Plath, despite herself, was drawn to listen. She was hungry for anything that made her father real again.
“What a brilliant man, your dad. And a good father, too. Better than I was to my daughter.”
“You have a daughter?” Plath asked, keeping her voice neutral. Information was power, and there was nothing to be gained by telling Burnofsky what they knew.
“Had,” Burnofsky said. “Had. Had a daughter. Had. Just like you had a father and a brother. And of course your mother, oh God, I’d have traded my soul for her.” He smiled wistfully. “Beautiful woman. Nothing like you,” he added cruelly.
Plath showed him nothing.
Wilkes lifted a loose brick off the scaffold, stepped close, and calmly smashed it into Burnofsky’s mouth.
Blood erupted from his lips and gums.
She put the brick, smeared red, back in place just as it had been, as if it was an heirloom resting on the mantel.
“Beat a helpless old man?” Burnofsky cried as he spit blood. “It’s like that is it? Fucking little bitch!”
Wilkes made a “Who, me?” face.
Plath waited for Nijinsky to call Wilkes out, to order her to stop. Nothing. So she said, “Maybe not, huh, Wilkes?”
“She’s the nice one,” Wilkes said, helpfully pointing to Plath. “I’m the other one.”
Billy the Kid watched it all from beneath lowered brows.
“So who the hell are you?” Wilkes asked Billy, not unfriendly, just sounding like Wilkes.
“Billy.”
She stuck out her hand to shake his. “Having fun so far?”
“Burnofsky here’s got a nanobot controller in his bag,” Keats said. “We were just going to get it out. He placed a sort of pod of nanobots on Plath’s neck. Hard to count, but maybe a dozen.”
Keats picked up the vodka bottle, twisted the lid off, and carried it to Burnofsky. He dragged an empty plastic paint bucket over and set the bottle on the can, just a few feet from the older man.
“What are you doing?” Nijinsky asked dully.
“He’s a drunk or a junkie or maybe both,” Keats said.
“Fuck all of you, you deserve what’s coming,” Burnofsky said, and spit blood at Plath.
“Oh, but we’ll be best of friends once we’re absorbed into the hive mind and spouting Nexus Humanus nonsense, won’t we?” This from Wilkes. Plath was surprised to see her take the lead. Nijinsky barely seemed to be in the room. “You’ll forgive us then, right? I think I’ll smack you again.”
“Yes, what you have now is so much better, isn’t it?” Burnofsky snarled. “So much better. A hundred thousand years of violence, starvation, torture, betrayal, brutality, rape, and murder. So much to be admired in Homo sapiens, eh? Not an inch of this planet that hasn’t been drenched in blood.” As he spoke blood bubbled on his lips. “Yes, what a lovely world it is that brings you young thugs together to beat up an old man tied to a ladder. Yes, that’s worth fighting for, right?”
“It works for me,” Wilkes said.
“We’re fighting for the right to go on being human,” Nijinsky said quietly. “We’re fighting for freedom.” He frowned, as if he was hearing this for the first time and not sure if he found it convincing.
Burnofsky barked a laugh and a piece of tooth went flying. “Of course you are. Freedom. The freedom to do what, exactly? Don’t worry, Mr Hwang, you’ll still be able to pleasure strangers in bathroom stalls after the great change.”
Nijinsky went paler still. Plath carefully avoided making eye contact with him.
“Shane Hwang,” Burnofsky said grandly. “Nijinsky. Of course we know who you are, you’re on posters all over Manhattan, although you do look different with clothing on. Your father disowned you after he found you bent over his kitchen counter …entertaining …the cable installer. Oh, we know all about you, Nijinsky. We could have taken you out at any time, but why bother, eh?”
Wilkes sighed theatrically and picked up the brick.
“Go ahead! Beat me! Show me your moral superiority; show me what you’re fighting for.”
Wilkes hesitated.
Nijinsky, his voice straining to remain calm, said, “He doesn’t know who you are, Wilkes. Or Keats. Doesn’t know Billy, I’m guessing. He’s bluffing. Pretending to know more than he does.”
“I know what they are,” Burnofsky shot back. “The losers. The damaged. The victims. Life’s little rejects, all except Sadie McLure of course, no, she’s the rich daughter of privilege out for revenge.” He shook his head. “Every war in history was fought by the cannon fodder. All for the benefit of someone who stayed safe and above it all. They get you into the fight with high-flown rhetoric, and then they blood you, don’t they? They make sure you’ve seen a friend’s blood and drawn blood from an enemy. You’re pushed into their fight but now you’ve lost people, so now it’s personal. Now it’s too late to get out because you’ve done things …unimaginable things.”
Nijinsky jerked almost violently.
Burnofsky didn’t seem to notice. He was on a roll. “You’ve been hurt, so now, by God, it’s your fight. Yours. Oldest game in history: idealists and patriots turned into vengeful killers. Somewhere, Lear is laughing.”
As if on cue a terrible moan came from Vincent, whom Anya had drawn away into a far corner of the church. It was a moan that rose higher and higher before suddenly falling off a cliff and tumbling down in manic laughter.