“Best friends forever,” Shay said softly. “It’s just that getting captured by a bunch of freaks isn’t my idea of fun. How about you, Fausto? You like being stuck in this brain-rattling hovercar?”
“Loving every minute of it,” he said absently, shifting his sneak suit through different dorm plaids, as if he didn’t want to get involved.
“I don’t remember you having a better idea,” Tally said.
“I had plenty of ideas.” Shay turned back to Aya. “But I’ve learned that when Tally gets a plan in her head, it’s easier just to go along. Otherwise, you’ll find out that Tally can be very, very special.”
Aya swallowed, wondering if her English had been scrambled by whatever the inhumans had stabbed her with. The conversation had started her head spinning again. The Cutters were so different from how merit-rich, world-saving, famous people were supposed to be.
“By ‘special’ . . . do you mean something bad or good?” she asked.
“Not bad or good. Just special.” Shay shrugged. “Tally’s someone who makes things happen, that’s all, and the easiest thing is just to play along. So are you going to be a good little random and help us?”
“But you’re the Cutters!” Aya said. “You ended the Prettytime, and I’m fifteen. How am I supposed to help you?”
Shay smiled. “Well, from the rough translation we saw of your story, you seem to be pretty good at fooling people.”
Aya sighed. “Thanks for the reminder.”
“You’re welcome,” Shay said. “All we’re asking is for you to lie a little more. Explain to our surge-crazy captors why a bunch of foreign uglies were trying to sneak you out of the city.” She pointed at her ugly mask. “These disguises won’t hold up if they get suspicious.”
Aya frowned, slowly realizing how tricky this was going to be. “But you don’t even speak Japanese.”
“I’m sure you’ll think of some explanation,” Shay said, then laughed. “Just imagine the great story you’ll get out of it. Honorary Cutter!”
Aya nodded slowly. It would be an amazing story: an ugly drawn into helping the Cutters save the world. Plus, she could show what the famous Tally Youngblood was really like.
“But I don’t even have a spycam. Stories don’t mean anything without shots.”
“Are you sure about that? Check your eyescreen.”
Aya flexed her ring finger. The familiar feeds were all missing, but a few signals hovered at the edge of her vision: an unrecognizable language from some passing city, fragments of the hovercar’s interface beneath layers of security. And in its corner, her last known face rank captured as they’d shot through the flash-bombed hovercams: eight.
“I made the top ten,” she said softly.
Then she saw it: Moggle’s signal, its power minimized but steady, coming from only meters away.
Her eyes widened. “Moggle’s stuck to the bottom of the car.”
“Yep. It snuck under there while they were loading us on,” Shay said. “Pretty clever little hovercam you’ve got there.”
Aya looked down at Ren’s sleeping form. “It’s his mods, not mine.”
“Smart boy.”
“Okay, you’ve got a story,” Tally said. “So is it worth your time to help us save the world?”
“You promise to protect us?”
“Yeah,” Tally said. “I promise.”
Aya took a slow breath, remembering Lai’s words on the sled.
“Sure, I’ll help. I happen to like the world, after all.”
“That’s just bubbly of you, Aya-la,” Shay said. “Now what about your friends? Are they going to be a problem?”
“No, I’m sure they’ll help too.” Aya took Frizz’s hand, wondering if she should wake the rest of them up. It was best if they all learned what was going on now, before anyone had a chance to . . .
. . . give everything away.
Aya looked down at Frizz, her eyes widening. He was beginning to stir at her touch, a soft moan escaping his lips . . . his beautiful lips that could speak nothing but the truth.
And suddenly Aya realized that now was not the best time for Radical Honesty.
ADVANCED ENGLISH
“Aya?” Frizz murmured softly, his eyes fluttering open. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” She leaned closer. “Are you okay?”
“I think I’m covered in bruises,” Frizz answered. “And I know I’m very upset with Tally Youngblood.”
Aya squeezed his hand, unsure how much to tell him about their situation. After what Shay had said, she wondered what Tally would do to Frizz if she found out that his brain surge threatened her plans.
