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Amped
  • Текст добавлен: 24 сентября 2016, 01:32

Текст книги "Amped"


Автор книги: Daniel H. Wilson


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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 16 страниц)

CNN.com

Live Blog: Former Echo Squad Soldiers Suspected in Bombing Plot, One Suspect Killed

Report Timeline:

[Posted at 8:12 a.m. ET] A bomb blast has torn through the heart of Washington, D.C., destroying offices of the Pure Human Citizen’s Council. Local hospitals reported that three people were killed and eleven more injured seriously. As of now, no arrests have been made and no group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

[Updated at 6:06 p.m. ET] A spokesman for the Washington, D.C., metropolitan police department has announced that authorities believe an amp separatist organization called Astra is to blame for the bombing. The spokesman declined to comment on what evidence led police to this conclusion. “Our nation is officially under attack by the radical amp minority, just as I have long warned that it would be,” Senator Joseph Vaughn, head of the PHCC, said in a statement.

[Updated at 7:32 p.m. ET] A suspect detained near the site of the bombing has been shot and killed by police officers. Witnesses described a scene of panic as officers approached an onlooker who was exhibiting suspicious behavior. “The guy was moving weird. Like, too fast,” said a witness who asked not to be identified.

[Updated at 9:42 p.m. ET] The suspect killed earlier today has been identified as Lawrence Krambule, a former member of the infamous Echo Squad. The group of twelve Special Forces soldiers was disbanded ten years ago after it was determined they had been willingly and illegally implanted with classified, militarized Neural Autofocus implants.

Hitching west. I tell myself that there is no shame in running away. It doesn’t matter if fear fuels your flight. Just so long as you’re running toward something. There is a device in my head that my father paid for with his life and only one person who can tell me what it is: a stranger named Jim who lives in a damn trailer park.

I should have known this day was coming.

The pressure built silently, month after month. Court cases. Protests. The strain growing until it was unbearable, hidden in silent interactions between amps and regular people. I felt it in the burnt-eared shame of falling eye contact. In the rippling shift of elbows at the lunch table when an amp student sat down. By the end, the pressure was pushing in so hard that I wanted to pop my ears or scream or curl up and hide.

And then, boom. Pressure released. Enter free fall.

Every second now takes me away from the broken remains of my life. A job I’ve been effectively fired from, apartment I’ve been evicted from, and friends who’ve turned their backs on me. For the last twenty-four hours I’ve been running away from nothing—the life of a ghost.

The cab of the semitruck pulsates with rap music, the bass low and loud. I can smell fast food and lotion and sweat. But only barely. The air-conditioning is gushing icy odorless air into this oasis of life support, this pod wrapped in a ten-ton pile of hot speeding metal.

The autonomous rig looks a lot like the old-school trucks from the movies. A few more video screens, maybe. There’s a steering wheel and gas and brake pedals. The driver, Cortez, leans back in his seat, pudgy arms crossed over his stomach, hands lightly resting on puffy touch pads embedded in the steering wheel. His tiny pinkish fingernails list lazily with the wheel as it adjusts itself.

As we roll, my thoughts turn to the machinery that I carry inside my skull. Something special, my dad said. Something extra. Leaning my head against the cool window, I let the hum of the road vibrate through me. I imagine that I can feel the anonymous black plastic inside as it sends feathery pulses of electricity forking away into my gray matter.

Fwish. Fwish. Fwish.

Like a clock counting down, a time bomb wedged in the meat between my eyes. How long until it explodes? If the biocapacitor fails, the implant will lose power and I could die fast—lights out. If the clock falls too far out of sync, then the implant will send bad commands to my brain and I could die slow. And if the temperature or vibration or current fluctuates, or my bio-gel runs out or spoils, there’s a chance I’ll die and, honestly, who cares how fast or slow it happens?

There is no separating me from the amp. Our fates are grotesquely interwoven—a tree grown through a chain-link fence. Live or die, it’s a part of me.

I must have reached up and stroked the nub of plastic jutting from my temple without knowing it, because Cortez swivels his great head toward me. He watches my face for a long second, his three-hundred-pound frame quivering in his seat, settled in there like a scoop of chocolate ice cream.

