She needed to see...
Then Aya remembered the control panel of her hoverboard. In this absolute darkness, even a few pinpricks of light would make a difference.
She knelt and booted the controls. Their soft blue glow revealed sweeping walls of ancient brick, patched in places with modern ceramics and smart matter. A broad stone ceiling arched overhead, like the vault of some underground cathedral.
But no Moggie.
Aya drifted slowly through the darkness, letting the subtle air currents carry her board, listening hard. A smooth lake of black water spread out a few meters below her board.
Then she heard something nearby, the slightest catch of breath, and turned...
In the dim blue glow, an ugly face stared back at her. The girl stood on a hoverboard, holding Moggie in her arms. She gave Aya a cold smile.
"We thought you might come after this."
"Hey!" Aya said. "What did you do to my - "
A foot kicked out from the darkness and sent Aya's hoverboard rocking.
"Watch it!" Aya shouted.
Strong hands pushed her, and she took two unsteady steps backward. The hoverboard shifted, trying to stay under her feet. Aya stuck her arms out, wobbling like a littlie on ice skates.
"Knock it off! What are you - "
From all directions, more hands shoved and prodded her - Aya spun wildly, blind and defenseless. Then her board was kicked away, and she was tumbling through the air.
The water struck her face with a cold, hard slap.
AUDITION
Blackness boiled around her, its watery roar like thunder stuffed into her ears. The shock of impact stripped away any sense of up and down, leaving only the tumbling, freezing cold. Her arms and legs flailed, the water filling her nostrils and mouth, squeezing her chest...
Then Aya's head broke the surface. She gasped and sputtered, hands clawing at the water, searching for something solid in the dark.
"Hey! What's your problem?"
Her cry boomed through the vast space, echoing in the blind emptiness. But no answer came.
She paddled water for a moment, catching her breath, trying to listen.
"Hello...?"
A hand grabbed her wrist, and Aya found herself pulled into the air. She hung there, feet dangling, her shivers sending water cascading from her soaking robe.
"What...what's going on?"
A voice answered. "We don't like kickers."
Aya had figured as much: They wanted to kick their own story about how they rode the trains, and keep all the fame for themselves.
Maybe it was time for some truth-slanting. "But I'm not a kicker!"
Someone snorted, then a closer voice said, "You followed me here from that party - or your hovercam did, anyway. You were looking for a story."
"Not a story, I was looking for you." Aya shivered again, fighting to keep her teeth from chattering. She had to convince them not to drop her into the black lake again. "I saw you guys the other night."
"Saw us where?" the closer voice said, and the grip on her wrist adjusted. That one had to be Eden; nobody could hold her up like this without help from a hoverball rig.
"On top of a mag-lev train. You were riding it. I tried to find out who you were, but there was nothing on the feeds."
"That's the way we like it," the first voice said.
"Okay, I get it!" Aya said. "Um, are you just going dangle me here like this?"
"Would you prefer I drop you?" Eden asked.
"Not really. It's just that this is kind of... wrist-hurting."
"Call your board, then."
"Oh...right." In her panic, Aya had forgotten all about her hoverboard. She reached up with her free hand and twisted her other crash bracelet. A few seconds later the hoverboard nudged her feet, and the iron grip released her.
She wobbled for a moment on the board, rubbing her wrist. "Thanks, I guess."
"Are you telling us you're not a kicker?" It was the first voice again, maybe the ugly woman she'd glimpsed. It echoed through the darkness low and growly, like she'd surged her throat to sound scary.
"Well, I've put a few things on my feed. Same as everyone."
"Pictures of your cat?" someone said, then snickered.
"So do you always go to parties disguised as a Bomber?" Eden asked. "With a hovercam in tow?"
Aya wrapped her arms around herself. The soaked robe was clinging to her skin, and her teeth were going to start chattering any minute. "Look, I wanted to join up with your clique. So I had to track you down. Moggie's good for that."
"Moggie?" the mean voice asked.
"Uh...my hovercam."
"Your hovercam has a name?"
Laughter echoed from every direction. Aya realized that there were more of them than she'd thought. Maybe a dozen hidden in the darkness.
"Hang on a second," Eden's voice said. "How old are you?"
"Um...fifteen?"
A flashlight flicked on, blindingly bright in the total darkness.
"Ouch!" She squeezed her eyes shut.
Whoever was holding the flashlight added, "Thought that nose looked big. Even in infrared."
As Aya's eyes adjusted to the flashlight, she began to make out faces. They looked like Plain Janes, the clique for girls who didn't want to be pretty or exotic, just normal - as if that concept still existed. Except for Eden Maru's padded and muscular form, the hovering figures around Aya all looked the same - generic bodies, designed to disappear in a crowd. All of them were girls, as far as Aya could tell, just like the night she'd seen them hitching a ride on the mag-lev train.
"So you like to sneak around at night?" Eden said.
"I guess so. Beats sitting in my dorm room."
"Easily bored?" The other girl drawled the words in her growling voice. "Then maybe you should
have a surf sometimes."
"A surf?" Aya swallowed. "You mean I can ride with you?"
A few grumbles came from the darkness.
"But she's only fifteen," the girl holding the flashlight said.
