A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said in a telephone interview that a confidential bureau memorandum had been distributed. The memorandum describes the threat as being from implanted extremists belonging to the Astra terrorist organization. Specifically, officers were ordered to “exercise heightened vigilance and to immediately detain any implanted individual exhibiting suspicious behavior.”

The old man is on the trailer roof again, right over my bedroom ceiling. I can hear him up there. His exoskeleton motors sigh in time to the creaking over my head.

I figure I’ll give him five more minutes and then I’ll climb up and say good-bye.

My duffel bag is on the bed, half open, a ragged cornucopia spilling balled-up T-shirts and blue jeans. I packed it a few minutes ago in a kind of hazy panic. It’s the middle of the night, but the law will be coming for us after what just happened in the field.

So much for keeping my head down.

Stepping outside, I watch a group of three or four neon-modded temples float past my window, streaming toward Lyle’s cluster of trailers. More have already congregated. Something is up.

I climb the wooden ladder tipped against the end of the trailer. Jim is barefoot and bare chested up here, wearing his exoskeleton. The old man slowly lunges through the motions of one of his tai chi routines. His skin gleams in the light from antique sodium arc lamps. I watch him practice the martial art for a few seconds, somehow soothed by each deliberate movement, every slow-motion strike and block executed with centimeter-level precision. Whatever form he is doing, I imagine that with the help of the exoskeleton he’s executing it more perfectly than any ancient master ever did.

“How’s Nick?” I ask.

Jim nods. “Got the port cleaned and attached to the implant. Slathered it in the last of my bio-gel. He’ll recover.”

“Good,” I say. “I’m headed out. Going with Lyle.”

Leaning forward, palms out, Jim slowly straightens and turns.

“Where?”

“Detroit. A Zenith there needs help.”

My family is going to eat yours up.

Jim nods at me, sweat beaded on his upper lip.

“We should have gone slower,” he says. “Introduced the Autofocus to fewer people. It was too much too fast.”

Jim’s not thinking about what happened tonight. He’s thinking about a thing that happened years ago. Something he’s only paying for tonight.

“You did good, Jim,” I say. “You cured people. Same as my dad.”

Jim slows and stares at his hands. It doesn’t look like he believes me.

“Can you control it?” he asks.

“I think so,” I say.

“Mind and body,” he says. “You know what you get when the mind and body act as one?” he asks. Jim resumes moving, sinking toward me. His hands scoop the air, rise with animal grace. “You get harmony,” he answers. “Remember that. There is no you. There is no it. Mind and body need a single purpose.”

“Why are you saying this?”

“You’re walking a dangerous road. The choices you make from here on could save us or damn us. Lyle and them are soldiers. All they understand is force. I hope you can show them a new perspective. Provide some balance.”

“I’ll try. Look after Nick and Lucy for me.”

“Always,” he says.

“I probably just killed my chances with her.”

Jim doesn’t respond. Might have ducked his head a little.

“I won’t be gone long,” I say.

“I’ll be here,” he says, “breaking rocks.”

As I climb down, I hear his motors whirring again. Watch the silhouette of his face slip out of view over the lip of the roof.

Around me, more of Lyle’s gang are walking toward his boxes. They mostly look past me or through me, but I catch a hint of something on some of their faces: pity for me, maybe, or fear.

A shifting blue glow comes from inside Lucy’s trailer. I stand on her porch for five minutes, shivering, before I finally get up the nerve to knock quietly.

The sun will be up in another hour. But there is something I have to do before I leave. Something I should have done days ago.

Lucy pulls the door open and lets me step inside. I can’t read her face. Nick is sleeping on the living room couch, a warm lump under a pile of covers. The muted television dribbles a soft idiot light into the room. It dances in Lucy’s eyelashes. She’s the best thing I’ve found in my short time in Eden. She treated me like family. Saved my life in the field. And I’ve given her nothing in return.

I’m starting small.

“I’m sorry,” I say, eyes lowered. “I’m not in control, Lucy. I’ve never been in control. I tried to stop Lyle and I couldn’t. I couldn’t protect Nick. I yelled at you because I was beaten up and embarrassed and I felt like an idiot. You don’t have to forgive me—”

And that’s when I notice it.

My shirt. Hanging over the arm of the couch. It’s the same one that I was wearing the day those boys beat me up and pissed on me. I threw it stinking into the weeds and forgot about it. Now here it is—washed and dried and folded neatly.

Lucy follows my eyes.

“I wasn’t sure how to give it back,” says Lucy.

A warm breeze sighs in the window. It smells mostly like grass and a little like motor oil. Lucy is standing a foot away from me, delicate and freckled in the dim, stuttering light of the television. Her lips turn down at the corners, but the skin beside her eyes is creased with years of laughter.

I’m smiling now and none of today’s madness can stop me.

There’s nothing I would love more than to kiss Lucy Crosby. And with this realization, I’m ten years old and standing on the end of the high dive. Shivering, inches from the abyss. Jump already, kid.

“I’m doing the best I can,” I say.

“I know.”

It’s probably the wrong moment. But I step forward and slide my arms around Lucy and I kiss her anyway. She kisses me back. We stand together in the still living room, bodies pressed against each other and finally, blissfully not thinking.

When I take a step back, I notice that her eyes are wet.

“Lyle is back at his trailer,” she says, running a finger across the strap of the duffel bag hanging over my shoulder. “Should be ready to go.”

I lean in for another kiss and she puts a hand on my chest.

“The cops will be here soon,” she says.

“Okay,” I respond.

“So be careful,” she says.

“Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Will you go on a date with me? When I get back?”

“You know I have a son.”

“I kind of like him.”

“I live in a trailer park with a bunch of social outcasts.”

“And you’re the prettiest one. By far.”

“I’ll think about it,” says Lucy.

And she smiles and gives me that last kiss.

I’m headed for the trailers on the edge of Eden, trailed by the last of Lyle’s soldiers. This crowd must have come in from all over the county tonight. Wondering about it makes my mouth go dry.

The sun’s almost up. Time to go.

The halo of bravery I felt a couple minutes ago fades the closer I get to Lyle’s boxes. The half-dozen trailers are scattered haphazardly around a campfire, shoved to one corner of Eden. Fossilized tire tracks gash lewd grins in the hard-packed dirt.

Dark people shapes surround the campfire, backlit by the flames, each accompanied by a pinprick of neon light. Someone has dragged out a couple of rotten old couches. Amps swarm the cushions like ticks, listening to tinny music that jangles from a chipped boom box on an extension cord.

Something big moves, like a skyscraper swaying in the wind. It’s the Brain. Sitting on a tree stump, he’s got a forty in one hand. Makes the beer look the size of a sippy cup.