Amped

  “What happened to that guy?” I ask, yelling over the guttural chanting of the crowd.

  Lyle cups a hand to my ear and shouts back, “The Brain? He’s a first-generation diagnostic amp. Totally experimental. Got it to maximize his training. Banned from the NFL for body monitoring. Guy can see his blood pressure, heart rate, perspiration. Control it. He can turn off his pain.”

  Lyle taps the nub on his own temple and mouths the words “Smart mother.”

  I have my doubts about that, based on what is crouched and waiting across the ring from the Brain. It’s a science-lab nightmare that would make Dr. Frankenstein piss his lab coat. The other fighter is long and lean and he moves constantly, bouncing and bobbing. I have to pay close attention just to get a good look at him.

  There is no mistaking it when they announce his name.

  The Blade. The body amp stands maybe seven feet tall, graceful, his skin covered in geometric tattoos. He is planted solidly on custom-fabricated carbon fiber legs with painful-looking backward knee joints. His slender arms are riddled with lumpy biomechanical implants visible through his skin, snaking into his muscles and joints. When he punches the air, his gleaming bladed fists disappear into a blur.

  Stilman whispers something to Daley and he nods thoughtfully. Valentine glances at them, suspicious, seemingly out of whatever loop they’re in.

  I wonder what kind of doctor would do this to a man. Ninety-nine percent of amps are regular people who happen to have a dot on their temple. They are mothers and fathers and children. This is something I’ve never seen or even fathomed—a harbinger of a new world, populated by new people who I can hardly recognize as human.

  A bell clangs and the two monsters advance on each other. The Brain is focused, brow furrowed, like this is a life-sized chess match. He lunges and the Blade leaps away with incredible dexterity. I don’t know how this big pink bull is ever going to get a hold on that bouncing, flying bundle of razor wire.

  The impending carnage is too much and I look away.

  People are fascinated by what they fear most. For their own reasons, both the amps and humans in the crowd seem terrified by what they see. Terrified … and thrilled. What’s happening in the ring sounds nauseating. I hear whistling, whiplike punches and wet, blunt smacks. The Blade is silent, but the Brain emits an almost constant, subterranean groan.

  I look up just in time to see it.

  Like a trap springing, the Blade sends his right foot blade streaking upward. It slices through the flesh of the Brain’s pectoral muscle with just a little tug. The Blade continues up and over into a back flip, a sheet of bright blood arcing away into the crowd. As the audience collectively groans, the Brain charges forward, his nearly severed pectoral muscle flopping sickeningly.

  In the corner of my eye, I see Valentine nudge Lyle. Stilman and Daley shoot concerned looks at the cowboy. Lyle holds up a finger as if to say, Wait.

  The Brain doesn’t even notice his wound. His huge pink palms are outstretched and groping. He nimbly catches the Blade as he steadies himself from that devastating kick.

  A torrent of blood courses down the sculpted column of the Brain’s torso. Then, just as suddenly as it gushed out, the flow stops. Now the Brain has got hold of the Blade with one hand under his thigh and the other over his shin. The Blade struggles wildly, but his body is held completely off the floor.

  The Brain’s pink mouth opens wide and a landslide of muscle pulses up from his arms and neck; his face darkens from the titanic effort.

  Prap!

  The Blade’s mechanical knee joint shatters with a sound like a piston being thrown from under the hood of a hot rod. Slivers of carbon fiber shrapnel perforate the immediate audience. Screams of surprised pain from the crowd up front mingle with the faceless roars of approval from behind.

  Lyle nudges me in the ribs, taps his temple. Stilman and Daley have gone still again, unblinking. Valentine looks queasy. But Lyle is enjoying this, watching these fighters kill each other. These guys who aren’t so different from us. I want to, but I also can’t look away from the shining arena.

  The poor guy who calls himself the Blade is convulsing now pretty severely. That amputated piece of technology was hardwired to his implant; and even though it was a prosthesis, his central nervous system is convinced that his leg has just been torn off. He twists his face my way, sending a spray of sweat dancing against the lights. His lips are curled over gritted teeth, and his chest contracts reflexively as he emits short grunting shrieks.

  His amp won’t let him lose consciousness.