Shit. How stupid can I be? I burrow deeper into my cushioned seat and nonchalantly press a palm against the tinted window. Outside, relentless sunlight acid washes the highway, sending up dazzling heat lines that make the horizon dance. Shadows of clouds skate across rolling green hills. Nothing else moves save the glinting of far-off traffic.

I can’t remember ever being able to see this far.

“You coming from out east, huh?” asks Cortez.

“Yeah.”

“Good luck.”

“Why?”

“These rednecks out here don’t like people being too smart,” says Cortez, tapping his temple. “Pure Priders are always preaching that y’all will steal their jobs, you know? They probably have a point.”

The dash-mounted video screen chirps, stutters on.

The thudding music recedes on an automatic quick fade and an emergency alert tone squawks. A fuzzy, nasal voice reads: “All-points bulletin. A BOLO has been issued for Covenant Transport vehicles. Operators are instructed to be on the lookout for the following persons of interest. Be advised these suspects are former military and should be considered highly dangerous, even if unarmed. On contact, please report immediately to your regional coordinator. Operators are advised to verify information before taking action.”

A grainy video appears. A title card reads: Echo Squad Conspirators Sought. A series of faces flash by—each of them young and hawkish, aggressive. And oddly similar. These are military portraits taken during boot camp. Each has a name underneath. Valentine. Crosby. Stilman. Daley. Gray.

Oh, shit. The next face blinks onto the screen and there I am.

My school photo, lifted from the Allderdice Web site. Starkly different from the others. Softer. It stares at me and Cortez for a second and a half, then disappears.

Cortez snorts, wide nostrils flaring. “Thought I knew you. Seen you on the tube, pardner.”

This has to be a mistake. Why the fuck am I on a bulletin? How could I be swept up in a manhunt with real criminals? I keep my face pointed forward, panic rising in my chest. “What are you going to do?” I ask.

“Turn you in, man. I’m responsible for this truck. Anything goes wrong in here, it’s my fault. This is a good job. I don’t want to lose it.”

“Look, they’ve got me confused with somebody else. You can see I’m not military. Just let me off anywhere,” I say, my voice going hollow with fear. I’m staring at a button on the steering wheel. It has a phone on it. With a touch of his finger, Cortez can send me to jail or worse.

“I won’t tell anybody you picked me up,” I say. “No harm, no foul.”

“Sorry,” he drawls. “Company already knows somebody in here. This truck is wired to the tits.”

It’s true. If the big man’s hands leave those pads on the steering wheel for more than a few seconds, the truck will pull itself over and cut the engine. This is because years ago an original model autonomous tanker with a sensor malfunction and no driver rolled off the road and smashed into the side of an office building. Wouldn’t have been a big deal if the truck weren’t hauling a double load of gasoline. The trucking company was sued out of business. And the rest of the industry realized they needed an insurance policy. Someone to take the blame.

In other words, a human driver.

“Why not turn yourself in?” asks Cortez. “You look like a damn schoolteacher or something. You don’t want to be on the run from the cops.”

I could stop running now, minimize the damage. I didn’t push Samantha Blex. Let them arrest me and I can set the record straight. It’s the sane thing to do. But I can’t forget the edge of panic in my father’s voice. Naked, ugly fear was on his face, the kind you never show willingly—the kind that’s contagious.

I turn to Cortez.

“You heard amps are going to steal your job? Well, guess what? I couldn’t drive your truck if I wanted to,” I say. “No amp could steal your job after today.”

“How come?”

“I can’t take the blame for a wreck. Legally. In the eyes of the law I don’t exist. You’d be better off having a three-year-old drive this thing.”

Cortez snorts again, his deep-set bluish-gray eyes scanning the featureless, blazing road ahead. I can’t read his expression. Can’t tell if it’s good or bad. But discrimination is legal now, and from what I’ve seen the regular people are getting the hang of it real fast. If this guy sends me back to Pittsburgh, it’s all over.

“That’s messed up,” he says finally. “They’re saying you’re not even a person.”

“It’s what they’re saying. I can’t get picked up by the cops. I don’t have any rights. They can do whatever they want to me. Will do.”

The emergency alert squawks again. A tinny voice from the dash speaks: “Come in, Cortez. Come in.”

Eyebrows up, Cortez paws a button on the dash and responds. “This Cortez.”

