Amped (8 page)

Jim speaks to the foreman on my behalf. The Pure Priders outside won’t work alongside the old men, so the work site has to bring in extra amps. They could always use one more, according to Jim.

Around the site, a dozen other elderly workers shrug themselves into glinting metallic devices—drinking in the pure, sweet strength of youth. Others sway on prosthetic legs or flex sinuous carbon fiber forearms. All the old men set to their jobs with the grim robotic work ethic that always belongs to the previous generation. And across the street from the construction site, a dark pool of anger deepens.

For the next few hours, I’m setting up scaffolding and breaking it down so these vintage spider monkeys can place chattering rods of rebar. The sun has come up for real now, dull and pounding. Jim tells me I’m making less than minimum wage in cash for this. I’m thankful for the money but mostly for the mindless routine of work.

“Things are changing faster and faster,” calls Jim over his shoulder as he lays out rebar for cementing. He talks between the sporadic catcalls that still ring out from beyond the fence. “Change scares people. Makes them dangerous.”

“Then why are you here?” I ask. “You’ve got a pension, right?”

Jim chuckles drily. “You’re just a kid. You don’t know about getting old. But you’re right—it ain’t about money.”

“Then maybe you should think about getting a hobby.”

In a sudden mechanical jerk, Jim hops off the scaffolding and lands hard enough to make me flinch. He holds out his calloused hands, palms up. The exoskeleton motors grind quietly, like a cat purring, as the pincers retract.

“I’m a builder right now. What am I without a job? Without a tool in my hand?” asks Jim.

I picture Jim sitting inside his trailer, alone with a bottle of booze, finishing the umpteenth pointless game of solitaire. Stale, heavy air and the mindless whisper of a television. To him, the exoskeleton must seem like a second chance. Like youth bottled and sold.

“And what if the tool is inside you? What are you then?” I ask.

Jim shrugs an arm out of the machine and wipes sweat off his forehead. Puts his arm back in without looking. He speaks carefully. “It’s still only a tool. In the end, a man makes his own decisions. You decide, not the machine.”

“Why am I here, Jim?”

Jim reaches for a rod of rebar. He clamps the curved pincers around it, lifts the bouncing metal like it was made of Styrofoam. He stops and looks at the rebar with fresh eyes, as if realizing that every move he makes is a miracle.

“I bet this mess weighs more than I do. And I’m holding it like it was nothing. The machines give us a lot of power.” Jim places the rod, continues. “Way I figure, your pop sent you to me, hoping I could tell you what’s in your head and what you’re going to do with it. Problem is, I don’t really know.”

My shoulders slump.

“But I got an idea,” continues Jim. “And from what I can tell, there are only two bets. Either you’re here for Eden to protect you … or you’re here to protect Eden.”

A shrill whistle blows from across the street.

From over the wall, I hear the demonstrators start up a chant. The voice of the crowd is deep, the edges of the words grated off by straining vocal cords. “Pure Pride,” they’re saying. “Pure Pride.”

I imagine those dozens of ragged pink mouths spilling their garbled words and remember Samantha falling between my fingers. Events are still moving out of control. The reins have slipped away and now they’re dragging loose, slapping on the ground.

Jim plucks a dusty sledgehammer off the ground.

“How could
I
protect you?” I ask, incredulous.

Jim stares at me, letting his eyes wander to the nub on my temple. “You might be surprised what you’re capable of.”

The old man is hunched up, leaning over the sledgehammer. A drop of sweat hangs from the tip of his nose and he ignores it. “We’ve got big problems. And not just here,” he says. “Everywhere. Battle lines are being drawn up. Amps and their families are running back to Uplift sites all over the country. Regulars are moving out.”

“What do you think is going to happen?” I ask.

“If we don’t figure this out quick—find some goddamned way to stop Vaughn and his Pure Priders—well, there’s only one thing that
can
happen … war.”

Then the screaming starts from outside the fence.

The panicked yelling in the street is mixed with strange laughter. The kind of laughter that’s got nothing to do with humor. It gets louder as I walk closer.

Through the gaps in the chain-link fence, I spot the laughing man standing on top of his stark shadow in the middle of the street.

He’s a shirtless cowboy in dusty black jeans and boots. His lanky arms and slim chest are smothered in tattoos. Crows. Dozens
of crows flapping and screeching and tearing their way up and down his body. And a bloody star tattooed across the center of his chest.

Another guy, one of the protesters—and a big one—is staggering away from the cowboy, holding his right hand in his left and looking at it with bugged-out eyes. He is shrieking at what he sees. It strikes me that most of his fingers are pointed the wrong way.

The laughing man takes his cowboy hat in his hand and leans one forearm on his thigh, giggling. He stands and takes a hoarse breath, then doubles over again with barking laughter. Ropes of matted brown hair fall into his face but not before I spot the node on his temple.

The laughing cowboy is an amp.

“Oh, you came
way
too close,” says the laughing man. “Paint by numbers, amigo. Saw your game coming a mile away.”

A half-formed thought rises. This man looks familiar. I look over at Jim, but he just turns away. Walks back into the job site, shaking his gray head.

“Who is that?” I call.

Jim doesn’t stop walking. “Lyle Crosby,” he says. “Grew up around here. Gone for a while but now he’s back.”

A couple of protesters shuffle the guy with broken fingers off the street. The rest watch Lyle with dark expressions, but nobody gets near him.

