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The old man is on the trailer roof again, right over my bedroom ceiling. I can hear him up there. His exoskeleton motors sigh in time to the creaking over my head.

I figure I’ll give him five more minutes and then I’ll climb up and say good-bye.

My duffel bag is on the bed, half open, a ragged cornucopia spilling balled-up T-shirts and blue jeans. I packed it a few minutes ago in a kind of hazy panic. It’s the middle of the night, but the law will be coming for us after what just happened in the field.

So much for keeping my head down.

Stepping outside, I watch a group of three or four neon-modded temples float past my window, streaming toward Lyle’s cluster of trailers. More have already congregated. Something is up.

I climb the wooden ladder tipped against the end of the trailer. Jim is barefoot and bare chested up here, wearing his exoskeleton. The old man slowly lunges through the motions of one of his tai chi routines. His skin gleams in the light from antique sodium arc lamps. I watch him practice the martial art for a few seconds, somehow soothed by each deliberate movement, every slow-motion strike and block executed with centimeter-level precision. Whatever form he is doing, I imagine that with the help of the exoskeleton he’s executing it more perfectly than any ancient master ever did.

“How’s Nick?” I ask.

Jim nods. “Got the port cleaned and attached to the implant. Slathered it in the last of my bio-gel. He’ll recover.”

“Good,” I say. “I’m headed out. Going with Lyle.”

Leaning forward, palms out, Jim slowly straightens and turns.

“Where?”

“Detroit. A Zenith there needs help.”

My
family
is
going
to
eat
yours
up.

Jim nods at me, sweat beaded on his upper lip.

“We should have gone slower,” he says. “Introduced the Autofocus to fewer people. It was too much too fast.”

Jim’s not thinking about what happened tonight. He’s thinking about a thing that happened years ago. Something he’s only paying for tonight.

“You did good, Jim,” I say. “You cured people. Same as my dad.”

Jim slows and stares at his hands. It doesn’t look like he believes me.

“Can you control it?” he asks.

“I think so,” I say.

“Mind and body,” he says. “You know what you get when the mind and body act as one?” he asks. Jim resumes moving, sinking toward me. His hands scoop the air, rise with animal grace. “You get harmony,” he answers. “Remember that. There is no
you
. There is no
it
. Mind and body need a single purpose.”

“Why are you saying this?”

“You’re walking a dangerous road. The choices you make from here on could save us or damn us. Lyle and them are soldiers. All they understand is force. I hope you can show them a new perspective. Provide some balance.”

“I’ll try. Look after Nick and Lucy for me.”

“Always,” he says.

“I probably just killed my chances with her.”

Jim doesn’t respond. Might have ducked his head a little.

“I won’t be gone long,” I say.

“I’ll be here,” he says, “breaking rocks.”

As I climb down, I hear his motors whirring again. Watch the silhouette of his face slip out of view over the lip of the roof.

Around me, more of Lyle’s gang are walking toward his boxes. They mostly look past me or through me, but I catch a hint of something on some of their faces: pity for me, maybe, or fear.

A shifting blue glow comes from inside Lucy’s trailer. I stand on her porch for five minutes, shivering, before I finally get up the nerve to knock quietly.

The sun will be up in another hour. But there is something I have to do before I leave. Something I should have done days ago.

Lucy pulls the door open and lets me step inside. I can’t read her face. Nick is sleeping on the living room couch, a warm lump under a pile of covers. The muted television dribbles a soft idiot light into the room. It dances in Lucy’s eyelashes. She’s the best thing I’ve found in my short time in Eden. She treated me like family. Saved my life in the field. And I’ve given her nothing in return.

I’m starting small.

“I’m sorry,” I say, eyes lowered. “I’m not in control, Lucy. I’ve never been in control. I tried to stop Lyle and I couldn’t. I couldn’t protect Nick. I yelled at you because I was beaten up and embarrassed and I felt like an idiot. You don’t have to forgive me—”

And that’s when I notice it.

My shirt. Hanging over the arm of the couch. It’s the same one that I was wearing the day those boys beat me up and pissed on me. I threw it stinking into the weeds and forgot about it. Now here it is—washed and dried and folded neatly.

