The rushing wind thrashed at her hair, whipping the jackets into a frenzy, but Aya didn't lie flatshe let her body slow her down. The Sly Girl who'd been surfing just behind her shot past on her board, then another went by, then a third.
She was braking faster than all of them!
To her left the train's flank was thundering past now, its magnetic field sending shudders through the hoverboard. Aya fought to keep steady keeping close to the flashing metal wall of the train.
But maybe she was braking too quickly The rear of the train shot past, its wake yanking Aya into the suddenly empty space over the tracks now. Her board spun, earth and sky whirling around her.
She tried to pull herself flat, but the board bucked and twisted in her grip, like a kite in a gale.
"Let go!" someone shouted.
Aya obeyedthe board tumbled away from her. She fell toward the blur of metal tracks The magnets in her crash bracelets kicked in, yanking her up by both wrists. She flipped once head over heels, like a gymnast swinging from two rings, her feet barely missing the ground. She hover-bounced down the mag-lev tracks that way until her momentum was expended.
The bracelets set her down gently, facing the receding lights of the train. She rubbed her wrists, dizzy from spinning.
"You okay?"
Aya looked up to find Eden Maru floating beside her, an amused expression on her face.
"I think so," Aya said.
"You shouldn't brake that fast."
"I noticed." Aya sighed. The night before, she'd watched Eden dismount from the tram. In her full hoverball rig she made it look easy, like rolling off a building in a bungee jacket. "Thanks for telling me to let go, I guess."
"You're welcome, I guess." Eden glanced down the tracks toward the receding train. "Your board will be back soon, along with the others. Slowing down takes longer if you don't wipe out."
Aya glared back at Eden's smile. She was so beautiful, and the only one of the Sly Girls with a big face rank. What did someone so famous get out of skulking around with a secret clique?
Maybe now was the time to find out. Aya straightened her uniform, angling the spy-cam toward Eden. "Can I ask you a question?"
"If it's not too nosey."
"You're not like the rest of them I mean, the rest of us.
You're a big face in the city."
Eden did a slow midair spin. "That's not a question."
"I guess not." Aya remembered the rumors about Eden's ex-boyfriend. "But don't you and the Sly Girls have sort of a difference in ambition? You're a hoverball star, and they work so hard to be extras."
Eden snorted. "You would ask something lame like that. I bet you don't even know where that word comes from."
"Extras?" Aya shrugged. "It just means extra people, like superfluous."
"That's what they teach at littlie school. But it had a different meaning back in Rusty times."
"Well, sure," Aya said. "They had billions of extras back then."
Eden shook her head. "It had nothing to do with overpopulation, Aya-chan. You've seen old wallscreen movies, right?"
"Of course. That was how Rusties got famous."
"Yeah, but here's a weird thing: Rusty software wasn't smart enough to make backgrounds, so they had to build everything in the movie. They had whole fake cities for the actors to walk around in."
"Fake cities
?"Aya said. "Wow, talk about waste."
"And to fill these fake cities, they hired hundreds of real people to walk around. But they weren't in the story at all.
Just in the background. And they were called extras."
Aya raised an eyebrow, not sure if she believed any of this. It all sounded so crazy and out of proportion which was, of course, very Rusty.
"Isn't that how you feel sometimes, Aya-chan?" Eden said. "Like there's a big story going on, and you're stuck in the background?"
"Everyone feels that way sometimes, I guess."
"And you'd do anything to make yourself feel bigger, wouldn't you? Even betray your friends?"
Aya set her jaw. "I'm a Sly Girl now, Eden. Didn't you hear?"
"Yeah, I head your little speech." Eden floated higher, looming over her like a giant. "I just hope you were telling the truth, because real life's not like some Rusty movie, Aya-chan. There's not just one big story that makes the rest of us disappear."
Aya narrowed her eyes. "But you're not in the background. You're famous!"