“Cort. It’s Jason. I’m doing the BOLO follow-up. Fleetscan indicates you took on a passenger in Nashville. Can you confirm?”

Cortez frowns at me. “Yeah.”

“Okay, can you let me get cab video?”

Cortez blinks, as if he’s just woken up. He takes one hand off the steering wheel and scratches his unkempt beard. A light begins to blink on the dashboard, and his chubby hand flutters back to its roost almost unconsciously.

“Jason … it’s my cousin. Giving him a ride to Tulsa to see his momma.”

“That’s nice, Cortez. Now let me get cab vid.”

“Nah,” says Cortez.

“Dammit, Cort. Are you smoking weed in there again?”

“Man, get out of here with that. Check my environmental.”

“Then give me video.”

“Do I come to your work and stare at you?”

“I’m trying to do my job here, Cortez. I don’t have time for this shit. If you don’t grant me vidrights, I’m engaging the override and flagging you for law enforcement inspection. Now, are you going to do it or not?”

“This is bullshit. It’s called privacy, Jason—” responds Cortez, and then the whole dashboard flashes red. The doors thunk as they lock themselves. We start losing speed.

“Must be kidding,” mutters Cortez, leaning on the steering wheel. He glances at me and shrugs, shakes his head. The gravel shoulder crunches under the truck tires. My stomach drops.

“Uh, hold up,” I say, leaning toward the dash. I’m doing my sad best to sound like I could be Cortez’s cousin. “Cortez shaved his head, all right? It’s nasty. All shiny and shit. Head looks like a bowling ball with cuts all over it. Said he’d get fired before he lets you see it.”

Thin laughter tinkles out of the dashboard. “What?” asks the voice. “Seriously?”

Cortez smiles at me, nods. “Barber in Nashville messed me up,” he says. “Came at me like a ax murderer. I had to shave it all off. Laugh if you want, but you not gonna be seeing my mug for about two weeks.”

The laughter slowly dies away. There is a long pause. Static.

“So, that’s your cousin?” asks the voice.

“Yeah,” says Cortez.

“He sounds white.”

“What’d you say? Oh, we done,” says Cortez. “Done, done, done.” And he punches the cutoff button.

The truck crawls over the gravel shoulder, slowing until it finally stops. Blistering cold air rasps across my face and the dash burns bright red in my eyes. We sit together in silence for thirty seconds.

“Cops come,” says Cortez in a whisper. “I’m saying you held me hostage.”

“Fair enough,” I say.

The dash flickers and goes dark.

Then, the lights power up and the dash returns to normal. The engine rumbles, starts. A smile spreads across Cortez’s bearded face. I take a deep breath and collapse back into my seat. We’re safe.

Cortez pulls back onto the highway. We roll together toward the western horizon for about ten minutes before he speaks.

“What people been saying about amps,” he says, “I heard all that shit before. If they’re not calling you a monkey, then they’re calling you a superman.”

“So … are we good?” I ask.

“We be all right,” says Cortez, never taking his eyes off the road. “Cuz,” he adds, breaking into a wide grin. He playfully shoves me in the shoulder. “You know I gotta shave my head now, right?”

After eight hours in the truck we pull in for gas outside Sallisaw, Oklahoma. I grab my pack, lean over, and shake hands with Cortez. When I crack open the hermetically sealed door, a razor’s edge of dusk sunlight briefly stripes his face.

“You pretty close to where you going. Motel is over there. Should be an okay one for you—guy who owns it is blind.”

His amused chuckle is lost in the low bass line and profanity-laced lyrics. I thank Cortez and leave him in his rolling den. Step around the gas station’s automatic fueler, avoiding the patterned light that it sprays as it blindly searches for a gas cap. Cortez never has to leave the truck, not even to fuel it.

Taking the blame is a full-time job.

Walking toward the motel, I hear a chime from the idling truck as it acknowledges the pump. I pretend to scratch my forehead, blocking the sight of my face from the two subtle lumps on that hulking hood as they twinkle with laser light, scanning the environment and matching the truck’s local map with what’s up there in the satellite. Even way out here, the world is thick with cameras.

Just another link in the supply chain of human civilization.

It used to be people who drove the trucks and airplanes and boats. Things still look the same from the outside, but the core is always changing, always being upgraded. And the role of technology is under constant renegotiation.

