Amped (33 page)

I uncurl my fingers from his shirt. When I speak, my own voice echoes in my ears. “You think that you used Lyle against his own kind,” I say. “But you’ve been used. He won’t stop.”

Vaughn laughs in my face. Hot breath rolling over my cheeks. With a sharp tug, he yanks my arm off his chest and I let him. He steps back and wipes the blood off his mouth with his hand. Looks at it and shakes his head.

“We’ve worked together for a decade. The man hates himself, pure and simple. And there’s no way out of it. The implant changes your brain patterns over the years. A little nudge here, a nudge there. Even if Lyle were able to remove the technology and still function … he would never be a man again. He knows that. It’s why he never wanted it to happen to another person. And that was a guarantee that I could
provide.”

Vaughn pulls a white handkerchief out of his breast pocket and dabs at his lip. “We’ve got the research shut down and seized. Control over the doctors. The existing amps are corralled and imprisoned. We won. It’s over. Lyle Crosby got everything he wanted out of our arrangement.”

I hear a familiar acid chuckle behind me. Stepping away from Vaughn, I slowly turn around. My eyes devour the light, analyzing.

Lyle.

Leaning across the open doorway like a butcher knife buried in a kitchen table. He’s wearing black jeans and a wrinkled cowboy shirt with pearl buttons. There is a smear of blood on his chest. A gray-suited body of a guard sprawled at his feet. In his right hand is a dead-black Glock .44 semiautomatic pistol. Index finger inside the trigger guard. He casually reaches up and scratches his temple with the slide of the gun. The fluorescent orange sight dot hovers,
mesmerizing.

“I wouldn’t say I got
everything
I wanted,” he says. Lazily, Lyle extends his arm. Pulls the trigger without the slightest hesitation.

Three, two, one, go.

By the time the bullet leaves the barrel of the gun, I’m moving fast as a reflection in the mirror. I feel the light of the sudden searing muzzle flash blaze across my retinas. Tiny meteorites of gunpowder residue impact my cheeks and forehead as I lunge forward.

The bullet passes by. Not meant for me.

Twisting, my palm closes across the slide of the gun. The brass cartridge arcs past my face, end over end. The bullet itself is ten feet away, vaporizing a hole in Vaughn’s expensive suit, tearing through the meat of his pectoral muscle, shattering a rib and a clavicle, and spraying the wall behind him with pieces of his shoulder blade.

As I tear the gun from his hands, Lyle depresses the magazine release with his thumb. Then he lets go of the gun altogether. The magazine, pregnant with rounds, drops away.

Vaughn staggers with a plume of red mist erupting from his chest. His knees hinge drunkenly and he falls. The side of his face audibly slaps the tile wall. A wet, coughing bark grates out of his mouth as the weight of his body meets the ground. The head of the PHCC and second-term senator from Pennsylvania lies still.

I land and roll with the empty gun in my hand. The ejected magazine is too far away. With a tug from both hands, I disengage the slide and smack the top of the gun against my palm, popping the barrel out. I land in a crouch, pieces of the Glock raining around my feet.

Vaughn screams hoarsely, face buried in the crook of his arm.

“Aw, quit your crying,” says Lyle, a feline smile curled into the corners of his mouth.

“You promised I could turn him in,” gasps Vaughn. “You promised.”

Lyle clucks his tongue. “Listen to yourself. You used to be so
put together. When I found you, boy, you had balls. Now you’re just a sad, fat, old reggie.”

I’m on my feet. Circling toward Vaughn. Hands up and ready for when Lyle attacks.

“Help me,” says Vaughn.

“He wants me to help him,” Lyle says to me, rolling his eyes. With one eye on me, he steps over Vaughn and spits words at the sweating, bleeding man.

“You were never in control, genius. After I leaked the existence of Echo Squad and got us disbanded, I did a nationwide search to find a guy just like you. What happened to your daughter was such a
sad
story. I constructed the bones of the PHCC for you. Told you what you wanted to hear. But, goddamn, how could you not know by now? You never did figure it out. I only built you to
destroy
you
.”

