Up here in the highest layer of the trees, the jungle was much less dismal. The vines sprouted flowers, and shafts of sunlight caught the iridescence of insect wings. A flock of pink-crested birds fluttered just overhead. They squawked and fought over the best branches, baring white bellies inside green wings. One stared suspiciously down at Aya, a bright yellow beak between its beady eyes.
Maybe the jungle wasn’t so bad after all—once you could float above the mud and slime. Of course, its magnificence just made Aya feel even more cam-missing.
“Tally-wa,” Frizz said softly. “May I ask you a question?”
“Can I stop you?”
“Probably not,” he said. “Those cylinders Aya found, what if they weren’t really weapons?”
“What else could they be?” Aya asked.
Frizz paused for a moment, staring at the cables strung around them. “What if they were just metal? That’s what this is all about, right?”
“But Frizz,” Aya said. “They had smart matter in them, remember? That proved they were weapons!”
He shook his head. “That proved they had a guidance system. But what if they were programmed to fly to this island?”
“Why would anyone bomb themselves?” Aya asked.
“They wouldn’t have to aim for the buildings,” he said.
“That’s true,” Tally said. “This is an island, after all. The cylinders could fall into the ocean. That would cool them off after reentry, then you could salvage the metal.”
Frizz spun in midair to face her, his hands stirring the ferns around him. “You said the inhumans were salvaging metal everywhere. So maybe the mass drivers are just a way to get it all here.”
“Easier than smuggling it halfway around the world,” Tally said. “Maybe all those empty mountains we found had already launched all their metal.”
Frizz nodded. “That would explain why they were moving out of the place you found, Aya-chan. They were almost ready to send the cylinders here.”
“Frizz!” Aya cried. “Why are you on her side?”
“It’s not about sides.” He shrugged. “It’s about what’s true.”
“What’s the matter, Aya-la? Afraid your little story won’t hold up?” Tally chuckled. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you got it wrong. If you see everything through hovercams and feed stories, you wind up blind to what’s right in front of you.”
Aya tried to answer, but found herself sputtering. She glared at Frizz.
He cleared his throat. “Well, we still haven’t got a clue why they want all this metal.”
“They’re not building anything here,” Aya said. “All we’ve seen is a few factories and some storage buildings.”
Tally pondered for a moment.
“You heard what Udzir said about making sacrifices, right?” Aya said. “Didn’t that sound a little ominous to you?”
“He said they wanted to save humanity.” Tally sighed. “Historically speaking, that can mean anything from solar power to worldwide brain damage.”
“Or worldwide destruction!” Aya said.
“With the cities expanding like crazy, David and I have been tempted to do a little destruction ourselves.” Tally shook her head. “Sometimes it looks like we’re headed back to Rusty days.”
“But you can’t be Rusty without metal,” Frizz said quietly.
Tally looked at him. “You think the inhumans are trying to slow down the expansion?”
Frizz shrugged. “You need metal for buildings and mag-levs, after all.”
“And without a steel grid, nothing hovers,” Tally said. “No cars, no boards, no new fancy floating mansions.”
“But wouldn’t everyone just start strip-mining again?” Aya asked.
“It’s easier to blow up a mining robot than someone’s mansion,” Tally said softly.
Aya raised an eyebrow.
“If blowing up things was what you were inclined to do . . . in special circumstances.” Tally shrugged. “If that’s what the freaks are up to, I might even be on their side. Once they stop kidnapping people.”
Aya stared through the leaves at the cluster of towering ruins being taken apart, stunned by the thought that Frizz and Tally could be right.
If the mass drivers weren’t weapons, that meant the world wasn’t descending into a horrific new age of warfare. If the freaks had figured out a way to stop the cities from ruining the wild, it meant that some human beings really were sane, and that Toshi Banana and his kind could shut up for good.
But unfortunately it also meant one other thing: that a brain-missing fifteen-year-old named Aya Fuse had completely blown the biggest story since the mind-rain.
