Squinting against the wind, Aya could hardly see anything. Only a few meters ahead, Miki was nothing but a teary blur. Luckily, the board was programmed to fly itself until it matched the speed of the train.
Sneaking out the night before to look for Eden and her friends, Aya had never expected to wind up riding the train herself. She’d imagined zooming along at a safe distance, with Moggle closer in, capturing images for her feed.
Yet here she was, taking the most brain-kicking ride of her life, and it wasn’t even being recorded!
The ground flashed by below, but the train beside her seemed to be gradually slowing down. The hoverboard was really catching up.
Soon she’d have to climb aboard.
For a second, she thought about veering off, shooting away into the night. She could still kick a secret clique bent on wild tricks and avoiding fame.
Of course, she’d have nothing to prove her story but two crash bracelets, a high-speed board, and a waterlogged hovercam. Except for Eden Maru, she didn’t even know any full names. No one would believe her—especially not Hiro.
To get the footage she needed, she had to make the Sly Girls think that Aya Fuse was one of them. And to do that, she had to surf this train.
In the howling wind, she could feel the awesome physical forces all around her, waiting for any mistake. The mag-lev seemed to drift into place beside Aya as her board matched its speed.
The hoverboard’s autopilot flashed once—it had done its job.
Now Aya was in control.
Jai had warned her about this part. Any sudden shift of weight could send the board crashing against the train, or spinning away into a passing building.
Ahead of her, Miki was swaying back and forth, testing her control.
Aya held her breath . . . and lifted the fingers of her right hand. The wind bent them back painfully, and her board shuddered, veering away from the train.
She dragged her fingers back into a fist, and the stabilizers kicked in, steadying the hoverboard. Her whole hand throbbed.
This was fast. . . . If only Moggle were watching.
Ahead, Miki was only a meter from the train—another girl farther on was already reaching out a hand toward the roof. Aya had to get onboard before the mag-lev line straightened out.
“Here goes,” she said through gritted teeth.
She crooked her left thumb, barely lifting it from the hoverboard’s front edge. The board responded more evenly this time, angling toward the steady expanse of the mag-lev’s roof. She drifted closer in cautious stages, like handling a kite with minute tugs on its strings.
A few meters from the train, her board began to jump and shudder again. Jai had warned her about this, too: the shock wave, an invisible boundary of turbulence stirred up by the train’s passage.
Aya fought the tumult with twitches and gestures, every muscle straining. Her ears popped with pressure changes, and her eyes streamed tears into the wind.
Suddenly she pulled free of the turbulence, sweeping across the remaining space to bump softly against the metal flank of the train. Aya felt the mag-lev’s vibrations buzzing in the board beneath her as its magnets firmed up the connection.
The wind was muted now—she was inside a thin bubble of calm surrounding the train, like the eye of a hurricane.
Aya demagnetized her left crash bracelet, then slowly slid her hand across the board’s grippy surface to the roof of the train.
It smacked down hard and secure.
But it was nervous-making, disconnecting her other crash bracelet. The hoverboard was Aya-size, the mag-lev inhumanly huge and powerful. She was like a rat hitching a ride on a stampeding dinosaur.
Shutting her eyes, she pulled her right hand free, then hauled herself up onto the roof and slapped her wrist down.
She’d done it! The train rumbled below her like an unsettled volcano, and the half-muted wind still tore at her hair and clothes. But Aya was onboard.
The humming rose up around her—the train’s smart-matter joints pulling it back straight. She’d made it just in time.
The train’s roof stretched out dead straight ahead of her, dotted with nine Sly Girls along its length. Glancing back, the wind whipping handfuls of hair into her mouth, she saw the other three—everyone had made it.
The wind built as the train accelerated, and most of them were already surfing, standing with their arms out to catch the wind. Just like flying, Eden had said.
Aya sighed—as if riding on top of a mag-lev wasn’t risky enough without standing up!
