Amped (23 page)

“The right amount,” says Lyle, taking a step forward.

“We’re here to help you,” I say. “Stop running.”

Valentine laughs once gutturally. “You don’t know enough, kid,” he says.

“I know that Elysium has a whole dossier on you. You’ve been compromised. We’re here to warn you,” I say, walking deeper into the room.

“Check out the desk, thirteen,” says Valentine, “then get back to me.”

He lowers his forehead and trains his eyes on Lyle. His fingers have stopped drumming the wall. I look back and forth between the two soldiers. It strikes me how still they both are, like gunslingers, two sweaty palms hovering over gun butts.

“Lyle—” I begin to ask.

Quick as a mousetrap, Valentine has pulled his arms away
from the wall. He wraps his thumb around his pinky and leaves the three remaining fingers splayed like knives. In the greenish light, his spotted forearms are the mottled color of a shallow ocean floor. His face looks like he’s about to cry.

“No,” says Lyle.

Valentine lets his fingers collapse into a fist: three, two, one, zero. His body shudders once, jerks as though he’s just completed an electrical circuit. Lyle is already diving forward as Valentine’s lips twitch.

I know from experience what he is saying:
Three, two, one. Yes, yes, yes.

Lyle lunges and hits the wall, collapsing rotten plaster with his elbow. But Valentine is gone, already pivoted on his foot and stepped perfectly out of the way. His red hair hangs sweaty over his forehead, and underneath it I can see that his eyes have gone slack and empty in a familiar way. Breathing harshly through a snarl, he lifts one leg and blindly kicks out the window behind him.

“Shit,” mutters Lyle, as Valentine hunches like a crab and spins in place. He disappears through the window without a sound, without touching the jagged remaining glass or so much as tickling the frame. Here and gone like a vampire.

Lyle pauses, looks at the desk, then the window. Makes a decision and follows Val outside, moving just as naturally, with eyes just as dead. I can hear the iron fire escape outside clattering against the building as Lyle gives chase.

On Val’s rust-eaten metal desk, a spray of papers and folders lie open. My retinal is picking out the words in the dim light before I can even think of reading them.
Mission
Analysis
and
Planning.
Familiar names pop out of the dense text: Stilman, Daley, Valentine, and Lyle Crosby. My name. And the names of places: Houston, Chicago, Detroit.

 … necessary to execute synchronous combat operations on key political targets to continue decreasing regional stability…

The words describe a battle plan.

. . . escalate operations to precipitate “crisis moment” that spur regional factions to engage local forces independently, triggering widespread chaos…

Civil war.

. . . as a Zenith you have a destiny, Valentine. Failure to respond to this proposal will be recognized as a tacit rejection of your duty to your squad, your people, and to Astra. It will be met with lethal response…

And the signature at the bottom: Lyle Crosby.

The laughing cowboy doesn’t want to warn Valentine; Lyle is here to kill a rogue Zenith.

My world realigns, shifts into new focus. On the roof, Lyle is doing his best to murder an innocent man who refused to join him in a new war.

Cradling my hurt hand, I duck through the window and onto the rattling fire escape. I climb the rungs, one-handed, my cloth-wrapped palm stained with dirt. The sun has just slunk over the horizon, leaving the clouds bloody.

A gunshot punches into the twilight as I reach the top of the ladder. Pigeon wings flap in my ears like an echo. I peek over the edge.

The rotten sloping roof is empty. Dirty-pink insulation peeks through collapsed holes like diseased flesh. At the far edge, two silhouettes embrace. Lyle holds the gun in his right hand. His left arm is wrapped around Valentine’s shoulder. He lowers Val to the rooftop.

“Sorry,” I hear him murmur. “I’m sorry, Val.”

Valentine lies on his side. He tucks his right hand under his left armpit, forearm over the wound to his chest, shoulders arched in pain. His breath is coming in shudders and his shirt is dark
and heavy with spreading blood. Lyle crouches next to the fallen soldier, head bowed, his back to me.

Val’s green eyes open and he spots me. His mouth spreads into a red smile, teeth washed in blood. “Thirteen,” he chokes. “Good luck.”

Lyle stands up and faces me. I watch him, motionless. Only my head is visible over the lip of the roof.

“You saw the pages,” says Lyle, with a tone of finality. “Valentine was talking to the Priders. He was going to warn them. I can’t have a rogue Zenith on my hands, Gray.”

I hear movement in the room downstairs.

“I’m not the bad guy, understand,” continues Lyle. “And that girl who killed herself … Samantha. She was right, Gray. Made the coward’s choice, but she was right. This world is never going to accept us. There’s no place for us in it. We’ve got to fight to make a new one. Especially if you’re a Zenith.”

On the ground behind Lyle, Valentine’s chest stops rising and falling.

“Think of it,” says Lyle. “Coordinated strikes on reggie targets, timed to create maximum confusion. Guerrilla warfare, house-to-house. Not just us soldiers but all the amps against all the reggies. Forging a new country out of plastic and titanium and silicone. It’s happening tomorrow, Gray, on a scale you can’t imagine.”

