Amped

  This whole place feels wrong.

  Around us, the grass and trees are twisted and dead. With each breath I feel the metallic sting of air pollution on the back of my throat. A rust-colored grime coats everything: the streets, sidewalks, and abandoned cars and trailers along the side of the empty roads. Under this overcast sky, with the sun a glowing haze on the horizon, the street has an otherworldly, Martian feel to it.

  And I can sense the eyes on us.

  Families haunt the broken porches up and down the block. They sit on old couches and faded lawn chairs. More people are inside their homes, looking out through cracked panes of glass. A kid on a bike makes lazy loops in the street, somberly watching us, tires scratching over the grit. Unseen dogs bark from the shared backyards behind the row houses.

  Different place, same story. Families like the ones in Eden. Regular people who happen to have technology under their skin and no other place to go. Over the months, they must have filtered out of the suburbs and the country to this place and hundreds of others like it. Shuttled along by friendly reggies, but hustled away just the same. Amps with no jobs or family to turn to.

  Lyle speaks to me quietly, cupping his eyes against a dusty window. “He could be in one of these. I don’t know which. Haven’t been here in a year. But we need to hurry. Priders could be here already.”

  In the distance, a crumbling factory glares at me with a thousand broken eyes. It would be the simplest thing in the world for Vaughn’s men to camp out in there with a pair of binoculars. Or maybe a rifle. I scan the street again.

  My retinal picks out vivid details. Seamlessly lays the extra information into my vision. The device works all the time, slipping more visual data into my head.

  I point to the house next door, the one with the collapsed roof. It seems abandoned, with a front door that is barricaded with rotten two-by-fours.

  “He’s in there,” I say.

  “How you know that?” asks Lyle.

  I shrug and nod at the bleeding star that has been spray-painted on the front porch. The symbol is hidden by weeds and the dirt that coats everything, but it’s unmistakable.

  “Ad astra,” I say.

  “Damn right,” says Lyle. “No use messing with that front door. Follow me.”

  Lyle climbs back onto the fallen porch next door, quick and silent. Scales the rotten spine of the fallen porch roof, testing each footstep on bloated wood before going higher. I follow him up, stepping gingerly without my amp activated.

  I’m only human, for now.

  At the top, we both jump from the splintered porch to the roof of the porch next door. This porch is more sturdy, buttressed by a tar-covered layer of galvanized steel that is warped into black waves. That empty window breaks the cold brick face of the house. Its frame sprouts fanglike shards of glass.

  The cowboy considers the window. Pulls a piece of chalk from his pocket and marks a white X on the brick beside it. Drops the chalk and peeks inside.

  “So our friends know where to meet us,” he says.

  “Careful. Something’s in there.”

  Lyle cocks an eyebrow at me. “You mean somebody, right?”

  Before I can answer, he ducks under the glass slivers and into the window’s dark throat. For a moment, I’m alone on the sagging porch. The window, just a hole in the bricks, has the treacherous feel of a spider’s nest.

  Turns out, that’s not far from the truth.

  I hear somebody’s shout from inside, cut off. Hurrying, I crouch and manage to drop inside the window without cutting myself. For a split second, it’s too goddamn dark and I can’t see anything. A body hits the brick wall next to me with a slap. In the reddish slant of window light, an unconscious man falls into view. I step out of the light and press my back against the sweating bricks while my retinal amplification kicks in.

  Lyle’s boots crunch off down the hallway. Now I can make out the guy at my feet. A young amp in an army jacket, lying still on a bed of stiff, moldy carpet and rain-bleached trash. I watch him until I see his chest rise and fall.

  More strangled shouting comes from deeper inside the house. A crunch of plaster and a shriek. Lyle is long gone. This room is weather-beaten and empty. A dim rectangle of light leads to a claustrophobic hallway, choked with swathes of paint hanging from the ceiling like moss.

  Eyes squinted, I take one step toward the hall before I see it coming for me.

