“No,” I mutter, pulse pounding in my ears. “No.”

Thirty seconds scrape by. My thoughts hover and dart like mosquitoes. The world has collapsed to two choices. Trust a mass murderer or die. Or … open this door in my head. Step into the same dark woods that swallowed Lyle.

Vaughn ambles to the door. Knocks three times.

“I suppose I’ll have to inform America that I’ve overseen your killing instead of your capture. Perhaps instant gratification is better, after all. They’re going to love me even more than if you’d confessed, I suspect. Who knows? Maybe I’ll run for president.”

A gap opens and Vaughn slips out, nods at the guards.

Now, Big and Little stand in the doorway. Little has a nasty grin on his face. Big looks blank and resigned and solid as an oak tree.

“End of the line, buddy,” says Little.

I squeeze my eyes shut. In the darkness, I stumble back into the room with the question. The words wait impatiently for me, implacable and alien. Level five. Full sensory networking. Long horizon mission planning. Command and control. Enhanced mobility and survivability. Do you consent? Do you consent?

Yes, I think to the beast. Yes, yes, yes. I’m saying the motherfucking word. Keep me alive, technology. Come on inside and make yourself right at home.

And something clicks.

I don’t feel any different. Whatever I woke up inside my head isn’t talking to me. I’m asking it one very important question: How do I live? How do I stay alive in this situation? Please.

But the oracle doesn’t speak.

Instead, the answer appears—painted before me like dance moves on a gym floor. Bluish footprints emerge glowing from the tile, flickering slightly between various configurations as the seconds pass by. Next, a swathe of scaly orange-red mountains rises up—a dull reddish tide that burns bright orange in the shape of those watery boot prints. I’m looking at a topographical map of wetness. Mountains of probable slickness.

I blink my eyes, but the additions to the landscape remain. This is coming from me. Nobody else can see this. Retinal talks to cochlear talks to neural talks to executive. I’m telling me what to do. Or the technology in me is telling me what to do. How is this happening?

Never mind. I don’t care how it works. I just want to live.

“Got fucking dirt in your ears?” bawls Little.

I look down at the U bar jutting from the top of the metal table. A chain rises from the desk and through my handcuffs and back, keeping me pinned. Now a bluish circle emerges to indicate the maximum perimeter based on the chain length.

Can you hurt someone with your brain?

Without thought, I fall into the dance moves painted on the floor. One quick step forward. Little’s eyes widen. I pivot to the right but slow. Drag my left foot. Give him time to react to the feint, time to lean forward with that nightstick rising like an angry cobra. Now I twist around the desk, planting my left foot and springing forward. He falls past me, a high-pitched eek coming from his black-soled boots on the slick tile floor.

As Little sails past me, I bow my arms out and catch his head under my left elbow. My ass lands on the cold metal desk and I pull my arms up to my chin, pinching Little’s windpipe under the unforgiving chain links.

“Hlurgh,” says Little, weakly waving his nightstick.

“Back,” I say to Big. “Stay the fuck back and I let him breathe.”

Little’s nightstick clatters to the ground.

Big considers, looking curiously at the twisted snarl on the face of his colleague. I’m breathing hard, but Little isn’t making a sound. He’s just turning a bright shade of red, eyes squeezed closed. The seconds seem like minutes to me. And they probably seem like hours to Mister “I’m quickly suffocating to death” here, his sweaty head wedged under my arm.

“All right,” says Big, flashing me his black-gloved palms. “Take it easy, fella.”

“I am willing to crush his windpipe,” I say, staring at Big with what I hope is a stern face. I relax the chain across Little’s neck. Just enough so he can take a ragged breath.

“Uncuff me,” I say to Little.

Little’s breathing sounds like gravel being sucked through a straw. He responds sluggishly, fumbles for his keys. I never lift the cold chain from his Adam’s apple, and I never take my eyes off Big.

Click.

My handcuffs are undone. The chain drops from Little’s neck and slithers away, coiling on the desk. For a split second, nothing happens. Then Little yanks his head up and Big dives forward.

And faster than my brain can process light, those blue lines blink back into existence. Luminous guardrails guiding me toward survival. Just stay on the road, Gray, and you’ll live through this.

Two arrowed vector lines shoot away from Little’s rib cage. As he drags himself up, back facing me, I reach down and smoothly unfasten his body armor. I yank it up from behind and dump the rear portion over his head. As he staggers forward under the weight of those heavy ceramic plates, I snatch his cuffs out of his belt.

Big charges forward and shoves the flailing Little out of the way, onto the desk. He’s too massive to stop. A rhino. Big brings down that nightstick toward my head with both hands like it was a battle-ax, but I’ve got the cuffs up and waiting. The stick lands between the cuffs and I pull them down toward me and twist the nightstick out of his hands. It hits the ground, clanging like a tire iron. Big lunges at me with his hands, and I pivot away and snap one of the cuffs onto his wrist. The other end I snap onto an ammo loop on Little’s body armor.

I dart out of the room. As the solid door swings closed behind me, it cuts off the bellowing of the two guards. I stand in the hallway for a few tense seconds, listening to myself breathe and feeling the storm coursing through the jail walls. I’ve done the thing I said I would never do.

I’ve woken up the beast inside my head.

Now it whispers to me in fans of blue light. In glowing mountain ridges of probability erupting from the walls and floor. Schematics of similar detention facilities. Blind spots. Routes and patterns.

I was wrong before. The beast is not silent. It speaks through my actions.

Turns out, the beast says, you can hurt somebody with your brain. In fact, you can fuck a person up pretty severely and steal supplies and sneak out of a perfectly secure detention facility—if you’ve got an okay grasp on the physics of it.

And I most certainly do.

EMERGENCY CIVIL CONTROL ADMINISTRATION

***

Instructions to All Implanted Individuals

Living in the Following Area:

Allegheny County

All implanted individuals will be evacuated from the above designated area by noon next Tuesday. No implanted person shall be permitted to enter or leave the above described area after 8:00 a.m., Thursday, without obtaining special permission from the provost marshal at the Civil Control Station.

Be notified that the Civil Control Station is equipped to assist the population affected by this evacuation in the following ways:

1. Give advice and instructions on the evacuation

2. Provide services with respect to the management, sale, storage, or other disposition of most kinds of property, including real estate, equipment, household goods, boats, automobiles, livestock, etc.

3. Provide temporary residence for those in family groups

4. Transport persons and a limited amount of clothing and equipment to their new residence as specified below.