Extras

Banned

The Sly Girls were not pleased with Slime Queen.

It turned out that Kai watched the others' face ranks as closely as her own. Aya's sudden jump from obscurity to mild fame hadn't escaped her notice. After several pings back and forth, Kai admitted that maybe it wasn't entirely Aya's fault, but it was still a problem.

No hovercam-magnets allowed.

So Aya was banned from the Sly Girls, at least until her face rank fell back into six figures.

At first Aya thought the delay would drive her crazy. Here she was, a huge story finally in her grasp, and she had to wait for a bunch of nobodies to stop making fun of her about nothing.

On top of that, Aya didn't dare hang out with Frizz until this was all over. If anyone spotted them together, another wave of Slime Queen slamming would erupt, driving her face rank back up.

But as the days passed, waiting turned out not to be so bad.

Aya stayed in her room, avoiding classes by claiming that her underground lake chill had worn her out. She took all her old stories down from her feed for a week, and only answered pings from Hiro, Ren, and Kai. And gradually Aya Fuse (and her alter ego, Slime Queen) began to disappear, her face rank dropping thousands every day.

The strangest part was not having a feed. For the last two years, everything important to Aya had been stored there: images, stories, class schedules, and grades. Lists of everything she did and thought and wanted, and of all her friends and enemies. Even if hardly anyone ever looked at it, blanking her own feed was like erasing part of herself.

Fortunately Aya had plenty to keep her occupied.

It took a whole week to edit a rough draft, making sure to conceal the awful truth until the end, yet still revealing enough to keep people watching. It was the longest story she'd ever kicked—almost twenty whole minutes. Hiro told her to shorten every version he saw, but Aya wasn't worried about anyone getting bored.

The story had everything: eccentric outsiders, mysterious technology, eye-kicking shots of the wild, even a near miss with a mag-lev train. And of course, good old humanity trying to wreck the planet once again—all the promise and danger of the mind-rain wrapped up in one big kick.

The only thing she left out was the trio of inhuman figures she and Miki had seen. There weren't any shots of them, after all. And surely city-killing weapons were enough, without adding implausible aliens to the mix. She didn't even mention them to Hiro and Ren, who would probably just say she was believing in unicorns again.

She left a blank space at the end for the truth about the cylinders, once she'd proved Ren's theory about smart matter. But Aya was already convinced: The math all checked out, and she'd found out that the Rusties had also hollowed out mountains, places for their leaders to survive while the rest of the world crumbled. This was all an awful flashback to the ancient wars that had killed millions.

Maybe once they saw the truth, the Sly Girls would forgive her for kicking the story. Even Kai could understand that the safety of the world was more important than keeping a few tricks secret.

So Aya waited patiently, editing and reediting, putting up with Hiro's annoying comments, and giving Ren a whole minute to fill with the math of orbital mechanics and kinetic energy. That part was boring at first, but it ended with explosions—the perverse eye-kicks of buildings tumbling after their hoverstruts were ripped apart by slivers of half-molten metal.

And finally, after a long week, her face rank slipped back across a hundred thousand. Slime Queen was no more, and Aya Fuse became a Sly Girl one last time.

Testing

"You're sure nothing followed you?" Kai called.

"Very," Aya said, skidding her hoverboard to a halt. Just to be certain, Moggle had stalked her all the way from Akira Hall, watching for any hovercams left over from Slime Queen's short reign. And to make doubly sure, Ren had sewn six spy-cams into her dorm jacket, facing in all directions, and none had spotted a thing.

"Where's everyone else?" asked Aya. Eden and Kai were the only Sly Girls waiting here at the edge of town.

"Taking the night off," Eden said. "It's a little windy for surfing. But we thought you'd be game, since you've been on parole."

"Really?" Aya frowned. She'd noticed the wind on the way out, but it hadn't seemed that strong.

"Thanks, I guess. I was getting pretty bored of my dorm room."

"That's what you get for hanging out with big faces." Kai laughed. "Maybe if you got that nose trimmed down, you wouldn't attract so many pretty boys."

Aya rolled her eyes. Her nose was too pretty now? "Whatever, Kai. I just want to get inside the mountain again. I've been doing some research, and I've got a theory about those cylinders."

"Can't wait to hear it," Eden said. "But I'm afraid you're a little behind."

"You mean you already know about them?" Aya asked softly.

Eden grinned and shook her head. "No, I just mean that Kai is Lai these days."

"It's a never-ending battle, staying obscure," Lai said. "But you know all about that now, don't you, Slime Queen?"

"Sure, Lai." Aya hid her relief with a glance over her shoulder. The rumble of the train was just beginning to build beneath her feet.

"Don't worry about being out of practice, Nosey," Lai said, smiling. "Mag-lev surfing's just like riding a hoverboard. You never forget."

The slipstream was worse than ever.

The wind grew stronger as the train neared the city's edge, and lying flat against her board, Aya could feel every tug and shudder in the air. The breeze was blowing straight across the arc of the turn, its energy blending with the turbulence of the train's passage, like two swift rivers merging into boiling rapids.

Her first contact with the slipstream knocked Aya into a barrel roll, spinning earth and sky around her. Only Eden's souped-up crash bracelets kept her hanging on, her fingers white-knuckled around the board's front end.

She struggled for control, wrestling the board level again. But every time she edged it toward the train, the tumult knocked her into another spin.

No wonder Lai and Eden had told the other Girls to stay home!

The train began to hum—it was straightening again, speeding up—and Aya gritted her teeth. No way was she spending another day locked in her dorm room, sitting on the biggest story since the mind-rain She leaned hard to the left, yanking her hoverboard toward the train, willing it through the slipstream's barrier.

The board spun into another set of barrel rolls, but this time Aya didn't fight the spins. She let the world twist around her a dozen times, until the pattern of the track lights steadied. Then, letting the board's gyrations carry her, she rolled across the tumult.

In the calmer air, Aya wrestled her board back to level flight. Her head was still spinning, but the train stretched out beside her, as steady as a house.

She slipped up against its metal flank and climbed aboard.

A few meters ahead Lai and Eden were already standing, watching with amusement.

"Not bad," Lai called. "Maybe you're ready to learn some new tricks!"

The train was still speeding up, and Aya didn't answer, scrambling to shift a crash bracelet to her ankle. She stood just as the train hit cruising speed, and the three of them rode in silence together, ducking decapitation hazards, the wild shooting past on either side.

Soon the mountains rose into view, their dark bulk a hundred times more ominous now that Aya knew what was inside.

Ren had sent her more math today: Only a mountain could hide a mass driver large enough to hurl a projectile into orbit. Conveniently, the atmosphere was thinner up around mountaintops—less air resistance for the cylinders once they left the shaft. Whoever had built this had thought long and hard about how to destroy the world.

As the dark peaks grew before her, Aya wondered for the first time if mind-rain slammers like the Nameless One were right. Maybe humanity really was too dangerous to be free. It was only three years since the cure, and already someone had built a weapon that would have made the Rusties proud.

At least the discovery made one thing easier: Once they realized what the mass driver was for, the Sly Girls would have to understand that they couldn't keep it secret anymore.

"So what's this theory of yours?" Lai asked.

"Well, it has to do with that stuff." Aya pointed her flashlight at the hidden door.

Eden Maru was kneeling beside it, the matter hacker in her hands, her fingers jumping across the controls. The tunnel was pitch-black except for Aya's flashlight—the other two had infrared—and the darkness around them came to life as the door began to hum.

"You mean smart matter?" Lai asked.

"Exactly" Aya swept her light across the surface, watching it ripple and undulate, smelling the scent of ram. "What if those cylinders are laced with it?"

Eden glanced over her shoulder at Lai, but neither said anything.

"That shaft Eden found looks like a mass driver to me," Aya continued. "And if the cylinders can change shape, they must be missiles of some kind."

For a moment there was no sound except the hum of smart matter, then Lai said, "You mean this whole mountain is a weapon?"

"Exactly. An old-fashioned, Rusty sort of weapon."

"Interesting theory." Eden watched the last layers of the door slip aside, revealing the orangey glow of the tunnel. "How sure are you about this?"

"Almost positive. I can prove it when we get to the cylinders."

They stepped inside, and Eden turned to close the hidden door again. As expected, Moggle would be trapped on the other side tonight. At least Aya had her spy-cams.

"Clever," Lai said. "But you're not the only one who's been clever this week."

Aya frowned. The two of them didn't even seem surprised. "This is serious, Lai. Those cylinders could take out a whole city. They're much deadlier than anything used in the Diego War."

"Maybe so, Nosey. But wait till you see what we've cooked up."

"But this could mean—" "Aya, I said wait!"

The door rippled closed, and Aya fell silent. She'd forgotten that Eden Maru was also a tech-head, a much more famous one than Ren. What had she and the Sly Girls been up to for the last week?

The three of them made their way down the stone hallways, through clutter and equipment. When they reached the cylinder room, Aya paused at the top of the stairs, letting her spy-cams take in the ranks of metal missiles.

"What's the matter, Nosey?" Eden said.

"If I can borrow the hacker for a minute, I'll show you something."

"It's not a toy," Eden warned.

"I know that. Just let me try something."

"Let her," Lai said. "This could be interesting."

Eden sighed, then handed Aya the device. It was heavier than it looked, its topside thick with controls and readouts. Ren had warned that it was one of the few machines deliberately designed to be tricky to use—no voice help, no handy instruction screen, as opaque and interface-missing as the Rusty gadgets in the city museum.

Aya made her way down the stairs and chose a cylinder at random. She pulled Ren's memory strip from her pocket and slid it into the hacker's reader.

"You wrote code for a matter hacker?" Eden snorted. "You're full of hidden talents, aren't you?"

Aya shrugged. She was tired of lying.

The hacker sprang to life, and she pressed it against the smooth metal flank of the cylinder. A hum filled the air, much lower than the sound of the hidden door. Like the rumble of a train approaching, but as smooth as a bow drawing across a cello string.

A scent filled the air. Just like when the door opened, she tasted rain and lightning.

The cylinder began to change, rolling slowly into another shape, like metal syrup poured into an invisible mold. First it transformed into a cone, its point rounded and colored pale white. Ren had said that would happen—the white part was made entirely of smart matter, a heat shield to protect it from burning up on the journey into orbit. Four stubby wings protruded from the sides, one reaching toward Aya like the pseudopod of some metal bacteria.

She stepped back, fascinated by the undulating shapes.

The wings shifted and turned, designed to use the upper atmosphere to guide the missile into the right orbit. Then the transformations came to a halt, like a liquid suddenly freezing in the cold, and the metal sat in front of them unmoving.

Maybe it was waiting for specific instructions, something beyond the simple command Ren had programmed.

"Is that it?" Lai said.

"I guess." Aya frowned. "But you saw those wings. That means it's a missile, right?"

Eden smiled. "That's what we figured. Nice proof of concept, though."

"You knew?"

Aya cried.

Lai shrugged. "Once we'd realized the shaft was a mass driver, the rest was obvious. But I'll hand it to you, Aya, we didn't think of testing the cylinders. We were looking at the other half of the equation."

"What other half?"

"Come and see, Slime Queen."

Eden took her hand firmly, pulling her toward the entrance to the mass driver. The three of them clambered along the tunnel, through both airlocks, and to the edge of the shaft. Lai pointed down into the blackness.

"Notice anything new?"

Aya’s flashlight faded before it reached the bottom. "I can't see a thing, Lai. I don't have infrared, remember?"

"Oh, right. Take a closer look then."

Lai placed one hand firmly in the middle of Aya's back, and pushed her off into the void.

Shafted

Eden Maru's crash bracelets must have been reprogrammed. They didn't jerk Aya to a halt this time, just slowed her fall, lowering her gently through the darkness.

For a panic-making moment, she wondered if Eden and Lai had discovered what she was, and were planning to leave her down here. Then she heard their giggles following her down the shaft.

"Very funny!" she called up.

Eden drifted past her, saying, "I hope you're not afraid of falling, Aya. That might be a problem."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Eden didn't answer, just grabbed Aya's feet and guided her downward till they settled on a stone floor.

Aya rubbed one sore shoulder, pointing the flashlight with her other hand. The shaft was roomier down here, and a strange contraption stood in the center. It was four long-distance hoverboards crudely bound together with strips of metal, a tangle of industrial lifters crowding the space inside them.

"You didn't find this thing down here, did you? You built it."

"Of course. It's my little sled." Eden stroked the nearest hoverboard. "Bet you can't wait to ride it."

"Ride it?

Where?"

Eden tugged on the chain around her neck, pulling a whistle from inside her hoverball rig. Puffing her cheeks, she blew a long, ear-kicking blast.

"Ouch!" Aya said, covering her ears too late. "A little warning, please?"

Lai settled to the ground next to her, giggling as she swung from her crash bracelets. An answering whistle blast came from above.

Aya looked up, and saw a tiny glimmer overhead. Moonlight.

"The opening was sealed, so they can pump the air out," Lai said. "Of course, those cylinders can blow straight through plastic. But since we're the projectile, I sent the Girls up to clear the way" "We're the…?" Aya started, then frowned. "But you said the others were taking the night off."

"I lied," Lai said with a sigh. "And lying is wrong, isn't it?"

Aya looked at the sled. "Hang on, you haven't gotten the mass driver to work, have you?"

"No way," Eden said. "With juice in those coils, the acceleration would kill us. But there's enough steel in the mass driver for hoverboards to push off. My little sled can go pretty fast."

"Us? But what happens when we reach the end?"

"Inertia happens," Lai said. "Flight happens.

Fun happens."

Aya's jaw dropped. "What about when gravity happens? We could wind up hundreds of meters in the air!"

Eden shook her head. "Oh, much higher than that, Nosey-chan."

"But how’s your little sled supposed to land? There's no grid out here. Those hoverboards will fall like rocks."

Lai smiled. "Don't you listen to the gossip about us, Nosey?"

She pointed at the floor. Aya's flashlight revealed four heavy bundles there, like backpacks full of laundry, bungee straps dangling from them.

Then Aya remembered Hire's story about the Girls. The rumors of them jumping off bridges…wearing parachutes.

Homemade parachutes, because the hole in the wall wouldn't give you real ones.

"Oh, crap."

"Just don't pull the cord before you count to thirty," Eden said. "Night like this, the wind could carry you for hours if you pop your parachute too high."

"But I don't—" "First time I did it," Lai said, "I wound up halfway to the ocean. Took me hours to hike back to the tracks."

Aya's head was throbbing. "You mean you've done this before?"

"Five times!" Lai announced, holding up a handful of outstretched fingers. "We've been practicing all week, getting it ready just for you!"

Aya stared up at the tiny glimmer of moonlight. "What do you mean, getting ready for me?"

Suddenly her crash bracelets booted, slamming her wrists against the contraption. She twisted and pulled, trying to demagnetize them, but they held firm.

"What are you doing?" she cried.

