Michael Grant - BZRK

He pulled the hood of his sweatshirt over his head and, with a deep, bracing breath, opened the door.

Sure enough, Jindal was waiting with a high-five. Jindal was . . . well, what was he, exactly? A sort of office manager for twitchers? He saw himself as being in some kind of position of authority. The twitchers saw him as the guy who made sure the fridge had plenty of Red Bull.

Thirty-five years old, grinning ingratiatingly at a sixteen-year-old kid in a hoodie. Sucking up. Even doing a little dance move, like he was trying to impress the Bug Man with a flash of ghetto. Bug Man was from Knightsbridge, a pricey neighborhood in London. He was not from the Bronx. But what did Jindal know? Any black face had to be ghetto.

“The damn signal repeater on the blimp went weak on me, Jindal,” Bug Man said, a little too loud over the music in his ears. “I was down to eighty percent.”

Let’s see if Jindal wanted to dance about a glitchy repeater. Bug Man pushed past him.

But Burnofsky was a different thing. Couldn’t really just blow off Burnofsky. He might be a sixty-year-old burnout with a six-day growth of white whiskers and a drunk’s chewed-up nose, but Burnofsky had game. No one was a better twitcher than Anthony Elder aka Bug Man, but if there was a close number two it was Burnofsky.

After all, he had created the game.

Bug Man pulled out one earbud. The band was going on about watching the company that you keep. Burnofsky was making that twisted, sneering face that was his most pleasant expression.

“S’matter, Bug? You don’t want to see the video?”

“Bugger off, Burnofsky. I need a slash.”

Burnofsky must have already been hitting the Thermos where he kept his chilled vodka. He grabbed Bug Man’s shoulder and spun him around. “Come on, kid. Don’t you want to see the macro? This is an accomplishment. A great moment for all of us.”

Bug Man knocked the old drunk’s hand away, but not before being exposed to a high-def visual of devastation. Looked like a camera angle from that same blimp, too steady to be a helicopter. Smoke and bodies.

Bug Man turned away. Not because it was too terrible to see, but because it was irrelevant. “I just play the game, old man.”

“The Twins will want to thank you,” Burnofsky taunted. “You going to tell them to ‘bugger off’, too? I mean, you struck a major blow today, kid. Grey McLure and his boy are charcoal briquettes. You’ve stepped up to the big times, Anthony: you’re a mass murderer now, up in the macro, not just shooting spiders down in the meat. And we’re all one step closer to a world of perfect peace, happiness, and universal brotherhood.”

“I just want to be one step closer to the loo, man,” Bug Man said.

“It’s called the restroom in this country, you little British bastard.”

He started to move away, but Burnofsky stepped suddenly closer, put his bloodless, papery-fleshed hands on Bug Man’s neck, pulled him close, and breathed eighty-proof fumes into his ear. “You’ll grow up some day, Anthony. You’ll know what you did.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “And it will eat you alive.”

Bug Man shoved him back, but not so hard as to knock him down. “How stupid are you, Burnofsky?” Bug Man grinned and shook his head. He pointed a finger at his own temple. “I just rewired that pilot’s brain. You think I won’t rewire my own? You know, if I ever feel the need?”

That shut Burnofsky up. The old man took a step back, frowned, and waved his hand like he was trying to block the sight of Bug Man’s smooth face.

“The macro is all micro, old man. You drown your conscience in booze or whatever it is you smoke that makes you smell like roadkill . . .” He saw Burnofsky glance nervously back at Jindal. So: Burnofsky thought that was a secret, did he? Old fool. “You do what you have to do, Burnofsky. It’s not my business, is it? But I have a better way. Snip snip, wire wire. I mean, you know, if I ever get old and soft in the head like you. Now: I either go to the toilet or pee on your leg.”

FOUR

Sadie McLure had passed out in the ambulance on the way to the ER.

She’d awakened in bits and pieces, in flashes of light, and hovering faces, and tiled ceilings and fluorescent fixtures rushing by overhead. Images of green scrubs, masks, tubes, and shiny metal instruments.

Like a dream. Not a good dream.

Sharp, breathtaking pain from her arm when someone jostled it.

And with the scrubs came the black suits. Security. Protect the McLure. That was her now: the McLure.

A stab of pain that was not from any nerve ending, a stab like a cold knife wielded by her own soul.

Then muzzy relief flowed through her veins as the opiates arrived to take the edge off.

Sleep. And terrible nightmares of falling into an oozing mass of burning flesh. Like overcooked marshmallow. And it wasn’t her father or brother burning but her mother, who hadn’t burned, who had died in a bed like this one, her insides eaten by cancer.

Sadie woke. How much later? No way to know. There was no calendar or clock in the room. What there was was a man in a black suit, white shirt, black tie, and an earpiece. He was sitting in the chair, legs crossed, reading a graphic novel.

He would have a gun. He would also have a stun gun. And probably a second gun in an ankle holster.

Sadie’s body was one massive bruise. She did a quick inventory and decided, yes, every single inch of her hurt. Inside and outside, she hurt.

She was on her back, head slightly elevated, a needle taped to her right arm. A clear plastic bag hung beside the bed.

Her left arm was wrapped in hard plastic sheathing, bent into a lazy L and suspended from a wire.

Something had been inserted in her urethra. It hurt, but at the same time she had the feeling it had been there for a while.

“Who are you?” she asked. It sounded perfectly clear in her head, but she had the impression it came out as a whisper.

The man’s eyes flicked up from his book.

“Water,” Sadie gasped, suddenly overwhelmed by the sensation of thirst.

The man rose quickly. He came to the bed and pressed a button. The door opened within seconds, and two nurses came in. No, a nurse and a doctor, one was wearing a stethoscope.

“Water,” Sadie managed to say in a semicoherent voice.

“First we have to—” the doctor said.

“Water!” Sadie snapped. “First: water.”

The doctor took a step back. She would not be the first or last to take that step back.

The nurse had a drinking bottle with a bent straw. She let Sadie swallow a little. A blessing.

Nurses, Sadie remembered. That’s what her mother had said as she lay dying. Doctors can all go to hell; nurses go straight to heaven. Not that Birgid McLure took either heaven or hell literally.

Alone.

Sadie was alone. The realization scared her.

Just me , she thought.

She thought she might be crying, but she couldn’t feel tears, only the need to shed them.

A second guy in a black suit was in the room. Older. The corporate security chief. Sadie knew him. Should remember his name, but she didn’t. A third man, sleek in a very expensive striped suit, might as well have had “lawyer” tattooed on his forehead.

The corporation was swinging into action. Lawyers, security, all of it too damned late.

She had a stupid question to ask. Stupid in that she already knew the answer. “My Dad. And Stone.”

“Now isn’t the time,” the nurse said kindly.

“Dead,” the security chief answered.

The nurse shot him a dirty look.

“She’s my boss,” the man said flatly. “She’s McLure. She asks a question, I answer.”

The doctor was busy reading the chart. The nurse peered at Sadie, as if measuring her courage. She was Jamaican, maybe, judging from the accent. Or from one of those other islands where they do cool things to the English language.