As the big rig hauls itself out of the parking lot, engine hissing, I keep my head down and wonder what would happen if we rolled everything back ten years. The computers would go a little slower, I guess. The factories would make a little less, and the farms wouldn’t produce as much. These seem like such small things, but we depend on each new advance.

Millions would die. Because once we have the tech, we can’t let it go.

Fwish, fwish, fwish goes the implant in my head. It is inscrutable and mute and God knows what it does. But it doesn’t seem like a clock ticking down anymore. More like a heartbeat. Steady and dependable.

At least, I hope so.

I have seen

The old gods go

And the new gods come.

Day by day

And year by year

The idols fall

And the idols rise.

Today

I worship the hammer.

–CARL SANDBURG (1914)

Disbanded Echo Squad Vets Under Investigation

FORT COLLINS—This morning a spokesman for the US Army confirmed that members of the so-called Echo Squad, made up entirely of “amped” soldiers outfitted with prototype neural implants, were under federal investigation for plotting terrorist crimes. Four federal warrants were issued, although records indicate there were twelve original members.

Echo Squad was dissolved a decade ago in the wake of a scandal. Documents exposing the existence of the squad were leaked by an online coalition of hackers known as Archos, and published simultaneously by three collaborating newspapers.

An Army spokesman said, “In the interest of national security we cannot comment. These men are walking weapons. People’s lives are at stake here.”

Army officials have come under criticism for failing to track the soldiers after Echo Squad was decommissioned. Head of the Pure Human Citizen’s Council (PHCC) and U.S. senator from Pennsylvania Joseph Vaughn argued that the effort was bungled. “How could the U.S. Army allow dishonorably discharged veterans with militarized neural implants back into society? These members of our service personnel volunteered for an illegal and immoral program, and there should have been a system of tracking put in place before these animals were discharged into the general public,” he said.

Jim Howard lives in the Eden trailer park in Eastern Oklahoma. About a four-mile walk from the motel. I can’t sleep, so I hoof it at first light. My legs are soaked by the time I arrive, lashed by the dewy grass that grows knee-high along the roadside. I’m shivering as the sun teases the horizon, a reluctant lump of warmth and light that seems to want to let me freeze in the dark a little bit longer.

Birds are starting to sing, and the list of questions in my head is growing.

I find the dirty white trailer on the edge of Eden. The trailer park is the size of a couple football fields, wrapped in a fence and strewn with trailers in loose rows connected by meandering dirt paths. The ground is carpeted with sticks and stems from a sprawling canopy of pecan trees. Jim’s trailer is up on concrete blocks, weeds sprouting under it. A haphazard wooden deck has been built alongside a small porch, with the remains of old paper lanterns strung over the gaping carcass of a hot tub.

The porch light wavers in the dawn, powering through mildewed plastic and crusted layers of insect corpses. As I climb the steps, I hear creaking from over my head. It’s a stealthy, careful sound.

I step back until I can see the roof.

A dark figure stands on top, thin and crooked. It’s a man with his hands out, elbows bending as he takes an exaggerated slow-motion step. The roof of the trailer complains as he moves through some kind of tai chi routine. Silhouetted fingers splay and his head turns toward me. He slows and then stops. Stands up straight.

“Howdy, kid,” says a firm voice.

“Jim?” I ask.

There’s a long pause. If this doesn’t work and Jim turns me away, well, I saw an overpass on my walk over here. I guess that’s where I’ll be living.

“Owen,” says the old man. “Your pop told me you might be coming.”

“Is he …” I trail off, voice breaking.

Jim shakes his head, mouth in a line.

“How did you know him?” I ask.

“We worked together, a long time ago. Good man.”

“Oh,” is all I can say.

“I’m headed out to work about now. You can come along, I guess. Long as you ain’t scared of getting yelled at a little bit.”

“Pure trash,” snaps the old man. “That’s what I call ’em. Not Pure Pride. Joe Vaughn can kiss my wrinkled old ass.”

White hair sticking out from under a ball cap, Jim hooks a thumb at a group of young men standing across the street. The demonstrators watch us silently, heads cocked, squinted eyes swimming in shadows. One of them spits on the ground. Standing with crossed arms or perched on pickup truck tailgates, none of them reveals the slightest expression.