Eden lifted one of the backpacks and held it behind Aya. Its straps came to life, coiling like snakes around her thighs and shoulders.

"Just making sure your story has a brain-rattling ending," Eden said.

Lai laughed. "We wouldn't want to disappoint your fans!"

"But I'm not a …" Aya's voice trailed off, and she slumped against the sled, all out of arguments.

In a strange way, it was a relief that they'd learned the truth. "How did you know?"

"You think we're completely stupid, Nosey?" Eden said. "That we hadn't noticed you pumping me and Miki for information?"

"Or that we really believed you heard that train when it was fifty kilometers away?" Lai added.

"What was that, a hovercam posted on the tracks?"

Aya shook her head, tears stinging her eyes. "No. Moggle was hiding at the top of the shaft."

"Oh, yes, Moggle." Lai laughed. "That was the final proof. Those slam shots of you and Frizz Mizuno."

"Me and Frizz? But Moggle wasn't anywhere near us!"

"Maybe not near you. But your little friend was off in the background in one, chasing plastic missiles and war wheels while you two made manga eyes at each other. I didn't even realize it was Moggle at first, till Eden noticed those big lifters on the bottom. Then we all started wondering why that particular hovercam wasn't at the bottom of a lake where it belonged."

"Okay, I'm a kicker, all right?" Aya swallowed. "What are you going to do to me?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Eden pulled the parachute straps tighter. "We're taking you on a joyride."

Joyride

Lai and Eden strapped on backpacks of their own, then fastened the fourth parachute to the sled.

They stood across from Aya, equally spaced around the contraption, facing each other like three littlies holding hands.

Aya felt a trickle of relief. At least they were coming with her on this joyride. "How does that parachute feel, Nosey? Secure?" Aya twisted her wrists; they didn't budge. "Very." The parachutes straps were definitely borrowed from a bungee jacket; they adjusted as she moved, but stayed reassuringly tight around her arms and thighs. Still, Aya couldn't make herself forget that the jackets lifters—useless out here in the wild—had been replaced with a big wad of silk. Her life depended on a piece of fabric.

She vaguely remembered the theory: Parachutes had a much bigger surface area than you did, so you fell like a feather instead of a stone, if you didn't panic and forget to pull the cord, and if the homemade mechanism opened up without tangling "You've really done this before?"

"Twenty-seven trips up the shaft altogether," Eden said. "Only one broken leg."

"That's comforting."

"Try to relax." Lai smiled. "One thing we learned from bridge-jumping: Only the nervous ones die."

"Are you…?" Aya started, then realized she didn't want to know if Lai was kidding or not.

Maybe that was the real reason why the Girls hated to be kicked: Tricks like this could go very, very wrong.

She tugged her crash bracelets one more time, but they felt welded to the frame of the sled.

Eden was already counting down. "Three…two…one…" Aya had expected a jolt, but the launch was as smooth as any hoverboard takeoff. Soon, though, the sled was picking up speed, the copper rings blurring past them.

Aya squinted up at the tiny dot of moonlight. As the walls of the shaft shot past, a panic-making thought began to grow inside her. What if this was the Sly Girls' idea of an amusing way to get rid of her forever? What if she wasn't really wearing a parachute, but a backpack full of old laundry?

"You know why I had to lie to you, right?" she pleaded. "Can't you see how important this story is?"

"You were truth-slanting from the start, Nosey," Eden yelled over the wind. "Not trying to save the world, just trying to get famous."

Aya opened her mouth, but no words came. Whatever she'd told herself this last week, one truth remained: Her career as a Sly Girl had started as a lie.

Finally she managed, "I was mad at you for dropping Moggle."

"That was your choice," Lai said.

"Okay, I lied! But this is still important. People need to know about it."

Neither of them answered. The wind had torn her words away.

"This weapon could reach anywhere in the world!" she cried. "You have to let me—" "Here we go!" Lai screamed.

Suddenly the world grew bright…they'd burst out into moonlight! Aya's ears popped, her head ringing. She caught a split-second glimpse of cheering Girls on the mountaintop, but they streaked past in an instant, the whole horizon expanding around her.

"How's this for eye-kicking?" Lai yelled, her insane smile as radiant as any pretty's. "I hope you brought spy-cams!"

Aya squinted against the wind, astonished at how high they were climbing. Above them she saw a wisp of white catching the moonlight. It seemed to dissolve as they approached, turning to vague tendrils on every side.

She swallowed, looking around. They were actually climbing through the lowest clouds The view was suddenly huge—an entire mountain range stretched around them, the mag-lev line cutting through it like a seam of silver.

Lai disconnected one hand and pointed down at the glimmer of solar panels on either side of the tracks. "That's where the mass driver gets its power, steals it from the mag-lev's solar array. Just pause all the trains, and you've got enough juice to toss a cylinder every minute."

Aya angled the spy-cam on her left shoulder to get the shot. This sequence would be more amazing than anything so far, as long as her parachute actually worked Their ascent was slowing, the sky turning lazily overhead as the sled began to spin. A momentary dizziness passed over her.

"You're really going to let me kick this?" she asked.

"Of course," Eden said.

"But you'll never be able to come here again."

Lai laughed. "We Sly Girls happen to like the world, lucky for you. We may not be merit-grubbers, but death machines are bad for tricks!"

Aya looked down at the city lights on the horizon, trying to imagine countless tons of steel, aerodynamically shaped and precisely targeted, streaking from the outer reaches of the atmosphere.

Something shifted in her stomach. Suddenly, the sky seemed still around them except for the slow spin of the sled.

The wind had died completely.

"Um, are we falling now?"

"We're going down," Eden said. "But you're about to learn a new definition of falling, Aya-chan."

"Oh." Her stomach rebelled again, as if something were trying to push its way out—something that didn't want to be several kilometers up in the air with nothing but a backpack full of silk, two crazy people, and four useless hoverboards for company.

"Pay attention now, Aya," Eden shouted. "When you land, hike back to the mag-lev line, then call for a hoverboard with your bracelets. We left one waiting for you by the tracks."

Aya nodded, trying to stay focused. This was the brain-kicking ending her story needed, and she had only a few more seconds to wrap up loose threads.

"So what will you do, now that you're going to be famous?"

"We're leaving the city tonight," Lai said. The wind was building again, her hair streaming straight up, making her look even more deranged than usual. "We'll change our faces. That's why we gave you this ride, to give ourselves a head start."

Aya found she still couldn't believe it. "But don't you realize how much face you'll get for uncovering this? How many merits?"

"It's going to stir up more than merits." Lai pulled one bracelet free, reached across the sled, and took Aya's hand in a firm grip. "You be careful."

"Don't worry. I'll count to thirty."

"No, I mean be careful after you kick this."

The sled was starting to spin faster as it fell, the sky and earth twisting around her. "Careful with what?"

"With everything and everyone!" Lai shouted over the wind. "Whoever built this monstrosity is dangerous!"

The sled was starting to tip now, rolling onto its side, the spin turning into a wild tumble.

"Speaking of dangerous, shouldn't we get off?" Aya asked, twisting at her crash bracelets.

"Just be careful!" Lai yelled. "And enjoy your fame!"

She planted a boot on Aya's chest, and shoved her away Aya spun head over heels away from the sled, her breath knocked out of her. She was suddenly all alone, falling helplessly through the air. Even if it was just a bunch of useless hoverboards, at least she'd had something to cling to a moment ago.

Now it was just her and the rushing air.

Spreading out her arms, Aya tried to get control of her fall. She was supposed to count to thirty before pulling the cord. But was that from the top of the climb … or from when Lai had pushed her off?

And how many seconds had already passed?

Gradually Aya's descent steadied. But her eyes were streaming from the wind, the Earth a dark blur beneath her. If she popped the parachute too soon, she had no idea how far the wind might carry her.

She looked frantically around for the others and saw them ten meters away, clinging to the sled, Eden reaching inside to pull its chute cord. The two kicked away from it, and a rippling stream of fabric burst from the top.

The chute blossomed into shape, and the whole contraption shot upward into the darkness away from Lai and Eden.

The Earth below was growing visibly—Aya could see the Sly Girls now, their flashlights a circle around the mass driver's mouth.

Lai and Eden were a dozen meters away, still screaming their heads off, reveling in every second of their final jump. Aya realized that waiting for them to pull their cords might not be the best idea.

She stared down at the spinning Earth. It was growing faster now, trees and rocks and bushes shimmering into focus. She imagined herself hitting at full speed And pulled the cord.

The parachute bloomed over her head, fluttering for a moment, then snapping into shape with an ear-kicking pop.

The straps jerked her upright, like a puppet yanked from the floor by its strings.

A brief moment of violence…then suddenly the air was still around her.

The moon glowed hazily through translucent silk, and Aya could see the rectangular outlines of silk sheets and pillowcases that the Girls had sewn together. The mountainous panorama around her steadied.

Lai and Eden had already zoomed past, tendrils of their screams trailing behind. They dropped farther and farther away, arms outstretched as if rushing to embrace the mountain below.

Were they trying to kill themselves?

At the last second, chutes blossomed from their packs, pouring out in long streams, then billowing into shape.

Lai and Eden were still moving fast, though. The wind carried them sideways across the top of the mountain, the other Sly Girls scrambling behind. They coasted for a moment a few meters high, then dropped again, boots scraping through the dust and scrub, skidding to ungainly halts.

The other Girls reached them, swarming to gather the crumpled folds of their parachutes.

But Aya was still more than a hundred meters up. The wind seemed to strengthen, pulling her away from the opening of the mass driver. She passed over Lai and Eden, the parachute carrying her like a silken sail. The mountains edge slipped past to reveal the valley below, and Aya realized she still had a very long way to fall.

This was why they'd picked such a windy night. It would be long minutes before she touched down, maybe hours before she could hike back to the mag-lev tracks. Plenty of time for them to make their own escape before she could even think of kicking the story.

Aya fixed her gaze on the bright silver streak of the mag-lev line. She swung her feet and pulled on the straps, trying to guide herself toward the tracks. But the parachute puffed up overhead, caught by another updraft.

It was going to be a long hike. For the moment, though, there was nothing to do but let her spy-cams take in the scenery and—slowly, slowly—fall.

Lai's final warning echoed in her ears, but Aya wasn't afraid. Once the story went to feed, none of this was her problem. Since the Diego War, the world had very strict rules about stockpiled weapons.

The Global Concord Committee would swoop down within hours, pulling the mountain apart.

Someone was in big trouble.

But not Aya Fuse. Her biggest problem now was what to wear to Nana Love's Thousand Faces Party. Because with an ending like this, the City Killer story was going to make her that famous.

Maybe for the rest of her life.

Kicking It

"You are not wearing that!"

"Why not?" Aya twisted the ringlets in her hair, which was puffed up like a manga-head's and dyed bright purple. Her dress was spattered with sparkle lights, and her shoes were variable-friction platforms—she'd skidded into Hire's apartment like the floor was made of ice. She took two handfuls of the dress and spread it out, looking down at herself. "This outfit is totally kick!"

"Maybe if you're fifteen," Hire muttered.

Aya rolled her eyes. "Well, I happen to be fifteen. And you can't tell me how to dress for this party. My story's the whole reason we're going!"

"Yeah, but I'm the one with the invitation, remember? You're just tagging along."

"For now," Aya said softly.

Tonight wasn't the party—the Thousand Faces was still a week away—this was just a monthly tech-head bash. But Ren had said Aya should be there tonight when her City Killer story kicked. Full of physics-heads and mag-lev spotters, the bash would spawn the interviews, feed wars, and rampant rekicking that every big story demanded.

"Whatever, Aya-chan. Just please don't visit Mom and Dad till those flash tattoos fade."

Aya stuck her tongue out at him, which made the spirals on her cheeks spin. The temporary tattoos still tickled when they moved, and she let out a giggle.

"Ren Machino," Hiro told the room, then asked, "Where are you?"

"Almost there," he pinged back.

"Just wait downstairs. We're almost out the door."

"What's the rush?" Ren sounded amused. "City Killer doesn't kick for an hour."

"I know. I've been staring at the clock all night."

"Clock-staring makes him grumpy," Aya cut in, spinning in place on her platforms. "It's my story, you know, and you don't see me getting all shaky."

Hiro sighed. "She refused to hide the sled sequence in the background layer, Ren. It's going to give my parents brain damage."

"And Hiro keeps forgetting whose story this is!" Aya said. "But don't worry. I keep reminding him."

Ren's laughter boomed. "I'll remind him too, Aya-chan!"

Hiro snorted, cut the connection with a snap of his fingers, and turned the giant wallscreen into a mirror. He'd borrowed one of their fathers old formal jackets: black spider silk and real bamboo buttons.

He didn't look half bad.

Aya skated across the room on her platforms, watching her dress trail sparkles in the wallscreen, Moggle tracking the motion. She'd paid for the dress with Hire's reputation, but paying him back was going to be a cinch.

She didn't get why Hire was so nervous. Tonight felt long overdue to Aya, more real than all the merit-grubbing and obscurity of her life so far. All that had merely been preparation for this … for fame.

Best of all, Frizz was coming to the bash. He still felt bad about the Slime Queen story, but tonight would banish all that awkwardness. Though Frizz didn't know it yet, Aya and he were finally going to be face-equal, not to mention headed to the Thousand Faces Party together next week.

"Stop skating around like that!" Hiro said. "You look like an ugly about to kick some pictures of your cat!"

She skidded to a halt. "Oh, no!"

"What? Did you forget an edit?"

"No, it's just that…maybe this story would be better with a cat!"

Hiro finally cracked a smile, then turned back to the mirror. "Actually, it's pretty much perfect, Aya-chan. Even if it does give Mom and Dad a heart attack."

"Perfect?" she asked, hoping Moggle was getting this. "Really?"

"Really." He shrugged. "If it wasn't, I wouldn't be rekicking it. Want to see something?"

He flicked his finger, and the screen changed—a schematic of an apartment. It was huge, with walk-in closets and smart-matter windows, and a hole in the wall that could grind out almost anything.

"What's that?" she asked.

"An apartment in Shuffle Mansion. It just opened up."

Aya blinked. Shuffle Mansion was where the absolute biggest faces in the city lived. It had the best views and the strongest privacy, and even its walls were profoundly status-conscious. Every few weeks they moved a little, giving the mansion its name, every square centimeter reflecting the latest updates in the face ranks.

"Shuffle Mansion? You think I'll be that famous?"

He shrugged again. "You may have stopped a war, Aya-chan. That means merits on top of fame.

Ready to go?"

Aya felt heat on her cheeks, not just from the new flash tattoos. She glanced into the wallscreen one last time and gestured, changing the view back to her profile. Tonight, somehow, she almost looked like a pretty. Even her nose seemed perfect.

She nodded. "Yeah, I'm totally ready."

It was time.

