BZRK

evidence suggests that MK-ULTRA also experimented with early versions of nanotechnology. When those efforts were frustrated by congressional budget cuts, the research was handed off to the Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation and their weapons research division. All records of AFGC’s involvement have been expunged. A number of individuals involved have died under suspicious circumstances.

THIRTEEN
    A knock.
    Sadie—she hadn’t begun to think of herself as Plath, not yet—said, “Who is it?”
    “Vincent.”
    Vincent. Sadie hadn’t seen him since he appeared suddenly in her bathroom. He looked the same. Twentysomething going on a thousand.
    The boy with the blue eyes, Keats, was with him. Keats looked like he’d just been roused from bed. Of course, she probably did, too, considering that she had just been roused from bed.
    Renfield was a few feet back in the shadows. He had struck an arms-akimbo pose, like a soldier on guard. She saw the wariness with which he looked at Vincent. Vincent didn’t seem to do anything to cause this reaction, he wasn’t angry or domineering. He was quiet and self-contained and looked a little sad in his dark raincoat. But Sadie had to admit that she felt a bit of Vincent-awe herself: she remembered the blade of his pen.
    It was night outside. She had slept the sleep of exhaustion, all through the day.
    “Things are moving a bit quicker than we’d like,” Vincent said. “Usually there would be time to teach you. Prepare you. But we have an opportunity tonight.”
    Why was it absolutely impossible for Sadie even to imagine saying no to him?
    Her eyes widened. Had they done something to her? In her brain?
    As if he’d read her mind Vincent said, “Both of you are alone. Keats: Renfield retrieved his biots while you were asleep. And Ophelia’s are back with her, Plath.”
    Plath
.
    “How do I know that?” Sadie demanded.
    Renfield looked about ready to say something but stopped himself and took half a step back.
    Vincent said, “Listen to me, Plath. You, too, Keats.”
    He knew her real name. But he wasn’t using it. She had a feeling he would never slip and call her Sadie. Might not even think it.
    Plath. It took some thinking about.
    “I need you both to trust me,” Vincent said. “I don’t mean that I’d
like
you to trust me. I mean that I
need
you to trust me. For that reason, I will never lie to you. If you were ever to catch me in a lie, you would never fully trust me again. So I will never lie.”
    Sadie glanced at Keats. His suspicion was an echo of her own. “Okay, then,” she said. “What are we doing?”
    “We are going to make your biots.”
    Her breath caught. “Now?”
    Renfield led the way. Not the way they had come into the building, not through that alley, but down a steep, narrow set of steps, and then a broader set of steps, and then through a door, and a room that was obviously the dry-storage space of a restaurant. Cans of chili sauce. Big plastic tubs of mayonnaise. Pickles. Ketchup. A surprisingly tall stack of boxes of canned soup. Canned sodas and bottled water.
    Sadie smelled grease, vinegar, and urine.
    Renfield opened a second door, and they stepped out into a dark and regrettably fragrant hallway with a door labeled “Men” and another “Ladies”, and at the open end of the hallway a side view of a lunch counter.
    The restaurant was narrow. New York narrow. Smeared mirrors and a six-inch-wide counter on one side, five stools with cracked plastic seats on the other, a low counter decorated with chrome napkin dispensers and stained plastic menus. Behind the counter a mess of mismatched refrigeration units, a grill, a drinks cooler, and to top it all off a cash register covered with age-curled clippings of cartoons from newspapers and magazines.
    A very old man with white whiskers sat hunched in a too-large jacket eating a grilled cheese sandwich. The only employee was a guy who might be in his late twenties, with a near-eastern complexion, sleepy eyes, and an apron. He was scraping the grill.
    He did not look up though the four of them appeared as if by magic from the direction of the restrooms.
    “This is the only time we’ll ever travel together like this,” Vincent said when they stepped out onto the cold, windy street.
    They walked two blocks in silence to a hotel with a cab stand. The taxi ride took ten minutes—there was a lot of road repair on Sixth Avenue.
    Vincent had the cab drop them two blocks from where Sadie