I follow Lyle farther down the block. The front stoop of the house next door leans at a vertiginous angle, permanently italicized by rot and the elements.

“Let me check this one,” he says.

“Are you sure he knows we’re coming?” I ask.

“Told you I sent word. But there’s only five Zeniths left out of twelve. He ain’t likely to answer the door to anybody. Even a good friend like me.”

“Where are Stilman and Daley?” I ask. The other generals haven’t been back to Eden since their little vote. Off protecting the amps of America, I suppose.

“They’re around. Checking a couple other spots.”

Lyle smiles with nicotine-stained teeth. I have no time to wonder why we’re sneaking around, because he’s already on the move. He climbs the broken stone steps with wary grace. As he leans forward to peer in a cracked window, Lyle’s jacket hitches and I catch a glint of black metal. A pistol tucked into the crook of his back. A numbness creeps in around my shoulders—this feels wrong.

This whole place feels wrong.

Around us, the grass and trees are twisted and dead. With each breath I feel the metallic sting of air pollution on the back of my throat. A rust-colored grime coats everything: the streets, sidewalks, and abandoned cars and trailers along the side of the empty roads. Under this overcast sky, with the sun a glowing haze on the horizon, the street has an otherworldly, Martian feel to it.

And I can sense the eyes on us.

Families haunt the broken porches up and down the block. They sit on old couches and faded lawn chairs. More people are inside their homes, looking out through cracked panes of glass. A kid on a bike makes lazy loops in the street, somberly watching us, tires scratching over the grit. Unseen dogs bark from the shared backyards behind the row houses.

Different place, same story. Families like the ones in Eden. Regular people who happen to have technology under their skin and no other place to go. Over the months, they must have filtered out of the suburbs and the country to this place and hundreds of others like it. Shuttled along by friendly reggies, but hustled away just the same. Amps with no jobs or family to turn to.

Lyle speaks to me quietly, cupping his eyes against a dusty window. “He could be in one of these. I don’t know which. Haven’t been here in a year. But we need to hurry. Priders could be here already.”

In the distance, a crumbling factory glares at me with a thousand broken eyes. It would be the simplest thing in the world for Vaughn’s men to camp out in there with a pair of binoculars. Or maybe a rifle. I scan the street again.

My retinal picks out vivid details. Seamlessly lays the extra information into my vision. The device works all the time, slipping more visual data into my head.

I point to the house next door, the one with the collapsed roof. It seems abandoned, with a front door that is barricaded with rotten two-by-fours.

“He’s in there,” I say.

“How you know that?” asks Lyle.

I shrug and nod at the bleeding star that has been spray-painted on the front porch. The symbol is hidden by weeds and the dirt that coats everything, but it’s unmistakable.

“Ad astra,” I say.

“Damn right,” says Lyle. “No use messing with that front door. Follow me.”

Lyle climbs back onto the fallen porch next door, quick and silent. Scales the rotten spine of the fallen porch roof, testing each footstep on bloated wood before going higher. I follow him up, stepping gingerly without my amp activated.

I’m only human, for now.

At the top, we both jump from the splintered porch to the roof of the porch next door. This porch is more sturdy, buttressed by a tar-covered layer of galvanized steel that is warped into black waves. That empty window breaks the cold brick face of the house. Its frame sprouts fanglike shards of glass.

The cowboy considers the window. Pulls a piece of chalk from his pocket and marks a white X on the brick beside it. Drops the chalk and peeks inside.

“So our friends know where to meet us,” he says.

“Careful. Something’s in there.”

Lyle cocks an eyebrow at me. “You mean somebody, right?”

Before I can answer, he ducks under the glass slivers and into the window’s dark throat. For a moment, I’m alone on the sagging porch. The window, just a hole in the bricks, has the treacherous feel of a spider’s nest.

Turns out, that’s not far from the truth.

I hear somebody’s shout from inside, cut off. Hurrying, I crouch and manage to drop inside the window without cutting myself. For a split second, it’s too goddamn dark and I can’t see anything. A body hits the brick wall next to me with a slap. In the reddish slant of window light, an unconscious man falls into view. I step out of the light and press my back against the sweating bricks while my retinal amplification kicks in.

Lyle’s boots crunch off down the hallway. Now I can make out the guy at my feet. A young amp in an army jacket, lying still on a bed of stiff, moldy carpet and rain-bleached trash. I watch him until I see his chest rise and fall.

More strangled shouting comes from deeper inside the house. A crunch of plaster and a shriek. Lyle is long gone. This room is weather-beaten and empty. A dim rectangle of light leads to a claustrophobic hallway, choked with swathes of paint hanging from the ceiling like moss.

Eyes squinted, I take one step toward the hall before I see it coming for me.

The man-sized thing is black on black and galloping toward me in fast, insectile lurches. A spurt of childish bogeyman fear shoots into my veins. I step back and put out three fingers without thinking. Three. The thing falls sideways and bounces off a wall, keeps coming. Two. I can hear its breath hissing in and out. One. A nightmare bursts through the doorway and into the room.

Zero.

Level three. Tactical maneuvers. Evasion. Room clearing. Flanking. Improvised weaponry. Combat medicine. Do you consent? Do you consent?

Yes, oh fuck, yes, yes.

This thing looks like a twisted rag doll come to life—a scarecrow escaped from an abandoned field. It leaps for me and I’m instantly on my back, elbows crunching through broken glass and water-stained trash. Shrunken black fingers claw for my throat. I can see in flashes, my retinal feeding this thing’s movements to my Zenith. I grapple with impossibly thin and strong arms. Wrestle for position against spidery legs. Scrabbling through debris, I feel a shard of glass dimple the skin of my right palm, penetrate, and lodge itself warmly between flexing tendons.

It should hurt, but it doesn’t.

In a detached way, I notice that I am fighting something less than a man. And somehow more. There isn’t much but a torso and head with a four-limb prosthetic replacement. Each wire-thin prosthetic leg and arm has been wrapped in black plastic trash bags held in place with twine and rubber bands. As the wire man manipulates his prosthetic limbs, muscles in his chest and stomach flex like bugs crawling under his skin. He’s strong as rebar and quicker than me.

But he’s light. I manage to heave him up and off. Leaning back on the bricks, I scratch and grope my way to my feet. I make a mental note that my right hand is pretty fucked up. A piece of smoky glass shark fins out the side of my palm, stuck there.

I run for the hallway. About halfway across the room I hear him coming and I turn. The wire man sways toward me, alarmingly fast on his knotty stick legs.

His prosthetics are too strong. They swing at me like baseball bats, bruising my forearms each time I deflect them with the uncanny speed-boost of my Zenith. And his basic physics are off. The wire man’s arms are longer than his torso indicates they should be. The discrepancy seems to fool the built-in mechanics of my Zenith. He feints and one arm dips, hooks under my neck. A brutal metallic knee crushes into my diaphragm, pinning me to the wall.