Something more than men. Not gods, surely. But titans.

Lyle’s got three friends with us. The ones called Stilman and Daley sit together. They glance at me when they think I’m not looking. The third man, Valentine, doesn’t speak. Just watches warily. Freckles dot his face like a handful of thrown confetti. All three of these guys are as dense and muscular as Lyle is rangy. Sitting stock-still in the middle of this chaos, calm as monks.

I can’t tell if they’re his buddies or his bodyguards or both.

Around me, the crowd is mostly made up of pure humans, but every now and again I see an amp’s temple nub, sometimes along with the gleam of an artificial limb. Everybody here seems equally guilty. I get the feeling this event isn’t strictly legal.

“Is this safe?” I ask Lyle, thinking of my close call on the drive out to Eden.

The cowboy chuckles, glances at the other three men. “Relax,” he says. “I’d feel sorry for any cop who tries to stop us.”

Over fuzzy speakers mounted somewhere up high, the announcer dramatically bellows a name. Sounds like “Brain.” In the ring, the titan opens its mouth and bellows. I can feel the roar in my chest. Lyle’s friends watch the man below without blinking, their eyes doing silent arithmetic.

“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.