“Interesting surge,” someone said.
Aya froze . . . her hood had fallen back, revealing her ugly face.
“Um, thanks.” The words came out muffled, and Aya gulped down cold shards of ice. The breeze hit her sweaty face, and she realized how fashion-missing she must look.
The boy smiled. “Where did you get the idea for that nose?”
Aya managed to shrug, suddenly word-missing. In her eyescreen she could see Eden Maru already flying across town, but tearing her gaze from the boy was impossible. He was a manga-head: eyes huge and glistening, his delicate face inhumanly beautiful. Long, tapered fingers stroked his perfect cheek as he stared at her.
That was the weird thing: He was staring at her.
But he was gorgeous, and she was ugly.
“Let me guess,” he said. “From some pre-Rusty painting?”
“Uh, not really.” She touched her nose, swallowing the last few shards of ice. “It’s more, um . . . randomly generated?”
“Of course. It’s so unique.” He bowed. “Frizz Mizuno.”
As Aya returned the bow, her eyescreen displayed his face rank: 4,612. A reputation shiver went through her, the realization that she was talking to someone important, connected, meaningful.
He was waiting for Aya to give her own name. And once she did that, he’d know her face rank, and then his wonderful gaze would turn somewhere more interesting. Even if in some logic-missing, mind-rain way he liked her ugly face, being an extra was simply pathetic.
Besides, her nose was way too big.
She twisted a crash bracelet to call her hoverboard. “My name’s Aya. But I kind of . . . have to go now.”
He bowed. “Of course. People to see, reputations to bomb.”
Aya laughed, looking down at the robe. “Oh, this. I’m not really . . . I’m sort of incognito.”
“Incognito?” His smile was eye-kicking. “You’re very mysterious.”
Her board slipped up next to the stairs. Aya stared down at it, hesitating. Moggle was already half a kilometer away, trailing Eden Maru through the darkness at high speed, but part of her was screaming to stay.
Because Frizz was still gazing at her.
“I’m not trying to be mysterious,” she said. “It’s just working out that way.”
He laughed. “I want to know your last name, Aya. But I think you’re purposely not telling me.”
“Sorry,” she squeaked, and stepped onto the board. “But I have to go after someone. She’s sort of . . . getting away.”
He bowed, his smile broadening. “Enjoy the chase.”
She leaned forward and shot into the darkness, his laughter in her ears.
UNDERGROUND
Eden Maru knew how to fly.
Full-body lifter rigs were standard gear for hoverball players, but most people never dared to wear them. Each piece had its own lifter: the shin and elbow pads, even the boots in some rigs. One wrong twitch of your fingers could send all those magnets in different directions, which was an excellent way to dislocate a shoulder, or send you spinning headfirst into a wall. Unlike falling off a hoverboard, crash bracelets wouldn’t save you from your own clumsiness.
But none of this seemed to worry Eden Maru. In Aya’s eyescreen, she was zigzagging through the new construction site, using the half-finished buildings and open storm drains as her private obstacle course.
Even Moggle, who was stuffed with lifters and only twenty centimeters across, was finding it tricky keeping up.
Aya tried to focus on her own hoverboarding, but she was still half-hypnotized by Frizz Mizuno, dazzled by his attention. Since the mind-rain had broken down the boundaries between ages, Aya had talked to plenty of pretties. It wasn’t like the old days, when your friends never talked to you after they got the operation. But no pretty had ever looked at her that way.
Or was she kidding herself? Maybe Frizz’s intense gaze made everyone feel this way. His eyes were so huge, just like the old Rusty drawings that manga-heads based themselves on.
She was dying to ask the city interface about him. She’d never seen him on the feeds, but with a face rank below five thousand, Frizz had to be known for something besides eye-kicking beauty.
But for now Aya had a story to chase, a reputation to build. If Frizz was ever going to look at her that way again, she couldn’t be so face-missing.
