Extras u-4

by Скотт Вестерфельд

  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 t
urning 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?"