Amped by Daniel H. Wilson

slams the trailer door shut behind him. Leaves Jim and me by ourselves on the deck, dumbfounded.
    “See you next time,” says Lucy. She’s striding away, legs straining the cloth of her dress. “Welcome to Eden!” she calls to me, flashing that grin over her shoulder.
    The quiet lasts for one fuzzy second. Men stand gaunt outside their trailers, chests rising and falling, like actors waiting for a cue. The shirtless guy has put on his grease-smudged exoskeleton. He’s feeling it out, standing on one leg with his other foot pulled up behind him like a sprinter stretching.
    I turn to Jim. “What do we do?”
    “Nothing,” replies Jim.
    “Nothing?”
    Jim squints out at the trailer park. Porch lights are blinking off. Eden is going dark.
    “I’ve got to hide,” I whisper.
    “Sit tight,” Jim says as he grabs the back of my shirt. “Run now and they’ll give chase. You get caught with what’s in your head and in five minutes Joe Vaughn will have the country convinced that weaponized amps are infiltrating our trailer parks.”
    I relax and Jim lets go of me.
    A couple seconds later a cop claws his way between two trailers and into the clearing. He’s big. Twice the size of the kid who came through. Dressed in black. Some kind of light body armor. His radio earpiece sprouts a dime-sized, green-glowing ocular sight that’s mounted just below his left eye.
    Jim whispers, keeping his face oriented toward the cop. “Keep your face out of the light and for Chrissake don’t look at him.”
    The cop is ignoring us. Scans the ground. Sweeps his head back and forth like a predator, following the heat differential of recent footsteps. He pauses where the kid stumbled and nearlyfell. Cranes his neck and follows the path that Lucy took. Spots her still walking away and then keeps moving along the kid’s trajectory.
    Closer and closer. Right up to our trailer. Our steps.
    The cop stops and brushes his night sight to the side. Looks at me like I’m a piece of furniture. Maybe gauging how heavy I’d be to lift. He absentmindedly pats the radio handpiece that is velcroed to his Kevlar vest, up near his shoulder. Making sure it’s still there.
    “Move,” he grunts, mechanically climbing the splintered wooden steps. I hear motors whining faintly and notice the cop wears an integrated lower-leg exoskeleton in his armor. Nothing fancy, just a stepper to lighten the load.
    I’m not fast enough and the cop plows into me. The solid bulk of armor-layered muscle and compact battery weight sends me grasping for balance. I get hold of the rail just as the cop kicks open the door.
    “You can’t go inside there, sir,” says Jim.
    “I can do whatever I want,” says the cop, and his tone is final. The cop disappears into the trailer.
    He’s right. Legally, we’re living in limbo. I’m not sure there would be any way to prosecute this guy even if he decided to drag us into the street and shoot us all, one by one.
    Jim and I stand on the deck, looking past each other, while the cop bangs around inside. Glass breaks. Muffled shouts penetrate thin walls. A minute later, the cop emerges. Not breathing heavy. Moving slow, without urgency, robotic. He’s got the kid by the back of his shirt, dragging him out like a bag of trash.
    With a swoop of his arm, the cop nonchalantly tosses his captive off the deck. The kid stutters down the steps, scrabbling on skinned and bloody knees. Trying and failing to catch his balance, he sprawls in the dirt. The cop follows, descending one whining electric footfall at a time.
    Nobody in the trailer park has spoken. They just watch.
    Showing surprising spunk, the kid pops up onto his feet. Tries to make a run for it, but the cop is right behind him and gets hold of his hair. Gives the kid a brutal yank, spinning him around with his bleeding hands out and flailing. And then the kid accidentally scratches the cop across the face.
    A collective shudder goes through the people watching.
    The cop pauses,