“Jesus Christ. I sent Lucy your way. How blind are you? I saw that dopey look on your face the night I kicked that deputy out of Eden. Wanted to know more and she told me all about you. Thought I could get you on my side, fangs out. But Daley was right, you ain’t got any fangs.”

Flashes of memory. Lucy dropping by to talk with Jim, staying to talk with me. Squeezing my hand in Jim’s trailer. My piss-stained shirt, cleaned and pressed and waiting for me on the arm of her couch. Our kiss.

“What?” I ask.

Lyle is pacing. Manic. He wheels on me then stalks away, again, speaking all the time. “Wuh-wuh-what? Why you think she came over to your place? So friendly? How do you think I found out you were a Zenith? You think I showed up at your trailer that day and saved you by accident? You got a head full of rocks. And that’s sad, too, because, man, you had some serious fucking potential.”

He taps his temple with a finger, presses it in hard enough to make his fingertip go white.

“Did you know I qualified for Echo Squad out of two thousand two hundred and twelve Army Rangers from all three goddamn battalions? And I’m Zenith class, but, Jesus Christ, the shit you got ain’t even military grade. It’s better than military grade. They don’t make ’em like that anymore because they never made ’em like that. I don’t know what your daddy was smoking, or whether he saw the end of the world coming or what, but that man was not fucking around the day he put that shit in your head.”

Igaveyousomethingextra, is how my father put it.

I’m a means to an end. A soldier in Lyle’s make-believe army. My breath is back now, passing ragged through a bruised larynx. I’m leaning against a piece of plywood. Watching Lyle pace.

“You used me.”

“Correction. I tried to use you.”

I lean forward, grunting to get up. He raises a lanky leg and drops a boot onto my chest, crushing the air out of me.

“Sit down, hero,” he says. “I don’t have time for this shit. These people think they’re fighting now, but I haven’t even got started yet. I’ve got a goddamn ace up my sleeve that’s been waiting there for ten years. Since the birth of Pure Pride. Wait until I show them what I got, Gray. Then they’ll know war.”

That gun glints darkly in his hand. Curses and shouting come in a steady torrent from the front gate. Lyle glances over his shoulder and licks his lips. His chest is rising and falling like he just ran a marathon.

Pinned, I struggle to wriggle out from under the boot. I don’t want to die here, groveling in the dirt.

Lyle lifts his foot, looks at me like I’m a carpet stain. “I’m not gonna kill you, Gray. There’s something better planned for you.”

He saunters ten feet away, then turns.

“When you get arrested, don’t resist,” he says. “Try to have some dignity when the feds lock you up for the rest of your life. After all, you’re the leader of Astra.”

Violence Plagues Nation in Wake of Attack

HOUSTON—Anger over the tri-city amp attacks on Chicago, Houston, and Detroit has quickly erupted into escalating acts of violence nationwide.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation estimates that over 120 incidents of violence against implanted individuals have occurred since the attacks were perpetrated.

Reports of harassment and assault are pouring in from all over the country but are concentrated in the cities directly affected by the attacks.

Instances continue to pile up: In Chicago, a man on an anti-implantee rampage fatally shot an implanted panhandler at a gas station. In Detroit, a Molotov cocktail was thrown Tuesday at a community center run by the Free Body Liberty Group. Three were injured and the downtown building was severely damaged. Possibly the worst incident occurred in Houston, where a mob of 500 people surrounded the home of a local implantee. The man was beaten severely and left in critical condition and his home partially burned before the group was dispersed by police.

So far, the government has been unable to quell the violence. FBI Director Greg Wright has repeatedly told the press that “vigilante attacks and threats against implantees or their loved ones will not be tolerated.”

Lyle stalks away, head lowered. His right hand is out, fingers extended. Three, then two. One. He makes a tight fist.

The laughing cowboy trots and then breaks into a run. Skips across the dust-smeared work site too fast, movements birdlike and stomach-turning. Ducking between Priders and amps alike. The Zenith is clearly whispering in his ear.

Gotanewworldtobuild, he said and I know immediately where he is going.

A mile from here, the Pure Human Citizen’s Council is staging a rally that’s brimming with good, upstanding reggie citizens. Joseph Vaughn has got politicians and speakers and reformed doctors on a stage raised to the eyes of the world. The cowboy is going to continue his fight.

Lyle laughs hoarsely as he dodges through the crowd of dazed Priders. He calls out commands to the other amps. The plume of smoke still rises over broken exoskeletons and police-issued steppers. A half dozen of Lyle’s gang jump up to follow him, grinning and panting. I hear his boots slapping the empty street erratically, skipping in unnaturally long strides. Then he’s around the corner, out of sight, gone with his trained seals into the industrial neighborhood that wraps around the construction site.

I wrench myself up and stagger after him. My legs are swinging heavy and stiff in bloodstained jeans. But the grime on my face is dried up and whatever electrical surge happened to my amp is over now.

On my own I’m too slow to catch Lyle.

Taking a deep breath, I try to hold out my fingers. Still wrapped, my hand will barely obey. So instead, I visualize my hand. Curl my imaginary pinky and slide the ball of my thumb over it. As I perform the mental countdown, I take a perverse pleasure in it. Try to think good thoughts as I oh so carefully engage the Zenith. Gentle, like you’d tap a hot water faucet in a crummy shower. Level three and that’s it, Jack. I’m not going any deeper than I have to.

Three, two, one, zero. And when my eyes open, the Zenith shows me more.

For one, I see that I’ve got a bigger problem now. About seven feet and three hundred and fifty pounds of problem, looming with its hands out, breathing like a bull. Blocking the open fence and my way out.

The Brain.

The titan stands watching, as alien to me as a Cro-Magnon must have been to a Neanderthal. I know he’s human. But he used that diagnostic amp to sharpen his training, to push his body within millimeters of the breaking point, day after day. He used sheer willpower and pinpoint mental control to become the template for a new species.

I consider this as the Brain puts out his meaty arms. He shakes his great head at me slowly, tendons in his neck the size of my biceps. He’s only human, I remind myself. And he’s not a Zenith.

The body, no matter how bizarre, is just an extension of the mind. And my mind is bigger than his.

“Let me through, Brain. You know what I can do.”

His face splits into a pink smile. “And I know what you won’t do,” he says.

The dreamy look on his face reminds me of his fight with the Blade. The Brain was alone in his own mind then, according to Lyle, fighting in a smoky room. Focusing on his face, I dial out the writhing old men around us. Let the grayness seep in around the edges and absorb all distraction. I even banish the sadness and shock I feel for Jim, sensing it laced through my thoughts like venom.