Ten hovercams were drifting overhead, and dozens more waited over the mansion's steps. Their lenses flickered with torchlight as they swiveled to focus on Hiro, Aya, and Ren. Everyone knew that Hiro Fuse's new story was going up tonight, and rumors were flying that it was even bigger than immortality. What nobody knew was that the story was blank except for a rekick to his little sister's feed.

Piggybacking on Hiro's face rank annoyed Aya, but she had to admit it was the quickest way to spread the news.

As they reached the mansion's steps, she pushed her dress's sparkling into overdrive.

"Don't run down your batteries," Ren whispered, smiling for the cams.

"But Hiro said I needed to make a big entrance!" Her own smile faltered a little as she climbed the stairs. Her right ankle was still sprained from being dragged across rocks and brush by that stupid parachute. "Maybe I shouldn't have worn this," she mumbled.

"You look fantastic," Hiro said. "Just keep the friction on those shoes turned up—falling on your face is the wrong kind of famous-making."

"And remember," Ren added quietly "one hour from now, you'll have the biggest face in the room."

Aya glanced nervously at Hiro, and he took her hand.

She checked her eyescreen: The average face rank of the party was already at two thousand, much higher than the one she'd crashed ten days ago. And that number would only climb as the big faces arrived, the popular tech-kickers who could explain mass drivers in terms that extras could understand.

Inside, the air was so thick with hovercams that Aya wondered how any of them could get a clear shot. Whole swarms moved together, like minnows in an overcrowded fish tank. Moggle joined the dance overhead, looking oversize and clumsy amid the finger-size cams.

The funny thing was, she'd watched a million parties like this on the feeds, and she'd never once noticed all the hovercams. But now their flitting forms were as distracting as mosquitoes in the rainy season.

But she could understand why they were here. The surge-monkeys alone were eye-boggling.

Dozens of new skin textures abounded: fur, scales, strange colors, and translucent membranes—even a stony crust, as if living statues had joined the party. Aya spotted face-types based on animals, historical figures, and she-didn't-know-what, all vying for the attention of the swarming cams.

With Nana Love's party only a week away, everyone was pulling out all the stops, trying to eye-kick their way into the top one thousand.

Somehow, though, none of the surge-monkeys here was as unnerving as the figures she and Miki had glimpsed in the mag-lev tunnel. This party was all about fashion and eye-kicks, but those freaks were something…inhuman.

She took a deep breath, banishing body mods from her mind. Not everyone here was a surge-monkey. There were also the geniuses: math-heads playing with puzzle cubes and airscreen mazes, science cliques in lab wear, all blended together in a tech-kicker's paradise.

Aya scanned the crowd for Frizz, but extraordinary sights kept arresting her gaze.

"Look at those pixel-skins!" she cried. Across the room a couple stood half naked, blurry images moving across their backs. Somehow they were changing their skin cells' colors fast enough to show a feed channel, like chameleon lizards clinging to a wall screen.

"It's rude to point," Ren said. "And that's old news. Check out those four in the corner."

Aya followed his gaze. "What do you mean? I don't see anyone."

"Exactly. That's the latest generation of pixilated skin— almost perfect camouflage."

"Very funny, Ren. You're totally full of…" Her voice trailed off. The corner had just moved, a barely perceptible shift, like a wrinkle passing through the wallpaper. The motion left a shape in her vision—a human body. She whispered, "Moggle, are you getting that?"

"Big deal," Hiro said. "Octopuses can do the same thing."

"That's where the idea came from," Ren said. "Octopus skin cells have these little bags of pigment inside, which they control with—" "Hang on," Aya interrupted. "Why can't we see their clothes?"

Hiro chuckled, and Ren said, "What clothes?"

Aya's eyes widened. "Oh. That's…interesting."

"One problem, though," Hiro said thoughtfully. "Isn't invisibility the opposite of fame?"

"Hiro!" Ren hissed. "Nameless One Alert!"

Aya looked up to see Toshi Banana making his way across the room, his famous shark-shaped hovercam slicing through the air overhead. An entourage of wannabe kickers and fame groupies trailed in his wake.

"What's he doing here?" Hiro said. "He's way too famous for this party, and he hates tech-heads!"

"And, um, is he coming toward us?" Aya asked softly.

"No way," Hiro said.

But Toshi's wide-shouldered frame was headed straight at them, shoving his way between a leopard-pelted surge-monkey and a bunch of manga-heads.

The entourage swept to a halt around the three of them, a small armada of hovercams sliding into place overhead. Aya suddenly remembered all the slam interviews Toshi had pulled over the years—he was an expert at making his opponents look like idiots.

"Hiro Fuse? Is that you?" Toshi's voice sounded just liked it did on his feed: low and gravelly, threatening to shift into outrage at any moment. Aya noticed that he didn't bother to bow.

"Um…," Hiro began.

"Not sure? Well í think it's you, and I'm seldom wrong." Toshi chuckled, and his groupies broke into laughter.

"Loved your immortality story."

"Oh, thank you, Toshi-sensei." Hiro cleared his throat. "I appreciate that."

Aya rolled her eyes. One compliment from the Nameless One, and Hiro was already face-grubbing.

"Cloned hearts! Disgusting!" Toshi glanced back at the leopard girl and rolled his eyes. "Some people love to pervert the natural order, eh?"

"You mean those crumblies?" Hiro shrugged. "I think they were just afraid to die."

"Fear, exactly! That's what the mind-rain has given us."

"You keep slamming the mind-rain," Ren said. "So why not go back to being a bubblehead?"

Toshi turned his huge frame and sized Ren up. "Do I know you?"

Ren bowed a fraction of a degree. "I doubt it."

"Well, contrary to popular belief, not everyone was a bubblehead back in the Prettytime. Some people had to run the city." Toshi turned back to Hiro. "Your face rank seems to have slipped since that story, Hiro-chan. Maybe it's the company you're keeping."

"Hey!" Aya cried, doing a little frictionless spin. "His company is standing right here!"

Toshi looked down at her. "An extra? Dating downward, Hiro-chan?"

"Dating? That's my …," Hiro started, but under the stares of Toshi's entourage, his voice faded.

The Nameless One exhaled a slow breath, his gaze drifting over Hiro's shoulder, as if looking for someone more important. "Well if your effort tonight is interesting, perhaps you can guest on my feed. It might help you break into the big leagues."

"Forget it!" Aya said. "After tonight, we'll both be a zillion times famouser than you!"

The entourage's hovercams swiveled, all suddenly focusing on Aya. Toshi stared down at her like he'd found a cockroach between his chopsticks.

"Is this ugly in your story, Hiro-chan? If so, I don't get it."

As Aya started to reply, a troubling realization crossed her mind. To mind-rain slammers like the Nameless One, the city killer would be more evidence that humanity threatened the planet, just more proof that everyone had to be controlled again.

With his dozen hovercams, Toshi was already gathering material to spin her story his way. He'd already used Hiro's immortality kick to stir up fear of overpopulation. How much more could he do with a city killer!

"Don't worry, Toshichan

," Ren said. "You'll get it soon enough. Everyone will." He turned to Aya. "Let's kick it early. Let's kick it now."

"Really?"

"Good idea, Ren," Hiro said. "A little surprise for everyone."

Aya looked up at the Nameless One. Anything that threw him off balance was fine with her. She bowed. "Excuse us. We have something important to do."

He started to sputter a reply, but the three of them were already walking away. Unlock codes tumbled across Aya's eyescreen, and Hire's fingers were already twitching. She shot a quick ping to Frizz, just to make sure he caught the story the first time around.

Hiro's hands settled, and he turned to her. "Ready, little sister?"

She nodded slowly, and felt her flash tattoos spinning. "Ready."

"Kick in three…two…one …" They mouthed their final codes together, then stared at each other.

The City Killer story was on the feeds.

Ren pushed straight through the crowd, stepping into the middle of the room beside a manga-head with meter-tall sparkling hair. He clapped his hands together twice.

"Ladies and gentlemen, a brief announcement!" He paused for a moment while the chatter settled down. Even the Reputation Bombers were silenced by his audaciousness, but Ren looked unashamed, fixing everyone with his gaze.

He gave the room a low bow.

"Forgive me for interrupting, but Hiro and Aya Fuse's new story is up and running. And it concerns something you may be interested in … the end of the world!"

Truth-Slanting

Fifteen minutes later, it was starting to build.

Of course, most of the partygoers had gone back to their conversations after Ren's announcement. A few handhelds flickered, but the mansions big public wallscreen stayed dark. Why interrupt a bash to watch one feed out of a million? Especially once it turned out to be Hiro Fuse's little sister kicking tonight, and not Mr. Big Face himself.

In one corner, Toshi Banana was making a show of ignoring the rest of the party, telling jokes to his entourage and basking in their laughter. But Aya noticed one of his groupies lost in her eyescreen. As the story reached the truth about the city killer, she rose on her tiptoes to whisper in the Nameless One's ear, and a thoughtful look crossed his face.

Out in the city it was building faster—friends pinging friends, feeds rekicking it, the story spreading like a brushfire in the dry season. Aya watched her feed ratings slowly climb, her face rank crawling upward, already back under a hundred thousand.

"Just caught a ping-blast on the wardens' feed," Ren said. Both his eyescreens were on, his expression lost in scribbles of light. "They're scrambling hovercars."

Aya smiled. Like a good little citizen, she'd put a security flag on the story to make sure the city government watched it right away They'd have wardens out there tonight, securing the site from thrill-seekers and paparazzi, making sure nobody got smashed into mag-lev paste. Of course, this wasn't just about personal safety— by tomorrow, the Global Concord Committee's suborbitals would no doubt be headed here from every continent.

Staring into his eyescreens, Ren burst out laughing. "This is hilarious! Gamma Matsui is slamming you: She thinks you faked the sled footage! She says you couldn't have stayed up in the air that long—so the whole story's a hoax."

Aya's jaw dropped open. "That's so mean! What does she know, anyway?"

"It doesn't matter what she knows, Aya," Ren said. "What matters is that she's the most famous kicker to notice you so far."

Aya growled in frustration, but it was true: Her feed ratings had just bumped again. She brought up Gamma on her eyescreen, struggling to hear over the music and babble of the party.

"I'd kill for your wallscreen right now, Hiro," she said, her eyes suddenly itching for twenty feeds to follow the story's spread. "Why did I let you guys talk me into coming here?"

Ren placed a hand on Aya's shoulder, giving her a glass. "Hush, and drink some champagne. See that extra-looking woman playing with the puzzle cube? She can calculate the sled's terminal velocity off the top of her head, just by watching. When it comes to physics, she'll eat Gamma for breakfast.

That's why we're here."

"But she's not even watching my feed!" Aya cried. "Should I go explain to her?"

"Don't you dare," Hiro said. "No one else is talking about hoaxes yet. Don't poke a dead fire."

Aya groaned, putting the champagne aside. Sometimes, the hardest thing was doing nothing.

"Well, there's some good news," Hiro said. "The Nameless One's leaving."

Aya looked up in time to catch Toshi Banana and his entourage heading out the door. They looked like they were in a hurry.

Ren chuckled. "Probably wants to get back to his wall-screens and start slamming you before this gets too big."

"Shouldn't we be slamming him first?" Aya asked.

Ren blinked away his eyescreen squiggles and turned to face her. "We don't need to. This is a city killer, remember? It's way too big for that bubblehead to make his own."

Five minutes later the story went massive, ballooning out across the feeds, reaching past the city interface into the global network. It seemed to happen all at once, in one of those explosions of kick that was inexplicable—or at least way too fast for Aya's little eyescreen to make sense of.

Here at the party people were starting to glance in her direction, aware that something big was roiling the city interface. They pulled out handhelds, gathering in corners to watch together.

"So far so good," Hiro announced. "Your face rank just hit the top ten thousand. You're beating tonight's Reputation Bomber!"

"Glad to hear that." She flinched—her alert tone had just gone crazy, like a tiny jackhammer ringing a bell in her ear. "Something's wrong with my eyescreen!"

"Nothing's wrong, Aya," Ren said. "Those are pings rolling in. Better turn off your sound."

She squeezed her fists shut, silencing the noise, then rubbed her ear. "Ouch. Being famous is so brain-shattering!"

"Aya Fuse, complaining about fame?" someone said. "Talk about brain-shattering."

Aya turned to find Frizz standing there, huge-eyed, beautiful, and grinning.

"Frizz!" she cried, gathering him into a hug. "Did you see my story?"

"Of course." He squeezed her hard, then took a step backward and bowed to Hiro and Ren.

"Frizz Mizuno."

Hiro smirked as he returned the introduction. "So you're the famous Slime King?"

"And you're Aya's famous older brother," Frizz said, then frowned. "But probably not so famous anymore, compared to her."

Hiro's eyes widened, and Aya grabbed his arm.

"Go do something else, Hiro," she commanded. Radical Honesty was anxiety-making enough without her older brother around.

Smiling, Ren dragged Hiro away toward a group of kickers waiting for interviews.

"I've only got a minute, Frizz. I'm supposed to answer questions soon. But I'm glad you came!"

"I missed you." He stepped closer, his eyes locked on hers. "I never got to say sorry in person for getting you slammed."

Aya looked away, trembling a little under his manga gaze. "It wasn't your fault, Frizz—I should have been more careful. And being Slime Queen was kind of… interesting."

"After tonight they won't call you that anymore." He took her arm. "But I never thought of you as slimy."

She dared his gaze again, speaking too softly for the buzzing hovercams to hear. "But remember what you said that day? That you weren't sure what kind of person I was? Do you see now why I had to lie to get this story?"

It was Frizz who looked away this time. "It sounded awful, betraying friends like that. But I get it now." He sighed. "I guess sometimes you have to lie to find the truth."

He looked so sad saying those words that Aya wrapped her arms around him again, squeezing tight. She didn't care how many hovercams were watching, or how many slammer feeds compared her ugliness to Frizz's beauty.

"But I'll never lie to you, Frizz." She felt his muscles tighten.

"Then tell me one thing," he said.

"Anything."

"If you hadn't found the city killer, if this story was just about the Sly Girls and their mag-lev surfing, would you have kicked it anyway?"

Aya pulled away. Frizz wasn't stupid; he'd noticed that her truth-slanting had started long before she'd known about the city killer.

But would she have betrayed them, just to get famous? Like Miki had said, surfing through the wild had been so brain-expanding, and the more time Aya had spent with them, the more the Sly Girls had started to feel like friends. She could have changed her mind…maybe.

Was it lying if you weren't certain about the truth?

She cleared her throat. "When I joined the Sly Girls, I was just looking for a story any story. But after talking to you that day, I was starting to wonder."

He nodded. "So you'd already changed your mind?"

Aya looked up into his manga eyes—he wanted to believe her. It would be so easy just to agree.

And why make Frizz sad? It wasn't like she could ever be incognito again. After tonight everyone would know Aya Fuse was a kicker—no more lying for stories. So what did it matter if she was a truth-slanting Slime Queen just one last time?