"You can disappear in front of a crowd, too, you know. Once they start telling you what to do, who to be friends with." Eden spun head over heels, a graceful version of Aya in her crash bracelets.
"Out here with the Sly Girls, I get to keep something for myself."
Aya heard a burst of laughterthe other Sly Girls were gliding toward them down the tracks.
She only had time for one more question.
"So if you don't care about face rank, why did you break up with your boyfriend?"
"Who says I broke up with him?"
"A hundred or so feeds, last time I looked."
"Don't always believe the feeds, Aya. He's the one who couldn't stand people talking about our
'difference in ambition.' So the little moron ran away."
Eden floated a few centimeters lower, reaching out one finger till it was almost touching Aya's nose.
"And that, my Nosey-chan, is what being an extra really means."
The Mountain
As they approached the tunnel mouth, a few of the Sly Girls pulled out flashlights. Beams of red played across the opening, barely piercing the darkness within.
At least Aya wasn't the only one without infrared.
"What happens if a train comes while we're in there?" Pana asked.
Kai shrugged. "Just lie flat on your board, up by the ceiling."
Eden shook her head. "That won't work. The train's wake would pull you down." She hooked her thumb at Aya. "Sort of like what happened to Nosey-chan here."
A few of them laughed. On the way back to the mountain, Eden had demonstrated Aya's hover-bounce down the tracks. Several times.
"Well, it doesn't matter anyway," Kai said. "There aren't any more trains scheduled tonight."
"Don't they run unscheduled trains sometimes?" Pana said.
Kai rolled her eyes. "Maybe once a month. Hardly nervous-making, compared to what we do most nights. Come on!"
She and Eden shot forward into the tunnel mouth. A few of the other Sly Girls stood motionless for a moment, staring after them unhappily.
Aya twisted her flashlight on and urged her board forward. Eden Maru was suspicious of her already; she wasn't about to give the rest of them any reason for doubt.
A one-in-thirty chance wasn't that bad.
In the red light of her beam, dust swirled across the tracks, still unsettled from the train's passage.
A low moan filled the blackness, and her skin prickled. A steady breeze moved through the tunnel, as if the stone walls themselves were breathing.
Aya wondered how they were supposed to find the hidden door. Last night it had looked exactly like the tunnel wall. Maybe surged eyes or Moggle's fancy lenses could tell smart matter and stone apart, but Aya doubted that her normal human vision would be much help.
Miki was already drifting down the tunnel, a flashlight in one hand. She slid her fingers across the wall's surface, peering closely at the stone.
Aya brought her hoverboard alongside. "No infrared, huh?"
"No," Miki sighed. "How about you?"
Aya shook her head. "My crumblies won't let me. But you're sixteen, aren't you?"
"Yeah, but I like my eyeballs."
"They can make them look exactly the same, you know."
"But I like my eyeballs, not an imitation of them. I know that's sort of pre-Rusty."
Aya shrugged. "My brother kicked this natural-body clique who never surge. Some of them have to wear these things like sunglasses just to see, even when they're not out in the sun!"
M
iki narrowed her eyes. "Your brother's famous, isn't he?"
"I guess," Aya said, suddenly wishing she hadn't brought up kicking.
"That's why you became a kicker, isn't it? Because of him?"
"That's what Hiro thinks, like I worship him or something. But he's actually an advertisement for not being famous. It turned him into a big snob."
Miki laughed. "You don't have to run your brother down, Aya-chan, just because he's a big face.
We don't hate kickerswe just don't want anyone kicking us."
"Yeah, I get it." Aya shifted on her board, aligning the button camera again. "But a lot of people would love to see us surf, wouldn't they?"
"Yeah, but then everyone would start mag-lev surfing, and the wardens would get involved."
Miki shook her head. "We have to keep this trick ours. You understand that, right?"
"Of course!" Aya insisted, but Miki was still frowning. Maybe it was time to switch gears. "By the way, thanks for sticking up for me."
