Bzrk (34 page)

She pulled the pin.

(ARTIFACT)

To:
Lear

From:
Nijinsky

Wilkes is alive and back with us.

Ophelia is alive despite the loss of both legs below the knee.

Keats and Plath are both well and performed magnificently.

Vincent is suffering from a deep depression following the loss of one biot. The second biot was badly injured but is recovering. Vincent is being cared for, outcome very uncertain.

We failed in our main objective.

We await instructions.

BZRK—A CHEAT SHEET.

The Sides:

BZRK:
A secret organization, divided into numerous cells, devoted to stopping the Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation and the Armstrong Twins. The name BZRK is derived from the word “berserk.” Twitchers (those running biots) for BZRK face the threat of madness on a daily basis. The organization’s name is about owning that madness.

Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation:
Long ago it really was just about tchotchkes. But AFGC went into weapons research and from there into nanotechnology under the control of the Armstrong Twins. They still run thousands of airport gift shops, but their real interests lie else where.

Major Characters:

(But first, a word about the naming convention. Each member of BZRK takes a
nom de guerre—rather like a screen name—generally in wry acknowledgment
of his or her likely fate, or the name of someone mad or at least disturbed.)

Sadie McLure:
She’s sixteen, a New Yorker, smart, prickly, and opinionated. A rich girl who has no interest in fashion or gossip or partying, Sadie is a serious, thoughtful person with some real bite. When she joins BZRK, she takes the nom de guerre of Plath.

Noah Cotton:
He’s sixteen, a London boy. Noah is quiet and soft-spoken, an observer with a talent for thinking intuitively on multiple levels at once, which makes him invaluable to BZRK. His nom de guerre is Keats.

Michael Ford:
An American known as Vincent (for Van Gogh), he’s in his twenties, highly intelligent, and ruthless when he needs to be, though he tries to hold on to a moral core. He suffers from anhedonia, an inability to experience pleasure.

Shane Hwang:
He’s Chinese-American, in his twenties, a professional model, and gay. If Vincent is the brain of the New York cell of BZRK, Nijinsky (Shane’s nom de guerre) is the heart. Unlike Vincent, Nijinsky is quite adept at seeking pleasure.

Bug Man:
His real name is Anthony Elder, but no one calls him that. He’s fifteen, British, black, a gaming prodigy with a hardcore gamer’s complete indifference to anything outside the game. He is the dangerous prodigy on the Armstrong Fancy Gifts side of the war.

Karl Burnofsky:
He’s middle-aged but looks older, a drunk and an opium addict who is the scientific genius behind the nanobot technology of the Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation.

Charles and Benjamin Armstrong:
They are conjoined twins, American, middle-aged, power hungry, damaged, ruthless, brilliant, and unstable. Their terrifying deformity has locked them into a life of almost total isolation atop the skyscraper home of the AFGC.

Eva Drew:
Known as Wilkes (from Annie Wilkes, of Stephen King’s
Misery
), she’s an American, seventeen, a runaway after she tried to burn her school down. She’s fearless and determined, ironic, vulnerable.

Ophelia:
Her real name is not yet revealed. She’s in her twenties, from India, the calm center of the BZRK world, capable, quiet, a bit mysterious, absolutely devoted to the cause. If Nijinsky is the heart, Ophelia is the soul.

Lear:
No one knows his or her name. No one has met Lear. No one has spoken with Lear. Lear is the mastermind of BZRK.

Caligula:
The macro-world enforcer for Lear. Betray BZRK and you get a visit from Caligula. He’s middle-aged, presumably American, dapper, soft-spoken, a bit sardonic, and very dangerous.

The Technology:

Nanobots
are the mechanical nano-scale robots created by Karl Burnofsky and used by Armstrong Fancy Gifts Corporation under the control of Charles and Benjamin Armstrong. They are machines just small enough to be invisible to unaided human vision.

Biots
are the biological counterparts of nanobots, developed by Grey McLure, and were originally intended for medical uses. Biots are built of various bits of DNA taken from scorpions, spiders, and humans. A poorly understood psychic connection exists between a biot and the human whose DNA is in it. This allows humans to control biots, but it also means that a biot death can drive a human to madness.

The Battlefield:

From the macro to the nano. From the streets of New York down to the level of individual neurons inside a human brain, a war rages between AFGC and its agenda of uniting the human race in one happy hive mind and the members of BZRK, who choose freedom, even if the price is irreversible insanity.