Knock him out again? Toss him out of the hovercar?
Aya decided that she needed help with this.
She turned to Shay. “Wake those two up, Shay-la? I might as well explain everything at once.”
Shay nodded, then nudged Hiro and Ren. They came awake slowly, their eyes sweeping around the shuddering cargo hold in disbelief.
“What happened?” Hiro said, sitting up. His lifter rig had been removed, and his party clothes were rumpled beyond repair.
Aya helped Frizz sit up, then gestured the others closer. When they were huddled together, she spoke in rapid Japanese.
“They used us as bait, and let us all get captured. So I guess we’re headed to wherever those freaks come from.”
Ren glanced at Shay. “So that’s the real reason they’re in disguise.”
“Yeah. And now they need our help,” Aya said. “They want to sneak into the inhumans’ base without anyone knowing who they are. We have to pretend they’re friends of ours.”
“Are they brain-missing?” Hiro cried. “How dare they drag us into this?”
Aya turned to him and shrugged. “I guess Tally’s so famous she thinks she can do anything.”
“Well, I’m not helping them.” Hiro crossed his arms. “Not after they got us kidnapped on purpose!”
“But we wouldn’t just be helping them,” Frizz said. “Tally said there were more mass drivers. Lots. Don’t you think that somewhere there might be a cylinder pointed at our city, Hiro? Maybe programmed to take out your mansion?”
“Well, maybe,” Hiro mumbled, casting an annoyed look at Tally.
“And don’t you think this will make a better story if we help them?” Aya asked. “They want us to be sort of . . . honorary Cutters.”
“Honorary Cutters?” Ren whispered. “That would be a pretty big story.”
Hiro shook his head. “Pretty crappy story without cams.”
“Not to worry,” Aya said. “Moggle is still with us, stuck to the bottom of this car.”
“Moggle did that while we were all knocked out?” Ren laughed. “My mods rule!”
Aya nodded. “So what do you say, Hiro? Do we kick this?”
The hovercar hit a patch of serious turbulence, dropping out from under them for a moment. They all lifted into the air, then came down hard against the metal floor. But Hiro just sat there as though the storm wasn’t happening, thinking hard.
Finally he nodded. “Okay, but we all kick our stories at the same time. And everyone gets to use any of Moggle’s shots they want.”
“Agreed,” Aya said.
“You two are very strange sometimes,” Frizz said. “Can I point out that how you kick this story is not our biggest problem.”
Aya sighed. “You’re right about that.”
Ren’s excited expression fell, and he let out a slow breath. “Radical Honesty.”
“So what?” Hiro said. “Can’t you just keep quiet?”
Frizz shook his head. “I can’t even keep a surprise party a secret. How am I supposed to hide the fact that the world’s most famous person is standing next to me in disguise?”
“You can’t keep a birthday party secret?” Hiro said. “Okay, Radical Honesty is officially the most brain-missing clique I’ve ever heard of!”
“Well, when I came up with it, I wasn’t planning on sn
eaking Tally Youngblood into someplace full of aliens, okay?” Frizz cried. “And neither were you, until you found out you could kick the story!”
“What’s your point?” Hiro asked.
“There’s one more thing,” Aya interrupted. “I think Tally’s a little . . . unstable.”
Hiro and Ren looked at her like they thought she was kidding, but Frizz nodded. “When I first got the idea for Radical Honesty, I spent some time studying the history of brain surge. Not just the bubbleheads, but everything, including what Tally’s city did to Specials.” Frizz glanced at the three Cutters. “They could be deadly when people got in their way. Their motto was, ‘I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to.’ And they did. They even killed people.”
Hiro gave Aya a sidelong glance. “And you want us to be ‘Honorary Cutters’?”
“But I thought they were all cured,” she said.
Frizz nodded. “Most of them were completely despecialized. But the Cutters who’d protected Diego in the war were allowed to keep their reflexes and strength, because their brains were cured.” He leaned in closer. “But Tally Youngblood never changed at all. She didn’t want anyone ‘rewiring’ her, she said—that’s why she disappeared into the wild.”