  The Brain just looks interested, head cocked like a smart dog, as he systematically pops the next joint. Again, he ignores the inflamed, howling crowd as though they aren’t there. Abruptly, I realize that they probably aren’t. If Lyle is right, the Brain can turn down his sensitivity, dial out the screams and waving arms and flying beer bottles. The Brain is alone out there, facing down his nightmare opponent in an empty, smoky room.

  It’s getting hard for me to breathe. The gruesome spectacle is winding down, but the audience around me has transformed. Joined together by the blood and shrapnel, we have become a many-headed creature, leering from the darkness, shrieking and slavering and breathing smoke.

  The white noise of the crowd rises to a jet turbine roar. The Brain is about to make his finishing move. As he lifts the Blade’s quivering body to the sky, I turn my eyes upward to the blinding-white spotlights. For a single moment, Lyle and I stand like brothers, arms around each other’s shoulders, balanced on our chairs in the haze of cigarette smoke and tangy smell of blood and burned electronics. The afterimages of the spotlights dance in my eyes and my ears ring with the screams of the spectators and fighters. And, yes, my own screams, too.

  Somewhere far below I think I hear a spine snap.

  Then, without warning, I slip off my chair and onto my knees and puke my dinner onto the filthy concrete.

  I flinch when Lyle kicks open the side exit with one shit-stained cowboy boot. I can feel the heat and noise pulsing out from the warehouse behind him like the blast of a furnace. It’s a slaughterhouse in there.

  Lyle steps out onto the cold concrete slab and looks me up and down. He’s got a toothpick wedged in the corner of his mouth and a questioning grin. His three friends emerge quietly behind him, stepping slowly like cats. They insinuate themselves around Lyle. Swivel their eyes past me, out into the darkness.

  I’m standing, leaning against a corrugated metal shed across a narrow alley, arms wrapped around my sides, shivering and trying not to show it.

  “Hoo boy,” chuckles Lyle. He waits for a few seconds, but I don’t have anything to say. Or I don’t know how to say it.

  “If it makes you feel better,” says Lyle, “you ain’t the only one in there lost his lunch.”

  I wipe my mouth with my arm and spit.

  “Saw an old lady barf up her nachos. All over the back of a reggie’s head. Grossest thing ever.”

  Against my will, a grin drops into the corner of my mouth. “Is the other guy, uh, alive?”

  “Sure, the Brain broke him is all. Just earning a paycheck. The big man’s not a mindless piece of meat. He’s got a brain like a dolphin.”

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “One part sleeps while the other part’s awake. It’s why dolphins don’t drown at night. Old boy can turn some parts on, other parts off. Course, that kind of diagnostic shit is first-level function for a Zenith. Baby stuff. He’s smart but not smart like us.”

  Lyle puts two fingers together and twirls them, gesturing to his friends.

  “You’re all Zeniths,” I say.

  The fact drops into place, suddenly so obvious. Valentine. Stilman. Daley. In all the carnage, I didn’t recognize the names right away. More Echo Squad soldiers from the police broadcast. All wanted for “questioning” in relation to terrorist activities. Like Lyle. And me.

  “Stilman has the Chicago area,” says Lyle. “Daley takes care of Houston. Val runs Detroi
t.”

  The men glance at me, go back to scanning the darkness. I wonder what they’re looking for out there. Who or what do they think might be stalking the weedy twilight?

  “Runs what?” I ask.

  Lyle raises his eyebrows at me, moonlight glinting from a spray of beer on his cowboy hat.

  “The amp resistance, man. Astra. We’re the only legit group protecting amps nationwide.”

  Stilman digs an electronic cigarette out of his shirt pocket. Bites off the activator and spits it on the ground and speaks. “I got around thirty thousand amped civilians in my district. Four times that if you count their families. Maybe a thousand amp soldiers. A hundred solid ones. Out of all Chicago.”

  Stilman looks disgusted.

  “The original Uplift program mostly hit little kids and vets,” adds Lyle. “Some of the kids are old enough to fight now, but most aren’t. People only want to fight if there’s no other way out. So we’re always looking for more soldiers.”

  Stilman nods, takes a drag.