Her eyescreen began to flicker. Moggle’s signal was fading, falling out of range of the city network as it followed Eden underground.
The signal shimmered with static, then went dark. . . .
Aya banked to a halt, a shudder passing through her. Losing Moggle was always unnerving, like looking down on a sunny day to find her shadow gone.
She stared at the last image the hovercam had sent: the inside of a storm drain, grainy and distorted by infrared. Eden Maru was curled up tight, a human cannonball zooming through the confines of the tunnel, headed so deep that Moggle’s transmitter couldn’t reach the surface anymore.
The only way to find Eden again was to follow her down.
Aya leaned forward, urging her hoverboard back into motion. The new construction site rose up around her, dozens of iron skeletons and gaping holes.
After the mind-rain, nobody wanted to live in fashion-missing Prettytime buildings. Nobody famous, anyway. So the city was expanding wildly, plundering nearby Rusty ruins for metal. There were even rumors that the city planned to tear open the ground to look for fresh iron, like the earth-damaging Rusties had three centuries ago.
The unfinished towers flashed past, their steel frames making her board shudder. Hoverboards needed metal below them to fly, but too many magnetic fields made them shivery. Aya eased back her speed, checking for Moggle again.
Nothing. The hovercam was still underground.
A huge excavation came into sight, the foundation of some future skyscraper. Along its raw dirt floor, puddles of afternoon rain reflected the starlit sky, like jagged slivers of mirror.
In a corner of the excavation she spotted a tunnel mouth, an entry to the network of storm drains beneath the city.
A month ago, Aya had kicked a story about a new graffiti clique, uglies who left artwork for future generations. They painted the insides of unfinished tunnels and conduits, letting their work be sealed up like time capsules. No one would see the paintings until long after the city collapsed, when its ruins were rediscovered by some future civilization. It was all very mind-rain, a rumination about how the eternal Prettytime had been more fragile than it seemed.
The story hadn’t bumped Aya’s face rank—stories about uglies never did—but she and Moggle had spent a week playing hide-and-seek through the construction site. She wasn’t afraid of the underground.
Letting her board drop, Aya ducked past idle lifter drones and hoverstruts, diving toward the tunnel mouth. She bent her knees, pulled in her arms, and plunged into absolute blackness. . . .
Her eyescreen flickered once—the hovercam had to be nearby.
The smell of old rainwater and dirt was strong, trickling drainage the only sound. As the worklights behind her faded to a faint orange glow, Aya slowed her board to a crawl, guiding herself with one hand sliding along the tunnel wall.
Moggle’s signal flickered back on . . . and held.
Eden Maru was standing upright, flexing her arms. She was someplace spacious and dead-black in infrared, extending as far as Moggle’s cams could see.
What was down there?
More human forms shimmered in the grainy darkness. They floated above the black plain, the lozenge shapes of hoverboards glowing beneath their feet.
Aya smiled. She’d found them, those crazy girls who rode mag-lev trains.
“Move in and listen,” she whispered.
As Moggle drifted closer, Aya remembered a place the graffiti uglies had bragged about finding—a huge reservoir where the city stored runoff from the rainy season, an underground lake in absolute darkness.
Through Moggle’s microphones, a f
ew echoing words reached her.
“Thanks for getting here so fast.”
“I always said your big face would get you into trouble, Eden.”
“Well, this shouldn’t take long. She’s just behind me.”
Aya froze. Who was just behind Eden? She glanced over her shoulder. . . .
Nothing but the glimmer of water trickling down the tunnel.
Then her eyescreen faded again. Aya swore, flexing her ring finger: off/on . . . but her vision stayed black.
“Moggle?” she hissed.
No flicker in the eyescreen, no response. She tried to access the hovercam’s diagnostics, its audio feed, the remote flying controls. Nothing worked.
But Moggle was so close—at most twenty meters away. Why couldn’t she connect?
