The strange thing was, it hadn’t even felt like lying.
They didn’t bother with a vote, and no one congratulated her. Kai just slapped Aya on the back and jumped onto her hoverboard, shouting, “Surf’s up! Let’s go find out what those freaks are hiding!”
Then the thirteen of them were spinning into the air, rushing to reach their hiding places before the train thundered into view.
Just like that, Aya Fuse was a Sly Girl.
She wondered if Moggle had gotten the shot.
TURBULENCE
Catching the mag-lev was easier the second time.
She slipped through its shock wave like a needle, as if her body had learned to roll with the bumps and shudders of the air. Once inside the calm slipstream, she was on the roof and standing before the mag-lev line began to straighten.
The city fell behind, and as the darkness of the wild wrapped itself around the train, Aya began to realize how many sights she’d missed on her first panicked ride. Huge old trees shot past, as gnarled as some immortal crumbly. Silhouetted flocks of birds rose up against the sky, scattered by the train’s thundering passage. Once Aya recognized a snow monkey’s scream in the roar of the wind—hardly dangerous and person-eating, but the thought of untamed animals out here sent a nervous shudder through her. Or maybe that was just the cold. Even wrapped inside two dorm jackets, a three-hundred-klick wind was shiver-making.
The ride was all contrasts: the dead-straight mag-lev line bisecting the knotted shapes of the forest; her fierce speed under the stillness of the sky; the mountains rising at a stately pace, punctuated by the nervous-making glimmer of decapitation warnings. But Aya felt the strange contentment again, as if her own troubles were an afterthought in the vastness of the wild.
The only worrying thing was Moggle. Even tracking her skintenna signal, the hovercam had to be falling farther behind with every minute. Ren’s lifters couldn’t fly more than a hundred klicks an hour—a third of the train’s speed. Moggle would catch up once they jumped off, but Aya wasn’t sure how long its little brain could function without her instructions. If it got confused enough, the hovercam might forget all about staying out of sight, and that would end Aya Fuse’s career as a Sly Girl.
Of course, there was nothing she could do about that now—she was stuck with deception. She wondered if that was why Frizz had come up with Radical Honesty. If you never lied, you’d never feel this trickle of dread in your stomach, the worry of being unmasked.
The mountains grew closer, until Aya could see that their black peaks were marbled with snow, like slivers of pearl glistening in the moonlight. A red flicker came from the front of the train, then a string of decapitation warnings. Aya pulled out her own flashlight and twisted it red, waving to the Girls behind her.
She knelt to strap a crash bracelet around her ankle, then lay flat, waiting for the sudden darkness of the tunnel to swallow her.
• • •
This time there were no unscheduled stops.
The train shot straight through the mountain, in and out in a roaring fury that made Aya’s ears pop like a quick hovercar descent. The hidden doorway must have flashed past in a fraction of a second, utterly invisible.
She remembered from her first ride that the next bend came up quickly. Ahead of her, Miki was already crawling toward the side of the train, readying to dismount. Aya headed toward where her hoverboard was stuck.
Getting off the train was trickier than getting on. In the city the grid was everywhere, but out here you had to stay close to the tracks. Too far out and magnetic lifters lost their grip on the metal, making boards and crash bracelets useless.
At two hundred klicks an hour, that would be deadly.
The train was slowing, a hum filling the air as it angled into the turn. Aya pulled her right wrist free, reaching out to slap it against her hoverboard.
The night before, she’d dismounted too cautiously, winding up much farther down the track than the rest of the Girls. This time she’d decided to be the first one to a dead stop.
Aya tugged at her board, and it released itself from the train, slowly turning from sideways to level. It fought the wind, steadying as the mag-lev slowed into the bend, and she slid her weight across onto the riding surface.
As the humming reached its crescendo, Aya angled gently away from the train, staying within arm’s reach, inside the bubble of relative calm that flowed around it. Two meters out was the deadly shock wave zone.
The rushing wind thrashed at her hair, whipping the jackets into a frenzy, but Aya didn’t lie flat—she 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 obeyed—the 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 train. 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 heard 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 laughter—the 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!”
Miki 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, Ayachan, just because he’s a big face. We don’t hate kickers—we 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 stone—it 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 anyone,” 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 themselves—the 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