“No,” says Vaughn, and he is crying now. “No, we did it together.”

“I made you more than a man. I made you a
symbol
. You’re the most human human there is, boy. And here in a minute, when I toss your screaming ass over that balcony and you go splitter splatter in front of the ten million zealots we created? Hoo boy.
Then
a real war’s gonna start.”

“What about the amps?” I hear myself say.

“We trigger a life-or-death situation and
force
them to fight. Force them to overcome.”

“They’ll
die
.”

“Maybe. But you gotta understand, Gray. In this world, I’m a broke-dick dog. A tool to be wielded by another man. But in the new world? Shit, I’m a warlord. A barbarian king. Free to spread my dominion over this nation. Who knows, man, maybe the world.”

“You’re going to get five hundred thousand people slaughtered.”

“Aw, I’m disappointed in you. You’re looking at the little picture,
Gray. You think Europe is going to allow a genocide? Rest of the world is already using implants. In China I hear they’re state issued, for Chrissake. This thing is gonna go global quick. And we’ll be heading the charge.”

“Help,” calls Vaughn, who then crawls about six inches toward the door before collapsing. The politician has got his useless arm pulled up tight under his chin, cradling it with his good arm and stretching out his expensive suit jacket. Beads of sweat glisten on a dime-sized bald spot I never noticed. Blood is smeared on the marble.

Lyle watches Vaughn, amused. “Help? Ain’t no help. I got your dead bodyguards stacked like cordwood in the hallway, dipshit,” says Lyle.

He winks at me, then continues: “Remember your little friend Samantha? She and I seen the same thing. She went and got her panties in a knot and jumped off a building. But I took the bull by his damn horns. We live once, buddy. One time. That’s all we get. And I intend to make my mark. I mean, look at us.”

Lyle strides to the balcony. Throws open the doors and gazes out over the thousand murmuring demonstrators. Even from here, I can feel their collective heat shouldering in through the doorway. Lyle turns to me, silhouetted, and his eyes are shining—finally, really alive.

“Who among the world of men may judge us, when we are as angels to them?”

Vaughn stirs from the floor. Looks up at Lyle with scared eyes. He’s pale. His right arm is twitching uncontrollably.

“Autofocus was meant to help people,” I say. “It was meant for good.”

“Well, hell,” says Lyle. He doesn’t seem to notice Vaughn anymore. “I’m beyond good and evil. And it ain’t too late. You should join me. With the shit you got upstairs, boy, we could split the world in half. I know you ain’t a killer, but the best generals never are.”

Lyle puts out his hand for me to shake. But I’m already listening to my Zenith. Dropping levels. On an express elevator to the planet core.

Three, two, one. Three, two, one. Three, two, one.

“Don’t you do that,” says Lyle, smiling. His hand snakes out toward me and I’m not there. “Where you headed, buddy?”

I’m going deeper than I’ve ever been. Sinking through the levels fast and smooth like a stone through water. Lyle backs up onto the balcony. A confused murmuring comes from the crowd as they spot the cowboy. His face is shrouded in black and he is dangerous as electricity, and having him only feet away puts a sickening fear into the pit of my belly.

Lyle speaks, words coming out in a torrent, a hoarse whisper that pulls me in. “Kill him with me, Owen. We can make a new world together.
Ad
astra
cruentus.
To the stars, brother, both of us stained in blood.”

I feel the vibration from deep inside me, vocal cords flexing, each minute movement of my tongue as it crafts the word from a gasp of air.

Never.

And in my head, I hear my father’s voice. My sight fades as he speaks to me. The familiar sound of him floods my mind with memories and it puts a stinging blur of tears in my eyes.
I
gave
you
something
extra, Owen. Level six. Freedom from suffering. Full executive extinguished. A conduit to your soul. Thought to action. I love you, son. I trust you. Do good. Do you consent? Do you consent?

He left this message for me. All this time. My father.