MAKE LIKE A MONKEY
They flew across the treetops, Aya and Frizz each holding one of Tally’s hands.
Brilliant flocks of birds burst up from the jungle as they passed, and wild monkeys screeched at them from below. Tally had to drag them into the trees to hide from hovercars again, down among a shimmering cloud of butterflies whose radiant orange wings were bigger than Aya’s hands.
But she hardly saw any of it.
The City Killer story had seemed so logical: a whole mountain hollowed out, like some Rusty command post from three centuries ago. A mass driver pointed at the sky, ready to launch cylinders full of smart matter and steel.
But what if she’d gotten it wrong?
Aya tried to remember the exact moment when she’d become certain that no more proof was needed.
When she’d realized how famous a city-killing weapon would make her?
The greatest outrage was always the biggest story, after all. She’d learned that from Toshi Banana, with his earth-shattering alerts about new cliques and poodle hairstyles. That was why every feed in the city had jumped on her story without question. Of course they’d just as gleefully jump on Aya if she was proven wrong.
Reigning as Slime Queen for a day would be nothing compared to that humiliation. Maybe the city interface didn’t care why people were talking about you—because you were talented or merely beautiful, ingenious or just crazy, concerned about the planet or outraged over nothing at all—but Aya cared.
And she didn’t want to be famous for a false alarm.
• • •
They spent the next few hours navigating the network of cables, hiding from construction lifters and hovercars, backtracking when they reached dead ends.
It wasn’t the most happy-making trip. Moggle’s absence nagged her like a constant toothache, and the thick, humid air felt like soup in Aya’s lungs. Sweat soaked her Ranger coverall.
When Aya complained that she and Frizz hadn’t eaten since the night before, Tally produced emergency bars from the pockets of her sneak suit. While they ate, Tally found and munched her way through a bunch of tiny bananas, entirely green and inedible-looking. Apparently her Special stomach could digest anything.
They made gradual progress toward the cluster of skyscrapers. A steady stream of lifters laden with scrap flowed outward from the spires, marking the route.
With only a few kilometers to go, Tally pulled Aya and Frizz down into the jungle.
“We have to stay out of sight the rest of the way.”
Aya groaned. “Does that mean we have to walk again?”
“I don’t have time for your mud-crawling,” Tally said. “Just keep those rigs in zero-g mode, and stay close to the cables.”
Tally gave them both a firm push deeper into the jungle, until the slanting afternoon sun disappeared behind the tangle of vines and branches.
“Aren’t you going to tow us?” Aya asked.
Tally snorted. “It’s a little too crowded down here to hold hands. Just make like a monkey.”
To demonstrate, she grabbed a nearby branch and pulled hard, sending herself shooting away through the dense vegetation. Reaching out to snag a passing tree trunk, she swung herself to a halt.
“See? It’s easy when you’re weightless.”
Aya shared a sidelong glance with Fri
zz, then sighed and looked around for a handhold. A nearby stem of bamboo looked strong enough. But as she air-swam closer, Aya spotted a creature with about a million legs crawling along it. She reached out gingerly, avoiding the crawly thing, and gave the bamboo a tug.
The effort propelled her a few meters before the heavy tropical air eased her to a halt beside a lichen-wrapped tree trunk. She twisted herself sideways and kicked out at it, and was rewarded with a much longer glide through the tangled forest.
It was a strange sensation—though the hoverball rig carried her weight, Aya still had plenty of mass and inertia. Getting herself moving took real effort, especially through the humid air. But once she’d built up speed, coming to a stop—or even changing direction—proved just as tricky.
It didn’t help that every surface seemed to be slimy or sticky or covered with insects, or that all the vegetation was still water-laden from the storm. Every time Aya plunged through a growth of ferns, she shook loose a clothes-soaking spray. But gradually she got the hang of it, her brain learning to juggle the tasks of spotting clear paths through the obstacle course, checking ahead for the next object to push off from, and avoiding sticky spiderwebs and water-dumping ferns.
