BZRK

little girls’ white arms and over their colorful dresses and up their necks and all the while the girls smiled.
    “Bang and it was over,” Stone said, nodding like it was true and like he remembered it and like there was nothing at all strange about his commenting on the circumstances of his own death.
    The cereal nanobots were disappearing into little pink ears and noses and eyes.
    She woke up.
    A knock at the door.
    Someone in her bed, a chest her head lay upon. She yanked back.
    “I’ll get it,” Keats said. He worked his arm, the one she’d been sleeping on, like it was numb, which it probably was. He opened the door.
    It was Ophelia. If she was surprised to find them both in the same room, she didn’t show it. She had two Starbucks, two bottles of water, and a brown bag with some kind of pastry, all in one of those corrugated carriers.
    “Need you both in about twenty minutes,” Ophelia announced. She even had a smile that said, “That’s an order, not a request.”
    In the bag they found muffins. One looked like blueberry, the other might have been raspberry.
    “I’ll take the blueberry,” Plath said. The cups were both lattes. They drained the water bottles, sipped the coffee, and wolfed down the muffins, no time for talk.
    Keats reached over and brushed a crumb from Plath’s mouth.
    “Probably shouldn’t . . .” Plath said. She meant that they probably shouldn’t do that. The touching thing that was the prelude to more. That’s what the smart part of her was saying, while a completely different part of her was wondering why he hadn’t touched her in the night as they lay side by side.
    Keats looked up sharply. He nodded once, a regretful expression. Then, “What do you think is on for this morning?”
    “Something disturbing,” Plath said.
    Keats smiled. “Thanks for taking care of me last night.”
    “I thought it was the other way around.”
    Keats shook his head and looked down at the floor. “I was a mess.”
    Plath said, “Yeah, you’re right. Me? I was fine.”
    A small laugh. “I wish I didn’t have to call you Plath. I don’t want to think of you as a poet who gassed herself.”
    She was so close to telling him. Sadie. That’s my name. But with an effort she stopped herself. “They want us close. But they don’t ever want us to forget.”
    Ophelia showed them to a room they had not seen before. It was up a ridiculously narrow interior staircase. It was like a shabby parody of the lab from McLure. Someone had hammered together a plywood table shoved against narrow, greasy windows that let in the gray gloom of New York. On the table a couple of mismatched microscopes, something that looked like a very expensive Crock-Pot, a small stainless steel freezer.
    But the focal point of the room was a massive piece of glowing, white machinery with which Plath was all too familiar.
    “Is that an MRI machine?”
    Ophelia nodded. “With some very customized add-ons. Yes. I’m told it’s worth about five million dollars. So don’t put your coffee cups on it.”
    It was a bizarre anomaly. It was possible to accept the junky attic lab or the massive, humming hulk of technology, but the two didn’t seem as if they should share the same reality.
    “We usually take more time with training,” Ophelia said. “But time is short. The enemy is planning a major strike. It’s a winning move if they pull it off. So we have to stop them.”
    “What is the plan?” Keats asked.
    “United Nations General Assembly. Most of the world’s heads of state—our President Morales, your Prime Minister Bowen, Keats. AFGC is going to try to place nanobots in them and others. China. Japan. India. Maybe more.”
    Keats shot a look at Plath.
    “AFGC. What is that anyway?” Plath asked.
    “The Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation.”
    “That doesn’t sound like an evil organization setting out to dominate the world,” Plath said.
    “That’s the idea,” Ophelia said. “If you try telling someone the Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation is taking over the world, they’ll think you’re crazy.”
    “Would they be wrong?” Keats muttered under his breath.
    Ophelia leaned close to him. She had a smile for this occasion, too, and it was solid steel. “It’s good to have a sense of humor, Keats. But don’t be flip. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is a game.”
    “No, miss,” he said, because Ophelia suddenly seemed much older than he.
    Ophelia tapped an oblong plastic case on the