“Why are you doing this?” I ask.

“Change, man,” he says. “Carving out what’s mine. Every living thing will fight to survive. And if the people don’t want to fight, we’ll make them. You don’t pick your revolution. It picks you.”

My eyes flick to the open window a story below me. I catch sight of Stilman and Daley inside. The two Zeniths are moving quickly and efficiently around the room. Stilman is carrying a dented gasoline can.

“Four of us left,” says Lyle. “What’s your choice?”

He raises the gun and trains it on my face, steadies his hand.

“Fight or die,” calls Lyle. “Stilman joined. Daley. The rest died. Are you my general or not?”

Valentine’s eyes are open and glassy, reflecting the gory clouds in the darkening sky. Sweat still evaporates from his forehead. The wind caresses his red hair.

Lyle pulls the hammer back. “Nobody is surprised when an oppressed people fight back. We are not the aggressors, Gray. We’re freedom fighters, joining the tradition of our ancestors who fought for their humanity. They won’t give us rights? We’ll take them. We’ll take everything we want.”

In my peripheral I can see the hood of Lyle’s truck just up the street. I know that the screwdriver that starts it is lying loose in the floorboard. Slowly, I lean my body away from the railing. Feel the wind breathing on the back of my neck.

“Okay,” I say.

“You’ll fight?” Lyle asks, warily lowering the gun.

“Yeah,” I say. “I’ll fight.”

And I let go of the railing.

*** SPECIAL REPORT ***

By JANET MARINO

Hundreds dead as detonations rock Chicago, Houston, Detroit Amp Extremists claim responsibility for horrific carnage

The
Associated
Press
CHICAGO

A simultaneous series of detonations crippled the downtown metropolitan areas of three American cities late last night in what witnesses described as a highly coordinated terrorist attack conducted by trained teams of amp extremists.

…

Ten hours on the road, and my eyes feel rough as cracked porcelain. Not even Lyle could run fast enough to catch me when I bolted. Got this truck started and peeled out before he could even get off a shot.

I’ve been hightailing it back to Eden ever since. Got to find Jim.

Traffic started bogging down a few blocks away from Jim’s work site. I saw a lot of people gathered and it was a bad sign, so I skirted around on a side street. Crunched Lyle’s old pickup to a halt in a weedy ditch.

The rattling truck is finally stopped, but my body still tingles with phantom vibrations. My hands don’t want to relax their grip on the plastic steering wheel. I put my forearm across it and rest my sweaty forehead, feeling my injured palm throb in time to my heartbeat.

Try to think.

The reports on the radio are chaotic. I don’t know what to believe. Timed detonations in cities around the country. Buildings falling. Hundreds dead, maybe thousands. Astra claiming responsibility for the start of a new war. Lyle must have thousands of amps ready to fight. A whole rank structure. Training and upgrades. He’s building a new world and I was too late to stop him.

It is chaos in the parking lot out in front of the site. Full to overflowing with screaming demonstrators. More than just the
guys who lost their jobs. Priders are here from everywhere. I wonder what Lyle is planning to do to them.

The double-wide chain-link gate is closed and locked today. Just inside, I spot a familiar hulking figure. The Brain, unmistakable, flanked by dozens more of Lyle’s gang from Eden. They stand behind the flimsy metal links, staring out. Taunting the demonstrators with smiles and crossed arms.

Lyle wasn’t fucking around.

I haul myself out of the truck. Scale the back fence and hop over, keeping a lot of room between me and the Brain. The work site is about half as full as normal. Mostly just the old men, heads down. Still doing their jobs while the angry crowd outside builds and builds.

I scour the site for Jim until a worker points upward.

Four stories up, I exit the wooden scaffolding to find the old man unloading bundles of rebar off the crane and stowing them in long lines for the rod busters to drop into concrete. Jim is working relentlessly, drops of sweat hanging off his chin, the putter of his exoskeleton motor cutting through the quiet air up here. The way he is moving is thoughtful and automatic at the same time. Calm compared to the madness unfolding downstairs.

“Hey,” I call out.

Jim turns to me, looks me up and down without saying anything. His eyes settle on the weeping improvised bandage wrapped around my hand. With a sigh, he sets down a piece of shivery rebar.

“Let me look at that hand,” he says.

The first-aid box is at the base of the building. Jim signals the crane operator that the load is finished. Then he leads me down the creaking scaffolding to the ground floor. The subbasement for the parking garage isn’t complete yet, and the three-story drop still tickles the pit of my stomach. In the cool cement interior of the half-completed structure, Jim pops open the rusty first-aid box and sets out the antiseptic, cotton balls, antibiotics, gauze.

In here, the rumble of the people outside sounds like distant traffic, punctuated by an occasional angry shriek. Other old men are standing outside the building, smoking and trying to look calm.

“You save that Zenith?” asks Jim.

“I … no,” I say.

“Jim—” I start to speak and then stop. I can’t think of the right way to say this because there isn’t one. Sometimes you’ve just got to blurt it out. “Lyle is the one killing Zeniths. Astra isn’t defending us. It never was. Lyle’s trying to start a chain reaction …”