"It all happened so fast," she said. "First it was just tricks, then suddenly the whole world was at stake." She looked away. "But no … I couldn't have done that to them."

Frizz pulled her close again. "That's a relief."

Aya squeezed her eyes shut, hiding from her own doubts. Frizz had believed her, just like that.

Maybe it wasn't such a stretch—the whole question was hypothetical, after all.

It would be crazy to throw Frizz away forever, when the price of keeping him was one little stretch of the truth.

"Um, Aya?" Frizz whispered in her ear. "I think your brother wants you."

She grasped him tighter. "I don't care."

"Actually, it's not just Hiro. It's sort of… lots of people."

Aya sighed and pulled away, glancing over his shoulder. When she saw them all, her jaw dropped open.

The feeding frenzy had begun.

Feeding Frenzy

There were dozens of people waiting. Ren was arranging them on the mansion's main staircase, with the most famous closest to the bottom. About half were tech-heads with crazy surge and smart-matter clothes, the rest looking out of place here at the bash—ego-kickers, newsies, a handful of city officials. Some big faces, some not.

But all of them were here to see her.

Hiro took Aya's arm and gently propelled her toward an empty spot at the bottom of the stairs.

Several hundred hovercams were focused on her now, in constant motion as they jostled for the best angles, shadowing her every step. Aya felt strangely small under their collective gaze, as insignificant as that first night she'd surfed into the wild.

But this was the opposite of obscurity, she reminded herself. This was what she'd always wanted—for people to watch her, to pay attention to every word she said.

"Eyescreen off," Hiro whispered. "You'll need your whole brain for this."

Aya nodded and flexed her ring finger. But as she stared up at the attentive faces before her, all suddenly crystal clear, the answers she'd practiced the night before started flying from her head.

"Um, this is kind of paralyzing," she said softly.

Hiro squeezed her arm. "I'll be right here."

She nodded and cleared her throat. "Okay, lets start."

The questions came hard and fast.

"How did you find the Sly Girls, Aya?"

"Just lucky, I guess. I just saw them surfing one night, and tracked them down at a party like this one."

"Why are some shots in the background layer altered?"

Aya cleared her throat, wondering how anyone had watched all those hours so quickly. "The Sly Girls wanted anonymity. So I scrubbed a few faces. That's all."

"You're not hiding anyone else?"

"Like who?"

"The builders of the mass driver."

"Of course not!"

"So you don't know anything about them?"

Aya paused, wishing she'd mentioned the inhuman-looking figures in her story. But it was such a crazy claim, and she didn't have a single shot to back it up. Alien builders would be a million times more implausible if she brought them up now.

"Why would I protect them?

Whoever built the city killer is crazy. Or did you miss the city-killing part?"

"Isn't that title a little hype-making, Aya?" another kicker asked. "A few tons of falling steel can't really destroy a city, can it?"

Aya smiled. Ren had made sure she was ready for this one. "At reentry velocities, it only takes a small projectile to knock out a hoverstrut-supported building. So if a cylinder splits into thousands of pieces…well, you do the math. Or better yet, ask that woman over there to do it. The one with the puzzle cube."

"Couldn't we stop the cylinders? Like the Rusties used to shoot down rockets?"

She'd looked this one up herself. "The Rusties never got very good at intercepting city killers—except in their own propaganda. And rockets trail big plumes of smoke. Slivers of metal would be tiny and invisible."

"Why do you think they left the mountain empty?"

"Ren Machino, who helped me with all this, thinks the mass driver was designed to be completely automatic."

"Do you think there could be more of these things in the world?"

She blinked. "I sure hope not."

"With the metal shortage going on, where do you think they got all that steel?"

"I have no idea."

"What made you want to be a kicker, Aya?"

"Um …" She paused, unready for this one, though Hiro had warned her that there was always some bubble-head asking personal questions, no matter how important a story was. "After the mind-rain I was having trouble figuring out the world. And telling other peoples stories is a good way to do that."

The kicker smiled. "Isn't that the same answer your big brother always gives?"

"Oh, crap … no comment," Aya said. At the sound of their laughter, she smiled and finally relaxed a little.

"What kind of face do you want when you turn sixteen?" a fashion-kicker shouted from the back.

"I don't know yet. I'm sort of partial to manga-heads."

"So we noticed, Slime Queen!"

"Okay. No comment again."

"Do you worry that you're glorifying dangerous tricks, Aya?"

She shrugged. "I'm just telling the truth about the world."

"But you didn't tell the truth to the Sly Girls…" Aya glanced at Frizz and said, "Sometimes you have to lie to find the truth."

"Why do you think a big face like Eden Maru hangs out with the Sly Girls?"

Aya shrugged. "Like she said in that interview: to get away from you guys."

"Do you think our city built the mass driver?" someone in the back row asked—one of Toshi Banana's groupies, Aya realized.

"Why would we do that?"

"We're the closest city to the mountain. Wouldn't that make you a traitor?"

"Make me a what?"

"What if we need the mass driver to defend ourselves?"

She looked at Hiro, who said, "If this is about defending us, then shouldn't we knew about it?"

"So, Hiro?" a tech-kicker interrupted. "What's it like to be upstaged by your little sister?"

"Pretty vex-making," Hiro said, then smiled. "But much better than watching my mansion getting bombed."

The questions kept coming: Aya's childhood, her favorite kicker, plans for follow-up stories.

Endless talk about math and missiles, Sly Girls and spy-cams, parachutes and paparazzi. Every time one kicker peeled off to prepare their story for the feeds, another joined the fray, and soon the questions began to repeat. Aya tried to come up with fresh answers, but eventually found herself mouthing the same words again and again.

Finally Frizz dragged her away into a corner, promising she'd be back soon. Hiro kept going without losing a beat.

"Water," she croaked.

Frizz thrust a glass into her hand, and Aya drank deep.

"Thanks," she gasped when it was empty, taking a look around. The air was thick with hovercams pointed at her, but people were keeping their distance, trying not to stare. For the first time in her life, a reputation bubble had formed around Aya.

On the other side of the room, a bunch of tech-heads had gathered at the mansions big public wallscreen, watching Ren demonstrate the grim math of ballistic weapons and collapsing buildings. For a moment she was alone with Frizz.

"How'd I do?" she asked softly.

"Amazing." He grinned. "So what does it feel like, being famous?"

She groaned, remembering her radical stupidity the last time they'd been together. "Very funny."

"No really," he said, "what's it like hanging out with someone as face-missing as me?"

"Cut it out! What happened to your radical honesty?"

"Teasing isn't lying," Frizz argued. "And besides, I'm really wondering how you see me now."

Aya rolled her eyes. "But it's not like you're some extra. There's no difference in ambition between us!"

"Yes there is."

"What do you mean?"

"You went for an hour without checking your face rank?" He laughed. "That's pretty jaw-dropping. Take a guess, before I blurt it out."

Aya swallowed. She'd hardly breathed since the story'd kicked, much less tracked her face rank.

And somehow she was afraid to boot her eyescreen and check. "You mean I'm more famous than you?

Am I under a thousand?"

"Don't be brain-missing, Aya! Immortal crumblies got your brother under a thousand. This is a city killer! Take a real guess."

Aya shrugged, not wanting to sound ego-kicking. "Um, five hundred?"

"Still brain-missing!" A pained expression twisted Frizz's face. "Not telling you is killing me."

"Then tell me!" Aya cried.

"You're the seventeenth-most-famous person in the city!" Frizz spat out, then rubbed his temples.

"Ouch. That hurt."

Aya stared at him—even if Frizz couldn't lie, he had to be mistaken. "Seventeen?"

"Nana Love kicked you."

"No way!" Aya cried. "What does she care about Rusty weapons?"

"Nana-chan cares about all humanity." He shrugged. "Which is nice of her. Maybe she pinged you."

"No way!" Aya turned her eyescreen on, heart pounding as it came to life. "You really think so?"

"Probably. She pinged me when I hit the top thousand."

Aya's interface appeared, stuffed with an enormous stack of pings, tens of thousands of them stretching off into the invisible distance. She'd never have time to read them all!

"You should see yourself, Aya," Frizz said, laughing. "You look like a littlie who just ate too much ice cream."

"Too much is right. You should see all these messages!" She remembered Hire's trick after big stories, when he was always ping-bashed with tips. Her fingers began to twitch. "Hang on, let me sort them by face rank. Pings from extras go to the bottom and the important ones rise to the top. If Nana-chan really is in here, she'll be right at the whoa."

There were so many pings, Aya could actually see them moving, the city interface straining as it checked each one against the constantly updating face ranks. Gradually a few bubbled to the top—big-face kickers, politicians, a note of thanks from the Good Citizen Committee "I am totally going to score some merits out of this," she murmured. "Shuffle Mansion, here I come."

Then she saw it … a glowing ping rising on angel's wings.

"Oh, Frizz. You were right…Nana-chan was watching!"

He laughed. "I told you so!"

Aya was about to open it, but suddenly the ping slid down. She stared at the new message in disbelief. It carried no decoration at all, its black text as bare as an automatic reply.

"Um, Frizz, there's another one above it."

"Another what?"

"I think someone more famous than Nana Love just pinged me."

"But there isn't anyone who's…except …" Frizz let out a strangled sound. "You mean Tally Youngblood just pinged you?"

Aya nodded slowly. It was right there, painted in laser light on her eyeball. A ping from the world's most famous person—the girl who'd made the mind-rain fall. The name prayed to by the Youngblood cults every morning, cursed by Toshi Banana as he slammed the latest mind-rain clique, repeated countless times whenever the story of the Diego War was taught to littlies "How could she know so fast?" Aya murmured. "Isn't she hiding in the wild somewhere?"

"The story went global two hours ago," Frizz said. "She must have friends checking the feeds for her."

"But since when does Tally Youngblood just ping people?" Saying the name made her throat go dry again.

"Who cares?

Open it!"

Aya twitched her finger, and the ping expanded. It was tagged by the global interface, guaranteed authentic. But as she read the message, Aya wondered if Tally's English was confusing her somehow.

"What does it say?" Frizz cried.

"It's only seven words."

"What words? 'Thanks'? 'Congratulations'? 'Hello'?"

"No, Frizz. It says, 'Run and hide. We're on our way.'"

Pinned

"This is stupid," Hiro hissed. "We should go back to the party. Running off like this is making us look like idiots!"

"You're telling me to ignore Tally Youngblood?" Aya said. "Her ping said run and hide!"

"You call this hiding?" Ren asked.

Aya glanced into the sky. A hundred or so hovercams had trailed them out of the party, probably wondering why the seventeenth-most-famous person in the city had suddenly abandoned her first interview ever. The swarm was silhouetted against the night sky, a host of lenses glinting down at them like the eyes of predators.

"That's a good point," Frizz said. "We have to find somewhere private."

"I'm trying."

Aya sighed.

The four of them had left the bash by a side door and headed randomly across a darkened baseball field. Safety fireworks were still shooting up from the mansion's roof. Flickering across the grass, they sent Aya's huge, jittering shadow stretching out in front of her.

She remembered Lai's last warning on the sled: "Whoever built this monstrosity is dangerous."

"What's the point of privacy?" Hiro snapped. "If you think someone's coming after you, shouldn't we stay where everyone can see us?"

Aya came to a halt, stopping so quickly that Moggle bumped her from behind. Maybe the safest place was in full view. No one would dare do anything at a crowded party— or with a hundred hovercams directly overhead, for that matter.

She sighed. "I guess we could go back in."

"Exactly," Hiro cried. "We can kick Tally Youngblood's ping. If everyone finds out she's on her way here, it'll be massive!"

Frizz cleared his throat. "This probably isn't the best time to worry about face ranks, Hiro."

"This isn't about face ranks, you bubblehead!"

"Technically speaking, I'm not a bubblehead," Frizz said calmly. "Which is why I'm not shouting our plans where everyone can hear them.'" Aya glanced up. There was still a fair-size reputation bubble around her, but a few cams were close enough to have caught Hiro's outburst.

"Whatever we do, let's keep our voices down," she said. "Somehow, I don't think Tally-sama wants the whole city to know she's coming."

Ren shook his head. "She's not from here, Aya, so she doesn't understand how the reputation economy works. About half a million people are watching right now. Your fame will protect us."

"You can't hide, Aya," Hiro said. "Everyone knows exactly where you are. Wasn't that the point of tonight?"

Frizz frowned, looking at her. "I thought the point of tonight was to save the world."

Aya sighed. "There may have been several points, okay? Everyone just be quiet for a second while I think!"

The other three fell silent. Aya stood there, feeling their eyes on her, and the lenses of a hundred hovercams, and another half a million people watching through them. Even Moggle was staring at her.

It wasn't the best spot for thinking.

Frizz drew closer, putting an arm around her shoulder. "If we go back to the party and someone comes after you, who's going to stop them? A bunch of pixel-heads?"

Hiro shrugged. "The wardens, just like any other crime."

"Do we trust the wardens?" Frizz asked. "Remember what that kicker said? Our city might have built this thing!"

"The guy who called her a traitor?" Hiro laughed. "He was totally brain-missing!"

"Well, maybe not totally," Ren said. "The mass driver was built using mag-levs that started here.

Someone from our city must have been part of it."

"Someone with a lot of authority," Frizz added. "To use all that steel with nobody knowing."

Aya swallowed. The city killer was so huge—whoever had built it wielded enough power to hollow out mountains. Could a few wardens really stop them? Would half a million witnesses stay their hand, when they had the audacity to destroy whole cities?

Gazing into the dark ring of trees around the baseball field, she remembered Eden Maru's words "You can disappear in front of a crowd, too."

"Moggle, go as high as you can and look around." She turned to Hiro. "I'm going to do what Tally-sama says…and hide."

She started walking again—away from the mansion's lights, away from everything.

Hiro followed, still arguing. "You're thinking like an extra. You can't hide! All anyone has to do to find you is turn on the feeds!"

A dizziness washed over Aya as she walked—the hovercams were moving overhead now, shadowing her every step, as if she was on a treadmill going nowhere. She felt trapped under their lenses, like a butterfly fixed with a hundred pins.

"Can you do something about those things?" she asked Ren.

"Well, maybe." Ren pulled out a trick-box. "When the big tech-kickers want an industrial-size reputation bubble, they jam everything for a hundred meters or so. I might be able to arrange a couple of minutes out of sight."

"Please." Aya glanced up at the cams overhead. "A little obscurity looks pretty good right now.

Safer, anyway."

"But why would anyone want to come after you?" Hiro kept arguing. "Everyone in the world already knows this weapon exists. What more can you do to them? You didn't hide anything, did you?"

Aya shook her head. "Of course not. You and Hiro always say burying shots is totally truth-slanting. So it's all in there. Well, except …" She paused, thinking of the inhuman-looking figures she and Miki had seen.

