BZRK

General Assembly room, a surprisingly intimate space, despite the fact that it was supposed to be a gathering place for the entire world. It reminded Wilkes of the planetarium her class had visited in what, eighth grade? Is that where she had let Arkady touch her boob?
    And they followed meekly along when it was time to go downstairs to the bathrooms, the special UN post office, the café, and the gift shop.
    They moved away from the group then. It was safe to do so now.
    They sat together eating veggie burritos UN style—not very good, really—and drinking coffee and getting their nerve up.
    The gift shop was just next door. It was not called Armstrong Fancy Gifts—unlike the ones in airports—it was just called the UN Gift Shop. Very imaginative. But it had the trademark AFGC products: supposedly homemade cookies in cellophane twists, the books selection that included a prominent display of the bestseller
Nexus Humanus: The Next Step in Human Evolution
, and the clever, throwaway handheld games that sold for three dollars and included accelerometers and multiplay and inline upgrades that made them the cheap impulse equivalent of expensive pads.
    “So a lousy burrito is my final meal,” Wilkes said.
    Ophelia looked at her, serious. They didn’t talk often, the two of them. Wilkes was more or less the diametric opposite of the graceful, reserved Ophelia.
    “Are you afraid, Wilkes?”
    “Hell, yes, I’m afraid,” Wilkes said, talking around melted cheese and a dropped bean. “You know what’s weird, though. I’m afraid of never getting down in the meat again. That is weird, right?”
    “You like it down there?”
    “Better than up here sometimes,” Wilkes said. “Are we bonding like true BZRK sisters?”
    Ophelia put her fork down and pushed her food away. “I don’t seem to have much appetite.”
    “Hey, the condemned person is supposed to have a choice of meal. Right? Like guys on death row? They always order a steak.”
    “I don’t think they grill steaks here.”
    The light, that’s what was so desperate about the scene. The glaring fluorescent light that turned their flesh to some color between bathroom grout and paper pulp. And the wobbly round tables and the terminally bored cafeteria workers.
    A hell of a place to get your nerve up for a suicide mission.
    “I always wanted to go to one of those fancy steak places,” Wilkes said. “It’s not about loving the steak all that much. It’s just you see those places in movies, and you think, wow, that must be kind of cool—to be one of those people who don’t really give a damn about anything but a fat, juicy steak. Maybe a martini, even, you know. Or those other ones? I forget their name?”
    “Margaritas?”
    “No, I know margaritas,” Wilkes said, suddenly cranky.
    Ophelia smiled tolerantly. “I don’t eat meat. But I would join you in a margarita.”
    “You’re a vegetarian? I tried that for a while. It didn’t take. Is it a Hindu thing?”
    Ophelia shrugged. “For some of us. For me it’s more of a health thing. Also my parents are vegetarians. I don’t want to disappoint them.”
    “Me, I worry I’ll disappoint Vincent. That’s stupid, isn’t it? Why the hell should I care? He’s not offering me heaven and a bunch of hot guy virgins, or whatever. That’s what you guys get in heaven, right?”
    “No.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “I would remember that. I’m Hindu: we just get reborn. Although I think I like your idea better.”
    “A couple girls, too, maybe, just because life is short and try everything, right?”
    Ophelia chose not to answer that directly. “Vincent does generate a certain degree of loyalty, doesn’t he?”
    Wilkes looked at her, very serious, eye to eye, or at least eye to eye-dripping-with-tattoo-ink, and said, “I’d die for him. I don’t think he even likes me, and I would totally fucking die for him.”
    Ophelia said, “And I will die because Charles and Benjamin Armstrong are a disease.”
    There was venom behind those words. No smile. Anger, quickly covered up, but Wilkes saw it and grinned at it.
    “You’re not telling me something,” Wilkes said.
    “No time. And this isn’t the place,” Ophelia said, turning stern.
    “If we come out of this?”
    Ophelia nodded, and surrendered what might be the last of her smiles, a wistful creation tinged with loss. “If we survive, we can play twenty questions, Wilkes.”
    “Time to go?” Wilkes asked, and to her intense irritation