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 Detroit.”

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?”