Vincent did not hear the sarcasm. “To win the game?”

Plath nodded, and now there were tears spilling from her eyes. He knew her, too. “Yes, Vincent. To win the game. We had to try and save you. We needed you. We need you now. To win the game, to wire Bug Man.”

Vincent’s eyes narrowed. “Wiring is the win?”

Plath shot a desperate look at Keats, who looked for a moment as if he might be sick, but then clenched his jaw, nodded once, and said, “That’s right, Vincent. The wire is the win. But we’re going to need to send Wilkes and Plath in, too, for a complete wiring, and we can’t do that unless Bug Man’s forces are destroyed. So for you the ‘win’ is disarming him.”

“Kill his nanobots, Vincent,” Plath said. “Then lay some scrambling wire until we can get more biots in his brain.”

“Thank you,” Vincent whispered.

His three biots looked up at the clinging nanobots. And just then, all dozen nanobots stirred.

Bug Man sat wet and naked and freshly shaved from wrist to face and shakily donned his gear.

He keyed the visuals for the nanobots guarding his nasal passage. They were fine and functional. Same with those in each ear.

Left eye, okay.

No contact with the other eye.

He switched visuals to the chiasm, an eye entry usually led here. Twelve screens opened in a snap. Hanging above/below his nanobots stood two identical biots and a third, similar but slightly longer.

Bug Man enlarged the visuals, not quite able to accept what he was seeing. It was hard telling one biot from the next, it was almost more instinct than recognition, but as the disturbing insect/human faces came into wavy focus he knew.

Vincent.

A thrill of fear went through Bug Man.

Back from madness? Vincent was back?

Twelve nanobots against three of Vincent’s biots. Four-to-one odds. Against most twitchers that would be more than enough. Vincent was not most twitchers. The last time he’d faced Vincent the odds were heavily in Bug Man’s favor and he’d barely come out on top.

He felt defeat coming. He was exhausted. He was frightened. He was eaten up inside with the loss of Jessica.

Bug Man had one small hope: he had to focus on killing one biot, ignore the rest, all it would take is that single kill and Vincent would be out of it again, this time, he fervently hoped, forever.

He platooned all twelve nanobots together. They would move as one.

One punch, that’s all he would get.

The twelve nanobots released their hold and pushed off into the cerebrospinal fluid, descending on Vincent like a mailed fist.

Halfway there Bug Man saw the two original biots move aside. They each crouched down and folded their legs, a clear sign that they were out of this battle.

Vincent would fight using only a single biot.

Bug Man’s mouth was dry. The water in his hair and on his body was making him shiver with cold. What would they do to him if he lost?

Twelve nanobots met the single biotin midair, except of course there was no air.

With unbelievable speed Vincent’s biot snatched the first two nanobots by their retracted wheels, paddled back with its remaining four legs and smashed the captives into the second row of advancing nanobots. In half a heartbeat four broken nanobots were sent drifting, and the odds had gone from twelve-to-one to eight-to-one.

Bug Man laughed in disbelief. This was some new kind of biot. It was stronger and faster and he was so going to get his ass kicked.

But hey: never say die.

Bug Man instantly split his eight remaining nanobots into two smaller platoons of four so that they could veer left and right, but Vincent had seen this coming, too, and used the split force against Bug Man.

Vincent’s biot reached the chiasmic wall, grabbed a single handhold and curled its body out so that the powerful hind legs were in position, claws stretched as the first two nanobots struck.

Vincent missed!

“Yeah! Yeah!”

Instantly Bug Man was back from the dead, hah!

Two of his nanobots hit the biot’s midsection, stabbed, penetrated deep, hah-hah-hah!

But they couldn’t stab again. Vincent’s biot wrapped them in its legs, tangling them hopelessly, and began ripping the machines apart.

The detached four turned awkwardly, racing back to attack from behind, but the slow circulation of fluid was against them and they were just …a little …too slow.

It was like some ancient World War I aerial dogfight with Bug Man’s four planes caught in a crosswind.

Anchored securely in place, Vincent had only to reach out and stab each one as it came helplessly within reach.

“Fuck!” Bug Man yelled.

What did he have left? A dozen other nanobots on board, but spread all around his head. He could bring them all against Vincent, but it would take minutes, and a second dozen wouldn’t do any better than the first dozen.

With sick dread Bug Man realized that his brain, his own self and soul, was wide open, unprotected, vulnerable to the only twitcher on Earth who might actually be his equal.

“What’s the move?” he asked himself. “What’s the move?”

The only real forces he had left were not on board in his brain. They were a mile away in the White House.

The Twins would take him out if he screwed things up with the POTUS. On the other hand, hell, they’d probably already come after him. And if he didn’t do something fast he’d be a wired-up little bitch, just like Jessica.

What a fool he’d been to trust her. What a fool he’d been to believe there was anything real there. He had made her, and then unmade her, and been shattered when she betrayed him. He was a fool.