“Crap,” Ren said. “They really don’t tell it that way on the history feeds.”
Aya swallowed. This was much worse than she’d thought.
She turned to Frizz. “So you understand the problem? You can’t let Tally know about Radical Honesty. There’s no telling what she’ll do if she finds out you could ruin her plans.”
Frizz’s eyebrows rose. “So let me get this straight, Aya-chan. You want me, a person who can’t lie, to lie about the fact that I can’t lie?”
“We need another plan,” Hiro said.
“What about the language barrier?” Ren said. “Maybe you could just tell her everything . . . but in Japanese.”
Frizz shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way, Ren. Speaking the wrong language is just another way of hiding the truth. I can’t deceive people.”
“But couldn’t you, sort of, forget they don’t speak Japanese?” Ren asked.
“I can’t lie to myself any more than I can to them.” Frizz groaned with frustration. “The more we talk about this, the more I’ll think about it. And the more I think about it, the more I’ll need to let them know we have a secret!”
He groaned again, looking in Tally’s direction.
Tally returned his gaze. “So how’s that going over there? Coming to any decisions?”
In perfect English, Frizz said, “They don’t want me to talk to you!” He choked to a halt, clamping both hands over his mouth.
Tally raised an eyebrow. “What?”
“Nothing!” Aya said in English. “We’re still discussing everything, that’s all.”
Shay gestured with her chin. “Well, you better hurry up. Looks like someone’s coming to visit.”
Aya looked up and saw that the metal door to the drivers’ cabin was swinging open.
Oh, great, she thought. More people for Frizz to talk to.
UDZIR
Two of the inhumans floated in.
Even here inside the car, they wore their hoverball rigs. The man glided across the cargo hold over their heads. The other, a woman, waited, hands grasping the edges of the doorway, fingertips glistening with needles. Behind her Aya could see the drivers’ cabin, where two more inhumans were seated at the car’s controls.
This close, the freakish faces were even more unsettling. The inhumans’ eyes were so far apart that they seemed to point in different directions, like the gaze of a fish. The floating man took them all in without turning his head, fixing Aya with one steely eye. He kept himself in place by stirring the hot, muggy air with his hands and strange bare feet.
“I see you are awake,” he said. “And no one is injured?”
His Japanese was imperfect—Aya realized that after six hours in flight the hovercar could be anywhere in Asia. She wondered where the inhumans really came from.
“We’re all in one piece,” she said. “But not very happy.”
“We did not expect to have to take seven of you,” he answered, performing a little midair bow. “We apologize for any discomfort.”
“Discomfort!” Hiro cried. “You kidnapped us!”
The inhuman nodded, an expression of regret passing over his strange features. “It is necessary to hide ourselves for the moment. You have to be silenced.”
“Silenced?” Aya said, swallowing. “You mean you’re going to kill us?”
“No, indeed! And I am sorry for my Japanese,” he said. “I only mean you cannot communicate with your home. But very soon there will be no more need for secrecy, and you may return.”
“Why can’t we go now?” Aya asked.
“We land shortly, then we can explain everything,” he said. “In the meantime, my name is Udzir. May I ask yours?”
Aya paused for a moment, then bowed and introduced herself. Ren and Hiro followed suit. The Cutters got the hint, giving false names when Udzir turned to them.
But his stare lingered on Tally.
“You do not seem like the others,” he said.
Aya wondered exactly what he meant. Back in the Prettytime, the Global Concord Committee had averaged the different regions of the world, and the crazy surgery since the mind-rain had only further confused the old Rusty genetic categories. But uglies still showed their heritage, and the Cutters’ smart-plastic masks didn’t look particularly Asian.
But Udzir was singling Tally out—had he glimpsed a hint of uncured Special in her eyes?
“It’s true,” Frizz said through gritted teeth. “She isn’t like the rest of us.”
Aya snapped out of her silence. “What Frizz means is that our friends are students from another city. They don’t speak Japanese very well.”