Gliding through the dense canopy, Aya marveled at how rich and intertwined the jungle was, how much more complicated than some ten-minute feed story. She wondered how hard becoming a Ranger would be. At least then she’d be doing something useful, protecting something beautiful instead of stirring up fake calamities for a bunch of bored extras.
• • •
After half an hour of pulling herself from vine to trunk to branch, Aya realized she was being watched.
A troop of red-faced monkeys perched in the trees nearby, silently observing as she and Frizz crashed through the ferns and vines. Aya couldn’t blame them for their perplexed expressions. She was painfully aware of the eons of evolution that separated her from them, her lack of simian reflexes and . . .
Prehensile toes.
Aya grabbed hold of the next vine to bring herself to a halt.
“You okay?” Frizz asked, sliding to a stop beside her.
She nodded. “Yeah. But I think I just figured out their crazy body mods.”
“The inhumans’?” he asked, then laughed. “You mean you could actually concentrate while swinging along like a . . .” He trailed off, looking at the tiny faces watching them through the leaves. “A monkey.”
She nodded again. One of the monkeys dangled from its feet, long toes curled around a branch like fingers.
“Even Hiro noticed,” she said. “Back when we were hiding and waiting for Tally-wa . . . the freaks are like monkeys.”
“What are you two gossiping about?” Tally called impatiently from ahead. “We’re almost there!”
Aya realized they’d been talking in Japanese, and she gave a little bow. “Sorry, Tally-wa. But I think we figured out something. If you’re getting around in a jungle wearing zero-g rigs, another pair of hands is a lot more useful than feet.”
“Like the freaks?” Tally thought for a moment, drifting closer in her rig. “I guess it makes sense having more fingers, if you’re never going to touch the ground.”
“So maybe they’re collecting metal for a huge grid,” Aya said. “You think they want people to give up cities and live in jungles, like some sort of hovering monkeys?”
“And go backward five million years?” Tally raised an eyebrow. “That’s a pretty radical way to get along with nature.”
“Radical is what the mind-rain is all about, Tally-wa,” Frizz said.
Tally sighed. “Why does everyone always say that like it’s my fault?”
Frizz looked at her and shrugged. “Well, you started it.”
“Don’t blame me. I didn’t tell everyone in the world to go crazy!”
“But didn’t you expect some weird stuff to happen?” Aya asked.
Tally rolled her eyes. “I didn’t expect anyone to change their feet into extra hands. Or let hovercams follow them all day. Or get brain surge just so they could tell the truth!”
Frizz shook his head. “But we lost so much in the Prettytime—all the foundations were gone. So we’re stuck making it up as we go along!”
Tally laughed. “So what else is new, Frizz? Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual. So don’t tell me that humanity being logic-missing is my fault.” She spun herself around and pointed up through the trees. “Anyway, we’re almost at those skyscrapers. Shay and Fausto are probably already there.”
Above them, the skeletal spires glinted with afternoon sunlight through the trees. The upper reaches were swarmed with construction lifters, and the screech of metal-chewing blades echoed down from them.
“But if we can’t use pings, how do we find them?” Aya asked.
Tally shrugged. “We make it up as we go along.”
THE PILE
The jungle was clear-cut around the base of the spires, but the ancient Rusty streets were heaped with lattices of salvaged steel.
The pile reminded Aya of a game littlies played: You dropped a bunch of chopsticks onto the floor, then tried to pick up one without moving the others. But instead of chopsticks, these were huge metal beams, encrusted with ancient concrete and rusted cables.
There was no sign of the freaks down here at ground level. The deconstruction crews were all up in the spires, cutting more metal for the pile.
“See the tallest one?” Tally pointed. “Stay under cover till we get there.”
“You mean crawl through this?” Aya glanced at Frizz. “But I heard that some ruins have Rusty skeletons in them.”
