don’t know how it happened.”
“A Swedish intelligence officer and a British admiral.”
“But how?”
“Many questions, brother.”
They turned the wheelchair to face the large monitor that hung
above a touch-screen desktop. The monitor was divided into twenty-
four smaller frames. Three were tuned to various news outlets. The
rest were clearly surveillance cameras. An empty room with desks. A
17
MICHAEL GRANT
break room with one woman making coffee. A lab with two people
in white coats moving to some unheard music while they tapped on
keyboards. A puzzling view of what might be a warehouse.
One by one the video tiles flipped to be replaced by different
views. Every corner of the Armstrong empire.
They could see everything, but what could they control? They
weren’t even sure they could return to New York. London, too, might
be out of bounds.
“We are hiding like rats from a cat,” Benjamin said.
“We’re foxes at the very least,” Charles said, trying to make it
sound like a good thing, trying not to think about the way fox hunts
usually ended with dogs tearing at the cornered animal. “System:
locate Burnofsky,”
A larger picture appeared, in the center of the monitor. The object
of their search had his back to them. He was hunched over a terminal.
“There’s our Karl,” Charles said, steel in his voice.
“Ours?”
Charles sighed. “Either he hit bottom on some grand, final bender
and decided to turn his life around. Or—”
“Or BZRK wired him,” Benjamin said.
“Ling!” Charles yelled. “It’s dinnertime, and I find I would enjoy
a drink.”
They shared a digestive tract, despite having two mouths. It took
consent from both for either to drink alcohol. Or to eat, though they
tried to be tolerant on that. Benjamin liked to snack on a bowl of Chex
Mix sometimes, and Charles preferred fresh fruit. Apricots. He loved
a perfect apricot, though a really good one was hard to find.
18
BZRK APOCALYPSE
“A drink, yes,” Benjamin said. “And maybe more than one apiece.”
Ling appeared, moving with a gliding speed that belied her
advanced years.
“Ah, our friend and hero, Ling. I shall have a glass of wine,”
Charles told her. “A Cabernet, I think.”
“I’ll have a Cognac,” Benjamin said. “You know what I like.”
They sat glumly watching the video frames opening and clos-
ing around Burnofsky as the system cycled randomly through the
hundreds of surveillance cameras. Here was a woman making copies.
There a man staring blankly into space. A couple putting on coats
ready to go home. Jet-lag-dulled shoppers at the Twins’ O’Hare Air-
port store. Two men debating something, both pointing at tablets.
At the bottom of each window was a small tag giving the location.
Athens. Newport News. Tierra del Fuego. Johnson City. AFGC—the
Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation—had locations all over the
world, even without counting the shops in virtually every airport.
“We have not lost, brother,” Charles said softly, with what he
hoped was an undertone of iron resolve.
“Yet we’re in hiding.”
“We have not lost . We are not beaten . We have the Hounds. We
can rebuild the twitcher corps. We can start again. And we have Floor
Thirty-Four.”
“Floor Thirty-Four’s a losing tactic,” Benjamin snorted. “Defen-
sive. It takes down BZRK. But it does not give us back the president we
lost, or the premier we lost, goddammit! God damn it!” He slammed
his fist down on the desk, making Charles’s glass of wine jump. “Or
Bug Man. Or the Doll Ship .” He moaned. “What we have lost! What
19
MICHAEL GRANT
we have lost !” He drained the snifter of Cognac in a single long swal-
low.
“When Floor Thirty-Four is ready, we take down BZRK and all
they have within weeks. It spreads, brother; it will find them in all
their hiding places. And when it has done its work, we will be without
enemies, we—”
“Without enemies? You