes caught in a crosswind.
Anchored securely in place, Vincent had only to reach out and
stab each one as it came helplessly within reach.
“Fuck!” Bug Man yelled.
What did he have left? A dozen other nanobots on board, but
spread all around his head. He could bring them all against Vincent,
but it would take minutes, and a second dozen wouldn’t do any better
than the first dozen.
With sick dread Bug Man realized that his brain, his own self and
soul, was wide open, unprotected, vulnerable to the only twitcher on
Earth who might actually be his equal.
“What’s the move?” he asked himself. “What’s the move?”
The only real forces he had left were not on board in his brain.
They were a mile away in the White House.
The Twins would take him out if he screwed things up with the
POTUS. On the other hand, hell, they’d probably already come after
him. And if he didn’t do something fast he’d be a wired-up little bitch,
just like Jessica.
What a fool he’d been to trust her. What a fool he’d been to believe
there was anything real there. He had made her, and then unmade
her, and been shattered when she betrayed him. He was a fool.
“Okay, Vincent,” he said. “You got me good, dude, you got me
good. But the game isn’t over yet.”