"No problem. Like I said, I trust you."
Aya turned to study the wall closely, the nervous trickle starting in her stomach again. "Yeah. But I still owe you one."
A tapping sound came from ahead, and they both looked up.
It was Kai, striking the wall with her flashlight as she slid through the air. Her blows echoed down the tunnel, the stone sounding as solid as a mountain.
"So that's our plan for finding the secret door?" Aya said softly. "Banging on the wall?"
"Do you think they could program smart matter to sound like stone?"
"Probably," Aya answered. Ren always said you could program smart matter to do practically anything. It was one of the big inventions since the mind-rain, like AI and internal eyescreens, innovations that the Prettytime had postponed for centuries. "But why would they bother? Whoever made that door wouldn't expect anyone to walk around down here looking for it."
Miki tapped her own flashlight against the stoneit sounded like solid rock. "So if it hadn't been for us mag-lev surfing, no one would ever have found that door." She smiled. "Maybe it's like the Youngblood cults say: Being crim can change the world."
Aya turned toward her, making sure the button cam had a shot. "And how does finding this door change the world?"
"Well I guess that depends on what's inside." Miki tapped the stone. "I mean, what if there's something really scary hidden down here?"
"Like a secret toxic waste dump?" Aya smiled. "Think how many merits the Good Citizen Committee would give us for uncovering it."
"Don't say that too loud, Aya-chan. Kai hates merits even more than fame." Miki tapped the wall again. "But thanks for mentioning toxic waste. That should distract me from the unscheduled train I've been imagining."
"Hey, Eden!" someone called. "Come here!"
Ahead, a small cluster of Girls had gathered around a section of the wall, all tapping with their flashlights. Aya and Miki glanced at each other, then urged their boards farther into the tunnel.
As they grew closer, Aya listened hard. Was there was something hollow about the echoing blows?
"Let me past, Nosey," Eden Maru's voice came from behind her.
As Aya slid aside, she saw the device in Eden's hands and her heart began to race. It was a matter hacker.
This wasn't just tricks; this was really illegal. Matter hackers could reprogram smart matter any way you wanted there were whole buildings you could hack to the ground if you were crazy enough.
And all she had was this stupid button camera. Shots of an illicit matter hacker would be a total eye-kick.
Aya peered ahead into the darkness, hoping that Moggle was lurking somewhere close. She was dying to check for a signal, but her eyescreen's flicker would be a dead giveaway in the blackness of the tunnel.
The cluster of Sly Girls parted for Eden, all eyes on the small device in her hands. She pressed it against the wall, fingers running over the controls.
After a moment, she nodded. "This is it. Stand back there could be anything behind there."
"Or any one," Miki murmured.
Aya thought of the inhuman figures again, their strange faces and long, thin fingers. "But those body-crazy freaks were just storing something down here," she said. "Nobody lives in this place."
Miki shrugged. "I guess we're about to find out."
A humming filled the tunnel as the clever molecules of smart matter began to rearrange themselvesthe wall rippled, its texture changing from rough stone to the pearly sheen of plastic. The door's shape came into focus, a rectangle the exact size of a mag-lev cargo door.
Then the wall began to peel aside, one layer after another, like water sliding across a flat surface.
Just as it had the night before, the air tasted tremulous, like a thunderstorm was coming.
The tremors traveled along Aya's skin, as if the matter hacker was changing her as well The last layer slipped away, and the door stood open wide before them. A long hallway stretched out ahead, lit with an orange glow.
"Now this is very sly," Kai said, and stepped inside.
The Hidden
The Sly Girls dashed ahead into the mountain hideaway, everyone wanting to be the first to discover what wonders were hidden here. Calls and laughter filled the air, echoing from the bare stone walls.
Aya couldn't see a single right angle, just arches and rounded corners. Every few meters, oval doorways led away to more winding halls, an undulating maze cut into stone.
"Well, whoever lives here is definitely moving out," Miki said.