Aya urged her board forward slowly, listening hard, trying to peer through the darkness. The wall slipped away from her hand, the echoes of a huge space opening around her. Trickles of rainwater chorused from a dozen drains, and the damp presence of the reservoir sent chills across her skin.
She needed to see. . . .
Then Aya remembered the control panel of her hoverboard. In this absolute darkness, even a few pinpricks of light would make a difference.
She knelt and booted the controls. Their soft blue glow revealed sweeping walls of ancient brick, patched in places with modern ceramics and smart matter. A broad stone ceiling arched overhead, like the vault of some underground cathedral.
But no Moggle.
Aya drifted slowly through the darkness, letting the subtle air currents carry her board, listening hard. A smooth lake of black water spread out a few meters below her board.
Then she heard something nearby, the slightest catch of breath, and turned. . . .
In the dim blue glow, an ugly face stared back at her. The girl stood on a hoverboard, holding Moggle in her arms. She gave Aya a cold smile.
“We thought you might come after this.”
“Hey!” Aya said. “What did you do to my—”
A foot kicked out from the darkness and sent Aya’s hoverboard rocking.
“Watch it!” Aya shouted.
Strong hands pushed her, and she took two unsteady steps backward. The hoverboard shifted, trying to stay under her feet. Aya stuck her arms out, wobbling like a littlie on ice skates.
“Knock it off! What are you—”
From all directions, more hands shoved and prodded her—Aya spun wildly, blind and defenseless. Then her board was kicked away, and she was tumbling through the air.
The water struck her face with a cold, hard slap.
AUDITION
Blackness boiled around her, its watery roar like thunder stuffed into her ears. The shock of impact stripped away any sense of up and down, leaving only the tumbling, freezing cold. Her arms and legs flailed, the water filling her nostrils and mouth, squeezing her chest . . .
Then Aya’s head broke the surface. She gasped and sputtered, hands clawing at the water, searching for something solid in the dark.
“Hey! What’s your problem?”
Her cry boomed through the vast space, echoing in the blind emptiness. But no answer came.
She paddled water for a moment, catching her breath, trying to listen.
“Hello . . . ?”
A hand grabbed her wrist, and Aya found herself pulled into the air. She hung there, feet dangling, her shivers sending water cascading from her soaking robe.
“What . . . what’s going on?”
A voice answered. “We don’t like kickers.”
Aya had figured as much: They wanted to kick their own story about how they rode the trains, and keep all the fame for themselves.
Maybe it was time for some truth-slanting. “But I’m not a kicker!”
Someone snorted, then a closer voice said, “You followed me here from that party—or your hovercam did, anyway. You were looking for a story.”
“Not a story, I was looking for you.” Aya shivered again, fighting to keep her teeth from chattering. She had to convince them not to drop her into the black lake again. “I saw you guys the other night.”
“Saw us where?” the closer voice said, and the grip on her wrist adjusted. That one had to be Eden; nobody could hold her up like this without help from a hoverball rig.
“On top of a mag-lev train. You were riding it. I tried to find out who you were, but there was nothing on the feeds.”
“That’s the way we like it,” the first voice said.
“Okay, I get it!” Aya said. “Um, are you just going to dangle me here like this?”
“Would you prefer I drop you?” Eden asked.
“Not really. It’s just that this is kind of . . . wrist-hurting.”
“Call your board, then.”
“Oh . . . right.” In her panic, Aya had forgotten all about her hoverboard. She reached up with her free hand and twisted her other crash bracelet. A few seconds later the hoverboard nudged her feet, and the iron grip released her.
She wobbled for a moment on the board, rubbing her wrist. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Are you telling us you’re not a kicker?” It was the first voice again, maybe the ugly woman she’d glimpsed. It echoed through the darkness low and growly, like she’d surged her throat to sound scary.
“Well, I’ve put a few things on my feed. Same as everyone.”
“Pictures of your cat?” someone said, then snickered.
“So do you always go to parties disguised as a Bomber?” Eden asked. “With a hovercam in tow?”