"Are you still back in the Prettytime?" said the growly-voiced girl. "Who cares how old she is?
She crashed Prettyville and came down here all alone. Got more guts than most of you, probably."
"What about the hovercam?" Eden said. "If she kicks a story, we'll have wardens all over us."
"She could still call the wardens if she wants to." The mean-voiced girl slid closer on her board, until her nose was only a few centimeters from Aya's. "So we either leave her down here for good, or get her on our side."
Aya swallowed, glancing down at the shimmering black lake.
"Um, do I get a vote?"
"No one but me gets a vote," the girl said, then smiled. "But how about this? You do get to make a choice."
"Oh?"
The girl held Moggie at arm's length, and Aya saw the lock-down clamp against its skin. It was frozen, brain-dead until someone removed the clamp.
"You can either take your hovercam and go away. Or I drop it right now, and you get to come surfing with us."
Aya blinked, listening to the cold water still trickling from her robe. Ren claimed he'd made Moggie waterproof, but could she find her way back to this exact spot?
"How important is it to you, getting out of that boring little dorm room?"
Aya swallowed. "Very."
"Then choosing should be easy, right?"
"It's just...that cam cost me a lot of merits."
"It's a toy. Like face ranks and merits, it doesn't mean anything if you don't let it."
Face rank didn't mean anything? This girl was brain-missing. But she was right about one thing: Nothing was more important than getting out of boring, pathetic Akira Hall.
Maybe Ren could help her find the way back here...
Aya closed her eyes. "Okay. I want to come with you. Drop it."
The splash echoed like a slap.
"Good choice. That toy isn't what you really need."
Aya opened her eyes. They stung with hidden tears.
"I'm Jai," the girl said, bowing low.
"Aya Fuse." She returned the bow, her eyes falling to the widening ripples beneath them. Moggie was really gone.
"Well see you again soon," Jai said.
"See me soon? But you said - "
"I think you've had enough fun for one night, for a fifteen-year-old."
"But you promised!"
"And you said you weren't a kicker. I want to see if you were truth-slanting about that."
Aya started to protest, but the words faded in her mouth. There was no point in arguing now - Moggle was already gone.
"But I don't even know who you are."
Jai smiled. "We're the Sly Girls, and we'll be in touch. Come on, everyone - we've got a train to catch!"
They spun their hoverboards into motion, swirling around Aya, filling the underground chamber with echoing whoops and hollers. The flashlights flickered out, and she heard them shooting away one by one, their cries swallowed by the storm drain mouths.
Aya found herself alone in the dark, swallowing back tears.
She'd given up Moggle for nothing. Once the Sly Girls checked her feed, they'd know all about her stories. And if they realized that her brother was one of the most famous kickers in the city, they'd never trust her again.
"Stupid Hiro," she murmured. If it wasn't for Mr. Big Face, being an extra wouldn't be so hard.
She wouldn't have so much to prove.
And she wouldn't have traded Moggle...for nothing.
Aya squeezed her fists tight, letting her board descend until she heard the light slap of its lifters against the water. Kneeling, she stretched out one hand in the darkness, lowering her palm and resting it gently on the surface. She could still feel the ripples spreading from where Moggle had splashed.
"I'm sorry," Aya whispered. "But I'll be back soon."
BIG BROTHER
Vast mansions zoomed past Aya, huge and brightly lit with torches. In the early morning light, bonfires burned everywhere: massive carbon allowances on display. Overhead drifted swimming pools, hovering bubbles of water shaped by invisible lines of force. As she flew beneath them, Aya glimpsed the outlines of people lounging on floaters, gazing at the dawn.
Hire's mansion rose three hundred meters into the air, a spindly tower of gleaming glass and steel.
To keep the gorgeous views from getting stale, the entire building rotated at the speed of an hour hand.
Its mass held up by hoverstruts, only a single elevator shaft touched the ground, like an enormous and glacial ballerina spinning on one toe.
In this neighborhood, all the buildings moved. They hovered and transformed and did other flabbergasting things, and everyone who lived here was legendarily bored by it all.
Hire lived in the famous part of town.
As Aya's hoverboard approached the mansion steps, she remembered what her brother had been like in those months during the Prettytime: beautiful, contented, respectful. Sure, he'd gone to all the bashes, but he'd come home for every holiday, always bringing Aya and the crumblies presents.
The mind-rain had changed all that - except for his pretty face.
For the first year after being cured, Hiro had jumped from clique to clique: Extreme Surge, the city hoverball team, even a tour in the wild as a Ranger trainee. He hadn't stuck with anything, shifting aimlessly, unable to make sense of freedom.
Of course, in that logic-missing first year a lot of people were confused. Some actually decided to reverse the mind-rain - not just old crumblies, but new pretties, too. Even Hiro had talked about turning back into a bubblehead.
Then two years ago came the news that the economy was in trouble. Back in the Prettytime, bubbleheads could ask for anything they wanted: Their toys and party clothes popped out of the hole in the wall, no questions asked. But creative, free-minded human beings were more ravenous than bubbleheads, it turned out. Too many resources were going to random hobbies, new buildings, and major projects like the mag-lev trains. And nobody was volunteering for the hard jobs anymore.