Lucy follows my eyes.

“I wasn’t sure how to give it back,” says Lucy.

A warm breeze sighs in the window. It smells mostly like grass and a little like motor oil. Lucy is standing a foot away from me,
delicate and freckled in the dim, stuttering light of the television. Her lips turn down at the corners, but the skin beside her eyes is creased with years of laughter.

I’m smiling now and none of today’s madness can stop me.

There’s nothing I would love more than to kiss Lucy Crosby. And with this realization, I’m ten years old and standing on the end of the high dive. Shivering, inches from the abyss. Jump already, kid.

“I’m doing the best I can,” I say.

“I know.”

It’s probably the wrong moment. But I step forward and slide my arms around Lucy and I kiss her anyway. She kisses me back. We stand together in the still living room, bodies pressed against each other and finally, blissfully not thinking.

When I take a step back, I notice that her eyes are wet.

“Lyle is back at his trailer,” she says, running a finger across the strap of the duffel bag hanging over my shoulder. “Should be ready to go.”

I lean in for another kiss and she puts a hand on my chest.

“The cops will be here soon,” she says.

“Okay,” I respond.

“So be careful,” she says.

“Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“Will you go on a date with me? When I get back?”

“You know I have a son.”

“I kind of like him.”

“I live in a trailer park with a bunch of social outcasts.”

“And you’re the prettiest one. By far.”

“I’ll think about it,” says Lucy.

And she smiles and gives me that last kiss.

I’m headed for the trailers on the edge of Eden, trailed by the last of Lyle’s soldiers. This crowd must have come in from all over the county tonight. Wondering about it makes my mouth go dry.

The sun’s almost up. Time to go.

The halo of bravery I felt a couple minutes ago fades the closer I get to Lyle’s boxes. The half-dozen trailers are scattered haphazardly around a campfire, shoved to one corner of Eden. Fossilized tire tracks gash lewd grins in the hard-packed dirt.

Dark people shapes surround the campfire, backlit by the flames, each accompanied by a pinprick of neon light. Someone has dragged out a couple of rotten old couches. Amps swarm the cushions like ticks, listening to tinny music that jangles from a chipped boom box on an extension cord.

Something big moves, like a skyscraper swaying in the wind. It’s the Brain. Sitting on a tree stump, he’s got a forty in one hand. Makes the beer look the size of a sippy cup.

Standing here on the periphery of the firelight, second thoughts start creeping in. These people are younger than me, tougher than me. Unpredictable and feral. I get the feeling that I’ve fallen into a cage at the zoo.

This is Astra and I’m scared of it.

I never see Lyle coming. He slaps me on the back, hard. It staggers me and the loud clap gets everyone’s attention. People turn to look at us. Lyle wraps an arm over my shoulders and roots me to the spot.

“Gray,” announces Lyle. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Half of Lyle’s face is lit up red by the fire. His implant is a dark blemish on his temple, like mine.

“Need you to formally meet some of the boys,” says Lyle. As he says each name, Lyle squints one eye and points at the person with his index and middle fingers pushed together, like a gun. Finally, he gets to the looming shape on the tree stump.

“And I believe you’ve met the Brain.”

Lyle puts a hand beside his mouth, whispers loudly at the side of my face. “Try and keep your lunch down this time.”

People chuckle. I wonder how much they know about me.

“Let’s go,” I whisper, ducking my head so the others can’t hear. “Cops are going to tear Eden apart looking for us. We’ve got to warn Valentine. Did you call him yet?”

“Won’t matter,” says Lyle. “They got him under surveillance. If he makes a move, they’ll take him.”

“They’ll kill him. We have to get him out of there.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” asks Lyle, putting his back to me. He is a thin dark shape blocking the flames—an absence of light. “But before we go, you got to join Astra.”

“Okay.”

“Okay what? You got to say it.”

“I want in, Lyle. I want to join Astra.”

Lyle puts an arm back around my shoulders. Addresses our audience. “This is Gray, y’all. I vouch for him.”

Lyle turns to me.

