“And why do you think I’d want that?”

“Why, to protect Eden,” he says.

He’s right. Thinking of those spotlighters, of Nick sad and bleeding, makes me want to claw through those plastic sheets and leap into the chair.

“All my generals have it,” says Lyle, eyebrows up. “Get it. Learn to use it and you won’t bother to hide your face no more. You’ll be the baddest motherfucker on the block. You’ll be Astra.”

A general? I’ve only been down to level two. Am I ready to lead an army?

Ducking under a leaf of plastic, I take a closer look and my breath catches. The reality of those surgical instruments drops onto me. Gleaming silver, razor edges, and hypodermic tips.

“Relax, man,” says Lyle. “Even little Nick has one of these. They’re so simple to install that this guy can do it in a goddamn trailer in the middle of nowhere.”

“I—I need to think about this—” I stutter.

“You think Vaughn’s gonna let us just walk in and warn Valentine?” asks Lyle. “You’re gonna need every advantage you can get. We don’t have time to fuck around.”

Lyle gestures at the patient. He’s a Hispanic guy curled on his side, eyes wide as the surgeon works on his temple. “Look at us. Amps. We’re morons smarter than Lucifer. Cripples stronger than gravity. A bunch of broke-ass motherfuckers, stinking rich with potential. This is our army. Our people. Strong and hurt. We’re the wounded supermen of tomorrow, Gray. It’s time you got yourself healed. New world ain’t gonna build itself. And the old world don’t wanna go without a fight.”

“Where’s yours?” I ask.

In response, Lyle leans forward and pulls down his lower eyelid with a greasy fingertip. Faintly, I make out a rectangular square floating over the white of his eye. A trace of gray, it’s nearly invisible.

“Came with Echo Squad. Part of the package,” he says.

“You never seemed like the military type.”

Lyle snorts. “Military was my family for a long time. But all that ended once they put the Zenith in me. Saw things clearer then. Realized I had a whole new family—one that needed me.”

“So you got lucky that the names of your unit were leaked and the army kicked you out?”

“Yeah. Lucky,” says Lyle, smirking. Something in the tilt of his smile is off. Some memory, half suppressed. “And you’re lucky, too. This kind of hardware only goes to my closest. Folks with potential. You handled your initiation like a man. I know you can handle these upgrades and a lot more. I’m proud of you, buddy.”

Lyle’s smile goes genuine.

Something bumps into me, and I see it’s the patient. He’s stumbling out of the operating room on wobbling legs. Lyle reaches up and grabs the guy’s shoulders, steadying him. Cups the guy’s cheeks in his dirty hands, orients his face toward me.

“Check out his retinal,” he says.

I peer into the guy’s eyes. They look the same, except the right one. It has a small rectangle sort of floating on it. Like a circuit diagram or a microscopic tattoo. Hardly noticeable, like the one Nick has.

“Thank you, Mr. Crosby,” says the guy.

“Ad astra,” says Lyle.

“To the stars.”

Jim told me to trust myself. Absorb the technology into my body and hope like hell that I’m a good man. We’ll see if he was right.

“If I do this,” I say, “we find who is hunting Zeniths. It’s not enough just to help Valentine. Whether it’s Priders or the government or the military—I don’t care. We’ve got to find out who it is and put an end to it.”

“You’ll find out,” says Lyle. “I promise.”

I push through the last plastic sheet and into the operating room. Lyle fades to a blurry figure on the other side. “Your vision is about to get a whole lot clearer, Gray,” he calls. “You’ll be seeing shit you can’t imagine.”

I take a deep breath and sit down on the padded chair. Nod at the doctor. Then I call back to Lyle. “How can you pay for this?”

“It’s covered,” he replies.

“By who?”

Lyle stops for a second, thinking about how to respond. Finally, he pushes his blurry face against the plastic and looks me dead in the eye.

“By the boss. Who do you think?”

My mind and body are still out of tune.

I hope they run into each other real soon.

—JIM MORRISON

Attacks Deplored, Inquiries Pushed

OKLAHOMA CITY—Against a background of violence and uncertainty, a special federal grand jury was convened today to investigate the outbreaks of violence between implanted and nonimplanted citizens that continue to plague the nation.

Assistant US Attorney Clarence Albad, in his charge to the grand jury, emphasized the savage beating of Pure Pride demonstrators in Eastern Oklahoma last week that injured two dozen people. Similar incidents have been reported in major metropolitan areas across the nation, including the burning of a house in Houston that was used for Pure Human Citizen’s Council meetings.

From his offices in Pittsburgh, Senator Joseph Vaughn has announced that a round of new Pure Pride protests have been scheduled to occur around the country. Sequoyah County, near where the beating incident occurred, has become a symbolic destination for protesters. The governor of Oklahoma announced that 300 Oklahoma state troopers and 500 National Guardsmen have been put on alert statewide, ready to back up local police if violence erupts.

I’m staring up at a four-story row house made of moldering red brick. Shaggy yellow moss coats the seams between bricks like tooth decay. The roof is partly caved in, and swollen slats of plywood cover all the windows but one. Someone has spray-painted a hand-sized image of a bloody star on the porch, and vines have eaten all but the star’s points.

This building was beautiful once. That was a long time ago.

Blinking, I feel the rasp of my new retinal implant under my eyelid. My eye is a little tender, but otherwise I feel the same. Lyle says it takes a while for the Zenith to acclimate to the new information being collected by retinal and cochlear. My new eyes and ears.

“Valentine is in charge of the whole Detroit area?” I ask Lyle. “And he lives in one of these?”

Lyle makes his way carefully down the sidewalk toward me. Puts a finger to his lips. Points to the house.

I stare up into that lone dark window and a wave of white light suddenly bleeds across the surface of the building. The blackness behind the window fades up to gray and I glimpse something inside. I wince and the dazzling light fades. The retinal implant has some kind of autoexposure and it’s always on. I squeeze my eyes shut to block out the overexposed building and to block out something else.

A glimpse of something gnarled and man-shaped, standing behind that window.

“Valentine is in charge,” Lyle says quietly, cracking his knuckles and sizing up the boards that cover the front door. “This neighborhood is Beverly Hills compared to the others. There’s ghettos like this over southwest Detroit. Amps got no other place to go.”

These few blocks of row houses are huddled together in the middle of an abandoned industrial park, falling against one another in a decomposing heap. The carbon lick of extinguished flame rises from some of the gutted windows. At least most of the debris on the street has been stacked or burned. Twisted piles of plastic, broken glass, and scrap metal are scattered like modern art.