“They don’t speak it at all!” Frizz proclaimed. Aya squeezed his hand, willing him to stay silent.
“English, then?” Udzir switched effortlessly.
Tally nodded. “Yes, English is better. Did you say where we’re going?”
“You will see soon.”
“We’ve been flying south for hours,” Fausto said. “And it’s pretty hot. We must be near the equator.”
Udzir nodded, smiling. “And you are very good students, I see. Let me reward your cleverness: We will soon land on an island that the Rusties called Singapore.”
Aya frowned, trying to remember her geography. The name wasn’t ringing any bells, but there were hundreds of Rusty cities that had been lost. At least the change in subject had quieted Frizz’s need for Radical Honesty.
The hovercar was descending now, the ride growing rougher as clouds darkened the windows. The hold began to pitch from side to side, setting the cargo straps swinging. Aya felt her stomach lurch, and was suddenly glad she hadn’t eaten anything since dinner the night before.
Tally, Fausto, and Shay seemed unfazed by the turbulence. They shifted their weight like hoverboard riders, compensating for every movement of the car. It was as if they’d learned to read the storm’s howls and anticipate the next assault of the wind.
Udzir, unperturbed in midair, looked down at the Cutters with renewed interest. “You’ve ridden in a tropical storm before?”
“We travel a lot,” Tally said simply.
“I noticed your hoverboards were made to fly in the wild. Most unusual, especially for uglies.”
“Really?” Shay said. “They’re all the rage where we come from.”
Frizz tensed up beside Aya, and she dug her fingernails into his hand.
“Which is where, exactly?” Udzir asked.
“We’re from Diego,” Shay said, and Aya felt Frizz relaxing a little at the sound of the truth.
“A city known for its forward-looking nature,” Udzir said approvingly. “Perhaps you will appreciate our project.”
“Which is what?” Tally asked.
“When we land,”
the man said. The hovercar banked suddenly, and he glanced toward the drivers’ cabin. “As you will all realize very soon now. If you wish to take a look at our home, you may.”
“Why not?” Tally said. She pulled herself up and peered down through one of the tiny windows. The other Cutters followed suit.
Moggle was probably shooting from the bottom of the car, but Aya decided to take a look herself. She gulped a deep breath of the dense, muggy air to fight the nausea rising in her stomach, and pulled herself up by the cargo webbing.
“Be careful, Aya,” Frizz said.
She nodded, gaining her feet unsteadily. The window was small and streaked with rain, the plastic thick and vision-warping.
The car was passing through a layer of clouds, the window revealing nothing but a dark gray mass and streaks of rain. But gradually the clouds grew thinner, boiling away into tendrils as the car descended.
The view cleared, the hovercar abruptly steadying.
A steely gray ceiling hung just above them, a solid sheet of clouds. Beneath the storm a dense rain forest spread out all the way to a shimmering glimpse of ocean. The mass of jungle was wrapped around the largest ruins she’d ever seen. Clusters of huge towers reared up from the wind-whipped treetops, their metal skeletons disappearing into the clouds.
Even with the storm raging, construction lifters were attached to the ancient Rusty buildings, grasping iron beams like birds of prey, as if waiting for a break in the weather to tear them apart.
The car banked hard, tipping the view in a dizzy-making way, the Rusty towers disappearing. Now Aya could see a broad clearing cut from the jungle. A hoverport sprawled out beneath her—hundreds of cars and heavy lifters arrayed across a landing field, mag-lev lines converging from every direction on a central station.
“This is huge,” Tally breathed.
“Yes,” Udzir said. “We are very proud of all we’ve done.”
“But you’re clear-cutting the jungle!” Tally said, and Aya heard razors in her voice.
“We serve a greater cause,” Udzir said. “Once you see more, you will understand the sacrifices we’ve made.”
The car banked harder, gyrating around the port like a tiny boat being sucked into a giant whirlpool, and more structures rotated into Aya’s view. Long storehouses, prefab housing, automated factories all jumbled together without rhyme or reason. Figures darted among them, wearing heavy plastic coats against the rain . . . and flying.