  Daley speaks without looking at me. “Sixty thousand in my area of Texas. Rural, like here. Spread out in clusters of a few hundred to a few thousand. Hard to protect. Keeps my soldiers on the road.”

  Valentine, a little taller and skinnier than the others, speaks quietly. “I’ve got a hundred thousand people. Probably forty thousand amps. All in the abandoned outskirts of Detroit and forgotten. Easy to protect them. Toughest job is to keep them from killing each other.”

  These men are generals. Now I understand what they see out there in the darkness—a war. And here I’ve been standing in the middle of it, oblivious, like a turtle crossing a highway.

  “What about you, Lyle?” I ask.

  “I got the Oklahoma City area but I’m here and there,” he says cryptically. “There are four areas, including ours. Earlier this year, we lost a fifth area out east, near DC. Together we account for nearly three hundred thousand amps, most of them pretty geographically concentrated. Another couple hundred thousand are outside our areas. But there’s a leader for every region. A Zenith.”

  “Does Lucy know?”

  Lyle cocks his head at me. “Now, why would you go and ask that?”

  I shrug.

  “You got a thing for my sister, Gray?” he asks me, starting to grin. When I don’t say anything, he keeps going. “Lucy is a good girl. Hell, she adopted that kid after his reggie parents took off and she don’t even get paid for that. But she don’t know much about this. And we don’t tell her. Bad people are looking for us. Knowing isn’t good for her safety, you understand?”

  “That’s why you’re always traveling,” I say.

  Lyle shrugs.

  “Gotta keep ’em guessing. And I got my tricks. Remember that cop with the frozen legs?” Lyle flashes a piece of flat black plastic tucked into the waist of his jeans, dimpling his skin. “Modified stutter gun. Low-power electromagnetic pulse generator. Neural Autofocus is built on ruggedized circuits, so it can deal with chickenshit EMP. But those cop steppers are cheap. Fucks their radios, too. Of course, sometimes it don’t matter how rugged a circuit is. If a nuke drops, for instance, we’ll all be brain fried before the sky gets pretty.”

  At this, Daley chuckles. Stilman takes a drag from his e-cigarette. Steam rolls silently out of his nostrils and gets lost in the curls of his beard. Val just blinks.

  “The real question,” says Lyle carefully, “is why you’re here.”

  All four men have their eyes on me now. A blistering, familiar intelligence is behind each of their gazes. And a sudden glint of malice. This is a test. A pop quiz and I can feel the lies evaporating in my head, gone before they can reach my lips. So I find the truth.

  “When things got bad, my dad told me to come here. Said Jim was a man I could trust. But the real reason I’m here is that a student of mine, an amp, stepped off a building. Killed herself in front of me. She was fifteen years old. Her name was Samantha. She was a genius and they said I pushed her.”

  Lyle picks his teeth with the toothpick. Stilman casually rests one knuckle on his hip, just above the oblong denim imprint of a pocketknife.

  “But Samantha told me something just before she died. She said there was no place for us in this world. That amps don’t belong. I don’t believe that.”

  The three generals stare through me, crossed arms rising and falling on even breathing. They’re waiting on Lyle.

  I take a half step back without thinking about it.

  Stilman nods at Lyle almost imperceptibly. Daley shakes his head, tosses the e-cig. Thumbs-up, thumbs-down.

  Eyes wide, I turn to Valentine. He’s watching me like a chess player, working out all the moves in his head. Finally, he bobs his head once, quick, then goes back to watching the empty lot.

  “Good enough,” says Lyle, and all the men relax.

  I suspect that Valentine has just saved my life. I exhale.

  The cowboy leans against the warehouse and puts a knee up. He takes off his hat and wipes a forearm over his sweat-soaked forehead. Pushes his hat hair up out of his face. The generals relax slightly.

  “That girl was smart,” he says. “And she was right. The world we knew ended and nobody told us. The world we belong to doesn’t exist yet because we haven’t created it. Thirteen Zeniths were made, including you, Gray, but only the five of us are left now because the government is afraid of the new world that’s coming. But what they don’t know is that they can’t stop us. We’re already so close to the end.”

  “Who is hunting Zeniths?” I ask.

