Скотт Вестерфельд - Extras

"What's the point of privacy?" Hiro snapped. "If you think someone's coming after you, shouldn't we stay where everyone can see us?"

Aya came to a halt, stopping so quickly that Moggle bumped her from behind. Maybe the safest place was in full view. No one would dare do anything at a crowded party— or with a hundred hovercams directly overhead, for that matter.

She sighed. "I guess we could go back in."

"Exactly," Hiro cried. "We can kick Tally Youngblood's ping. If everyone finds out she's on her way here, it'll be massive!"

Frizz cleared his throat. "This probably isn't the best time to worry about face ranks, Hiro."

"This isn't about face ranks, you bubblehead!"

"Technically speaking, I'm not a bubblehead," Frizz said calmly. "Which is why I'm not shouting our plans where everyone can hear them.'" Aya glanced up. There was still a fair-size reputation bubble around her, but a few cams were close enough to have caught Hiro's outburst.

"Whatever we do, let's keep our voices down," she said. "Somehow, I don't think Tally-sama wants the whole city to know she's coming."

Ren shook his head. "She's not from here, Aya, so she doesn't understand how the reputation economy works. About half a million people are watching right now. Your fame will protect us."

"You can't hide, Aya," Hiro said. "Everyone knows exactly where you are. Wasn't that the point of tonight?"

Frizz frowned, looking at her. "I thought the point of tonight was to save the world."

Aya sighed. "There may have been several points, okay? Everyone just be quiet for a second while I think!"

The other three fell silent. Aya stood there, feeling their eyes on her, and the lenses of a hundred hovercams, and another half a million people watching through them. Even Moggle was staring at her.

It wasn't the best spot for thinking.

Frizz drew closer, putting an arm around her shoulder. "If we go back to the party and someone comes after you, who's going to stop them? A bunch of pixel-heads?"

Hiro shrugged. "The wardens, just like any other crime."

"Do we trust the wardens?" Frizz asked. "Remember what that kicker said? Our city might have built this thing!"

"The guy who called her a traitor?" Hiro laughed. "He was totally brain-missing!"

"Well, maybe not totally," Ren said. "The mass driver was built using mag-levs that started here.

Someone from our city must have been part of it."

"Someone with a lot of authority," Frizz added. "To use all that steel with nobody knowing."

Aya swallowed. The city killer was so huge—whoever had built it wielded enough power to hollow out mountains. Could a few wardens really stop them? Would half a million witnesses stay their hand, when they had the audacity to destroy whole cities?

Gazing into the dark ring of trees around the baseball field, she remembered Eden Maru's words "You can disappear in front of a crowd, too."

"Moggle, go as high as you can and look around." She turned to Hiro. "I'm going to do what Tally-sama says…and hide."

She started walking again—away from the mansion's lights, away from everything.

Hiro followed, still arguing. "You're thinking like an extra. You can't hide! All anyone has to do to find you is turn on the feeds!"

A dizziness washed over Aya as she walked—the hovercams were moving overhead now, shadowing her every step, as if she was on a treadmill going nowhere. She felt trapped under their lenses, like a butterfly fixed with a hundred pins.

"Can you do something about those things?" she asked Ren.

"Well, maybe." Ren pulled out a trick-box. "When the big tech-kickers want an industrial-size reputation bubble, they jam everything for a hundred meters or so. I might be able to arrange a couple of minutes out of sight."

"Please." Aya glanced up at the cams overhead. "A little obscurity looks pretty good right now.

Safer, anyway."

"But why would anyone want to come after you?" Hiro kept arguing. "Everyone in the world already knows this weapon exists. What more can you do to them? You didn't hide anything, did you?"

Aya shook her head. "Of course not. You and Hiro always say burying shots is totally truth-slanting. So it's all in there. Well, except …" She paused, thinking of the inhuman-looking figures she and Miki had seen.

"Except what?" Frizz asked softly.

"There's one thing I sort of left out." She looked at Hiro. "But I didn't even have any shots of them."

His eyes narrowed. "Shots of who, Aya?"

"Well, that first night I surfed…What does it matter, anyway?"

Hiro took a step closer. "Because if you don't put everything on the feeds, someone can silence you! What did you leave out?"

"Well, in the tunnel that first night, I saw some people who weren't quite, um…human."

There was a pause. The three of them stared at her, dumbfounded.

A thump came from the darkness nearby, and they all jumped. A few meters away, a hovercam lay on its side, its running lights dark. Another thump came from farther away, then a third. Aya looked up.

The hovercams were starting to fall.

She smiled. "Wow, Ren. How'd you do that?"

Ren lowered the trick-box, a puzzled expression on his face. "Here's some bad news. I'm not doing that—someone else is."

The thudding came from every direction now, like a slowly building hailstorm. Raising her arms over her head, Aya saw that the sky was already half empty.

Soon she would be invisible again. And then, once no one was watching, Aya Fuse might disappear forever.

She started running.

"Get us four hoverboards," Hiro was yelling. "Property override! I don't care who owns them, this is an emergency!"

Aya led them back toward the bash—at this point, a crowd seemed better than darkness. The last few hovercams trailed them doggedly, tumbling from the air one by one.

"Moggle, are you still up there?" she hissed. The hovercam's view appeared—she saw herself and the others from a distance, specks against the vast expanse of the baseball field. No one else was in sight. "Stay up high, Moggle! Someone's jamming everything around us."

On cue, another hovercam crashed to the ground in front of Aya. She jumped over it, her party dress threatening to tangle around her ankles.

"There they are!" Hiro shouted.

Four hoverboards were shooting across the field toward them, silhouetted by the lights from the tech-head party.

"Won't they just crash?" Aya asked. "Like the cams?"

"I think I can block the lifter jamming," Ren said, poking at his trick-box as he ran. "Just stick close to me."

"But is anyone chasing us?" Frizz asked.

Aya scanned the darkness between mansions. Still nobody in sight—nothing but the motionless remains of cams littering the ground.

Then she heard the whoosh of a hovercar.

It shot overhead, drowning out the thudding of their footsteps, whipping her hair with its passage.

For a moment Aya thought it was the wardens, but then she heard the scream of lifting fans—the car was designed to work outside the city where wardens never went.

And somehow she doubted it was Rangers overhead.

The car wheeled violently, dropping in front of them. The grass shimmered underfoot, roiling in the tempest of the lifting fans. Whirlwinds of dirt rose from the baselines of the baseball diamond.

Through the windshield, two drivers gazed back at her with a strange calm—their eyes set too wide apart, their skin pale and hairless, just like the ghastly faces in the tunnel.

She stumbled to a halt. Like Miki had said that night, they didn't look human.

Frizz pulled her back into a run, angling around the hovercar. Flying dust forced her eyes half-shut, and her dress billowed like an open parachute around her.