  The man-sized thing is black on black and galloping toward me in fast, insectile lurches. A spurt of childish bogeyman fear shoots into my veins. I step back and put out three fingers without thinking. Three. The thing falls sideways and bounces off a wall, keeps coming. Two. I can hear its breath hissing in and out. One. A nightmare bursts through the doorway and into the room.

  Zero.

  Level three. Tactical maneuvers. Evasion. Room clearing. Flanking. Improvised weaponry. Combat medicine. Do you consent? Do you consent?

  Yes, oh fuck, yes, yes.

  This thing looks like a twisted rag doll come to life—a scarecrow escaped from an abandoned field. It leaps for me and I’m instantly on my back, elbows crunching through broken glass and water-stained trash. Shrunken black fingers claw for my throat. I can see in flashes, my retinal feeding this thing’s movements to my Zenith. I grapple with impossibly thin and strong arms. Wrestle for position against spidery legs. Scrabbling through debris, I feel a shard of glass dimple the skin of my right palm, penetrate, and lodge itself warmly between flexing tendons.

  It should hurt, but it doesn’t.

  In a detached way, I notice that I am fighting something less than a man. And somehow more. There isn’t much but a torso and head with a four-limb prosthetic replacement. Each wire-thin prosthetic leg and arm has been wrapped in black plastic trash bags held in place with twine and rubber bands. As the wire man manipulates his prosthetic limbs, muscles in his chest and stomach flex like bugs crawling under his skin. He’s strong as rebar and quicker than me.

  But he’s light. I manage to heave him up and off. Leaning back on the bricks, I scratch and grope my way to my feet. I make a mental note that my right hand is pretty fucked up. A piece of smoky glass shark fins out the side of my palm, stuck there.

  I run for the hallway. About halfway across the room I hear him coming and I turn. The wire man sways toward me, alarmingly fast on his knotty stick legs.

  His prosthetics are too strong. They swing at me like baseball bats, bruising my forearms each time I deflect them with the uncanny speed-boost of my Zenith. And his basic physics are off. The wire man’s arms are longer than his torso indicates they should be. The discrepancy seems to fool the built-in mechanics of my Zenith. He feints and one arm dips, hooks under my neck. A brutal metallic knee crushes into my diaphragm, pinning me to the wall.

  While I gasp for air, two gnarled arms wreathe my torso and squeeze. I’m impaled on the blunt knee, breath rushing from my lungs. I wrap my fingers around the plastic-encased metal arms, pushing with every fiber of muscle I have. Even with all my strength, I can’t breathe.

  The thing leans its face in close to mine. When it speaks, I can see that inside those shrunken cheeks are nothing but purple gums and a wormlike tongue. “Valentine won’t go easy, Zenith,” it hisses.

  I have no breath in me to tell this thing that I’m a friend.

  At level three, I am deep inside. The glass shard embedded in the butt of my right palm throbs, but the pain is informational. I force myself to let go of the wire man’s arms. His knee plunges even harder into my diaphragm and my vision erupts with pinpricks of capering light. I’ve got enough oxygen for another second or two of consciousness.

  So I better make it count.

  In one deliberate jab, I drag the side of my right palm across the wire man’s forehead, just over his eyes. The shard peels his scalp open even as it bites deeper into my hand. The wire man shrieks in pain as warm blood gushes out over his eyes.

  That anvil lifts from my chest and I fall to my knees, coughing an
d gagging. The wire man writhes on the ground, spewing spittle and curses from wrinkled lips. I’m able to scramble to the hallway, shove the water-warped door closed behind me on broken hinges.

  I put my back against it.

  Looking at my hand, medical information telegraphs into my head. I bite the fabric of my shirt sleeve and rip a piece off with my good left hand. Fabric dangling from my teeth, I yank out the blood-coated sliver of glass and drop it on mildewed carpet. I wrap my hand tightly and tie it off.

  There is no pain, no urgency. There is only the Zenith.

  Through the floor, I feel the tremor of fighting in another room. The Zenith tells me where Lyle is, like an intuition. I dart through the broken hallways and stairwells lit only by the grayish amplified light of my retinal. A couple of times, I see motionless people shapes lying on the floor as I pass by.