The old man takes off his cap, tosses it to me. “Put this on and don’t talk to anybody. Nobody should be out here looking for you, but better to play it safe.”

I shuffle ahead to keep up with Jim as the bent old man humps it across the street. With only a piece of toast in my belly and virtually no sleep, it’s a struggle to keep my footsteps in his shadow. He’s got a heavy-looking duffel bag over one shoulder, but he hobbles quick and steady in the dry morning heat, like an old camel.

Jim has a strong chin and high, weathered cheekbones. On the drive over, he told me he’s a full-blood Cherokee but his hair went pale after his life hit a rough spot. I don’t have the gall to ask what that was. I imagine it involved a war.

“Fuckin’ gray hair,” calls one of the men from across the street as we reach the orange-ribbed fence of the construction zone. “Go home, ya scab amp!”

Jim doesn’t even look up, just leads me into the job site.

“Who are they?” I ask.

“Workers we replaced. They’re pure human. And young. But I tell you what, every man’s got a right to earn a living. Being young don’t earn you a damn thing in my book.”

A five-story, half-framed building crowds the work site. The rising sun flings skewers of light through its half-renovated steel skeleton. The frame straddles a deep, unfinished subbasement that makes a nauseating drop into crisp shadow. Jim tells me that, in a few months, this steep pit will be a claustrophobic parking garage for auto-driven cars. He says we don’t even have to run lighting down there—the cars won’t need it.

It’s still early. A crusty cement mixer filled with toolboxes swings overhead, lifted out of thieves’ reach by the site crane. A few elderly men mill around, drinking coffee. There’s hardly a worker here under sixty-five. Each has a maintenance nub, including Jim. Amps. When the old guys pass each other, they nod. Sometimes they give each other halfhearted little salutes. No smiles.

“Not a big talker, are you?” I ask Jim.

He shakes his head.

“My dad said I needed to find you. He said that you could explain why I’m here.”

Jim glances at me, eyes sharp and calculating. Chews on the inside of his cheek, considering. Finally, he shrugs. “Maybe,” he says. “Probably not. Anyway, there’s work to do.”

The old man drops to one knee and fiddles the drawstring open on his canvas duffel bag. In a well-practiced motion, he rolls down the sides of the faded bag to reveal tangled columns of dust-coated metal. Under a frenzied pattern of scratches and dings, I see the thin tubes are light-gold colored. Titanium alloy.

An ID code, like a VIN, is stamped onto one tube.

“My ride,” says Jim. “Beats a wheelchair and it beats the living crap out of the goddamn scooters that civilians get. Semper fi, kid. Semper friggin’ fidelis.”

Jim grabs the lightweight frame, lifts it out of the bag, and shakes it like a dirty T-shirt. The tubes flop out onto the ground, connected like a skeleton, with legs and arms attached to a backpack-like trunk. Without a pause, Jim plants one boot onto a foot-shaped piece of plastic at the end of one tube. He steps in with the other foot and then shrugs on the backpack part. The skeletal arms hang loose, their unfastened straps lolling like tongues.

“You’re a vet?” I ask, reaching out and touching the loose metal wrist of the thing. Jim nods. A pair of dull pincers hang from just above the wrist joint, scarred with shining gashes. I lift the dead metal, and the arm bends, limp. An array of compact tools is folded underneath, ready to be deployed: screwdrivers, files, even a power saw.

The pincer clamps onto my wrist and I jump back. I reflexively wrench my arm away from the cold metal, shake it off like a spider. Jim lets out a hoarse giggle. As both robotic arms settle down to his sides, the old man taps the maintenance nub on his temple.

“Settle down, kid. The exoskeleton is linked to my amp. Works even for a guy with no arms and legs. Mind control. All a vet has to do is claim arthritis and the VA coughs these things up like nickels.”

He casually lowers his arms into the arm bars of the device, straps them in one at a time. “Makes us more employable,” he says.

Jim is in his late seventies. He says he retired from the military forty years ago and he retired from the workforce a decade ago. Now he’s standing in front of me wearing a government-issued medical exoskeleton and about to start another day of hard labor, and this is the reason that those young men across the street are huddled together giving us the evil eye.

The old folks have stolen all the jobs.

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.


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