“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 rain. “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 equa
tion.”
“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 Hiro’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 parachute’s 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 jacket’s 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.
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