But if the Girls were going to accept her, she’d have to be as crazy as they were. And it wasn’t really surfing if you were lying down.
She unthreaded the straps on her right bracelet, pulled it off, and curled up to wrestle it over her foot. It was all very clumsy, but after a minute’s fumbling, she had the bracelet strapped tightly around her ankle.
She magnetized it, and felt her shoe plant hard against the metal roof.
Gingerly she released her other wrist . . . the wind didn’t whip her away.
Time for the scary part.
Aya pushed herself up gradually, feet planted wide apart and arms out, like a littlie standing on a hoverboard for the first time. Up ahead, Miki’s body was angled sideways into the wind, like a fencer presenting the smallest possible target. Aya imitated her as she stood up.
The higher she got, the fiercer the wind grew. Invisible, chaotic whirlwinds buffeted her body, twisting her hair into knots.
But finally Aya was fully upright, every muscle straining.
All around her, the world was a wild blur.
The train had reached the outer edge of the new expansion, where the city grew every day. Banks of worklights shot past like bright orange comets, earthmovers the size of mansions flitting by. The wild lay just ahead, its dark mass the only steady shape in the maelstrom of lights and noise and rushing wind.
Then the last glow of construction streaked past, and the train plunged into a sea of darkness. As the city network fell behind, Aya’s skintenna lost its connection with the city interface. The world was quickly emptied: no feeds, no face ranks, no fame.
As if the screaming wind had stripped everything away.
But somehow Aya didn’t miss it all—she was laughing. She felt huge and unstoppable, like a littlie on horseback galloping at breakneck speed.
The train’s awesome power flowed across her hands. Angling her palms flat, she felt the airstream lift her up, pulling her against the straps around her ankle, like a bird straining to fly. Every gesture whipped her body into a new stance, as if the wind was an extension of her will.
But just ahead, Miki’s dark outline was crouching. Something was in her hand. . . .
A yellow light.
“Crap!” Aya angled her palms down and bent her knees.
As she crumpled to the train’s roof, something huge and invisible sliced the air overhead, hissing like the blade of a sword whipping past. Its shock wave rang through her body like a blow.
Then it was gone. Aya hadn’t even seen what it was.
She swallowed, squinting into the wind. Ahead, a string of yellow lights stretched away toward the front of the train. They flicked off one by one, the danger past.
How had she missed them?
“Don’t get too excited,” Jai had warned. “Or you’ll lose your head.”
Trembling, she rose slowly from her crouch, her momentary sense of giddy power vanished. The darkness stretched out ahead as far as she could see.
Suddenly Aya Fuse felt very small.
TUNNEL
There were four things Aya was realizing about the wild.
It was formless. The forest rushing by on either side blurred into one impenetrable mass, a roiling void of speed.
It was endless, or maybe time had broken. Whether she’d been surfing for minutes or hours, she had no idea.
Third, the wild had a huge sky, which didn’t make sense—it seemed like the sky would be t
he same size everywhere. But the blackness overhead sprawled out—unmarked by the city’s jagged skyline, unstained by reflected light—starlit and vast.
And lastly, it was cold. Though that was probably thanks to the three-hundred-klick wind in Aya’s face.
Next time, she was bringing two jackets.
• • •
Some time later, Aya saw Miki’s outline drop into a crouch. She looked worriedly at the other girls ahead, but no decapitation warning lights were showing.
Miki seemed to be playing with the bracelet around her ankle—then suddenly she was untethered, sliding backward across the train’s roof on the seat of her pants, carried by the fierce headwind.
“Miki!” Aya screamed, kneeling and sticking out a hand.
As she slid within Aya’s reach, Miki slammed a crash bracelet down, spinning to a halt. She was laughing, the wind whipping her hair in a frenzy around her head.
“Hey, Aya-chan!” she shouted. “How’s it going?”
Aya pulled her hand back. “You scared me!”
