Aya rubbed one sore shoulder, pointing the flashlight with her other hand. The shaft was roomier down here, and a strange contraption stood in the center. It was four long-distance hoverboards crudely bound together with strips of metal, a tangle of industrial lifters crowding the space inside them.
"You didn't find this thing down here, did you? You built it."
"Of course. It's my little sled." Eden stroked the nearest hoverboard. "Bet you can't wait to ride it."
"Ride it? Where?"
Eden tugged on the chain around her neck, pulling a whistle from inside her hoverball rig. Puffing her cheeks, she blew a long, ear-kicking blast.
"Ouch!" Aya said, covering her ears too late. "A little warning, please?"
Lai settled to the ground next to her, giggling as she swung from her crash bracelets. An answering whistle blast came from above.
Aya looked up, and saw a tiny glimmer overhead. Moonlight.
"The opening was sealed, so they can pump the air out," Lai said. "Of course, those cylinders can blow straight through plastic. But since we're the projectile, I sent the Girls up to clear the way"
"We're the...?" Aya started, then frowned. "But you said the others were taking the night off."
"I lied," Lai said with a sigh. "And lying is wrong, isn't it?"
Aya looked at the sled. "Hang on, you haven't gotten the mass driver to work, have you?"
"No way," Eden said. "With juice in those coils, the acceleration would kill us. But there's enough steel in the mass driver for hoverboards to push off. My little sled can go pretty fast."
"Us? But what happens when we reach the end?"
"Inertia happens," Lai said. "Flight happens. Fun happens."
Aya's jaw dropped. "What about when gravity happens? We could wind up hundreds of meters in the air!"
Eden shook her head. "Oh, much higher than that, Nosey-chan."
"But how's your little sled supposed to land? There's no grid out here. Those hoverboards will fall like rocks."
Lai smiled. "Don't you listen to the gossip about us, Nosey?"
She pointed at the floor. Aya's flashlight revealed four heavy bundles there, like backpacks full of laundry, bungee straps dangling from them.
Then Aya remembered Hire's story about the Girls. The rumors of them jumping off bridges...wearing parachutes.
Homemade parachutes, because the hole in the wall wouldn't give you real ones.
"Oh, crap."
"Just don't pull the cord before you count to thirty," Eden said. "Night like this, the wind could carry you for hours if you pop your parachute too high."
"But I don't - "
"First time I did it," Lai said, "I wound up halfway to the ocean. Took me hours to hike back to the tracks."
Aya's head was throbbing. "You mean you've done this before?"
"Five times!" Lai announced, holding up a handful of outstretched fingers. "We've been practicing all week, getting it ready just for you!"
Aya stared up at the tiny glimmer of moonlight. "What do you mean, getting ready for me?"
Suddenly her crash bracelets booted, slamming her wrists against the contraption. She twisted and pulled, trying to demagnetize them, but they held firm.
"What are you doing?" she cried.
Eden lifted one of the backpacks and held it behind Aya. Its straps came to life, coiling like snakes around her thighs and shoulders.
"Just making sure your story has a brain-rattling ending," Eden said.
Lai laughed. "We wouldn't want to disappoint your fans!"
"But I'm not a ..." Aya's voice trailed off, and she slumped against the sled, all out of arguments.
In a strange way, it was a relief that they'd learned the truth. "How did you know?"
"You think we're completely stupid, Nosey?" Eden said. "That we hadn't noticed you pumping me and Miki for information?"
"Or that we really believed you heard that train when it was fifty kilometers away?" Lai added.
"What was that, a hovercam posted on the tracks?"
Aya shook her head, tears stinging her eyes. "No. Moggle was hiding at the top of the shaft."
"Oh, yes, Moggle." Lai laughed. "That was the final proof. Those slam shots of you and Frizz Mizuno."
"Me and Frizz? But Moggle wasn't anywhere near us!"
"Maybe not near you. But your little friend was off in the background in one, chasing plastic missiles and war wheels while you two made manga eyes at each other. I didn't even realize it was Moggle at first, till Eden noticed those big lifters on the bottom. Then we all started wondering why that particular hovercam wasn't at the bottom of a lake where it belonged."
"Okay, I'm a kicker, all right?" Aya swallowed. "What are you going to do to me?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Eden pulled the parachute straps tighter. "We're taking you on a joyride."
JOYRIDE
Lai and Eden strapped on backpacks of their own, then fastened the fourth parachute to the sled.
They stood across from Aya, equally spaced around the contraption, facing each other like three littlies holding hands.
Aya felt a trickle of relief. At least they were coming with her on this joyride. "How does that parachute feel, Nosey? Secure?" Aya twisted her wrists; they didn't budge. "Very." The parachutes straps were definitely borrowed from a bungee jacket; they adjusted as she moved, but stayed reassuringly tight around her arms and thighs. Still, Aya couldn't make herself forget that the jackets lifters - useless out here in the wild - had been replaced with a big wad of silk. Her life depended on a piece of fabric.
