BZRK

have to infest Burnofsky, see that wrinkled old parchment skin up close, probably crawling with parasites with all his natural defenses weak. Those bushy eyebrows would be alive with vermin.
    “Is it looped in?”
    “Dammit, get back in there, Bug, or I’ll do the job for you,” Burnofsky snapped.
    “And have you end up wasting two dozen of my branded nanobots? Have Vincent think he took me down?” Bug Man stormed back into the playroom.
    He slipped on the gloves and slid back into the seat. Burnofsky watched over his shoulder as he tested the communications. Twenty-one of the twenty-four screens lit up. Most showed other nanobots. Some had views of the brain fold where they were hiding. Down in the meat. Brain mapping was off for the moment.
    “Now bugger off, old man, you can watch from the other room.”
    “Macro is on its way.”
    “The fuck?” Bug Man raged. “I thought you said there was no way!”
    Burnofsky shrugged. “I ran your suggestion by the Twins. They agreed with you: they thought it was worth the risk to go macro as well. So I guess if you want credit for the kill, you’d best hurry, because it may be a bullet not a nanobot that does the job.”
    Bug Man quickly formed the nanobots into four platoons of six each. Not even the Bug Man could handle twenty-four individual nanobots. The platoons would perform identically, which sometimes ended up with the tiny robots getting in one another’s way, but there were techniques to minimize that. If you had the skills.
    He would send them in waves, a platoon at a time. The first group would locate Vincent’s biots. If Vincent spotted them, they’d engage immediately. If not, they’d wait while the remaining forces were moved up. Then, bam! Waves of four, maybe ten or twenty seconds apart. Boom, boom, boom, and down goes Vincent.
    Bug Man had a fantasy: he wanted to take one of Vincent’s biots alive and haul it out into the macro.
    Keep it alive and play with it for a while. As Vincent went slowly mad.
    *
    Plath pushed Renfield’s hands off her shoulders. She wasn’t going to freak out, but she didn’t want to be touched.
    The pain in her healing arm helped keep her focused. And maybe Vincent’s soothing tone, but not being touched; and then she slipped to her knees, bent her face forward, and retched again on the floor.
    What was that she was seeing? Some nightmarish beast, and another beside it. Standing on tall, clean, pyramidal spider legs on a long field of bumpy, grainy material that made her think of leather.
    Vincent’s voice, urgent, no longer soothing, said, “It’s a trap.”
    And he was on his feet, grabbing Anya Violet as she turned to run, snatching her trailed arm. She almost got away, wriggling out of her lab coat. But Vincent caught her and yanked her violently toward him and locked her neck between his forearms.
    She squirmed but could not get away.
    “Is she—” Renfield snapped.
    “Nanobot sign,” Vincent said. “No contact yet, but any second now. Contact Caligula. We have a problem.”
    Renfield tapped his phone. “You should kill her,” he said, not looking at Vincent, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “Snap her neck and retrieve your biots. Let AFGC come and do cleanup. Let Plath and Keats grab their babies—they’re viable by now in their crèches. Then we get out of here.”
    Plath stared at Vincent. She and Keats just stood there, helpless, not really knowing what was happening, not knowing what was coming, sick in stomach and heart, minds swimming.
    Was she going to see a murder? Right here in front of her? Was she going to see Vincent snap the woman’s neck?
    “Get their biots,” Vincent said to Renfield. “We’re getting out of here. We’ll take Dr Violet with us.”
    “Let go of me,” Anya cried. “Get off me!”
    “And have them track their nanobots?” Renfield drew a gun from the back of his belt. Not the Taser he’d shown before. This was the real, very real, thing.
    Vincent said something that sounded like, “I’m not Scipio,” which meant nothing to Sadie and not much to Renfield or Noah, judging by the blank expressions. “Unless you’re taking over here, Renfield, get their crèches.”
    Renfield looked shocked by the suggestion that he was taking over. He licked his lips, nervous.
    He pushed Keats aside to punch commands into the console. The drawers that had slid open to take the crèches now slid open to release them.
    Renfield glanced at them, read the labels, and handed