  Nobody says anything. For all their measured cool, these former soldiers don’t have any idea. They’re clueless.

  With the toe of my shoe, I scratch a symbol on the dirty pavement. It’s the icon I saw on the page of Joe Vaughn’s speech. The one tattooed on Billy.

  EM.

  “Elysium,” I say.

  Stilman and Daley glance at the dirt, recognition in their eyes.

  “Do you know what this means?” I ask.

  “Where did you see that?” asks Valentine.

  “Everywhere,” I say.

  The men glance at Lyle. Some silent inscrutable communication is taking place.

  “We think it’s some kind of elite Pure Pride group,” says Daley. “Close associates of Senator Joseph Vaughn. We’ve found members all over the nation. Most are law enforcement or security.”

  “Soldiers,” I say. “The ones hunting Zeniths?”

  “Maybe,” says Valentine. “We don’t know for sure.”

  I feel the night pressing in. The warm breeze rustles the grass out there in the darkness and every half-glimpsed movement makes me want to bolt.

  “Tell me how to activate my Zenith,” I say.

  Lyle grins at his friends. An I-told-you-so grin.

  “Here we go, then.”

  He holds up three fingers on his right hand, thumb and pinky touching. “Default configuration. Think of the device,” he says. “Feel that tickle in your head. Concentrate on that, while you do this.” Then he counts down quickly, dropping his fingers to rest on the back of his thumb. Three, two, one. He tucks his fingers underneath, making a tight fist.

  “Simple as that,” he says. “Think of the Zenith and count down with your right hand. You don’t picture the Zenith, it won’t activate. And if your hand ain’t working, just think about moving your fingers. It’ll be enough.”

  “What? In case someone cuts off my arm?” I joke.

  “Right,” he says. “There are five levels. You got to consent to each one. After you drop a level, that’s how deep you go from then on. Every time.”

  Lyle looks me up and down. “You never been in the military.”

  “No,” I say.

  “Don’t matter. The Zenith knows stuff. It can tell your body what to do. How to stay alive in bad situations. How to escape. And how to kill, if you let it.”

  The word orbits there for a few seconds: kill.

  “How do I turn it off?” I ask.
/>
  “That’s the hard part, ain’t it?” Lyle says. “What goes down don’t necessarily come back up. You got to focus. Concentrate on yourself, on your actions. Force the amp to give back control. It ain’t always easy. But you’ll figure it out.”

  Lyle extends his hand, palm open.

  After a second, I shake it gamely. He pulls me in and claps me on the shoulder. “You never activated that Zenith, so you got no clue what you’re capable of. But you’ll find out, Gray. And we’ll see what kind of man you are pretty damn fast.”

  “And what kind are you?” I ask. Valentine bites off a chuckle.

  “Me?” asks Lyle. “I’m a mystery man. Full of surprises. For one, you really think I brought you here just to watch these meatheads tear each other up?” Lyle looks up at the sky, finds the moon, and squints at it. “Come on,” he says. “Should be about time.”

  Around the side of the shed, a rectangle of light splays out onto the brushed concrete. Lyle’s teeth shine in the moonlight. He puts a finger to his lips and we creep.

  Just outside the door, Lyle straightens his shirt and cocks his hat back on his head. Stilman, Daley, and Valentine form up outside the door, turn their backs to it. Lyle plucks the toothpick out of his mouth, looks at it, then crams it back in. He walks into the light.

  I start to follow him but freeze up when I see what’s inside the toolshed.

  Shirtless and massive, the Brain sits on a rolling stool. Steam rises from his wet skin. He stares expressionless at the rusted tools hanging from the wall while a skinny doctor in a dirt-stained lab coat methodically sews up his torn pectoral muscle. The hunk of meat flaps from the Brain’s chest as the doctor works, but the man might as well be a statue. A big, meaty statue.

  The Brain’s deep-set green eyes flicker over to us as Lyle swaggers inside.

  “Hey there,” says Lyle. “You don’t know me but—”

  “I don’t want any,” says the Brain. His voice has the low hollow strain of a big mammal. A bull or an elephant.

  “That’s good, because I’m not here to sell you nothing,” says Lyle.