“But there’s only one way in or out of Astra. We welcome you tonight with our fists. If you’re strong enough, we’ll have you. Otherwise …”

Dry chuckles seep in from all around me.

I take a step back. But Lyle’s wiry fingers clamp harder onto my shoulder. Dark shapes are rising behind him. Looming up to form an ominous wall. A shifting, bobbing sea of neon-colored stars. Lyle pulls me toward him, whispers into my ear. “You know the part of you that’s listening right now? The part making decisions? The little man at the steering wheel right between your eyes?”

Lyle pushes his index finger between my eyes.

“Yeah,” I say, shaky.

“That’s your executive function. Does all your planning. Abstract thinking. Picks your actions. All the rest of your body is
on automatic. Digesting your food. Sweating, bleeding, balancing. Recognizing the faces of your brothers.”

“Okay.”

“You got executive and you got automatic. With me?”

“Yes.”

“Execute your trigger action. When you’re inside, take that executive—that little guy who is you—and send him on down to automatic. Step on his shoulders and stand up. Drop down through those levels and you’ll be fine. Can you do that, Gray?”

“Yeah.”

“You kicked some ass in the field tonight. But now you go deeper. Whatever you got, you better use it.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because we’re about to do our best to beat you to death.”

“What?” I gasp.

“Ad astra cruentus,”
says Lyle, and the people around the campfire mutter in unison: “To the stars. Stained in blood.”

He means it. My right hand instinctively goes to a three count. Pushing my focus to the Zenith, on the verge of the trigger, tickles something. Like pressing a hidden button.

Three, two, one, zero. Fist.

It’s as though I’ve fallen through a trapdoor and into my own brain. Thoughts are written on the inside of my forehead. I can see them scrolling there. White text on black background. Speeding past at the speed of thought.

Level
two. Close-quarter combatives. Fluid shock striking technique. Vital points. Nerve motor points. Defensive stances. Do you consent? Do you consent?

In a distracted way, I notice Lyle’s first punch land on my diaphragm. I stop breathing. A red haze settles over my vision.

Yes, yes, yes.

I see the words. Then, the words are replaced by my own thoughts. The little man at the steering wheel of my mind. I read
my own impressions as they appear and in a secondhand way, I am alarmed.

The words say that beyond this room in my head, there is a campfire surrounded by five trailers. A lanky cowboy covered in crow tattoos means me harm. Strangers are amassing with evil on their collective mind. My body is in danger. And here on the inside, hands on the controls of myself, I wait for the raw external world to attack again.

And it does.

Lyle leans into a lazy swing, going for my face this time. It’s a tight right hook, accelerating fast to vicious, a wicked elbow up and out to catch me on the chin if the punch misses. But the fist and elbow whiff past my face. The breeze of minutely displaced air feels cool on my upper lip.

I count the tendons rippling across Lyle’s forearm. Watching them, I find I can predict which muscles will flex. Where his tattooed arms will go. Those white-knuckled fists floating in darkness.

The next few punches come in flurries, quick combinations. But I am a tree, swaying in the wind and avoiding contact. From my perch inside, I watch this ballet unfold.

After a fruitless thirty seconds of attack, Lyle stops. Puts his hands on his knees. Sweaty hair hangs in his face. He spits on the ground, panting.

“You’re a quick learner, Gray. Shit.”

I am faintly aware that my body is balanced on the balls of its feet, arms raised slightly for balance. Fists uncurled, fingers relaxed. Breathing steadily and evenly, blank faced.

I mentally kick toward the surface, searching for the cradle of my body.

“Not yet,” whispers Lyle. “Not yet.”

He pushes his hair out of his face, turns to the crowd of people now standing and watching. Backlit by the fire, it is hard to
see their faces. But in shifting neon glints, I catch a few traces of awe—and many more of grim anticipation.

“All right, y’all. Let’s welcome our brother with our fists, as we were once welcomed,” says Lyle. “If he lives, he can fight alongside us.”

The hellish shapes come for me, but I am safe inside. I dance with the shadows of the campfire, untouched as dark fists push the night air around my body.