BZRK

eyes that wrapped down the side of the head like Princess Leia’s buns.
    Where the mouth should be was a sort of proboscis, a tube, hollow and with something viscous dripping from the end, like mucus from a cold sufferer.
    It had arms like a mantis. Dangerous and powerful. They ended in small asymmetric claws that had one short and one long pincer.
    But it was the eyes . . .
    The human eyes, smeared across that insect face, staring soulless from beneath the compound insect eyes. That was what finally obliterated Plath’s careful self-control and let her scream.
    And scream.
    And there, suddenly, a hand on her shoulder, Nijinsky standing behind her.
    Nijinsky looked at Wilkes. “Is she seeing you?”
    Wilkes nodded.
    “You should have warned her.”
    “Is that what my biot looks like?” Plath gasped. “Does it . . . does it have my eyes?”
    Wilkes grinned. “Beware, Plath,” she said, mocking, and not in the jokey way she’d been before, but with an edge of aggression and anger. “It’s a weird world down there in the meat. And the weirdest thing of all is us.”
    *
    “It wasn’t me,” Burnofsky said, first thing, first words out of his mouth when he next saw Bug Man. He grabbed the kid and pulled him into a side room, out of sight, out of sound, and looked him in the eye and said, “I don’t like you, Anthony, but it wasn’t me.”
    He smelled of booze. His pupils were the size of pinheads. So drunk
and
high. Nasty old geezer.
    “This isn’t a game to the Twins, kid.” He slurred it.
    “Yeah, well, as long as they keep you in dope, right?”
    Burnofsky made a small laugh. Then he leaned in, too close, and said, “Yeah. Exactly. That’s my price. And yours is thinking you’re a big man, and that piece of ass you go home to every night. And Jindal? He’s an actual true believer, a true hive mind, Nexus Humanus sucker. And One-Up? More like you. More about ego. We all have a drug.”
    “And Twofer? I guess they’re the dealers.”
    “See, you’re not so stupid,” Burnofsky said.
    The back of Bug Man’s legs hurt. The bruises made it hard for him to walk without limping. He had cried for the first time in . . . how long? A long time. Oh, definitely, he had cried. Anthony Elder had cried into his pillow and told Jessica to stay away.
    They had lain him out like a little punk and whacked his ass.
    Now here he was planning to take down the biggest target in the world. Final briefing. Final prep. And instead of getting what was his due, to swagger in as big as an elephant’s balls and have everyone kiss his ass, he’d had to hobble in like a cripple.
    “Two ways forward now, Anthony,” Burnofsky said. “Rebel or excel.”
    “What the hell are you babbling about?”
    “You turn against them. Or you show them your true worth.”
    “Rebel? You’d like that wouldn’t you? AmericaStrong thugs would be down on me and really fuck me up. Maybe kill me.”
    “Not maybe, Anthony.”
    He was so sure that it made Bug Man take a step back. It was true. He saw it in the old man’s rheumy eyes. The Twins would kill him. And Burnofsky knew this with absolute certainty.
    Because.
    Because he’d seen it happen.
    “Who’d they kill?” Bug Man pressed. “Somebody stood up against them? Who? You tell me. You tell me who it was.”
    “She was as good as you.”
    “Who’s this ‘she’?”
    “It runs in families, this talent we have, Anthony. This girl, Carla, yeah, lousy name to stick on a girl. Named after her father.”
    Burnofsky’s pale, whiskered face was ghostly. And yes, right then, with the scientist’s face too close and the stink of booze sweat coming off him, and drilling into Anthony with those needle-hole pupils, yes right then Bug Man remembered that Burnofsky’s first name was Karl.
    “Stood up to them, see, when she realized what was going on, what the real game was.” Tears were leaking out of Burnofsky’s eyes. “About your age. Like most twitchers. Gamer kid. They had her lace some juicy bacteria. The Twins had a grudge, see. A woman named Heidi Zulle, a shrink. You’ve heard rumors about the Doll Ship?”
    “Some kind of . . .” Bug Man didn’t have the right word for it.
    “A floating house of horrors, and Zulle was in charge of using drugs and so-called therapy to keep the victims in line. She had a change of heart that coincidentally came after the Twins had her . . . well, suffice to say, something much worse than they did to you, kid. She tried to give the