"Except what?" Frizz asked softly.

"There's one thing I sort of left out." She looked at Hiro. "But I didn't even have any shots of them."

His eyes narrowed. "Shots of who, Aya?"

"Well, that first night I surfed…What does it matter, anyway?"

Hiro took a step closer. "Because if you don't put everything on the feeds, someone can silence you! What did you leave out?"

"Well, in the tunnel that first night, I saw some people who weren't quite, um…human."

There was a pause. The three of them stared at her, dumbfounded.

A thump came from the darkness nearby, and they all jumped. A few meters away, a hovercam lay on its side, its running lights dark. Another thump came from farther away, then a third. Aya looked up.

The hovercams were starting to fall.

She smiled. "Wow, Ren. How'd you do that?"

Ren lowered the trick-box, a puzzled expression on his face. "Here's some bad news. I'm not doing that—someone else is."

The thudding came from every direction now, like a slowly building hailstorm. Raising her arms over her head, Aya saw that the sky was already half empty.

Soon she would be invisible again. And then, once no one was watching, Aya Fuse might disappear forever.

She started running.

Run And Hide

"Get us four hoverboards," Hiro was yelling. "Property override! I don't care who owns them, this is an emergency!"

Aya led them back toward the bash—at this point, a crowd seemed better than darkness. The last few hovercams trailed them doggedly, tumbling from the air one by one.

"Moggle, are you still up there?" she hissed. The hovercam's view appeared—she saw herself and the others from a distance, specks against the vast expanse of the baseball field. No one else was in sight. "Stay up high, Moggle! Someone's jamming everything around us."

On cue, another hovercam crashed to the ground in front of Aya. She jumped over it, her party dress threatening to tangle around her ankles.

"There they are!" Hiro shouted.

Four hoverboards were shooting across the field toward them, silhouetted by the lights from the tech-head party.

"Won't they just crash?" Aya asked. "Like the cams?"

"I think I can block the lifter jamming," Ren said, poking at his trick-box as he ran. "Just stick close to me."

"But is anyone chasing us?" Frizz asked.

Aya scanned the darkness between mansions. Still nobody in sight—nothing but the motionless remains of cams littering the ground.

Then she heard the whoosh of a hovercar.

It shot overhead, drowning out the thudding of their footsteps, whipping her hair with its passage.

For a moment Aya thought it was the wardens, but then she heard the scream of lifting fans—the car was designed to work outside the city where wardens never went.

And somehow she doubted it was Rangers overhead.

The car wheeled violently, dropping in front of them. The grass shimmered underfoot, roiling in the tempest of the lifting fans. Whirlwinds of dirt rose from the baselines of the baseball diamond.

Through the windshield, two drivers gazed back at her with a strange calm—their eyes set too wide apart, their skin pale and hairless, just like the ghastly faces in the tunnel.

She stumbled to a halt. Like Miki had said that night, they didn't look human.

Frizz pulled her back into a run, angling around the hovercar. Flying dust forced her eyes half-shut, and her dress billowed like an open parachute around her.

As the car settled to the ground, its side split open, spilling a wedge of light across the field. Two more figures stood silhouetted inside, visible for a moment among rolling clouds of dirt.

Then Aya heard a cry—Ren and Hiro zooming out of the dust storm, two empty hoverboards following them.

"I've never ridden one of those before!" Frizz shouted.

"Just stick with me!" Aya leaped onto a board, pulling him on behind her. They veered wildly for a moment, Frizz swaying like a littlie on a balance beam.

"Stay close or they'll jam you!" Ren yelled, waving the trick-box as he shot past.

Aya leaned into a hard turn, following Ren and Hiro. She felt Frizz's arms wrap around her, his body pressing close as they gathered speed.

Behind them, the whine of the hovercar rose again, the wind of its fans battering the air. Aya thrust her arms out wide, wishing she hadn't worn platform shoes tonight. At least the last two weeks were paying off: Riding double through a roaring wind wasn't half as tricky as mag-lev surfing.

Frizz's extra weight was a problem, though—Hiro and Ren were pulling away. Aya leaned forward, urging the board faster. If they fell too far behind Ren, they'd drop like the jammed hovercams.

And they weren't even wearing crash bracelets "Hold up!" she shouted, but the scream of the pursuing car erased her words.

Luckily, the mansion wasn't far away now. She could see partygoers on its roof watching the chase, probably wondering what sort of publicity stunt this was.

The hovercar roared overhead again, the wash of its fans sending her and Frizz into a series of serpentine curves. Aya twisted her body, barely keeping them onboard.

"Up there!" Frizz shouted.

Two figures had jumped from the open hovercar door, their freakish arms and legs splaying wide as they fell through the air. They hover-bounced, spinning in the whirlwinds beneath the car, but quickly gained control. Aya spotted lifter pads bulging from their thin-limbed bodies.

"They're wearing hoverball rigs!" she shouted. "Not good!"

The figures were zooming toward them now, riding the car's wash like windsurfers in a gale.

"Hold on tight!" she cried, and spun the board into a quick reverse, heading back across the field.

Frizz's arms wrapped around her tighter, his weight shifting with hers.

But the inhumans were closing the gap quickly. When Hiro and Ren turned to follow, the spindly figures shot past them without a second glance.

Aya Fuse was who they wanted.

She headed for the nearest trees, trying to urge the board faster. But it was a city toy, nothing like the Sly Girls' high-speed boards.

The trees rose up before them, and Aya twisted from side to side, banking between thick trunks.

Beams of light from the hovercar stabbed through the leaves, scattering bright coins across the forest floor.

Frizz's lips pressed against her ear. "Why aren't we crashing?"

Aya blinked—Ren and Hiro had to be fifty meters away.

"Of course!" she cried. "They had to stop jamming to use their rigs, which means…Moggle, come here! I need you!"

"Aya!" Frizz shouted. "On the right!"

One of the figures was swooping down at them, long fingers splayed like talons. Frizz dropped down, pulling both of them into a crouch as the figure swept past.

"Ouch!" Frizz flinched behind her. "Something stuck me!"

"What?" Aya stood again, pulling the board into another hard turn. She craned her neck to look at him. "Are you okay?"

"I think so. But I feel a little…watch out!"

Aya whipped her head around to find the other inhuman waiting directly ahead, arms out wide, fingertips glistening with needles.

She twisted her whole body to one side, banking the board to a halt. But Frizz's body was going limp, his arms slipping from around her waist.

"Frizz!" she called out, but heard only a groan in response And then he was toppling from the board.

"Frizz!"

She reached out to grab him, but he was already tumbling through the air. He flew straight into the waiting inhuman, their bodies colliding with a grim thud. The spindly figure crumpled, its long arms wrapping around Frizz, both of them flying backward into the darkness.

Suddenly free of his weight, the board went into a lopsided spin. Tree trunks whirled around Aya, sharp branches whipping her face and hands. She knelt and clutched the edges, letting the board gyrate its momentum away.

When it had slowed a little, Aya let go and rolled off into the leaves. She stood and ran to where the two figures lay sprawled and unmoving on the forest floor.

Her eyes were drawn to the inhuman's strange face. His skin was pale, his arms thin and weak-looking, but the needles on his fingertips were unambiguous—they were designed to do some damage.

But the strangest thing was the inhuman's feet. Bare and misshapen, they looked almost like hands, their long toes curled up like a dead spider's legs.

She dragged Frizz free of the tangle. "Can you hear me?"

He didn't answer. Then Aya saw the tiny red mark on his neck. One nick from those needle fingers had knocked him unconscious … or worse.

She pulled him closer, her head swimming. The hovercar still drifted overhead, spilling a trembling light through the leaves. The shadows slanted as it moved, as though the whole world was swaying.

"Aya!" came a shout. She looked up, and saw Hiro and Ren angling through the trees.

But in front of them flew the other inhuman, zooming straight toward her, arms outstretched and fingers glistening. His pale skin glowed in the darkness.

She pulled Frizz closer, feeling utterly abandoned. Where were the wardens? Where were the half-million others who'd been watching her every move five minutes ago?

He was ten meters away, five A small dark shape shot from the shadows, barreling into the inhuman's stomach. He crumpled into a ball with a grunt, then whirled past Aya, the hoverball rig keeping him airborne as he spun.

"Moggle," Aya breathed. The hovercam bounced away, crashing through the brush.

The inhuman hung unconscious from his hoverball rig, his handlike feet swinging a meter from the ground. A groan escaped from his lips, and his eyes began to flutter open Aya ran toward him, leaping up to grab his shoulders. They glided across the forest floor together, the rig adjusting to her weight.

His hand reached for her, but Aya grabbed his wrist and stuck a handful of needle fingers into his own neck. He sputtered for a moment, eyes widening, then passed out completely.

"Aya!" Hiro banked to a halt. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine." She jumped down, glancing up at the hovercar. It waited overhead, unmoving, lights probing through the leaves uncertainly. "Help me with Frizz."

Hiro glided to a halt. "He'll be fine, Aya. They don't care about him."

"Yeah, but I do." She ran to Frizz's unconscious body, towing the hoverboard behind her. She knelt and pulled at his arm, trying to get his weight up onto the riding surface.

He let out a groan.

"Are you all right?"

"Feel weird," he murmured. "Heavy."

"Tell me about it!" Aya strained. "If only we had a way to …" She glanced at the inhuman lying next to Frizz.

Hiro stepped off his board beside her, staring down at the inhuman. "Whoa. You left this out of your story?"

"Help me get the hoverball rig off this freak." Aya grunted, tugging at the inhuman's shin lifter.

"We can put it on Frizz!"

"All right," Hiro said, kneeling. "Here's how you do it."

He loosened the straps with practiced fingers, pulling the lifter pad free and slipping it onto Frizz's leg.

"What happened to him?" Ren asked, joining in the scramble.

"That freak stuck him with those needle fingers." Aya glanced up at the hovercar. Its side door was opening again, light spilling out around two more silhouettes. "Crap. More coming!"

"I'm done." Hiro was strapping the last forearm pad into place. "I've set the rig to neutral. He should be zero-g."

Frizz lifted easily from the ground, suddenly weightless. She wrestled his drifting body onto her board and knelt across him.

Hiro and Ren slipped up on either side and reached out their hands, pulling her forward like a littlie between two parents. Soon they were shooting ahead through a gap in the trees.

"Are they following us?" Aya asked.

Ren looked back. "I don't think so. They're picking up the other two."

"Two freaky bodies are worse than one live witness, I guess," Hiro said. "Speaking of which, you have some explaining to do, Aya."

"When we get to safety."

"Which is back at the party, right?"

"No. We're doing what Tally says—we're hiding."

"Where?" Ren asked.

Aya bit her lip, holding tight to keep Frizz's unconscious form from slipping off the board. "The underground reservoir."

"Cold and wet," Ren said. "But it's the one place in the city with no cams."

"Exactly," Aya said. Something was skimming through the trees in the corner of her eye, and she dared a glance. It was a camo-black hovercam, still wobbly from a recent collision.

It flashed its night-lights happily, and shaky images began to spill across Aya's vision. Whatever the inhuman creatures were, this time they'd been caught by more than just her eyes. She found herself smiling.

Moggle had gotten the shot.

The Wisdom Of The Crowd

The new construction site glowed dull orange, the earthmoving machines resting quietly in their foundation pits.

"Check your pings again," Hiro said. "Before we get cut off."

Aya scanned her eyescreen, then shook her head. A few priority pings had come in on the wardens' channel—and maybe ten thousand more asking her what was going on, not to mention a million theories burning up the feeds— but nothing from Tally Youngblood.

"If she's coming on a suborbital, she'll be out of contact for a few hours," Ren said.

Aya sighed. "As long as she gets here fast."

They dropped toward the tunnel below them and slipped inside.

"Hey, am I passing out again?" Frizz groaned, his weight shifting as the darkness closed around them.

"No, we're just going underground." Aya squeezed him tighter. "No lights, Moggle. Too obvious."

"Your dress," Frizz murmured. "Sparkles."

Aya nodded, flexing her fingers, and the party dress sputtered to life. The battery was down to its last dregs, but the flickering embers were enough cut the gloom.

"Told you this was the right dress, Hiro," she said.

"Very funny. Are you going to tell us about what happened back there?"

"Not yet."

They descended, the orange worklights of the surface fading behind them. After long minutes, the echoes of trickling water reached their ears, then the tunnel opened over the reservoir's huge expanse.

Aya brought her board to a halt in midair.

The cavern flickered with the dying lights of her dress, the ceiling shimmering with the water's trembling reflections. Moggle seemed to remember the place, and was soon drifting in nervous circles around the cavern, checking for hidden Sly Girls with lock-down clamps.

Hiro slid to a stop close by, sitting cross-legged on his board. "Great hiding place, Aya. There's no actual ground to stand on, is there?"

"No," Ren said. "But we've got plenty of water."

"It's not exactly Shuffle Mansion." Aya sighed. The apartment Hiro had shown her lingered in her mind's eye— the huge open spaces, the perfect city views. And here she was on her first night of fame, skulking underground.

Frizz's slow breathing echoed from the stone arches. He stirred beneath her, the effects of the needle-stab fading. She checked the mark on his neck—the redness had almost disappeared.

"Whatever was in those needles was designed to knock you out, Aya," Ren said. "But Frizz is a pretty. He'll be okay."

She nodded. The operation made pretties' bodies stronger and quicker to heal as well as beautiful.

"So who were those people?" Hiro asked.

"I have no idea," she said. "I only saw them once before."

"When you first saw the mountain open up?" Ren asked.

"Yeah. Miki and I were watching over the edge of the train. There were three of them, really skinny and tall. But it was so dark, I thought it was just the crazy shadows … at first."

Hiro cleared his throat. "And you didn't bother mentioning this?"

"I didn't have any shots of them! And it was so sense-missing. I thought if I started with those freaks, everybody would think it was just another surge-monkey story. Aliens didn't exactly fit the city-killer theme."

"They didn't fit the theme?"

Hiro cried. "What are you, some Rusty kicker? That's what the background layer is for!"

"Lecture her later, Hiro," Ren said. "Right now we need to figure out who they are, and why they're after Aya."

Hiro snorted. "We should go back to the surface and kick this! Call the wardens if you want!"

"Do we trust our own city?" Ren asked.

"I trust anyone, as long as there's a few hundred thousand people watching," Hiro muttered.

"What I don't get is, how did those surge-monkeys figure out you'd seen them?"

"Maybe there's something in the background layer that explains that," Ren said. "Too bad we're cut off from the feeds down here."

"Moggles got a copy of everything," Aya said.

"Okay, I'll take a look. Shake me if anything exciting happens." Ren stretched out on his board, his eyescreens flickering a full immersion warning.

Aya swallowed. With Ren shot-scanning and Frizz half-conscious, she was practically alone with Hiro. The last sparkles of her dress were fading, the darkness making his expression look angrier every second.