Do
you
consent?

I consider it for a fragment of a second.

Yes.

The Zenith awakes.

The room explodes into flowing, scintillating paths of murder and battle. Shining gossamer strands that represent the
vicious arc of fists and blunt trajectory of knees. Dense probability maps rise out of the floor based on tiny variations in its surface, routes toward cover, light reflections. Every glowing wisp of probability and vector streak of light slashes a path toward Lyle’s darkened face.

Every level before this has been a reflection of this glory.

For a handful of milliseconds, I simply stand in awe of the implant-generated vista. I never knew anything could be this beautiful. Somewhere, my true eyes are going dead and blank in the face of this overwhelming splendor. This must be what a cheetah sees, sprinting seventy miles an hour, fangs out, inches from sinking claws into writhing flesh. Every object humming with life—a flickering corona of data with only a single purpose: to help me survive a fight with
Lyle Crosby.

The muscle-priming routines snap into action like a mousetrap. Each movement of my initial feint and stuttering leap toward Lyle pulses through my body as a reflex action. The skinny cowboy charges at me, anticipating my first three feints, but my last change of speed and direction catches him centimeters off guard.

His hardware is running hot but not as hot as mine. We hit like bullets colliding. He stumbles back and I pin him against the balcony railing.

Before an audience of thousands.

“Where are you?” whispers Lyle.

Our arms intertwine, thrashing in short purposeful bursts. Attacks and parries at the speed of the nervous system. Watching it unfold, I see so many arm configuration probabilities radiating from our interlocked limbs that we look like Indian gods. Each brutal exchange digs us into a deeper, more intricate grip. When I snap his ring and middle fingers backward, breaking them both at the first knuckle, he barks a hyena laugh, tendons straining his throat.

But the fight is already over. Gruesome efficiency. An equation solved.

Our arms are locked up like a stuck drawer. Lyle’s side is wedged against the railing. Behind him, the crush of a thousand bodies presses in on us. All the infinite ghostly arm position configurations have collapsed into this single incontrovertible lock. Almost gently, I press my forearm over Lyle’s neck. He struggles, twists his sweaty head back and forth. Trapped between iron and flesh.

We both know he has a near-zero probability of escape.

Lyle’s eyes are shining like oily pavement after a thunderstorm. His tanned face reddens, darkens as the oxygen is cut off. Blinking just to focus, he grunts, “You’re not a killer.”

My forearm remains steady as bedrock as the words dissipate. Lyle looks confused. Sort of hurt, like I just called him a bad name.

These days, a single man can do more than his fair share of evil. The technology makes each of us so much more. This skinny cowboy could kill millions. And all he has going for him is raw grit and anger and the will to dominate—and that white-hot spark of science fueling it all.

I wonder if I am any different. I wonder if it even matters.

“We’ve all got a killer inside us,” I whisper, and I bear down with my forearm. Lyle’s eyes widen as his throat collapses, as the arteries and airways close for business. A surprised smile briefly plays over his mouth and his lips part. But no words come out.

Lyle’s black eyes close for the last time.

I watch his still face for a long minute before I let his body fall at my feet. People in the crowd below are confused. A woman screams. And something moves inside the room. Vaughn. He’s propped himself up on one elbow. Face sheened in sweat, he smiles at me and speaks with a bloodstained tongue.

“They’ll never believe you,” he says.

I hear shouting in the hallway, footsteps growing louder. My skin is buzzing, vision wavering. Staggered, I lower my hands onto my knees and double over. I can’t say quite why it feels this way, but I’m thinking that I just killed my best friend. Or my brother. Maybe myself.

Vaughn’s sweat-slicked face is pinched with triumph as he lies back, his strength completely exhausted.

But his smile fades as I reach up and pinch shaky fingertips around the nub on my temple. My retinal video has a cache of the last twenty minutes. I know this because I watched Nick learn it the hard way.

“No,” says Vaughn.

I give myself one deep breath, take hold of the port, and close my eyes.

Then I rip it out.