But the shaft wasn't much wider than she was tall— Tally thrust out her arms overhead, spreading her fingers as both hands struck the opposite wall. The traction of the climbing gloves brought her to a halt, facing upward, muscles straining.
Her back was arched, her body wedged across the width of the shaft like a playing card bent between two fingers. Dull pain throbbed in her wounded hand from the impact.
She twisted her head around, trying to see where Shay had fallen.
There was nothing but darkness below. The shaft smelled of stale air and corrosion.
Tally struggled to get a better look. Shay had to be close—the shaft couldn't go down forever, after all, and Tally hadn't heard anything hit the bottom. But it was impossible to judge perspective; all around her was a mass of meaningless infrared shapes.
Her spine felt like a chicken bone about to snap…
Suddenly, fingertips touched her back.
'Take it easy,' Shay's whisper came through the suits' contacts. 'You're making noise.'
Tally sighed. Shay was just below her in the darkness, invisible in her sneak suit. 'Sorry,' she whispered.
The hand pulled away for a second, then the touch returned. 'Okay. I'm steady. Let yourself drop.'
She hesitated.
'Come on, scaredy-cat. I'll catch you.'
Tally took a breath, squeezed her eyes shut, then let go. An instant of free fall later, she found herself cradled in Shay's arms.
Shay chuckled. 'You are one heavy baby, Tally-wa.'
'What are you standing on, anyway? I can't see anything down here.'
'Try this.' Shay sent an overlay through the suit contacts, and everything shifted around Tally, infrared frequencies rebalancing before her eyes. Slowly the glowing silhouettes around her began to make sense.
The shaft was lined with hovercraft crouched in holding bays, their outlines bristling like the one they'd seen above. There were dozens in all shapes and sizes, a swarm of deadly machines. Tally imagined them all springing to life at once and chopping her to pieces.
She placed a tentative foot on one of the machines, then slipped out of Shay's arms, hands clinging to the barrel of the craft's auto-cannon.
Shay reached out and touched her shoulder, whispering, 'How about all this firepower? Icy, huh?'
'Yeah, great. I just hope we don't wake them up.'
'Well, our infrared's all the way up, and it's still hard to see, so everything must be pretty cold. There's actually rust on some of them.' Against the jumbled background, Tally saw Shay's head turn upward. 'But that one outside is plenty awake. We should get moving before it comes back.'
'Okay, Boss. Which way?'
'Not down. We need to stay close to our hoverboards.' Shay pulled herself upward, grasping weaponry, landing legs, and airfoils like handholds in a climbing gym.
Up was fine with Tally, and now that she could see, the spiny shapes of the sleeping hovercraft made for easy climbing. Clinging to gun barrels was a little nervous-making, though, like entering some sleeping predator's body through its own razor-toothed mouth. She avoided the grasping claws and fan blades, and anything else that looked sharp. The slightest tear in her suit would leave behind dead skin cells, revealing Tally's identity like a fresh thumbprint.
About halfway up, Shay reached down to touch her shoulder. 'Access hatch.'
Tally heard a metal cha-chunk, and blinding light filled the shaft, falling across two hovercraft. In the light they seemed less threatening—dusty and ill-kept, like stuffed predators in some old nature museum.
Shay slipped through the hatch, and Tally scrambled after her, dropping into a narrow hallway. Her vision adjusted to the orange work lights overhead, her suit shifting to match the pale color of the walls.
The hallway was too narrow for people—hardly wider than Tally's shoulders—and the floor was covered with bar codes, navigation markers for machines. She wondered what nasty contraptions were roaming these halls, searching for intruders.
Shay started up the hallway, waving a finger for Tally to follow.
The hallway soon opened onto a room that was huge— bigger than a soccer field. It was full of motionless vehicles that towered around them like frozen dinosaurs. Their wheels were as tall as Tally, and their bowed cranes brushed the high ceiling. Lifting claws and giant blades shone dully in the orange work lights.
She wondered why the city would keep a bunch of Rusty construction equipment around. These old machines would only be useful for building beyond the city's magnetic grid, where hoverstruts and lifters wouldn't work. The claws and earthmoving scoops around her were tools for attacking nature, not maintaining the city.
There were no doors, but Shay gestured to a column of metal rungs set into the wall—a ladder leading up and down.
One floor up, they found themselves in a small, crowded room. Floor-to-ceiling shelves were stuffed with a wild assortment of equipment: scuba breathers and night-vision goggles, firefighting canisters and body armor… along with a whole slew of things that Tally didn't recognize.
Shay was already scrabbling through the gear, slipping objects into her sneak suit's pouches. She turned around and tossed something to Tally. It looked like a Halloween mask, with huge googly eyes and a nose like an elephant's trunk. Tally squinted to read the tiny label tied to it:
CIRC. 21 CENT.
She puzzled over the words for a moment, then remembered the old-style dating system. This mask was from the Rusties' twenty-first century, a little over three hundred years ago.
This part of the Armory wasn't a storehouse. It was a museum.
But what was this thing? She turned the label over:
BIOWARFARE FILTER MASK, USED
Biowarfare? Used? Tally quickly dropped the mask on the shelf beside her. She saw Shay watching, the shoulders of her suit moving.
Very funny, Shay-la, she thought.
Biological warfare had been one of the Rusties' more brilliant ideas: engineering bacteria and viruses to kill each other. It was about the stupidest kind of weapon you could make, because once the bugs were finished with your enemies, they usually came for you. In fact, the whole Rusty culture had been undone by one artificial oil- eating bacterium.
Tally hoped that whoever ran this museum hadn't left any civilization-ending bugs around.
She crossed the floor, took Shay's shoulder, and hissed, 'Cute.'
'Yeah, you should have seen your face. Actually, I should have seen your face. Stupid sneak suits.'
'Find anything?'
Shay held up a shiny tubelike object. 'This should do the job. The label says it works.' She slipped it into one of her sneak-suit pouches.
'So what's all that other stuff for?'
'To throw them off the scent. If we only steal one thing, they might figure out what we want it for.'
'Oh,' Tally whispered. Shay might be making stupid jokes, but her mind was still icy.
'Take these.' Shay shoved an armful of objects at her and went back to puzzling over the shelves.
Tally looked down at the jumble of equipment, wondering if any of it was infected with Tally-eating bacteria. She slipped a few pieces that would fit into the sneak suit's carrying pouches.
The largest object looked like some kind of rifle, with a thick barrel and long-range optics. Tally peered down its sight and saw Shay's silhouette in miniature, crosshairs marking where the bullets would hit if she squeezed the trigger. She felt a moment of disgust. The weapon was designed to make any average person into a killing machine, and life and death seemed like a lot to risk on a slip of some random's finger.
Her nerves were jumping. Shay had already found what they needed. It was time to get out of here.
Then Tally realized what was making her nervous. She smelled something through the sneak suit's filter, something human. She took a step toward Shay…
The lights overhead began to flicker, bright white chasing away the room's orange glow, and footsteps clanged from the ladder rungs. Someone was climbing toward the museum.