“Sorry.” Miki shrugged. “The wind always carries you straight down the train. Enjoying yourself?”
Aya took a deep breath. “Sure. But it’s kind of icicle-making.”
“No kidding.” Miki pulled her standard-requisition shirt up, revealing Rangers’ silks. “These work, though.”
Aya rubbed her hands together, wishing Jai had warned her about the cold.
“I came back because we’re almost in the mountains,” Miki shouted, rising to one knee. “That’s where the train slows down again.”
“And we jump off?”
“Yeah. But the tunnel comes first.”
“Oh, right.” Aya shivered. “The red-light warning. I almost missed that first yellow.”
“Don’t worry. It’s hard for a mountain to sneak up on you.” Miki put her arm around Aya. “And it’s not as windy in there.”
Aya shivered, huddling closer. “Can’t wait.”
• • •
The mountain range rose slowly from the horizon, black outlines against the starlit sky.
As they grew nearer, Aya realized how big the mountains were. The one straight ahead looked wider across than the city’s soccer stadium, and much taller than the central tower in town. It ate the sky as they approached, like a wall of blackness rolling toward them.
By now Aya was getting used to the unexpected size of everything out here. She wondered how anyone had managed to cross the wild back in pre-Rusty days, before mag-levs or hoverboards or even groundcars. The scale was enough to drive anyone crazy.
No wonder the Rusties had tried to pave it over.
“Here we go,” Miki said, pointing.
At the front of the train, a red light was flickering. Another appeared behind it, a string of seven more igniting like a chain of sparklers.
Miki pulled a flashlight from her pocket and flicked it on. She twisted it to red, then waved it toward the tail of the train.
Aya was already unlacing the bracelet from her ankle. She wanted both wrists magnetized by the time they reached the tunnel.
“You okay?” Miki asked. “You look funny.”
“I’m fine.” Aya shivered. Suddenly she felt small again, the way she had after the train had first plunged into the wild.
“It’s okay if you’re not sure yet,” Miki said. “I don’t just surf because it’s fun, you know? It also changes me. And that part takes a while to settle in.”
Aya shook her head. She hadn’t meant to sound unenthusiastic. The Sly Girls had to believe she was one of them, that she’d embraced their insanity keenly enough to give up kicking for good.
But it was true—something had shifted inside Aya, something she didn’t quite understand yet. The ride had whipped her so quickly from terror to elation, then just as suddenly to insignificance. . . .
She stared out across the dark landscape, trying to untangle her emotions. This feeling was nothing like the obscurity-panic that consumed her when she saw the lights of the city, the horrible certainty that she would never be famous, that all those people would never care about her at all.
Somehow, staring into the darkness, she felt contented that the world was so much bigger than her. Overwhelmed, but calm.
“I know what you mean . . . it’s sort of brain-shifting, being out here.”
“Good.” Miki smiled. “Now get your head down.”
“Oh, right. Tunnel.”
They lay flat on the train, snapping their crash bracelets down hard. The mountain grew closer and closer, until it towered over them like a huge wave rolling out of a black sea.
Squinting ahead, Aya watched the red warning lights disappearing one by one, gobbled by the tunnel’s maw along with the front half of the train.
Then, with a vast shudder of the air, darkness swallowed them. The roar of the train redoubled with echoes and reverberations. Aya’s whole body felt the difference in the train’s vibrations.
The tunnel’s blackness was a hundred times heavier than the starlight outside, but Aya could feel the tunnel roof sliding past—close enough to reach up and touch, if she wanted to lose a hand.
She felt the megatons of rock overhead pressing down, an infinite mass, as if the sky had turned to stone. Seconds ago the mag-lev had seemed huge, but instantly the mountain had dwarfed it, squashing her into the narrow sliver of space between the two.
“Do you feel that?” Miki called.
Aya turned her head. “What?”
“I think we’re slowing down.”