She vaguely remembered the theory: Parachutes had a much bigger surface area than you did, so you fell like a feather instead of a stone, if you didn't panic and forget to pull the cord, and if the homemade mechanism opened up without tangling...
"You've really done this before?"
"Twenty-seven trips up the shaft altogether," Eden said. "Only one broken leg."
"That's comforting."
"Try to relax." Lai smiled. "One thing we learned from bridge-jumping: Only the nervous ones die."
"Are you...?" Aya started, then realized she didn't want to know if Lai was kidding or not.
Maybe that was the real reason why the Girls hated to be kicked: Tricks like this could go very, very wrong.
She tugged her crash bracelets one more time, but they felt welded to the frame of the sled.
Eden was already counting down. "Three...two...one..."
Aya had expected a jolt, but the launch was as smooth as any hoverboard takeoff. Soon, though, the sled was picking up speed, the copper rings blurring past them.
Aya squinted up at the tiny dot of moonlight. As the walls of the shaft shot past, a panic-making thought began to grow inside her. What if this was the Sly Girls' idea of an amusing way to get rid of her forever? What if she wasn't really wearing a parachute, but a backpack full of old laundry?
"You know why I had to lie to you, right?" she pleaded. "Can't you see how important this story is?"
"You were truth-slanting from the start, Nosey," Eden yelled over the wind. "Not trying to save the world, just trying to get famous."
Aya opened her mouth, but no words came. Whatever she'd told herself this last week, one truth remained: Her career as a Sly Girl had started as a lie.
Finally she managed, "I was mad at you for dropping Moggle."
"That was your choice," Lai said.
"Okay, I lied! But this is still important. People need to know about it."
Neither of them answered. The wind had torn her words away.
"This weapon could reach anywhere in the world!" she cried. "You have to let me - "
"Here we go!" Lai screamed.
Suddenly the world grew bright...they'd burst out into moonlight! Aya's ears popped, her head ringing. She caught a split-second glimpse of cheering Girls on the mountaintop, but they streaked past in an instant, the whole horizon expanding around her.
"How's this for eye-kicking?" Lai yelled, her insane smile as radiant as any pretty's. "I hope you brought spy-cams!"
Aya squinted against the wind, astonished at how high they were climbing. Above them she saw a wisp of white catching the moonlight. It seemed to dissolve as they approached, turning to vague tendrils on every side.
She swallowed, looking around. They were actually climbing through the lowest clouds...
The view was suddenly huge - an entire mountain range stretched around them, the mag-lev line cutting through it like a seam of silver.
Lai disconnected one hand and pointed down at the glimmer of solar panels on either side of the tracks. "That's where the mass driver gets its power, steals it from the mag-lev's solar array. Just pause all the trains, and you've got enough juice to toss a cylinder every minute."
Aya angled the spy-cam on her left shoulder to get the shot. This sequence would be more amazing than anything so far, as long as her parachute actually worked...
Their ascent was slowing, the sky turning lazily overhead as the sled began to spin. A momentary dizziness passed over her.
"You're really going to let me kick this?" she asked.
"Of course," Eden said.
"But you'll never be able to come here again."
Lai laughed. "We Sly Girls happen to like the world, lucky for you. We may not be merit-grubbers, but death machines are bad for tricks!"
Aya looked down at the city lights on the horizon, trying to imagine countless tons of steel, aerodynamically shaped and precisely targeted, streaking from the outer reaches of the atmosphere.
Something shifted in her stomach. Suddenly, the sky seemed still around them except for the slow spin of the sled.
The wind had died completely.
"Um, are we falling now?"
"We're going down," Eden said. "But you're about to learn a new definition of falling, Aya-chan."
"Oh." Her stomach rebelled again, as if something were trying to push its way out - something that didn't want to be several kilometers up in the air with nothing but a backpack full of silk, two crazy people, and four useless hoverboards for company.
"Pay attention now, Aya," Eden shouted. "When you land, hike back to the mag-lev line, then call for a hoverboard with your bracelets. We left one waiting for you by the tracks."
Aya nodded, trying to stay focused. This was the brain-kicking ending her story needed, and she had only a few more seconds to wrap up loose threads.
"So what will you do, now that you're going to be famous?"
"We're leaving the city tonight," Lai said. The wind was building again, her hair streaming straight up, making her look even more deranged than usual. "We'll change our faces. That's why we gave you this ride, to give ourselves a head start."
Aya found she still couldn't believe it. "But don't you realize how much face you'll get for uncovering this? How many merits?"
"It's going to stir up more than merits." Lai pulled one bracelet free, reached across the sled, and took Aya's hand in a firm grip. "You be careful."
"Don't worry. I'll count to thirty."
"No, I mean be careful after you kick this."
The sled was starting to spin faster as it fell, the sky and earth twisting around her. "Careful with what?"
"With everything and everyone!" Lai shouted over the wind. "Whoever built this monstrosity is dangerous!"
The sled was starting to tip now, rolling onto its side, the spin turning into a wild tumble.
"Speaking of dangerous, shouldn't we get off?" Aya asked, twisting at her crash bracelets.