Aya wrapped her arms around herself. The soaked robe was clinging to her skin, and her teeth were going to start chattering any minute. “Look, I wanted to join up with your clique. So I had to track you down. Moggle’s good for that.”
“Moggle?” the mean voice asked.
“Uh . . . my hovercam.”
“Your hovercam has a name?”
Laughter echoed from every direction. Aya realized that there were more of them than she’d thought. Maybe a dozen hidden in the darkness.
“Hang on a second,” Eden’s voice said. “How old are you?”
“Um . . . fifteen?”
A flashlight flicked on, blindingly bright in the total darkness.
“Ouch!” She squeezed her eyes shut.
Whoever was holding the flashlight added, “Thought that nose looked big. Even in infrared.”
As Aya’s eyes adjusted to the flashlight, she began to make out faces. They looked like Plain Janes, the clique for girls who didn’t want to be pretty or exotic, just normal—as if that concept still existed. Except for Eden Maru’s padded and muscular form, the hovering figures around Aya all looked the same—generic bodies, designed to disappear in a crowd. All of them were girls, as far as Aya could tell, just like the night she’d seen them hitching a ride on the mag-lev train.
“So you like to sneak around at night?” Eden said.
“I guess so. Beats sitting in my dorm room.”
“Easily bored?” The other girl drawled the words in her growling voice. “Then maybe you should have a surf sometimes.”
“A surf?” Aya swallowed. “You mean I can ride with you?”
A few grumbles came from the darkness.
“But she’s only fifteen,” the girl holding the flashlight said.
“Are you still back in the Prettytime?” said the growly-voiced girl. “Who cares how old she is? She crashed Prettyville and came down here all alone. Got more guts than most of you, probably.”
“What about the hovercam?” Eden said. “If she kicks a story, we’ll have wardens all over us.”
“She could still call the wardens if she wants to.” The mean-voiced girl slid closer on her board, until her nose was only a few centimeters from Aya’s. “So we either leave her down here for good, or get her on our side.”
Aya swallowed, glancing down at the shimmering black lake.
“Um, do I get a vote?”
“No one but me gets a vote,” the g
irl said, then smiled. “But how about this? You do get to make a choice.”
“Oh?”
The girl held Moggle at arm’s length, and Aya saw the lock-down clamp against its skin. It was frozen, brain-dead until someone removed the clamp.
“You can either take your hovercam and go away. Or I drop it right now, and you get to come surfing with us.”
Aya blinked, listening to the cold water still trickling from her robe. Ren claimed he’d made Moggle waterproof, but could she find her way back to this exact spot?
“How important is it to you, getting out of that boring little dorm room?”
Aya swallowed. “Very.”
“Then choosing should be easy, right?”
“It’s just . . . that cam cost me a lot of merits.”
“It’s a toy. Like face ranks and merits, it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t let it.”
Face rank didn’t mean anything? This girl was brain-missing. But she was right about one thing: Nothing was more important than getting out of boring, pathetic Akira Hall.
Maybe Ren could help her find the way back here. . . .
Aya closed her eyes. “Okay. I want to come with you. Drop it.”
The splash echoed like a slap.
“Good choice. That toy isn’t what you really need.”
Aya opened her eyes. They stung with hidden tears.
“I’m Jai,” the girl said, bowing low.
“Aya Fuse.” She returned the bow, her eyes falling to the widening ripples beneath them. Moggle was really gone.
“We’ll see you again soon,” Jai said.
“See me soon? But you said—”
“I think you’ve had enough fun for one night, for a fifteen-year-old.”
“But you promised!”
“And you said you weren’t a kicker. I want to see if you were truth-slanting about that.”
Aya started to protest, but the words faded in her mouth. There was no point in arguing now—Moggle was already gone.
“But I don’t even know who you are.”
Jai smiled. “We’re the Sly Girls, and we’ll be in touch. Come on, everyone—we’ve got a train to catch!”