Tally laughed. “That’s up north. Down here in the tropics, the jungle eats everything.” She pushed off into the pile, threading her way through the rubble and steel.
“Oh, lovely,” Aya said, then followed.
Sneaking through the chopped-up buildings was a little like moving through the jungle. The rain had left the girders wet and slippery, and lichen grew on their rusty sides.
Hard steel was less forgiving than ferns and bark, though. As they floated after Tally, scraping past girders and jagged chunks of concrete, Aya and Frizz collected scratches like they were crawling through a thornbush.
“Remind me to drink some tetanus meds when we get home,” Frizz said, inspecting a bloody scrape across his palm.
“What’s tetanus?” Aya asked.
“It’s a disease you get from rust.”
“Rust gives you diseases?” Aya cried, pulling her hands away from the ancient steel beam before her. “No wonder the Rusties died out.”
“Shh!” Tally hissed. “Something’s coming.”
Shadows flickered around them: a large object passing overhead.
Through the tangle of metal Aya glimpsed its clawed shape—a heavy construction lifter carrying a giant severed piece of skyscraper, like the steel rib cage of some long-dead giant in a predator’s jaws. The freshly cut edges sparkled in the sunlight.
“I wonder where they plan to put that down,” Frizz said softly.
The lifter came to a halt directly overhead, and Aya felt a shudder pass through the pile. Girders shimmered around her, the magnetic fields straining under tons of ancient metal.
Suddenly the trembling stopped. . . .
“Uh-oh,” Frizz said.
The chunk of skyscraper dropped from the lifter’s claws.
Aya grabbed the nearest beam and pulled hard, scrambling away.
The falling iron skeleton struck home above her, metal pounding and shrieking, the whole heap ringing with the collision. A shower of rust and pulverized concrete rained down on Aya, clouds of eye-stinging dust billowing from above. She saw steel beams bending around her, twisting under the weight of the new addition.
“Aya!” she heard Frizz call.
She turned—his formal jacket was caught in a cluster of ancient cables, their twisted points like fishhooks through the silk. As he struggled to pull his arms out, the sleeves flipped inside
out, trapping his hands inside.
Aya spun around and pushed back toward him, reaching out to grasp his shoulders. She pulled as hard as she could—and with a shredding sound, Frizz ripped free, the jacket tearing into ribbons.
Above, the steel skeleton was still settling, raining debris down on their heads. The iron lattice sagged around them, flakes of ancient rust erupting from ancient beams as they bent into new shapes.
They shot ahead, flying half-blind through the pulverized concrete and rust, the beams squeezing tighter around them. Through the clouds Aya saw Tally waiting, her back braced against a steel bar as long as she was tall—it was set between two girders, like a toothpick holding open a giant’s jaw. . . .
And bending slowly under the pressure.
“Come on!” Tally cried.
Aya kicked hard at the nearest beam, and she and Frizz flew past Tally.
Tally jumped after them, abandoning the steel bar, which skidded to one side, squealing like fingernails scraping metal. It bent and twisted, then slipped free, bouncing back into the center of the pile.
The whole vast structure crumpled, a host of jagged metal teeth gnashing down on the place Frizz and Aya had just vacated. The new addition slowly rocked itself to a halt on the pile, grinding more concrete dust into the air.
The three of them floated into the ordered lattice of the tallest tower.
“Whoa,” Aya murmured. “That was close.”
“You’re welcome,” Tally said, rubbing her shoulders.
Aya remembered the awe she’d felt first laying eyes on Tally. It wasn’t just her strength—somehow she’d sensed the dynamics of the pile and braced a piece of iron in just the right place, giving Frizz the long seconds he needed to escape.
Tally really was special, even if Moggle hadn’t been here to get the shot.
Aya gave a low bow. “Thank you, Tally-sama.”
Frizz just stared into the crumpled pile, stunned into silence. His face was ghost white with dust, like an actor wearing rice powder.
“No problem.” Tally nodded approvingly. “You two managed to keep your heads.”