What he saw was a grotesque head with two staring eyes and a third, lesser eye that now belonged entirely to Benjamin. Two mouths screamed. A line of blood had been drawn between those mouths, between those eyes, as the self-replicating nanobots chewed their industrious way through all that connected Charles to his brother.
The pain was unendurable. He could only scream and scream as his privates and rectum, his stomach and chest, his neck and back and now head were eaten away, faster and faster as the nanobot army multiplied. Eaten away and then cauterized as Burnofsky had planned, so that blood loss would not occur too quickly.
Charles did not feel the moment when his body began to disconnect from Benjamin’s, the agony did not allow for calm consideration. But he saw, as he looked down, as he and Benjamin lowered their massive head to see, that they were now two dying men, two, connected only at the brain.
Benjamin slipped, his leg going out from beneath him, but Charles still stood, as like a dividing cell they split slowly apart.
Then finally Charles lost his grip, and they fell onto their backs and slid toward the window.
Charles tried to scream, but his throat was gone.
They slid, consciousness fading in a hell of pain and terror as they accelerated.
Benjamin stuck out a hand and grabbed the leg of a table, but it, too, was sliding. And then, with a bump at the sill, they were in the air.
It would take them just under eight seconds to fall to the pavement. At four seconds before impact Charles saw Benjamin’s body separate from his, a crudely bisected man trailing blood.
He saw Benjamin. Saw him there. There! For the first time in his life.
The Armstrong Twins hit the pavement two tenths of a second apart.
Two and a half minutes later, the Tulip came down in a catastrophic eruption of flame, smoke, steel, dust, and debris that buried Burnofsky and the Twins and Noah.
And the remote that would have destroyed the world.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Plath and Wilkes had to walk and hobble the whole way back to the safe house. The subway had been shut down. The taxis had fled the streets. They saw cars pass by, heading toward the bridge, pets and houseplants inside, household goods strapped to the roof. A hard-to-frighten city had at last been frightened.
By the time they made it they were numb with cold, lips blue, teeth chattering. Plath’s tears had frozen on her cheeks. She recalled the Île Sainte-Marie, recalled where she’d been not very many days ago. A completely different world. It had been so perfect there. Warm sunshine and blue water and Noah.
They had killed him. Noah. They had killed him.
Inside the safe house at last the two girls collapsed onto the couch and shivered, burrowing beneath throw pillows in search of warmth.
Plath saw that Anya was coming to investigate the noise. In the window in her mind she saw herself through Anya’s eye. She looked pitiful. Her face was smeared with smoke; her hair was thick with ash.
“What is the matter?” Anya asked. She didn’t wait for an answer but ducked out to come back with blankets to pile on the frozen girls. Then she made hot tea and helped them hold the cups until their hands could stop trembling.
“Where is Keats? Where is Billy?” Anya asked, already suspecting the answer. The TV had been on when they came in, tuned to news. On the screen the Tulip fell again and again. Hollywood and city luminaries ran wild through the streets again and again. The lurid loops played over and over again.
Plague of Madness.
An overhead shot of the Brooklyn Bridge was a river of red lights—cars fleeing the city.
“Dead,” Plath said. “Both dead.”
“This is Lear’s doing,” Anya said. “He is—”
“She,” Wilkes interrupted. “Our overlord and master is a chick.” Then, eyes darting suspiciously toward the stairs, said, “Get Vincent down here. Get Mr. Seventy Percent.”
Anya seemed ready to argue, but acquiesced with downcast eyes.
Plath felt a wave of exhaustion that forced her eyelids down. She coughed—she’d been coughing the whole way home. The nauseating stink of smoke was in her nostrils, the taste of it in her mouth, and more came when she coughed.
Vincent arrived silently and stood with Anya by his side, looking like a man waiting for his own firing squad.
“What did you know?” Plath asked wearily.
“What do you mean?” he asked, and Wilkes was up out of her seat and swinging a fist at him, which he blocked easily. She swung again, but with less conviction, and he gently pushed her back down onto the couch.
“What did you know, Vincent?” Plath asked again with deadly, weary calm that carried absolute authority. “Did you know who Lear is?”
He blinked and shook his head. Then he leaned toward her, frowning. “Are you saying you do know who he is?”
“She,” Wilkes said. “She, she, she. She. A sister. One of the vaginally endowed. Lystra Reid.”
Vincent drew back as if frightened. “You can’t do that, you can’t talk about Lear. Caligula will—”
“He’s dead, too,” Wilkes said. “That’s his work.” She stabbed a finger at the TV. “He’s dead. And Jin is dead. And Ophelia is dead. And Renfield is dead. And Billy is dead. Even the Twins are dead. And pretty—” She sobbed, and it was a moment before she could go on, her voice low and grating. “It’s a whole big bunch of dead tonight. Now answer Plath’s question, Vincent, or I swear to God I’ll find some way to make you dead, too.”