"How about some light, Moggle?" she said.

The hovercam's night-lights came on, filling the cavern. The deep shadows shifted as Moggle floated restlessly around the reservoir, but Hiro remained stock-still, staring straight at her.

She sighed. "I didn't mean to lie."

"No, Aya. But when you pick and choose facts to make your story, you always wind up truth-slanting. That's why good kickers put everything up. Save the manipulation for extras who only watch for ten minutes."

"Once more: I didn't have any shots of the freaks!"

"Still you saw them, and you hid them. That's like lying."

, Aya groaned, staring into the water. Its surface grew blacker as her dress's sparkles flickered off one by one. "I messed everything up, didn't I?"

"Not everything." His shoulders slumped. "But if you'd told what you saw, we might already know who those people were."

"How?"

"The wisdom of the crowd, Aya. If a million people look at a puzzle, chances are that one of them knows the answer. Or maybe ten people each know one piece, and that's enough to put it all together."

Aya sighed. "I guess so. I just never thought about the feeds that way."

"That's because all you ever cared about was getting famous," Hiro said. "The feeds are more than that. Like I always say, being a kicker is about making sense of the world."

She rolled her eyes. Just what she needed: a philosophy lesson from her stuck-up older brother.

The last sparkles on her dress were sputtering out, the batteries finally expended. "Well, we don't have any crowds down here. So what do you think they are? Aliens?"

"No, they're some kind of surge-monkey." The tapping of Hire's fingers against his board echoed through the cavern. "Sort of like real monkeys, actually."

"How do you mean?" Aya shifted on her board. "I didn't see any fur."

"But you saw their toes, right? They were prehensile, like a monkeys. It's like they have four hands."

"But it doesn't make sense." Aya sighed. "Why be a surge-monkey if you're going to hide all the time?"

"I don't think it's a fashion statement, Aya. It's like my immortal crumb lies: The surgery means something. There must be some way this all fits together."

"You mean city-killing weapons, hidden bases, and monkey toes?"

Hiro smiled. "I can see why you had trouble fitting all that into ten minutes."

They were silent for a while, Aya watching the flicker in Ren's eyes. Maybe by early morning, the flurry of City Killer kick would have faded a little. People had to sleep sometime, after all, no matter how big a story was. In a few hours, sneaking up to send Tally Youngblood a ping would be easy.

She remembered the year before in ugly school, learning about the origins of the mind-rain: the Smoke, the Specials, the awful Diego War. One common theme ran through all those lessons: Once Tally-sama arrived, the bad guys didn't stand a chance.

Time passed strangely in the cavern. Cut off from the city interface, the clock in Aya's eyescreen didn't work, but the minutes seemed to crawl. She dozed off once, coming awake in a panic, wondering where she was.

But Frizz was still beside her, sleeping off the effects of the needle. Nestled this close on the board, she could feel his breathing, and his warmth cut the cavern's chill. Whatever Hiro said about fame protecting her, it felt safer next to Frizz than under the eyes of a million people.

Hiro sat cross-legged on his board, eyes closed and head nodding. Ren's eyes were open, his eyescreens shimmering like two red fireflies in the air, but he didn't make a sound.

It seemed like hours later when Frizz began to stir beside her. He sat up halfway and rubbed his neck.

"How do you feel?" she whispered.

"Much better." He looked around sleepily "Where are we?"

"Underground." She squeezed his hand. "Don't worry. We'll be safe down here till Tally-sama comes."

"You brought me here? How did you manage…whoa." For a moment Frizz had started to drift up from the board. "What's going on?"

Aya smiled. "We borrowed a hoverball rig from those freaks. You're almost weightless."

He stopped moving, letting himself settle beside her. "You saved me."

She sighed. "I got you in huge trouble, you mean. If it wasn't for my truth-slanting, you wouldn't be in this mess."

"Truth-slanting?"

"Aya nodded slowly "Like I said, I saw those freaks ten days ago, but I didn't know what they were. So I sort of … left them out of my story" Frizz didn't say anything, just stared at the black water.

"I think I'm a natural liar," she finally whispered.

He shook his head. "No, you're not."

"I am," she hissed. "I can't go ten seconds without slanting the truth. I'm the seventeenth-most-famous person in the city right now, and for what? Tricking a whole clique into thinking I was one of them! And then I couldn't even kick the story without leaving out something. You must hate me."

Frizz took a slow breath. "I never told you how I came up with Radical Honesty, did I?"

"I never asked." Aya sighed. "I pretty much just talked about my own fame obsession."

"Well, I used to lie constantly,'" Frizz said. "Sometimes for a reason, but mostly just for fun. I was always pretending, making up a new Frizz for everyone I met—especially, you know, girls." He shrugged, his manga eyes glistening in the darkness. "But I started to forget who I really was. That probably sounds weird."

"Not really," Aya said. "That's sort of what happened to me with the Sly Girls. I liked being that person—she was braver than me."

He shrugged. "Sometimes it's fun to change yourself. But I wanted to see what it was like without lies. How a relationship works when you can't hide anything." He took her hand, sending a tingle through her skin. "What it's like to do this …" He leaned forward the small distance between their faces, and kissed her.

As they pulled apart, Frizz whispered, "Without lies."

"Dizzy-making," Aya breathed. She felt warmth in her face, like a blush, but not shaming. A ghostly echo of Frizz's lips lingered on hers, and shivers moved across her skin.

"You're right." He smiled. "Dizzy-making is what it is."

"Even with me, the Slime Queen of truth-slanting?"

He shrugged. "But you're also honest, Aya. You put yourself in your stories, one way or another.

Even that one about…" Frizz paused, looking around the cavern with a thoughtful expression. "Hey, are we close to that graffiti you kicked?"

"Sure, those tunnels all lead down here." She laughed softly. "You want to see them in person?"

He shook his head. "But isn't that story on your feed? Where everyone can see it?"

Aya hesitated. Before tonight, hardly anyone ever looked at her feed. But with a face rank of seventeen, lots more people would be checking her out. And at the same time, everyone was theorizing and debating where Aya Fuse had disappeared to and why.

Maybe only a few thousand would bother to watch her old stories, and most wouldn't notice what a perfect hiding place the graffiti tunnels were. But out of a million people in the city, what if just one sent a hovercam down to check?

"Uh-oh. You might be right. Hiro! I think we have to go!"

Her brother jerked awake. "What? Why?"

"The tunnels that lead down here, they're on my feed. That graffiti story I kicked."

"But that was two weeks ago…" Hiro's voice faded.

"What did you call it?" she said. "The wisdom of the crowd?"

Stirred by their voices, Ren sat up, blinking away eye-screen flicker. "What's up?"

"This place is famous from Aya's feed," Frizz said.

Ren got it instantly, groaning, "We're so brain-missing."

"Moggle!" Aya hissed. "Lights off!"

The hovercam obeyed, plunging them into total blackness.

Aya blinked away traces of vision, holding Frizz tighter. Gradually her eyes adjusted, and she saw something From one of the trickling storm drains, the barest shimmer of light was moving, sending shadows gliding across the dark.

Paparazzi

"Follow my voice, Moggle," she called, urging her board toward the nearest wall.

The storm drains on this side of the reservoir hadn't appeared in her graffiti story. Surely there weren't enough Aya-hunters down here to cover every tunnel and conduit in the city.

"Here's the wall," Frizz whispered.

She reached out and touched cool stone, drifting toward the sound of trickling water until a storm drain mouth echoed before them.

"Moggle? Come here," she called softly. A moment later the hovercam bumped against her. "Go up and see if it's clear. No lights!"

Moggle slipped away.

Over her shoulder, the light from the other storm drain was growing. Aya could make out Hiro and Ren outlined against its glow.

"Can you really jam a hovercam, Ren?" she asked.

"I can try." His face appeared in midair, lit by the glow of his trick-box.

"Aya," Frizz whispered, "if you need to get out of here fast, just leave me behind. I can't ride, and no one's chasing me."

"Don't be brain-missing, Frizz," she hissed. "Those freaks know you've seen them. I'm not leaving you down here!"

She booted her eyescreen. In Moggle's point of view, the tunnel stretched out ahead, empty and lightless.

"This drain's clear," she said.

"Let's get moving, then," Hiro whispered. "That light's getting closer."

Aya stretched out flat on the hoverboard, pressed close to Frizz. They slipped into the tunnel, climbing swiftly upward.

Moggle was close to the surface; orange worklights glowed from the storm drain's other end.

The feeds were flickering back on in her eyescreen, the city clock showing two hours before dawn.

"Careful, Moggle," she whispered. "Don't let anyone see you!"

The hovercam slowed, peeking up out of the entrance of the drain. Aya watched as it scanned the construction site—nothing but motionless machines and the empty iron frame of an unfinished building.

"Okay, Moggle. Wait for us."

Aya and Frizz climbed toward the surface, until she felt a cold breeze on her face. Moggles outline appeared, silhouetted by worklights. The feeds came back on line in force, filling her vision with a hundred clamoring arguments: alarm over her disappearance, theories about who'd built the city killer, questions of whether it was all a hoax. Most people thought she'd been kidnapped by the mysterious hovercar. The Nameless One had decreed that the mass driver was the city's secret weapon, and was calling for Aya's arrest as a traitor.

She blinked the commotion away, focusing on the world in front of her. The Slime Queen story had taught her how meaningless the feeds could be.

Sometimes the wisdom of the crowd was just so much noise.

At the storm drain entrance, Aya scanned the construction site with her own eyes. "Okay, it still looks clear. Everyone ready?"

"Just one question," Frizz said. "Where are we going?"

"Oh, right." Aya frowned. If the crowd had managed to find the underground reservoir, where else could she hide? Every interesting place Aya had ever explored had been kicked in some story. Her dorm, all her friend's names, even her favorite color was listed on her feed.

Aya hadn't kept any secrets for herself.

""What about your place, Hiro?"

"My place? Could we be more obvious?"

"At least it's got good privacy. It's a big-face mansion, so hovercams can't get close. And the famous part of town isn't too far from here."

"Forget it. You're not bringing this down on…" His voice trailed off. "But you're right about privacy. Why don't we head toward Shuffle Mansion. Remember that apartment I showed you?"

"Sure," Aya said. "But it's not mine."

"But it's open," he said. "Just walk in and declare it. You've got a face rank of… whoa! You're down to twelve now!"

"Nothing beats getting abducted by aliens," Ren said.

"What do you think, Frizz?" Aya asked.

He hesitated, then let out a sigh. "Anything sounds better than a hole in the ground."

They rose from the storm drain slowly, shivering in the freezing wind.

Aya looked down at her party dress. It was covered with wet leaves and tunnel trickle: The Return of Slime Queen. But the scent of pine trees and fresh air was a welcome relief after hours of rotting leaves and runoff.

The city looked more awake than usual for the dead of night, the windows flickering, everyone watching the feeds. Anxiety rose in Aya at the sight—the mirror image of obscurity panic.

Suddenly there were too many people who knew her name.

They flew back toward the city, straight into Hiro's part of town. The trappings of fame appeared around them— swimming pools drifted overhead, steaming in the cold, and torches lit the paths along the ground.

But no one was out, the windows all glittering with wallscreen light even here. No matter how famous, everyone seemed to be watching the drama unfold.

"Uh-oh," Ren called, glancing up from his trick-box. "We have company."

Aya followed his gaze—a single hovercam was climbing toward them, its lenses catching the torchlight.

"Can you jam it?" she called.

He shook his head. "It's a full-time paparazzi cam, designed to track big faces."

"We're close to Shuffle Mansion. Let's go!" Hiro cried, shooting ahead.

"Hold on tight, Frizz," Aya shouted. She dove toward the ground, picking up speed as they dropped.

Frizz held her close, their bodies twisting and turning as one. He felt more confident than on their first ride, and Aya decided to take a few risks.

She turned hard around a tall, spindly mansion, cutting between two apartments held apart by hoverstruts. The board's lifters shivered, sending them into a series of fishtails, and Frizz's arms squeezed tighter. A few meters from her shoulder, Moggle shuddered in the strong magnetic currents.

But when she glanced back, the paparazzi cam was still there. Ren was right—this hovercam was designed to chase big faces. A few simple tricks wouldn't get rid of it.

She dropped lower and zoomed down a pleasure garden path, the warmth of burning torches whipping past on either side, the smell of smoke in her nostrils. The cam was tight on their tail now, close enough to recognize their faces.

The last thing she wanted was to show up at Shuffle Mansion with a hundred hovercams in tow.

"At the end of this garden go straight into a climb!" Frizz shouted.

"What are you planning?"

"Just do it!"

The last pair of torches was flying toward them, the secluded garden path spilling open onto a field of pre-Rusty shrines and temples. As they shot out, Aya tipped her weight back, pulling into a hard climb. Moggle followed, happily spinning barrel rolls.

"Come back and pick me up!" Frizz shouted…and leaped from the board.

"Frizz!" Aya screamed, spinning around to see him soaring into the air.

Of course—he was still wearing the hoverball rig, still weightless. His momentum carried him up straight in front of the paparazzi cam, and he rolled into a ball. The cam struck him right on his hoverball shin pads, the snap of high-impact plastic ringing like a hand clap.

Frizz spun away from the collision. Aya turned hard, bringing her board across his line of flight.

He hit her with a grunt, knocking Aya from the board. They tumbled through the air together until the rig's lifters compensated for her weight.

"Moggle!" she grunted, Frizz's arms so tight around her that she could hardly breathe. "Bring our board over!"

The abandoned board had come to a confused halt, probably wondering why its riders kept jumping off. Moggle eased up beside it, corralling it toward where they floated, arms wrapped around each other.

"Did I kill it?" Frizz asked.

Aya looked down and saw the paparazzi cam below, bouncing in pieces through the ancient shrines and temples. "Yeah. But that trick was panic-making!"

Moggle eased the hoverboard under their feet, and Frizz let her slide from his grip onto the riding surface.

"Not to mention damaging," Frizz said, reaching down to rub his shins. The pads were cracked from the collision.

"Serves you right," Aya said, turning the board toward Shuffle Mansion.

She kept low, sneaking under the neighborhood's hovering meditation pool, the starlight filtering down through lily pads and darting koi.

"Aya?" Ren's voice pinged in her ear. "We're here at the mansion. Where are you?"

"Closing in. We lost that cam."

"I think you picked up another one, then. Look at the windows."

Aya frowned. "What windows?"

"Any windows," Ren said. "They're all the same!"

"What are you …?" she began, but as they slipped out from beneath the meditation pool, a broad, old-style mansion sprawled out in front of them, its windows glowing with wallscreen light.

All of them were flickering together—hundreds of windows darting from light to shadow in unison, all tuned to the same feed.

"Uh-oh," Frizz said. "Do you see that?"