Aya nodded. The main hallway was crowded with equipment and storage containers, a disorganized jumble covered with a fine layer of dust.
"Maybe we should look for those big metal cylinders," she said. "Those were the only things they were moving in last night."
"As long as whatever we find isn't alive." Miki gestured toward a bunch of work chairs crammed together in the hallway. They were the wrong shapetoo high and narrow, suited for some inhuman form.
Aya shone her flashlight down at her feet. A meter-wide path of metal studs glistened from the stone floor, leading straight down the middle of the main hallway. "That's to give hover-lifters something to push against. Anything heavy would have to go this way. Come on."
The two of them followed the metal path with careful, silent footsteps. The arched doorways revealed empty rooms, dust patterns on the floor showing where furniture had been removed.
As they went deeper into the mountain, the echoes of the other girls' voices grew faint around them. Aya wondered how so many tons of rock had been carried away to make this place. Whoever had built it must have tricked the automatic mag-lev trains into taking a lot of cargo for them. Or maybe one of the city governments was involvedthis all seemed too big to do on the sly.
Every city had expanded since the mind-rain, pulling the Rusty ruins apart for scrap, scrambling to get more metal.
"Who has the resources to build something like this?" Aya murmured.
"Maybe this was one of those Rusty places where they dug up metal. What were they called mines?"
Aya realized that they were whispering. Noises reverberated sharply against the bare stone walls, making her conscious of every sound she made.
The long, sleep-missing day was finally catching up with her, a brain-fogging exhaustion erasing the excitement that had propelled her through the mag-lev ride. The dim orange lighting was playing tricks on her eyes. Long shadows leaped from the beams of their flashlights, and Aya doubted her button cam was getting any decent shots.
Suddenly Miki spun around. "Did you see that?"
"See what?"
"I don't know." Miki pointed her flashlight down the hall behind them. "The shadows were moving funny. Like something's following us."
"Something?" Aya said, turning to stare into the darkness. She felt totally awake now.
"Maybe I'm just imagining it."
Aya sighed. "Great. Now I'm imagining it too."
"Come on," Mik
i said. "I feel like we're getting close to something."
"Is that the same something that's following us? Or a different something?"
Miki shrugged, and moved ahead.
In the next room, the path of metal studs led to a large opening in the wall and a set of stairs leading down. There were no orange worklights below, only blackness.
Aya came to a halt. "Maybe we should call the others."
"You want Kai to think you're scared of the dark?" Miki snorted, and headed down the stairs.
Aya sighed, then followed.
As they descended, the echoes of their footsteps began to lengthen, a larger space opening up around them. Aya's flashlight played across high arches, like the stone roof of the giant reservoir below the city. For a moment she wondered if the entire mountain had been hollowed out to capture runoff during the rainy seasonbut why would people building a storm drain look so weird?
Then her flashlight found the cylinders. The room was full of them, in neat ranks like hulking metal soldiers on parade, stretching into the darkness.
"Okay, we found them," Miki whispered. "But what are they?"
Aya shook her head. She walked up to the closest cylinder and pressed her palm against it: cold metal, its surface seamless. When she stood on tiptoe to look at its top, she found no sign of any seal.
"Looks like solid steel to me."
Miki walked past her, a host of shadows wheeling in unison to avoid the beam of her flashlight.
Aya followed her deeper into the army of cylinders, looking for any clue as to what they might be. But the metal forms were unmarked and featureless, like giant pawns in an endless chess set, all exactly the same.
But wasn't there a metal shortage going on? This was enough steel to double the size of the city.
Miki came to a sudden halt. "There it is again."
"What?"
Miki turned and pointed her flashlight past Aya. "I saw a reflection in the metal. Someone's back there!"
Aya spun around, sweeping her flashlight across the ranks of cylinders. Shadows leaped and darted from its beam, but she saw nothing except the reflection of her own half-lit face, warped across the cylinders' smooth sides.
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