Three, two, one, zero. Level five consent and I’m in.

Pacing between the trees, a series of attack simulations come to me. I can’t stop them. My Zenith is talking to retinal. The two collude, slicing up my vision with crisp blue lines. The beams crisscross, meander down the stone path along high-probability approach routes. If the target comes this way, do this. If he comes that way, do that.

The choice is mine, sure, but either way, it’s kill, kill, kill.

Shadows play through the chattering leaves overhead, dappling Vaughn’s suit as he crosses a hill about a hundred yards away. Incredible to think this man single-handedly engineered a national crisis. Made a whole country afraid of amps. Capitalized on it to outlaw the technology and imprison everyone who has it.

Some small sound alerts me to the presence of a bodyguard. Without seeing him, I change route to flank. Place my steps one by one, quiet and deliberate.

I close my eyes, but the blue lines are still there—rolling Gaussian hills, superimposed over a faded image of the path as I last saw it. The faux scene plays out on the backs of my eyelids, borrowed from my memory of seeing it, even tilting and moving when I turn my head.

That would be cochlear talking to neural talking to retinal.

Shit, I’m carrying a lot of plastic in my head. A scrapyard of high-tech, all of it communicating and collaborating. Hundreds of subprocesses running alongside each other to figure out what’s happening, already happened, or is going to happen very soon.

My target keeps moving: Senator Joseph Vaughn. Six foot one. Forty-four. Graying at the temples. Snake eyes. Absolutely human through and through, and damn proud of it.

In a few hours, Vaughn will orate to the world. He will stand on an ornate wrought iron balcony jutting from the sheer limestone face of the Cathedral of Learning. On camera with his black wire-rimmed glasses and clean white teeth and a pure gold American flag pin on his lapel.

When he speaks, his words will bury me. If he announces my capture and escape, there will be no refuge. No way of proving my innocence. The crime is too colossal—it blots out all details by its existence.

Vaughn pauses to look at a grave. Leans over it, hands behind his back. The tombstone is white marble.

I crouch next to a tree. Put my fingers against the bark and feel every whorl and crevice in minute detail. Every one of my senses is alive and trained on one goal: killing the unlucky man standing over that tombstone.

A gray suit strolls past in the distance, but the bodyguard doesn’t go near Vaughn, keeps walking instead.

It’s pretty likely that here in about sixty seconds, I’m going to bury my skinned-up knuckles into Vaughn’s soft gut as I work my way up to crushing his windpipe. Mathematically speaking, there are an infinite number of ways to kill him with my bare hands. Combat algorithms rip through my vision, indicating exactly where I should stand. How to pivot. Which vertebrae to shatter and how much force it takes. Pressure points and bone-cracking leverage.

Whole fucking hog.

I want to hurt him for what he’s done. I want to gouge out his natural eyes and break his natural arms and legs. Puncture his natural organs with his natural ribs. Until Vaughn’s definition of a human being came along, me and Lyle and Samantha—we weren’t amps. We were people.

Someday, we’ll be people again.

The phantom movements I’ll make are already itching through my hands, a series of reflexive twitches. Every approach and outcome pair are broken down to physics and equations and meat. The grass swarms with six-inch-tall figures, glowing blue and visible only to me. Implant generated, the dummies grow out of the shadows and engage each other in a variety of high probability mock-combat situations.

Twitch, twitch, snap. Twitch, twitch, snap.

One of the tiny golems silently bends back the virtual fingers of its diminutive enemy, breaking them one by one. I shiver, hoping that scenario doesn’t happen. It looks painful as hell, even virtually.

Is this really you, Owen?

Am I a killer? I don’t know. It occurs to me that my body operates almost entirely without listening to my opinion—balancing, daydreaming, and healing itself, not to mention breathing and digesting food and a million other little things. I’m not sure how much control I really have anymore. How much control did I ever have?

I scan the periphery for gray suits.

Nobody is around. Vaughn is alone, crouched at the tombstone. His back is to me, perfectly vulnerable. I slowly rise, and the grappling dummies fade.

Now, I attack.

Trees and hills accelerate to a gray blur around me as my vision closes in on blue boot prints rising out of the soil. My legs are pumping, palms slicing the air as I gain momentum over the damp grass. My arms pull back, hands collapsing into fists like neutron stars.

As I make my final leap, my eyes register the tombstone. My retinal keys in. It’s carved in the shape of a cherub, lying down, wings folded and sleeping. Three words are inscribed on it that detonate in my mind: Emma Camille Vaughn.

Those first two letters: EM.

My heels dig into the ground and I grunt with the exertion of keeping my fists by my sides. I’m a foot behind Vaughn, catching my balance, and it’s suddenly, deafeningly still and quiet in the cemetery. The sound of my breathing rakes across the chattering chorus of windblown leaves overhead.

Vaughn speaks, on his knees. He doesn’t turn around.

“If you’re here to kill me, go ahead,” he says.

With an effort I stand up. Blood rings in my ears.

There is a new flower next to the tombstone. A simple yellow daffodil. An older flower is in the grass next to it, still yellow.

“She was six,” says Vaughn, still facing the grave. “Six years old. It’s hard, really, to explain how little and sweet she was. My Em.”

Elysium. Em. His baby daughter’s name.

Beneath the child’s name, in small block letters, is the simple message: HUSH MY DEAR, BE STILL AND SLUMBER. ANGELS GUARD YOUR BED.

“Elysium,” I say. “Heaven. Where heroes go when they die.”

“My inner circle. Friends who know why I fight. Who I’m fighting for.”

Vaughn wipes his face and his hand comes away wet. He isn’t acting. Was never acting, I realize.

“We had the implantation done privately. It was all my idea. My wife said wait. Said we should let the technology mature. But the doctors told me Emma was going to learn slow and that didn’t fit into my program. I had the access and the money and I thought I had the answer. And for a few months, I did.

“It was an infection. She started vomiting and we thought she had the flu. We took her to the hospital, but it was too late. She was so little. Such a sweet little baby girl in her hospital bed.”

Vaughn’s head bows.

“That doesn’t give you the right to start a war,” I say.

The man turns, looks up at me for the first time. He wipes away tears and snot with a carefully manicured hand. One of his knees is stained with dirt.

“I’m not starting a war,” he says. “And I don’t intend to.”

“You hired Lyle to kill the other Zeniths.”

Vaughn blinks at me, frowns. “What’s a Zenith?” he asks.

The politician is hunched over, hair mussed and cheeks covered in tears, and he has a look of real confusion on his face. He honestly doesn’t know. Vaughn doesn’t know what’s been happening.

I’m backing away from this kneeling man, finally realizing.

Somebody is building a new world.

The laughing cowboy.

“It’s Lyle,” I say. “It’s always been Lyle.”

Someone shouts from the woods. In my peripheral, I see a gray suit coming, knees flashing as he runs. Gun winking at me.