Скотт Вестерфельд - Extras

"Oh…well, that's sort of why I was looking for you, Ren."

He grinned. "What, did you break another lens? You've got to stop jumping out your window" "Um, it's kind of worse than that," Aya said softly, but she could see that Hiro was listening. Why was she always invisible to him, until she made a mistake? "You see, I kind of… lost Moggle."

Ren's eyes widened. "But how…?"

"You lost it?" Hiro turned to them, a glare set on his pretty face. "How do you lose a hovercam?

They just fly home when you leave them behind!"

"It's not like I left it somewhere," she said. "I mean, I would never—" "Do you know how long Ren spent on those mods?"

"Look, Hiro, I know where Moggle is, sort of," Aya said, a lump rising in her throat. "I just need a little help finding it and…getting it back to the surface."

"The surface of what?" Hiro cried.

"There's this sort of underground lake, and …" Her throat closed up around the words, and Aya shut her eyes. If Hiro kept yelling at her, she'd burst into tears.

She felt Ren's hand on her shoulder. "It's okay, Aya-chan."

"I'm sorry," she managed.

"Well, it sounds like a pretty famous-making story." He exhaled slowly. "I think I've got some time tomorrow. Maybe I can help you dredge up Moggle from this…underground lake?"

She nodded, eyes still closed. "Thanks, Ren-chan."

"She'll just lose it again," Hiro said.

"No I won't!" she shouted. "And I'm going to prove that you're wrong about the Sly Girls, too!"

But Hiro didn't answer…he just shook his head.

Aya made her way home, still trying not to cry.

She was exhausted, Ren hated her, and her stupid brother was getting more famous and horrible every second. If Ren couldn't find Moggle, there was no way she could scrape together enough merits for a new hovercam.

All Aya wanted to do was sleep until tomorrow morning, when Ren had promised to meet her at the new construction site. But this afternoon was already stuffed with classes—the ones she'd rescheduled from this morning on top of the dreaded Advanced English. She couldn't skip: Schoolwork was the quickest way to build up merits when you were an ugly—all the good jobs went to pretties and crumblies.

When she reached Akira Hall, she went down to the basement and found an empty wallscreen.

"Aya Fuse," she told it.

It popped to life, listing her pings and assignments, and displaying her miserable face rank of

451,441.

She was dying to look up Frizz Mizuno and Radical Honesty, but not until schoolwork was out of the way. As she scanned the list for any new assignments, her eyes froze on one It was anonymous and spitting animations, like the fluttering hearts that littlies decorated their pings with. But these weren't hearts, or exclamation points, or smilies.

They were eyes—dull, unsurged, Plain Jane eyes—and they kept winking at her.

Aya opened the ping Saw your story about the graffiti. Not bad, for a kicker. Meet us at midnight, where the mag-lev line leaves Uglyville.

But don't bring a cam, or we won't let you play

—your new friends

"Can't I use my own hoverboard?"

Jai snorted. "That toy? Too slow. The train will be doing a hundred and fifty by the time you jump on."

"Oh." Aya stared down at the long, shimmering curve of the mag-lev line. It cut through the low industrial buildings, an arc of white through dull orange worklights. The Sly Girls had brought her to the city's edge, where the greenbelt faded into factories and new expansions. "I just assumed you guys got on the train while it was standing still."

"The wardens would be expecting that, wouldn't they?" Jai swung her feet casually, as if there weren't a hundred-meter drop below them. "They have monitors all over the train yards."

"But isn't a hundred and fifty kind of fast?" Most boards were safety-capped at sixty kilometers an hour.

"That's nothing for a mag-lev," Eden Maru said. "We're catching it when it slows down on the bend." She pointed toward the wild. "The trains do three hundred once they hit the straightaway outside town."

"Three hundred klicks? And we'll still be riding it?"

"Let's hope so." Jai smiled. "Considering the alternative."

Aya glanced down at the magnetic bracelets strapped to her wrists. They were like the crash bracelets everyone wore for hoverboard falls, just much bigger. But were they really powerful enough to fight a three-hundred-kilometer headwind?

She wrapped her arms around herself, trying not to look down at the nervous-making drop. The three of them were balanced atop a tall transmission tower, high enough to see darkness on the horizon, the place where the city stopped.

Aya had never glimpsed the wild before tonight, except on nature feeds. Somehow the thought of venturing out into that lightless, barren expanse was even scarier than jumping on a speeding train.

Moggle's absence made her doubly uneasy. It was eerie knowing that none of this was being recorded. Like a dream, whatever happened would all be gone tomorrow morning. Aya felt cut off from the world, unreal.

"The next tram passes in three minutes," Jai said. "So what's the most important thing to remember once we're surfing?"

A cold trickle squirmed down Aya's spine. "The decapitation signals."

"Which work how?"

"When anyone in front of me flashes a yellow light, that means duck. Red means a tunnel's coming, so lie flat against the train."

"Just don't get too excited." Jai giggled. "Or you'll lose your head."

Aya wondered if the Sly Girls had ever considered lying flat for the whole ride, which would make decapitation much less of an issue. Or realized that not surfing mag-levs at all would keep head-losing safely in the realm of the unimaginable, where it belonged.

"Sounds like you've got it down," Jai said.

Eden snorted. "Yeah, she's practically an expert."

"Relax, face-queen," Jai said. "Not all of us are hoverball stars."

"Not all of us are fifteen, either. Or kickers."

"She doesn't even have a cam anymore."

Aya listened to them argue, wondering how high Jai's face rank was. Lots of people who avoided the feeds were famous, of course. In fact, the most famous person in the city—in the whole world—didn't have a feed of her own. But people talked about her every time they mentioned the mind-rain.

"You don't have to worry about me," Aya said. "Just because I'm an ugly doesn't mean I'm stupid."

"Of course not," Jai said. "In fact, I find your ugliness enchanting."

"I've been getting a lot of that lately," Aya said, thinking of Frizz Mizuno.

"One minute to go!" Eden called, and jumped from the tower. Her hoverball rig caught her fall, and she pirouetted in midair to face them. "Just be careful, Aya."

"She will be." Jai pushed off, stepping onto her waiting board. "They're always careful the first time!"

She laughed and spun away, the two of them sweeping down toward the tracks together.

Aya stepped gingerly onto the high-speed board they'd given her. It gave a little under her weight, like a diving board, but she could feel the power surging beneath her feet.

The approaching train was visible now, just crawling out from the yards, loaded with trade bound for other cities. She couldn't hear its rumble yet, but Aya knew that three hundred tons of speeding metal would shake the earth like a suborbital launch as it passed.

She followed Jai and Eden across the factory belt, down to the hiding place where the others waited—the rooftop of a low industrial building next to the tracks. A few driverless trucks rumbled along the streets below, tending the factories and building sites. No people anywhere.

As Aya swept in for a landing, loose gravel crunched under her hoverboard. She slid to a hiding spot behind a ventilation tower spitting exhaust from the underground depths of the factory. A smell like sulfur and hot glue tinged the air.