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.'
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.
Some people wanted to go back to Rusty 'money,' complete with rents and taxes and starving if you couldn't pay for food. But the City Council didn't go that crazy; they voted for the reputation economy instead. From now on, merits and face ranks would decide who got the best mansions, the most carbon emissions, the biggest wall allowances. Merits were for doctors, teachers, wardens, all they way down to littlies doing schoolwork and their chores?everyone who kept the city going, as determined by the Good Citizen Committee. Face ranks were for the rest of culture, from artists to sports stars to scientists. You could use all the resources you wanted, as long as you captured the city's collective imagination.
And to keep the face ranks fair, every citizen over the age of littlie was given their own feed?a million
