BZRK Reloaded Read Online Free PDF Page A

intelligence in evidence. She was
smarter than the brother who had died. He wondered if they had
killed the wrong McLure child. Stone was a stolid, dutiful type, his
sister on the other hand . . .
The result of Sadie’s wiring had been severe mental disruption.
Benjamin had screeched and babbled and generally made a fool of
himself, straining the physical barrier that connected his own head to
Charles’s—very painful—and caused the unfortunate incident of the
glass bottle, the results of which were still so obvious on Benjamin’s
face.
The membrane, the flesh, whatever the word was for the living
intersection between Charles and Benjamin, had been strained and
torn. The central eye, that eerie, third eyeball that sometimes joined
with Charles and other times with Benjamin, and at still other times
seemed to decide its own focus, was red-rimmed, the lower lid crusted
with blood that still seeped from a deep bruise.
At the end Plath had let Benjamin live when she might well have
killed him. Burnofsky wondered whether at this moment Charles
thought that was a good thing or not. How many times must one or
the other of the Twins have pondered the question of what happened
if one of them died?
Their heads were melded. Some areas of their brains were directly
connected. They shared a neck, albeit a neck with two sets of vocal
cords. They had two hearts—one apiece—and had a sort of two-lobed
stomach that fed out through a single alimentary tract.
Each had an arm. Each had a leg. And there was the third leg as
well, a leg that dragged like so much dead weight. As a consequence
they moved with extreme difficulty and usually chose to get around
in a motorized cart or wheeled office chair customized to fit their
double width.
Charles tried again. “We have important matters to discuss, Benjamin. We are on the cusp of completing Phase Three of our plan,
brother, don’t you grasp that? Don’t you see how far we have come?
But we must deal with this crisis. Bug Man’s incompetence may upset
everything!”
“It wasn’t you,” Benjamin snapped. “It wasn’t you. It was me. It
was me she humiliated.”
“Look, we’ll deal with the girl when we get an opportunity,”
Charles soothed. “Of course you feel violated. Of course you’re angry.
But—”
It was part of the strangeness of dealing with the Twins that when
they spoke to each other they could not look at each other. They had
never made direct eye contact in their lives.
“You think I’m being irrational,” Benjamin said, sounding rational for the first time in several minutes. “But you don’t understand.
This cannot be tolerated. If we can be humiliated this way, then we
will lose credibility with our own people. Do you think our twitchers
aren’t talking about it?” He stabbed a finger in Burnofsky’s direction.
“Do you think Karl isn’t smirking?”
In fact, Karl Burnofsky was smirking, but he hid it well. His sagging, whiskered face and rheumy blue eyes did not appear to reflect
any pleasure.
It occurred to him that this was his opportunity to speak. He
said, “Perhaps a vacation. Some time off. We have come a long way.
You’re both tired. Deservedly so, the weariness of a long battle.”
Charles shot a sharp, suspicious look at Burnofsky. “Are you out
of your mind? This thing with Bug Man and the president, for God’s
sake, target number one, the purpose for which we lost so many good
people. The woman has to give Rios the go-ahead.”
“She did,” Burnofsky said. “The initial go-ahead, anyway. I can
show you the video. She finished cleaning up the blood and went to
her pad, pulled up the ETA mission, and approved it. Rios has long
since started planning counterattacks on BZRK. The president has
scheduled a meeting with him to discuss raiding McLure, blocking their accounts, arresting individuals on suspicion of terrorism.
I am confident she will give him free rein; Bug Man has succeeded
in that. And gentlemen,