“Already?” Aya frowned. “Isn’t the bend on the other side of the tunnel?”
“It is. But listen.”
Aya focused on the tumultuous roar around them. Gradually her ears began to tease apart the sounds. The rumble of the train had a rhythm inside it, the steady beat of some imperfection in the track.
And that beat was slowing down.
“You’re right. Does the train ever stop in here?”
“Not that I ever heard. Whoa! Feel that?”
“Um, yeah.” Aya’s body was sliding forward; the train was braking faster now. Her feet spun in a half circle around the bracelets, carried by her own momentum.
The roar and rumble died slowly around them, the train gliding to a graceful, silent stop. The stillness sent tremors across Aya’s wind-burned skin.
“Something must have gone wrong with the train,” Miki said softly. “Hope they get it fixed fast.”
“I thought cargo trains didn’t have crews.”
“Some do.” Miki let out a slow breath. “I guess we wait and—”
A light glimmered across the tunnel roof. It came from the right side of the train, flickering unsteadily, like a carried flashlight. For the first time, Aya saw the inside of the tunnel, a smooth cylinder of stone wrapped around the train. The roof was perhaps twenty centimeters from her head. She reached up and touched the cold stone.
“Crap!” Miki hissed. “Our boards!”
Aya swallowed. The hoverboards were still clinging to the right side of the train, a few meters above head height. If whoever was out there looked up and saw one, they’d definitely wonder what it was.
“Let’s see what’s going on,” Miki whispered. She unlocked her wrists and pulled herself toward the roof’s edge.
Aya released her bracelets and crawled after Miki. If the hoverboards had been spotted, they had to warn the others right away.
At the edge of the roof, she and Miki peered over. A group of three figures had crowded into the narrow space between train and stone, flashlights lengthening their shadows into distorted shapes. Aya realized that they were floating, wearing hoverball rigs like Eden’s.
But they hadn’t seen the boards. They weren’t looking at the train at all. All of them stared at the tunnel wall. . . .
It was moving.
The stone of the mountain was transforming, undulating softly and changing colors, like oil floating on top of rippling water. A sound like a humming wineg
lass filled the tunnel. The air suddenly tasted different in Aya’s mouth, like in the wet season when a downpour was about to start.
One by one, thin layers of the liquid stone peeled away, until a wide door had opened in the tunnel wall.
The figures’ flashlights lanced into its depths, but from atop the train Aya couldn’t see inside. She heard echoes from a large space, and saw an orange glow from the doorway playing among the flashlight shadows.
A panel in the train slid open, matching the gap in the tunnel wall. The train settled slightly on its levitation magnets, descending until the two openings were aligned.
One of the figures moved, and Aya jerked her head back into the shadows. When she peeked out again, all three of them had stepped aside to watch a massive object drift from the opening in the train.
It looked like a cylinder of solid metal, taller than Aya and a meter across. It must have been heavy: The four lifter drones clamped to its base trembled unsteadily, carrying it across the gap with the measured pace of a funeral transport.
Before the object had disappeared into the mountainside, another followed, exactly the same. Then a third emerged.
“Do you see them?” came Miki’s soft whisper.
“Yeah. But what are they?”
“Not human.”
“Not . . . what?”
Aya glanced at Miki’s face and realized that she wasn’t watching the metal objects floating past. She was staring wide-eyed at the people down below.
Aya peered through the darkness, and finally saw that the flashlights weren’t distorting the figures’ shapes as she’d thought. The people hovering in the gloom were simply wrong—their legs absurdly stretched and gangly, arms bending in too many places, fingers as long as calligraphy brushes. And their faces . . . the large eyes were set too wide, the skin hairless and pale.
As Miki had said: not human.
Aya let out a shallow gasp, and Miki pulled her back from the edge. They lay there side by side, Aya’s eyes squeezed shut, her heart pounding as she imagined one of those spindly hands reaching up onto the top of the train and grasping her.