  Finally, I see a blade of light on the moldering floor. Wrenching open the door, I find Lyle standing with his back to me in a wide-open room, a patch of dusky sky visible overhead. Several interior walls have been torn down and part of the ceiling opens up to the evening air. The wood floors are bleached gray and the weather has washed the trash into congealed clumps along the walls. A couple of trees are growing in here, reaching awkwardly for the ragged hole of light above.

  Gaunt and tall and breathing hard, Valentine leans against the far wall, his long fingers splayed out behind him. His green eyes are wide and unblinking, collecting information. He hunches forward slightly, collarbone pushing through his olive green T-shirt. His army jacket hangs loose.

  “You okay?” Lyle asks me, without looking.

  “Fine,” I say. “This is not going according to plan.”

  “What makes you say that?” he asks, advancing toward the cornered amp.

  “Hey, number thirteen,” Valentine calls to me. He tries to grin, but a thrill of panic chases the curl out of his lip. His eyes dart back to Lyle. “How much does he know?”

  “The right amount,” says Lyle, taking a step forward.

  “We’re here to help you,” I say. “Stop running.”

  Valentine laughs once gutturally. “You don’t know enough, kid,” he says.

  “I know that Elysium has a whole dossier on you. You’ve been compromised. We’re here to warn you,” I say, walking deeper into the room.

  “Check out the desk, thirteen,” says Valentine, “then get back to me.”

  He lowers his forehead and trains his eyes on Lyle. His fingers have stopped drumming the wall. I look back and forth between the two soldiers. It strikes me how still they both are, like gunslingers, two sweaty palms hovering over gun butts.

  “Lyle—” I begin to ask.

  Quick as a mousetrap, Valentine has pulled his arms away from the wall. He wraps his thumb around his pinky and leaves the three remaining fingers splayed like knives. In the greenish light, his spotted forearms are the mottled color of a shallow ocean floor. His face looks like he’s about to cry.

  “No,” says Lyle.

  Valentine lets his fingers collapse into a fist: three, two, one, zero. His body shudders once, jerks as though he’s just completed an electrical circuit. Lyle is already diving forward as Valentine’s lips twitch.

  I know from experience what he is saying: Three, two, one. Yes, yes, yes.

  Lyle lunges and hits the wall, collapsing rotten plaster with his elbow. But Valentine is gone, already pivoted on his foot and stepped perfectly out of the way. His red hair hangs sweaty over his forehead, and underneath it I can see that his eyes have gone slack and empty in a familiar way. Breathing harshly through a snarl, he lifts one leg and blindly kicks out the window behind him.

  “Shit,” mutters Lyle, as Valentine hunches like a crab and spins in place. He disappears through the window without a sound, without touching the jagged remaining glass or so much as tickling the frame. Here and gone like a vampire.

  Lyle pauses, looks at the desk, then the window. Makes a decision and follows Val outside, moving just as naturally, with eyes just as dead. I can hear the iron fire escape outside clattering against the building as Lyle gives chase.

  On Val’s rust-eaten metal desk, a spray of papers and folders lie open. My retinal is picking out the words in the dim light before I can even think of reading them. Mission Analysis and Planning. Familiar names pop out of the dense text: Stilman, Daley, Valentine, and Lyle Crosby. My name. And the names of places: Houston, Chicago, Detroit.

  … necessary to execute synchronous combat operations on key political targets to continue decreasing regional stability…

  The words describe a battle plan.

  . . . escalate operations to precipitate “crisis moment” that spur regional factions to engage local forces independently, triggering widespread chaos…

  Civil war.

  . . . as a Zenith you have a destiny, Valentine. Failure to respond to this proposal will be recognized as a tacit rejection of your duty to your squad, your people, and to Astra. It will be met with lethal response…

  And the signature at the bottom: Lyle Crosby.

  The laughing cowboy doesn’t want to warn Valentine; Lyle is here to kill a rogue Zenith.

  My world realigns, shifts into new focus. On the roof, Lyle is doing his best to murder an innocent man who refused to join him in a new war.