"Yeah." She swallowed. "Everyone's watching one feed, which almost never happens, unless …" "Either Nana Love just got engaged," Frizz said, "or exactly one hovercam is shooting us."

Aya turned her head, scanning the air around them. Finally she saw it: another paparazzi cam a few meters away, its tiny lens focused directly on her face.

"Crap," she said.

Then she saw the swarm, dozens more hovercams sweeping in from every direction, in every shape and size. Clouds of them maneuvered together, whipping through turns like schooling fish.

"Just go, Aya!" Frizz shouted.

"Blind them, Moggle!" She leaned forward, shooting straight toward Shuffle Mansion.

Moggle zoomed along behind, its night-lights pointed backward on full, the pursuers' lenses glittering like firework weeping willows across the sky.

By the time they reached Shuffle Mansion, the swarm was catching up, wrapping around them, shooting from every angle as she dropped toward the mansion steps.

"Good job losing them," Hiro said dryly, turning to the door. "Let us in, quick."

"I apologize," the door said. "But Shuffle Mansion is a secure building."

"No kidding," Aya said. "That's why I'm here. I'm declaring…um …" "Legal residence," Hiro prompted. "Apartment thirty-nine."

"I'm declaring apartment thirty-nine as my legal residence. And requesting full privacy!" she said.

"Oh, and by the way, I'm Aya Fuse. Um, hi."

The door paused a second, ruby jitters of laser flickering across her face and hands. Over her shoulder, a wall of hovercams was gathering, all screeching to a halt at the privacy limit. A few skidded too close and instantly dropped from the sky. Serious privacy was Shuffle Mansion's trademark.

The door opened with a soft shushing sound.

"Declaration accepted," it said. "Welcome to your new home, Aya Fuse."

Shuffle Mansion

The windows framed the city's skyline like a painting, gathering vistas of the sea, the mountains, even a glimpse down into the big soccer field. The views were perfect Except for all the cams.

There weren't as many now that the chase had ended, but a few dozen still lingered at the fifty-meter limit. Aya could see the curve of the privacy barrier in the way they wrapped across the sky—a literal reputation bubble around the mansion. Even Moggle had to wait outside, because the halls were privacy-monitored as well.

Aya waved, hoping Moggle could see her.

"Close windows," Hiro ordered from where he squatted on the floor.

For a second, Aya wondered why the room didn't obey him—then grinned.

"This is my room, Hiro! You can't tell it what to do."

"Rooms," Ren corrected. "Plural."

Aya laughed, turning her platforms frictionless to skate across the apartment. The arm-spreading luxury of space followed her everywhere, especially the walk-in closets waiting to be filled. Aya had already stuffed her slime-spattered party dress into the hole in the wall, and she wore new shoes and a Ranger coverall with internal heating, built-in water filters, and countless pockets.

It was also slime-resistant.

"So you don't mind those freaks looking in at us?" Hiro asked. "They can watch the feeds too, remember?"

"I guess so." She sighed, waving the windows opaque. "Maximize privacy and security."

"Yes, Aya-sensei," the room said.

"Did you hear that?" she said, spinning in place. "The room keeps calling me sensei!"

"You are top one thousand," Ren said. He was stretched out on the floor, staring up at the chandeliers, both eye-screens glittering.

"Top twenty," Aya said. In fact, all four of them were sensei now—the others had been swept up in her reputation spiral.

"Let's all agree that Aya's quite famous, shall we?" Hiro said. "Now can we get back to business?"

She skated to a halt and shrugged.

"What business, Hiro? Tally should be landing soon, then we do what she says."

"You mean you don't want to kick any of this?"

Aya rolled her eyes. The mind-rain had happened after Hiro had left school, so he'd missed all the lessons about Tally Youngblood. He didn't seem to realize that once she got here, everything would be okay.

"We wait for Tally before we decide anything," she said. "We're safe here, right?"

"Looks like it." Ren rapped the opaque window. "Hey, room. What's this made out of?"

"A layer of artificial diamond blended with smart matter and electronics," the room said.

"Designed to protect residents from fame-stalkers and nano-snoops. Impossible to penetrate."

"We should have come here first," Hiro said. "But you guys had to go sense-missing over doing exactly what Tally-sama told you."

Aya snorted. "You wanted to go back to the bash, Hiro! Do you really think a bunch of pixel-heads would have saved me?"

"I would have thought of this place sooner or later," he grumbled.

"Sooner or later usually means too late," Frizz said.

Hiro turned to glare at him, but Frizz had already jumped from the spot. He drifted up to inspect the pair of chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling, each made from a million shards of glass suffused with soft blue laser light.

Now that Frizz had recovered, he was experimenting with the hoverball rig, swimming across the huge and furniture-missing apartment with broad sweeps of his arms. Aya found the sight unsettling, too much like the freaks in their lifter rigs.

"Hey, Hiro," Frizz called down. "Why does everyone always say these things are so tricky?"

"Because real flying tricky," Hiro said. "All you're doing is bouncing around in zero-g mode."

is "How do I try some real flying?"

"You don't, bubblehead. You'd yank your own arms out!"

"I may have had brain surge," Frizz said. "But I'm not a bubblehead."

"Not technically," Hiro muttered.

Aya snorted. "Who's the bubblehead, Hiro? If it wasn't for Frizz, those paparazzi cams would have caught us back in the reservoir."

"Yeah, I guess so." Hiro sighed and sat up straighter, giving Frizz a tiny bow. "Sorry I called you a bubblehead. You're pretty smart, actually."

Frizz returned the bow from midair. "And you're not as big a snob as Aya said you were."

Hiro's jaw dropped. "You said what, Aya?"

Ren suddenly sat upright on the bare floor. "I found something in your background feed, Aya.

About when you spotted the freaks."

"Great!" Aya eagerly turned away from her brother's glare. "Can you show it to us?"

"Sure, once I find the wallscreen in here."

"Yeah, where's the…?" Aya began, but the floor-to-ceiling window was already shimmering.

"Whoa," Ren said softly. "Diamond into wallscreen. This place is so kick."

An image appeared, shaky and distorted. Aya recognized the view from her button cam. One week ago: Miki studying the mag-lev tunnel wall, looking for the hidden door.

Seeing the Plain Jane face again brought back all the guilt that had been smothered by her sudden fame. Aya wondered what Miki thought of her, now that the whole world could watch the Sly Girls' secret rituals, their private tricks.

Eden Maru's voice came from offscreen, echoing through the tunnel. "This is it. Stand back—there could be anything behind there."

Miki took a slow breath, murmuring, "Or anyone."

Aya's own voice answered, "Those body-crazy freaks were just storing something down here.

Nobody lives in this place."

The shot froze, and Hiro grunted. "'Body-crazy freaks'? So that's how they knew you'd seen them. You told them in your own background layer!"

Aya shook her head. "But it still doesn't make sense. How did they look through all those shots so fast? There were hours and hours of button cam, and they came after us the moment we left the party."

"What if it was the wisdom of the crowd?" Ren said softly.

Aya frowned. "What do you mean?"

"We don't know how many of those inhumans there are," he said. "There could be hundreds.

Maybe there's a mountain full of them somewhere."

"Or a whole city," Frizz said. "That mass driver took some serious building."

A cold finger slid down Aya's spine. She'd thought of the freaks as a small clique. The notion of an entire city of inhumans sent her mind spinning.

"That's brain-missing," Hiro said. "Why would a whole city want to—" "Quiet, Hiro!" Ren closed his eyes. "Does anyone else hear that?"

Aya listened, and her ears caught a faint hum echoing through the room.

Frizz pushed off from the ceiling and floated down. "I think it's coming from the wallscreen."

Then Aya tasted it in her mouth: rain and thunderstorms.

"Smart matter," she said. "The window's made of smart matter. …" They all spun to face the wallscreen. Its surface was rippling, the frozen image of Miki's face warping like bad reception. The humming grew dissonant, a chord of incompatible tones fighting one another, causing the air itself to tremble. The taste of rain turned bitter in Aya's mouth.

"Someone's hacking your window!" Ren cried, springing to his feet.

Shapes began to emerge, three human figures bulging out from the flat expanse. An arm poked through, wrapped in the frozen image of Miki, like a mummy covered in wallscreen.

Frizz grabbed Aya, began to pull her backward toward the door.

"Wait a second!" she cried. "Look at their bodies…" The figures pulling themselves from the wall weren't misshapen like the freaks; they were tall and strong-looking. They stepped out into the room, strangely faceless and still swathed with the colors of the screen, as if the smart matter had stretched around them.

"Are they pixel-heads?" Aya said softly.

They moved with a predatory grace, colors dulling with every step until they had turned a flat gray.

"No," Ren breathed. "They're wearing sneak suits."

The tallest of the three reached up and pulled the layer of gray from its head, revealing a face of cold, intimidating beauty. Her eyes were coal black and wolflike, her skin swathed in flash tattoos, every feature sharp and cruel.

She was the most famous person in the world.

"My name's Tally Youngblood," she said. "Sorry to disturb you, but this is a special circumstance."

Cutters

Of course, Aya had learned all about Specials in school.

A long time ago, Tally Youngblood's city had created a special kind of pretty—cruel, ruthless, and deadly, instead of bubbleheaded. Specials were originally supposed to protect the city, rounding up runaways and keeping order. But gradually they'd become their own secret clique, each generation modifying the next, like weeds growing out of control. They had contempt for everyone who wasn't Special, and wanted to keep the whole world under control. Ultimately, they'd taken over their own city government and started the Diego War.

Tally and her friends had been Specials too, but a special kind called "Cutters." The Cutters were young and independent, and somehow they'd figured out how to rewire their own brains. They'd rebelled against the evil leader of the Specials, freed their own city, and saved Diego. Then they'd spread the mind-rain across the globe, ending the Prettytime forever.

As Aya stood before Tally, a mammoth reputation shiver went through her. This was the person who had made her world. Feeds, tech-heads, fame—everything important to her had come out of the mind-rain.

It was head-spinning, looking at a face so familiar, yet so strange.

For one thing, in Aya's school lessons Tally-sama had never looked scary. But in person her fingernails were long and sharp, her eyes deep black and penetrating. She was three years older now than during the mind-rain, of course, almost twenty, and she lived in the wild now, guarding it from the expanding cities.

Tally even looked wild: her hair long and untamed, her flash tattoos dulled by the sun, her skin darkened.

Aya pulled free of Frizz's grasp and gave a nervous bow, hoping her English wouldn't fail her.

"I'm honored to meet you, Tally-sama."

"Um, it's actually Tally Youngblood."

Aya bowed again. "I am sorry.

Sama is a title of respect."

"Great, another cult of me." Tally rolled her eyes. "Just what the world needs."

Aya heard a giggle. The other two Cutters—one boy, one girl—had pulled off their sneak-suit hoods to reveal faces like Tally's: pretty and cruel, laced with flash tattoos. Their eyes darted around the room with nervous energy, but at the same time smiles played on their faces, as if they were enjoying the excitement.

"My name is Aya Fuse."

Tally didn't bow back, just laughed. "No kidding. Every feed in this city seems to know you. And stop bowing!"

"I'm…sorry." Aya found herself nodding. She wished somebody else would say something, but Hiro, Ren, and Frizz looked as fame-struck as she was.

The three Cutters were moving through the apartment, checking the other rooms.

"Has anyone else tried to get in here?" Tally called.

"No," Aya said. "This is a very secure building."

"Yeah, we noticed that in the ten seconds it took us to break in," the other Cutter girl said. "Is this what you call hiding, by the way? There's about fifty hovercams out there!"

"We tried to hide, but my face rank is recently very high."

The girl looked at her with a blank expression, as if the words had made no sense. "Face rank?

Does that mean you're some kind of government official? Aren't you a little young?"

"No. Face is a measure of … reputation."

The girl's eyes swept around the vast apartment. "You actually live here? No wonder the cities are expanding. Still an ugly, and she's got five rooms!"

"I live here, but not every ugly gets to …" Aya trailed off in frustration with her English. Hiro had been right—no one from outside the city would understand the reputation economy. And this didn't seem like the best time to explain.

"You're Shay-sama!" Frizz said, snapping out of an eyescreen spin. He whispered in Japanese, "Two hundred and fourteen, mostly from mentions in history classes."

Aya nodded, feeling stupid that she hadn't recognized Shay. All the Cutters were famous. Some even had their own cults, but Aya could never keep track of them.

"My apologies, Shay-sama," she said. "Recent history is not my best subject."

Tally and the boy giggled, and one of Shay's eyebrows arched. Aya felt herself turning red, like some littlie asking for an autograph.

"Don't worry about it," Shay said. "And don't do that 'sama' thing with me either."

Tally snorted. "Yeah, she prefers to be called Boss."

"I missed you too, Tally-wa," Shay answered.

"I'm confused," Frizz said.

Aya nodded in agreement, wondering if the Cutters were speaking some dialect her Advanced English class hadn't covered. Hiro and Ren looked like they were having trouble following at all. Foreign languages hadn't been as popular back before the mind-rain, when they'd gone to school.

But Frizz came to her rescue. "We just want to show the proper respect."

"Well, respect this." Tally turned to Aya. "We need to get you out of here, and soon. You've stumbled on something that's bigger than you think."

"Bigger?" Aya said. "Than the end of the world?"

"Bigger than this one mass driver. We've been finding them all over the planet."

Aya swallowed, wondering if Ren had been right. Maybe there really were a huge number of the freaks, a whole city somewhere. "Why haven't you told the global feeds?"

"The other mountains were all empty," Tally said. "You're the first person to find the projectiles.

And we didn't want anyone looking for the people who built them. They're dangerous."

Aya nodded. "I know, Tally-sama. I've seen them face-to-face."

"We figured that, once they came after you." Tally's eyes narrowed. "People who see them tend to disappear, including a friend of ours. That's why we're here."

"We need to get going, Tally-wa," the boy Cutter said. "The sun's coming up soon."

"Okay, Fausto, but first, two questions." Tally fixed Aya with her dark stare. "You didn't tell anyone we were coming, did you?"

Aya shook her head proudly, suppressing an urge to smirk at Hiro.

Tally smiled. "Good girl. Second question: I know you're great at mag-lev surfing, but have you ever ridden two to a hoverboard?"

"Yes."

"Recently, in fact," Frizz added.

"You can ride with me then." Tally turned to the boy Cutter. "Okay, Fausto. How do we knock those hovercams out?"

He shrugged. "Nanos. Maybe flash-bombs?"

"Definitely flash-bombs," Tally said with a shiver. "Shay and I had a bad experience with nanos once."

"Bombs away, then, Tally-wa," Fausto said. He swung a pack from his shoulder and began to rummage through it.

"Pardon me, Tally…-wa?" Aya said, hoping she had the correct title. "My friends have also seen the…strange people."

"You've seen them?" Tally turned to the others. "All three of you?"

Hiro, Ren, and Frizz all bowed apologetically, and Tally let out a groan.

