“He’s catatonic. What have you done to him?”
Nijinsky slid a hand under Vincent’s head and raised him up. Vincent’s eyes never moved. No change of focus.
Nijinksy slapped his face, not hard.
Anya drew back, but she did not object. Instead she said, “Harder.”
Nijinsky delivered a stinging slap.
Nothing. Not a flinch. Not a blink.
“Again,” she said, and somehow now she was in charge, delivering orders.
Nijinsky took a deep breath. This time no open-handed slap. He delivered a short but very sharp closed fist punch to the side of Vincent’s head.
Nothing.
Both of them drew back, staring in horror at those blank, empty eyes.
Then Nijinsky saw something that made him gasp.
But what he saw was not in the room.
Perched at the back of his own eyeball, one of his own biots gazed passively at Vincent’s still, inactive biot.
“What is it?” Anya demanded.
“Just . . .” And he didn’t say what it was, because he didn’t know, all he knew was that the flesh on his arms rose in goose bumps because for the first time, Vincent’s biot had stirred.
Nijinsky felt a chill. He could barely breathe.
“What is it?” Anya demanded.
Vincent’s biot turned eerily Vincent-like eyes on Nijinsky’s own biot. Then, while the real, macro Vincent stared blankly, catatonic, seeing nothing, his biot walked uncertainly to Nijinsky’s creature and extended a claw to touch.
“Anya,” Nijinsky said, his tone awestruck. “He’s …He’s aware.”
NINETEEN
“Aren’t you a bit young to be playing with guns?” Burnofsky asked Billy.
Burnofsky looked bad. He’d spent the night tied up and staring longingly at the bottle of vodka. Jealously when he’d watched Nijinsky come and take a long pull.
Billy the Kid said nothing, because he had wanted to say, “I’m not playing,” and then there had been this huge rush of memories and it was like he’d swallowed poison or something. Like he wanted to heave up his guts and he’d already done that.
“Certainly young to be a murderer,” Burnofsky said.
Again, Billy was on the verge of saying something and stopped himself. What he wanted to say was, “I’m not a murderer. I just defended myself.”
Except that wasn’t quite true, was it? He had gotten out, after all. He had then walked around the block and come back into the bloody safe house.
He had been safe. Free and clear. And then he had gone back. Of course he’d thought all the bad guys were dead. Right? Right, Billy?
As if he could read Billy’s mind, Burnofsky laughed. It was a bitter, angry sound.
“Maybe I’ll shoot you,” Billy said, irritated.
“Might as well,” Burnofsky said. “If you don’t, one of the others will. Or more likely they’ll wire me.”
Billy noticed him glance at his suitcase. And Burnofsky noticed the curiosity.
“Ever run a nanobot, kid? Ever twitched?”
Billy shook his head.
Burnofsky said nothing more, just waited, and glanced at the suitcase again, and looked at Billy from half-closed eyes. Billy reached impulsively for the suitcase. He unzipped it. There was a clean shirt, underwear, a toiletries bag, and a zippered nylon case.
Billy glanced toward the stairwell. He hauled the zippered case onto his lap, wedged his gun under his leg, and opened the case.
“Looks like an old Xbox. Kind of. The glove . . .” It was like watching Burnofsky gaze lovingly at the bottle. Billy wanted to slip the glove on.
“Go ahead. It tingles. It’s much more sensitive than anything you’ve ever used before. You can set the tolerances, of course; at maximum, you barely need to move to twitch.”
Billy stalled, trying not to look greedy for the game. “Where are the nanobots?”
“Where? Ah, well, we have two kinds, you know.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Let’s call them the grays and the blues.”
“Okay.”
“The grays, well, they’re easy to move around, obviously. In fact, the biggest worry is losing them. See the two batteries?”
Billy had of course seen them. They were nestled in an peppermints tin. Two very average-looking batteries, a single AAA and a single AA.
Billy pulled the batteries out and cupped them in his hand. He prodded them with his index finger. He frowned and then pinched the protruding nub of the positive end of the AA and pulled. A cylinder slid out. Inside the cylinder were six glass tubes, each not much thicker than a sewing needle.
“Each of those contains two dozen nanobots,” Burnofsky said. Then he said, “Of course those are the grays.”
Billy heard the subtle disparagement in his voice. He looked up. There was a challenging, teasing look in the old man’s eyes.
“What’s the big deal about the color?” BIlly asked.
“It’s not about the color,” Burnofsky said in a near-whisper that forced Billy to lean in close. “It’s about capabilities. I mean, you’re a gamer, right, Billy?”
Billy the Kid had come up along a mean path strewn with bad people. He was not naïve despite being young. His instincts warned him that Burnofsky was up to something.
But he could handle Burnofsky. He slid the glove onto his hand. It seemed to come alive. It closed in around his hand, not squeezing exactly, but forming itself to fit perfectly. Like it had been made to order just for him.