  Cradling my hurt hand, I duck through the window and onto the rattling fire escape. I climb the rungs, one-handed, my cloth-wrapped palm stained with dirt. The sun has just slunk over the horizon, leaving the clouds bloody.

  A gunshot punches into the twilight as I reach the top of the ladder. Pigeon wings flap in my ears like an echo. I peek over the edge.

  The rotten sloping roof is empty. Dirty-pink insulation peeks through collapsed holes like diseased flesh. At the far edge, two silhouettes embrace. Lyle holds the gun in his right hand. His left arm is wrapped around Valentine’s shoulder. He lowers Val to the rooftop.

  “Sorry,” I hear him murmur. “I’m sorry, Val.”

  Valentine lies on his side. He tucks his right hand under his left armpit, forearm over the wound to his chest, shoulders arched in pain. His breath is coming in shudders and his shirt is dark and heavy with spreading blood. Lyle crouches next to the fallen soldier, head bowed, his back to me.

  Val’s green eyes open and he spots me. His mouth spreads into a red smile, teeth washed in blood. “Thirteen,” he chokes. “Good luck.”

  Lyle stands up and faces me. I watch him, motionless. Only my head is visible over the lip of the roof.

  “You saw the pages,” says Lyle, with a tone of finality. “Valentine was talking to the Priders. He was going to warn them. I can’t have a rogue Zenith on my hands, Gray.”

  I hear movement in the room downstairs.

  “I’m not the bad guy, understand,” continues Lyle. “And that girl who killed herself … Samantha. She was right, Gray. Made the coward’s choice, but she was right. This world is never going to accept us. There’s no place for us in it. We’ve got to fight to make a new one. Especially if you’re a Zenith.”

  On the ground behind Lyle, Valentine’s chest stops rising and falling.

  “Think of it,” says Lyle. “Coordinated strikes on reggie targets, timed to create maximum confusion. Guerrilla warfare, house-to-house. Not just us soldiers but all the amps against all the reggies. Forging a new country out of plastic and titanium and silicone. It’s happening tomorrow, Gray, on a scale you can’t imagine.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I ask.

  “Change, man,” he says. “Carving out what’s mine. Every living thing will fight to survive. And if the people don’t want to fight, we’ll make them. You don’t pick your revolution. It picks you.”

  My eyes flick to the open window a story below me. I catch sight of Stilman and Daley inside. The two Zeniths are moving quickly and efficiently around the room. Stilman is carrying a dented gasoline can.

  “Four of us left,” says Lyle. “What’s your choice?”

&nbsp
; He raises the gun and trains it on my face, steadies his hand.

  “Fight or die,” calls Lyle. “Stilman joined. Daley. The rest died. Are you my general or not?”

  Valentine’s eyes are open and glassy, reflecting the gory clouds in the darkening sky. Sweat still evaporates from his forehead. The wind caresses his red hair.

  Lyle pulls the hammer back. “Nobody is surprised when an oppressed people fight back. We are not the aggressors, Gray. We’re freedom fighters, joining the tradition of our ancestors who fought for their humanity. They won’t give us rights? We’ll take them. We’ll take everything we want.”

  In my peripheral I can see the hood of Lyle’s truck just up the street. I know that the screwdriver that starts it is lying loose in the floorboard. Slowly, I lean my body away from the railing. Feel the wind breathing on the back of my neck.

  “Okay,” I say.

  “You’ll fight?” Lyle asks, warily lowering the gun.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’ll fight.”

  And I let go of the railing.

  *** SPECIAL REPORT ***

  * * *

  By JANET MARINO

  Hundreds dead as detonations rock Chicago, Houston, Detroit Amp Extremists claim responsibility for horrific carnage

  The Associated Press

  CHICAGO

  A simultaneous series of detonations crippled the downtown metropolitan areas of three American cities late last night in what witnesses described as a highly coordinated terrorist attack conducted by trained teams of amp extremists.

  …

  Ten hours on the road, and my eyes feel rough as cracked porcelain. Not even Lyle could run fast enough to catch me when I bolted. Got this truck started and peeled out before he could even get off a shot.

  I’ve been hightailing it back to Eden ever since. Got to find Jim.