I let go of the fence and follow Jim. The old man grabs his sledgehammer and gets back to work smashing up a hunk of misplaced concrete. I talk to him between blows.

“Why don’t they call the cops?”

“Half of those Priders aren’t even American citizens. Just human.”

“Then how come they aren’t kicking that guy’s ass?”

“Won’t risk it,” says Jim.

“Why?”

Jim stops, turns, and points the twenty-pound sledgehammer at the street, holding it straight out by the tail end. The tube of his exoarm flashes in the sunlight and the hammer goes as level and steady as a girder. “Because they’ve already seen what happens if they cross him. They know he’s dangerous. That he’s got a gang of amped kids at his beck and call. What they don’t know”—Jim lowers his
voice—“is that Lyle is military. Ex-military, anyway.”

Now I remember. Those faces flashing across the dash video screen of the semitruck. Crosby. I picture the laughing cowboy in my mind. In the image he was younger, had shorter hair. But it’s the same guy.

“Echo Squad,” I say.

“It was an experimental group. But somebody tattled. Once the press found out, the squad got disbanded. Lyle was their commander.”

“I knew he looked familiar. Our faces were together on the broadcast. They grouped me with him like I was part of his squad.”

“Course they did,” says Jim, “because technically, you are.”

Fwish, fwish, fwish,
goes the implant in my skull. My vision blurs for a second and I rest a hand on the cool metal of Jim’s exoskeleton forearm. The arm dips, then comes back up, firm as a banister.

“What did you say?” I manage to croak.

Jim continues: “Fifteen years ago, your daddy called me up, crying in the middle of the night. Never heard him like that before. Said you hurt your head real bad. He asked me for a hell of a favor and I helped him. It scared me how much he loved you.”

From the street, the chanting has started up again.

“What—” I begin, but my thoughts are moving too fast. My mouth can’t keep up. I take a sharp breath through my nose, slow down, and start again.

“What the hell is in my head, Jim?” I ask.

Jim squints at me in the glare of the sun. “It’s called a
Zenith-class amp. A prototype. There were twelve of them officially installed. A team of handpicked soldiers. Later, when the press found out, they were called Echo Squad. Turns out, the whole operation was illegal. Squad went away and those disgraced soldiers spread to the wind. All that was in the news.”

He lowers his voice to a whisper that saps the warmth from the sunlight.

“What never saw print was this: a thirteenth Zenith was made in secret. I made it myself and I copied the encrypted military stuff onto it so it would work. Dropped it into an envelope and mailed it to your old man. He made you the thirteenth. Saved your life, but, like everything, it came with a price. You’ve got a weapon inside you, Owen. A weapon that’s never been turned on. With your pop’s office raided, I imagine the government knows all
about it by now.”

The rail-thin old man watches me, eyebrows low, tired face framed in wrinkles. He’s been burned up by the sun and made tough as rawhide, but the intelligence of a scientist still gleams in his eyes.

“That’s why I wonder whether I’m supposed to protect you or you me.”

I let go of Jim’s arm.

“You’re a biomedical engineer. Why the hell are you out here working construction?” I ask.

“Once, I designed neural implants for a living. Government R and D. Basic architecture stuff. I quit when I lost sight of whether the Autofocus was a good thing or an evil thing. Still couldn’t tell you. So I guess I’ll be out here breaking rocks until I figure it out.”

“And what about me?”

“You’re a Zenith. Like Lyle. They’ll either find you, or they won’t.”

It’s a strange sound. Intense and furtive. A pattern under it. It invades my sleep around the edges, seeping in.

Snick, snick, snick.

Sunday morning. Two days crashing in Jim’s tiny spare bedroom. No work today and a damn good thing, too. I’m exhausted. My arms and legs feel stiff under the loose-knit afghan. For the first time in my life, dirt-stained calluses have surfaced on my hands and fingers. I’m sore and glad for the pain, because without it my thoughts slide inexorably back to Pittsburgh. Back to the people I lost.

I’ve only been in Eden for a couple days, but it’s been a blur of work and sleep and failing to wheedle information out of Jim. The old man handed me a forged driver’s license yesterday and gave me a short haircut in the living room. Told me I better keep to myself. Stay out of town and never, ever get my numbers run.

Snicksnicksnick.

I force my eyes open. A startled yelp catches in my throat. Something is on the other side of the screened window next to my bed. Some kind of gray-faced monster. Child size. Watching me.

It’s a little boy. He must be standing on the hot tub on the deck outside. His hands move rapidly, twisting and swiveling something held out over his potbelly. A Rubik’s cube.

He smiles at me, pressing his forehead against the window.
Small sharp teeth flashing. His hands never stop turning and flipping the worn cube.

Something is off about the little boy. His ears sit low on his head like a couple of fleshy lumps. Small eyes, too far from each other. The color of mud. An oddly smooth patch of skin stretches between his upper lip and piggish, upturned nose. Classic fetal alcohol syndrome, the proof of it outlined in his distorted features for everyone to see.

And he’s an amp. A nubby maintenance port protrudes from his temple. Faintly I can make out the telltale square outline of a retinal implant on the white of his left eye. The retinal chip floats there like a tattoo, collecting information about the world and ferrying it to the Neural Autofocus embedded in the boy’s temple.

There’s a lot of hardware in him, but his smile is real. Genuine. It belongs to a little boy and not a monster. And what with the yellowish node on his temple, who knows what might be going on in his head? These days, there’s no guessing what kind of mind lurks behind a face.