"We might be less obvious if there's four of them, Tally-wa," Shay said. "And they'll be safer with us than if they stay here and get kidnapped."

"But we've only got three boards!" Tally said. "That's no good for seven riders."

"This hole in the wall can make big things," Hiro said, his English coming out a little shaky.

"Boards with lifting fans?" Fausto asked. "That work outside the city, off the grid?"

Hiro frowned. "Maybe not."

"Great," Tally said. "We'll have to call David into town, which screws up the whole plan. And you know how much he hates cities."

"Pardon me, Tally-sama," Ren spoke up in halting English. "Hiro has skill with a hoverball rig. If he stays close we can tow him."

Tally hesitated for a moment, glanced at Shay, then nodded. "Okay. That should work."

Hiro began to unstrap Frizz from the hoverball rig and put it on himself, complaining about the cracked shin guards. Ren told the hole in the wall to fabricate some crash bracelets, and reminded everyone to turn their locators off. The Cutters began to slap smart plastic on their faces and hands, hiding the lace of flash tattoos and their cruel pretty features.

Aya wondered why they needed ugly disguises out in the wild.

"Excuse me, Tally-wa, but where are we going?"

The Cutters traded glances, and the question hung in the air for a moment.

"We don't know yet," Tally finally said. "But we'll find out soon."

Honorary Cutter

Their hoverboards were waiting on the roof.

The three Cutters went ahead, their sneak-suited forms sliding across the darkened expanse like graceful ripples in the air. Aya barely saw the attack unfold—their arms spun almost invisibly, the throwing motions like a sudden breeze stirring dust and leaves across the roof.

It was all so silent and insubstantial…until the explosions began.

A spray of bright white flashes filled the night sky, sending jittering shadows across the roof. A cascade of detonations pounded her ears.

"Come on!" Frizz said, grabbing her hand to pull her forward.

A dozen steps away, half-blinded by the flashes, she felt a riding surface under her feet. Someone tall and muscular pressed against her, one arm around her waist.

"Hold on!" Tally shouted, and the board rose hard and fast, the scream of lifting fans filling the air.

Tally's body was wiry and hard, like a gymnast full of steel cables. "Didn't we tell you to keep your eyes closed?"

"Sorry." Aya squeezed Tally's waist tightly, blinking away spots. It reminded her of all the times Moggle had blinded her Moggle! Her hovercam was out there somewhere, probably battered and confused by the flash-bombs.

"Excuse me, Tally-wa. But can Moggle come too?"

"Who?"

"My hovercam."

"Your…wait. You own a hovercam?"

Aya blinked again, her vision slowly returning. "Almost everyone here does. How else would we put stuff on our feeds?"

"You mean you all have your own feed channels, too?" Tally laughed. "This city's insane!"

Aya looked over her shoulder. The cams, blinded by the barrage of flash-bombs, were milling around in confusion. The ultrafast Cutter boards had slipped past them in seconds.

"Please? Moggle doesn't like being left alone."

"No way," Tally shouted against the wind. "Have you not noticed we're trying to hide here?"

"Of course…but this would be for later. For history."

"Forget it. History's not my favorite subject either. Especially when it's about me."

Aya looked up at Tally's disguised face, and for a dizzy-making moment she was reminded of Lai. But the comparison was brain-missing. Tally was the most famous person in the world, and Lai was a deliberate extra—or at least she had been, before Aya had kicked her into unwanted fame.

"Tally-wa? Why are you all disguised as uglies?"

"In case one of those hovercams gets a shot. Can't let anyone know we're in town. Speaking of which …" Tally gestured, and her sneak suit began to change, taking on the texture and pattern of a dorm uniform.

Aya nodded with comprehension, but this was still frustrating. Here she was, riding a hoverboard with Tally Youngblood, and no one could see it. She wasn't even wearing a spy-cam!

She realized how few real pictures of Tally she'd seen. Even in history books all the images were paintings or manga, as if Tally was some pre-Rusty from before the days of cams.

But extras wanted connections with their heroes. That was why Nana Love was always Nanachan

, never Nana-sensei, no matter how famous she became. Famous people owed the world images of themselves.

A few shots for history's sake wouldn't hurt anything.

As they zoomed through the new construction site, lifting fans screaming and Rusty iron shooting past, Aya booted her eyescreen. She opened up a tracking signal, whispering a short ping to Moggle in Japanese "Follow us as jar as you can."

Whatever happened next was going to be very kickable.

They made their way toward the city's edge, screaming past all pursuit.

The predawn air was bitingly cold, but Tally hardly seemed to notice. Aya turned up the heating in her Ranger coverall, thankful that she'd ditched the slime-spattered party dress.

The Cutter boards were amazingly powerful, even carrying two riders each. Of course they'd slow down once they left the grid and had to tow Hiro.

And once out of the city, Moggle wouldn't be able to follow at all.

"Tally-wa?" she ventured. "We could take the mag-lev line out of town. Plenty of metal."

Tally shook her head. "Too much traffic out there. Tons of wardens are headed out to the mountain, not to mention the Global Concord Committee on its way."

"But they'd be happy to let you through, right? You're Tally Youngblood! You must have stacks of merits."

"Merits?"

"Oh. In my city, merits are …" Aya's mind spun for the right English. "Respect from authority Like fame, but for doing community things. Because you saved everyone from the Prettytime, my city would give you any assistance you needed."

"I'm not interested in their help."

Aya paused, wondering if the Nameless One's groupie had been right after all. "Are you worried that my city built this weapon?"

Tally shrugged. "I wouldn't say worried.

In fact, that would make things simpler. Governments have been taken down before, after all." She turned around and gave Aya a sharp-toothed smile. "By me."

Dawn began to break, and the wild stretched out before them, black and endless. The factory lights below grew sparser, and Aya's eyescreen began to lose the feeds.

Not that they'd been kicking anything new: Where was Aya Fuse headed off to now? Were all these dramatic disappearances nothing but publicity stunts? Was the mass driver the beginning of a new dark age of warfare?

Nobody had realized yet that Tally Youngblood was in town. Maybe Aya's first night of fame hadn't exactly worked out as she'd planned, but at least she had a big follow-up for the City Killer story.

She smiled. Rescued from aliens by Tally Youngblood!

As they neared the edge of the grid, the formation drew closer, their magnetics interweaving. Aya felt the shudder of Hiro's rig connecting with the boards.

"Bye, Moggle," Aya whispered in Japanese.

"Get home safe."

"You ready?" Tally asked. "Things might get a little nervous-making now."

"Don't worry about me. This can't be any worse than mag-lev surfing."

"It might be." Tally looked over her shoulder, eyes narrowing. "When Shay and I watched your feed story and saw all those tricks you pulled—going undercover, mag-lev surfing, flying up the mass driver—we decided you were a pretty tough girl."

Aya bowed a little, feeling herself blushing. "Really?"

"Really. We figured you wouldn't mind having one more adventure, Aya-la, seeing as how saving the world is so high on your list of priorities."

Aya looked into Tally's eyes, trying to read her expression. She was pretty sure that

— la was a good title. Tally had called her friend Shay-la at least once.

"An adventure?"

"That's why we're here, to take you on an adventure."

Aya nodded, but she was still unsure. "But you came to protect me from the …" She didn't know the English word for freaks.

"The strange people. Right?"

"Well, partly." Tally shrugged. "We also want to get to the bottom of all this, and find our friend who disappeared. So we figured a tough girl like you would want to help with that, Aya-la. As a sort of honorary Cutter."

Aya felt a smile spreading across her face, and she had to remind herself not to bow. "Of course.

I would be honored."

"Thought you'd say that. I'm just sorry your friends have to come along."

"They must be honored too, Tally-wa."

"Don't be so sure. You know that tracking signal you've been sending to your hovercam?"

"Um, my what?"

"Your hovercam, Aya-la…the one that's been conveniently following us." Tally's toothy smile appeared again. "We've been boosting your signal just a little. Not so much that your local wardens will bug us, but enough."

Aya swallowed. "Enough for what?"

Tally turned to face the front of the board. "For that."

Aya stared ahead into the distance. She couldn't see anything but the blackness of the wild, and the glow of dawn beginning to encircle the horizon.

"Let me know when you can see them," Tally said. "I want this to look realistic."

"Realistic?" Aya murmured, and a few moments later her eyes caught a glimmering cluster among the fading stars. She squinted, clearing the last bit of city interface from her eyescreen, and realized what they were.

The running lights of three hovercars.

"Are those friends of yours, Tally-wa?"

"I've never met them. But I think you have."

Aya blinked, her excitement moving in a new and stomach-churning direction. The hovercars were closing fast, the scream of their lifting fans echoing across the wild…the inhumans had found her again.

And Tally Youngblood had let it happen.

The Plan

"Everyone!" Tally shouted. "Head back toward the city!"

The board whipped around beneath them, and Aya squeezed tight, remembering that her crash bracelets were useless out here in the wild.

"What about my brother?" she cried.

"I got him," Tally said, angling closer to Hiro. She shouted, "Better hang on, just to be safe!"

Tally climbed above Hire's outstretched arms, and seconds later Aya saw his fingers grasping the board's sides.

The board shot forward, back toward the city. Even with the magnetic connection, Hire's knuckles turned white as they accelerated.

Aya stared down at the black forest rushing past. This whole towing thing had sounded tricky enough with them all going slowly.

"What if Hiro falls out here?" she cried in Tally's ear. "We're all helpless! You were just using us as…" Her English faltered.

"Bait is the word," Tally yelled. "I'll explain everything later, Aya-la. This is the part where you have to trust me!"

Aya shut her eyes, reminding herself who this was. She was riding with Tally Youngblood—the most famous person in the world—not some crazy-brained Sly Girl.

However panic-making this looked, everything was going to be okay.

She dared a glance over her shoulder. The three hovercars were gaining easily on the overloaded boards. As they grew nearer, the lifter fans began to shake the air.

Tally began to rock the board, and Aya squeezed tighter. "What are you doing!"

"They're trying to push us around. We have to make it look like it's working!"

"But why?" Aya cried, trying to keep her balance without shifting her feet. One wrong step, and she'd squash Hiro's fingers!

"Have you not been listening?" Tally yelled. "We don't want to give ourselves away!"

Aya frowned. What was the point of looking helpless? Whatever trap the Cutters had planned, wasn't now the time to spring it?

The edge of the city was in sight—maybe that was where they'd make their move. Once they were over the grid, Hiro could fly again, and their crash bracelets would work.

She looked around. Frizz and Fausto were only ten meters away, Frizz's manga eyes wider than ever. Fausto was swaying their board back and forth, an expression of wild delight on his plastic ugly face. Ren and Shay were pulling ahead, riding low and straight.

A car pulled level with Aya and Tally. The side door slid open, revealing two freaks staring at her, lifter rigs strapped on.

"They're waiting until we get back over the grid," Tally yelled. "That means they don't want to kill us."

"Wonderful." Aya swallowed, thinking of all the worse things than death the freaks might have planned.

One of the hovercars swept in closer, and Aya felt a familiar shudder building in the air.

"Shock wave!" she shouted, just as the turbulence hit.

Her ears popped, the wind battering her eyes shut. Then the board hit a pocket of low pressure and dropped. Her feet lifted from the riding surface, and Aya clutched Tally's waist as hard as she could.

Then the board popped back up, Aya's ankle twisting as her feet slammed down against a bump on the riding surface.

Him'$ fingers Aya heard his cry as he fell away, the city's edge still in the distance.

"Tally!" she screamed.

"Don't worry." Tally's body twisted in Aya's grip, bringing them around in a heart-stopping turn.

For a moment there was nothing below Aya but trees and brush—she was almost upside down, the howling lifter fans pushing her down past Hiro's tumbling form.

Aya wanted to scream, but every ounce of her strength went into squeezing Tally's waist.

They fell past Hiro, his panicked cries Dopplering by, then the board twisted again, sweeping up beneath them. Tally reached out and casually grabbed his arm, swinging him onto the board.

His face was pale.

"Sorry to cut that so close, Hiro," Tally said, glancing up at the hovercars. "Didn't want to make it look too easy."

The three of them staggered on the unsteady board, arms wrapped around each other. The lifting fans screeched under Hiro's added weight.

Aya's nose caught the scent of burning metal. "Are we overheating?"

"Yeah," Tally said. "The timing's perfect."

They shot across the city's edge just as the fans seized up with metallic shriek. The board shuddered as the magnetics took over.

But they were still descending "We're too heavy!" Hiro yelled. "Let me go! I can fly now!"

"Not yet." Tally still had an arm wrapped around him.

Above them six inhumans had jumped out of the cars. Two pursued each of the Cutters' boards, their needle fingers glistening in the dawn light like icicles.

"This is when you get them, right?" Aya asked. She hoped Moggle was close enough to capture the Cutters bursting out of their disguises and surprising the inhumans.

"Not yet," Tally said.

In the distance Aya saw Frizz and Fausto spinning out, their board losing control as two inhumans closed in on them.

Aya looked down. The ground was still rushing up too fast for her liking. Tally guided them toward a narrow alley between two factories, where one of the inhumans waited, all four arms extended.

"Let me go!" Hiro shouted.

Tally nodded. "Okay, in three seconds…two …" On one she pushed him from the board. Hiro leaped forward, arms outstretched—but something was wrong.

He was spinning wildly out of control, his limbs whirling like a top. An inhuman swept up beside his flailing form and stabbed him with a needle.

"Hiro!"

Aya screamed. "Tally! Do something!"

"Don't worry, Aya-la. It's all going according to plan."

Tally twisted the board away from the inhuman. But another waited at the alley's other end. They were headed straight toward him.

"Tally! Climb!"

"Quit waving your arms, Aya-la, or this could get messy."

"It's already messy!"

They shot straight into the outspread arms of the inhuman, and Aya felt a needle jab in her side.

Slivers of cold began to spread through her, like tendrils wrapping around her lungs and heart.

"Do something," she whispered, still expecting Tally's smart-plastic disguise to burst away and reveal her fearsome Cutter face.

Then she saw it clutched in Tally's hand—one of Hiro's shoulder pads, its straps undone. Tally had pulled it off on purpose. She dropped it as the hoverboard spun toward the ground.

"Just hang on for a few more seconds, Aya-la. Don't want to bump your head." Tally slumped down toward the riding surface, her eyes fluttering closed. But she sounded totally alert as she hissed, "And wherever you wake up, don't call me Tally. We're just your ugly friends, got that?"

"But why…?"

"Trust me, Aya-la. Sometimes it's a messy business, saving the world."

Aya's brain was spinning from the needle jab, losing its grip on consciousness, but slowly she grasped what the plan had been all along: a way for the disguised Cutters to be captured.

Aya and the others had been nothing but bait And Tally Youngblood—architect of the mind-rain, the most famous person in the world—was nothing but a truth-slanting Slime Queen.