Скотт Вестерфельд - Extras

By the time they reached Shuffle Mansion, the swarm was catching up, wrapping around them, shooting from every angle as she dropped toward the mansion steps.

"Good job losing them," Hiro said dryly, turning to the door. "Let us in, quick."

"I apologize," the door said. "But Shuffle Mansion is a secure building."

"No kidding," Aya said. "That's why I'm here. I'm declaring…um …" "Legal residence," Hiro prompted. "Apartment thirty-nine."

"I'm declaring apartment thirty-nine as my legal residence. And requesting full privacy!" she said.

"Oh, and by the way, I'm Aya Fuse. Um, hi."

The door paused a second, ruby jitters of laser flickering across her face and hands. Over her shoulder, a wall of hovercams was gathering, all screeching to a halt at the privacy limit. A few skidded too close and instantly dropped from the sky. Serious privacy was Shuffle Mansion's trademark.

The door opened with a soft shushing sound.

"Declaration accepted," it said. "Welcome to your new home, Aya Fuse."

The windows framed the city's skyline like a painting, gathering vistas of the sea, the mountains, even a glimpse down into the big soccer field. The views were perfect Except for all the cams.

There weren't as many now that the chase had ended, but a few dozen still lingered at the fifty-meter limit. Aya could see the curve of the privacy barrier in the way they wrapped across the sky—a literal reputation bubble around the mansion. Even Moggle had to wait outside, because the halls were privacy-monitored as well.

Aya waved, hoping Moggle could see her.

"Close windows," Hiro ordered from where he squatted on the floor.

For a second, Aya wondered why the room didn't obey him—then grinned.

"This is my room, Hiro! You can't tell it what to do."

"Rooms," Ren corrected. "Plural."

Aya laughed, turning her platforms frictionless to skate across the apartment. The arm-spreading luxury of space followed her everywhere, especially the walk-in closets waiting to be filled. Aya had already stuffed her slime-spattered party dress into the hole in the wall, and she wore new shoes and a Ranger coverall with internal heating, built-in water filters, and countless pockets.

It was also slime-resistant.

"So you don't mind those freaks looking in at us?" Hiro asked. "They can watch the feeds too, remember?"

"I guess so." She sighed, waving the windows opaque. "Maximize privacy and security."

"Yes, Aya-sensei," the room said.

"Did you hear that?" she said, spinning in place. "The room keeps calling me sensei!"

"You are top one thousand," Ren said. He was stretched out on the floor, staring up at the chandeliers, both eye-screens glittering.

"Top twenty," Aya said. In fact, all four of them were sensei now—the others had been swept up in her reputation spiral.

"Let's all agree that Aya's quite famous, shall we?" Hiro said. "Now can we get back to business?"

She skated to a halt and shrugged.

"What business, Hiro? Tally should be landing soon, then we do what she says."

"You mean you don't want to kick any of this?"

Aya rolled her eyes. The mind-rain had happened after Hiro had left school, so he'd missed all the lessons about Tally Youngblood. He didn't seem to realize that once she got here, everything would be okay.

"We wait for Tally before we decide anything," she said. "We're safe here, right?"

"Looks like it." Ren rapped the opaque window. "Hey, room. What's this made out of?"

"A layer of artificial diamond blended with smart matter and electronics," the room said.

"Designed to protect residents from fame-stalkers and nano-snoops. Impossible to penetrate."

"We should have come here first," Hiro said. "But you guys had to go sense-missing over doing exactly what Tally-sama told you."

Aya snorted. "You wanted to go back to the bash, Hiro! Do you really think a bunch of pixel-heads would have saved me?"

"I would have thought of this place sooner or later," he grumbled.

"Sooner or later usually means too late," Frizz said.

Hiro turned to glare at him, but Frizz had already jumped from the spot. He drifted up to inspect the pair of chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling, each made from a million shards of glass suffused with soft blue laser light.

Now that Frizz had recovered, he was experimenting with the hoverball rig, swimming across the huge and furniture-missing apartment with broad sweeps of his arms. Aya found the sight unsettling, too much like the freaks in their lifter rigs.

"Hey, Hiro," Frizz called down. "Why does everyone always say these things are so tricky?"

"Because real flying tricky," Hiro said. "All you're doing is bouncing around in zero-g mode."

is "How do I try some real flying?"

"You don't, bubblehead. You'd yank your own arms out!"

"I may have had brain surge," Frizz said. "But I'm not a bubblehead."

"Not technically," Hiro muttered.

Aya snorted. "Who's the bubblehead, Hiro? If it wasn't for Frizz, those paparazzi cams would have caught us back in the reservoir."

"Yeah, I guess so." Hiro sighed and sat up straighter, giving Frizz a tiny bow. "Sorry I called you a bubblehead. You're pretty smart, actually."

Frizz returned the bow from midair. "And you're not as big a snob as Aya said you were."

Hiro's jaw dropped. "You said what, Aya?"

Ren suddenly sat upright on the bare floor. "I found something in your background feed, Aya.

About when you spotted the freaks."

"Great!" Aya eagerly turned away from her brother's glare. "Can you show it to us?"

"Sure, once I find the wallscreen in here."

"Yeah, where's the…?" Aya began, but the floor-to-ceiling window was already shimmering.

"Whoa," Ren said softly. "Diamond into wallscreen. This place is so kick."

An image appeared, shaky and distorted. Aya recognized the view from her button cam. One week ago: Miki studying the mag-lev tunnel wall, looking for the hidden door.

Seeing the Plain Jane face again brought back all the guilt that had been smothered by her sudden fame. Aya wondered what Miki thought of her, now that the whole world could watch the Sly Girls' secret rituals, their private tricks.

Eden Maru's voice came from offscreen, echoing through the tunnel. "This is it. Stand back—there could be anything behind there."

Miki took a slow breath, murmuring, "Or anyone."

Aya's own voice answered, "Those body-crazy freaks were just storing something down here.

Nobody lives in this place."

The shot froze, and Hiro grunted. "'Body-crazy freaks'? So that's how they knew you'd seen them. You told them in your own background layer!"

Aya shook her head. "But it still doesn't make sense. How did they look through all those shots so fast? There were hours and hours of button cam, and they came after us the moment we left the party."

"What if it was the wisdom of the crowd?" Ren said softly.

Aya frowned. "What do you mean?"

"We don't know how many of those inhumans there are," he said. "There could be hundreds.

Maybe there's a mountain full of them somewhere."

"Or a whole city," Frizz said. "That mass driver took some serious building."

A cold finger slid down Aya's spine. She'd thought of the freaks as a small clique. The notion of an entire city of inhumans sent her mind spinning.

"That's brain-missing," Hiro said. "Why would a whole city want to—" "Quiet, Hiro!" Ren closed his eyes. "Does anyone else hear that?"

Aya listened, and her ears caught a faint hum echoing through the room.

Frizz pushed off from the ceiling and floated down. "I think it's coming from the wallscreen."

Then Aya tasted it in her mouth: rain and thunderstorms.