Amped (15 page)

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.

“I’m not for sale, either,” says the Brain.

“Settle down, now,” says Lyle, hands out.

With a menacing scowl, the Brain starts to rise. The doctor steps back, impatient for Lyle to get beaten down so he can get back to work. Lyle watches the mountain of a man carefully, his boots scratching lightly on the concrete as he backs out of reach. For an elastic second Lyle actually seems scared, and then something locks into place behind his eyes.

“Ho there, partner. Just came to talk. I was a Son of Silence like yourself,” says Lyle.

The Brain stops rising. “What chapter?”

“Northside Dirty White Boys,” says Lyle.

“Mad Dog set?” says the Brain.

Lyle pauses, thrown. Then he takes the toothpick out of his mouth and points it at the Brain. “Dragon set, you redneck fuck,” he says.

The Brain eases back down. The doctor goes back to stitching him up in precise lunges with a spool of black thread that looks more like clothesline rope.

“Right,” says the Brain. “What do you want?”

“Street ain’t the place for men like us. Running drugs, it’s for peons. And look at you. Cops see you coming a mile away. You and me were meant for something bigger. What I want is to invite you to be part of another brotherhood. A group of people that you can
relate
to.”

Lyle takes off his hat and pushes a lank piece of hair away from his forehead, revealing the nub of plastic on his temple. The Brain’s small eyes flick between Lyle’s nub and my own. I can almost hear his thoughts: Does this really make us brothers? Is there finally someone I can trust?

The cowboy is here to recruit muscle—the sort of muscle that doesn’t even exist outside of amp circles. And for some reason, he also wanted me to see
this
. The outer limits of human amplification.

“You ought to come out and see us at Eden,” Lyle urges. “Hang out. Be yourself for a little while. Nobody there to judge, you know it?”

Unconsciously, the Brain reaches up to his own bald head and touches the nub there. As his great arm rises, I catch a glimpse of something on the back of it—a peach-colored slick of mottled scar tissue. Burned skin. It’s a removed tattoo.

Faint, very faint, I catch sight of an outline that could be a dragon head. Some kind of gang insignia that’s been burned off the back of the Brain’s arm.

Clever cowboy.

The relic of the tattoo disappears into a fold of muscle as the
Brain sends his massive arm out like a crane, hand extended. Lyle pops his hat back on and bounces forward to shake it, his nimble fingers disappearing into that massive paw.

The Brain’s fist closes tight and he yanks Lyle forward. The Brain frowns, small eyes trained on Lyle’s forearm. A phrase is tattooed there. Tight black capital letters:
AD
ASTRA
CRUENTUS.

“What’s it mean?” asks the Brain.

Lyle flashes a grin, impenetrable as ever. “It means we’re going to the stars together, stained in the blood of our enemies.”

As I finish shaving the next morning, I see myself in the mirror and I can’t help but marvel at how
normal
I look. Last night, I saw what implants can do to a person. Saw what people can become when they let the technology inside.

And for the first time, I understand why Priders are scared: we’ve gone and become our tools.

In the distance, I hear the puttering of Jim’s pickup truck. Like most people around here, he’s got an old manual drive. Can’t afford the safety of an autonomous car. It makes a hell of a racket as he pulls up outside.

I can’t help thinking that the men in those freak fights are a type of person that has never existed before. Clawing each other to pieces in a ring lit up like an operating theater, they looked like newborn creatures exposed under the spotlights, blind and mewling, skin glistening. New breeds of men that have Joseph Vaughn and his Priders scared crazy, foaming at the mouth.

The unblinking generals—Valentine, Daley, and Stilman—went home to their own cities last night. Of all the new breeds, I think the Priders should fear them first. Zeniths, like me.

And yet a normal-looking former teacher is staring back at me in the mirror.

Knock, knock, knock.

The flimsy bathroom wall shudders.

“What happened to the front door?” asks Jim, voice muffled.

I step into the dim hallway with a towel around my waist, squeezing the ratty carpet between my toes. Jim waits for me, a serious expression hiding in the wrinkles of his face. It looks like he hasn’t slept since he left.

“I met Lyle Crosby,” I say. “I’m in. If I want to be.”

“He know about your Zenith?” asks Jim.

“He knows. It’s why he’s interested,” I say. “He’s building an army.”

Jim rubs his eyes with the balls of his thumbs. “Yeah.”

“Claims he’s the only thing protecting amps,” I say.

Jim stands in the hallway, breathing steadily and slowly. “Hell, he may be right, but it’s already gone too far. He’s going to give the reggies a reason to start a war. Make all Vaughn’s crazy predictions come true.”

Someone bangs on the front door. We both ignore it. I push past Jim into my bedroom. Throw on some clothes. Jim stands in the doorway, face shadowed.

“Watch him, Owen. Learn what you can. But for God’s sake, be careful,” he says. “The rest of the world is waiting to come down on us like a tidal wave. Not just Eden. All the amps. Half a million innocent people.”

The banging isn’t stopping. Light, repetitive taps that shake the screen door. Again and again.

“Lyle wants me to turn it on, Jim,” I say.

“Then you need to know everything,” says Jim, sighing. “After activation, you’ll enter a consent mode. Yes or no. You might hear a voice or see it in your mind’s eye.”

Bang, bang, bang.

“What does it
do
?” I ask.