Extras

"Did you get that fall?" she called.

The night-lights flashed once more, and Aya smiled.

Ren's mods had pulled through once again.

Jungle

Aya had never realized how a

The jungle was unimaginably hot, snarled, and logic-missing. Every direction was blocked by massive roots that spilled down from the trees. Spiderwebs glistened among the ferns, and the humid air was choked with clouds of insects. Ankle-grabbing vines covered the ground, which the rain had turned into a maze of waterfalls, rivulets, and mudslides. Her Ranger coverall was having trouble staying slime-resistant, and Frizz's clothes—the formals he'd worn to the tech-head bash last night—were threatening to fall apart.

The dense plant life had only one redeeming feature: It made the downpour bearable. Though the rain found its way steadily to the jungle floor, streaming down tree trunks and dripping from saturated leaves, at least it wasn't battering her on the head.

It was amazing that any of the Rusty ruins had survived in this climate, but Aya glimpsed the metal skeletons of ancient buildings among the trees. They were wrapped in vines and ferns, the jungle at work tearing apart their straight lines and right angles.

"Where are we headed, anyway?" Frizz asked. "How do we find the others without pings?"

"Shay said the usual place," Tally said.

"Usual?" Aya waved a mosquito away from her nose. "I thought you'd never been here before."

"She meant the tallest tower in the ruins." A smile played on Tally's lips. "That's where we always met people back in ugly days."

Frizz frowned, and Aya felt a radically honest moment coming on.

"You and Shay are logic-missing," he said. "Sometimes you're like best friends, other times you seem to hate each other."

"Maybe that's because sometimes we're best friends," Tally said. "And other times we hate each other."

"I don't understand," Frizz said.

Tally sighed. "Back in the Prettytime, we kept winding up on opposite sides. It wasn't because we wanted to fight, but people kept rewiring us, manipulating us to betray each other." Her voice grew softer. "I guess we kind of got stuck that way."

"But when the mass driver story kicked, you called her to help," Frizz said. "So she's your friend, right?"

"Of course she is—she saved me from life as a bubblehead, along with everyone else in the world. But along the way, we had a lot of fights." Tally's eyes narrowed at Frizz. "That's why your brain surge freaks me out. Bad things can happen when other people rewire you. Stuff you can't fix later."

"Maybe you could fix things," Frizz said, "if you talked with people instead of ru

Tally's eyebrows rose, and Aya said hastily, "Maybe we should figure out where we're going, and leave this for later."

"Let me get this straight," Tally said to Frizz. "You had to get brain surge just so you could talk about things!"

"I used to lie all the time," he said. "I couldn't trust myself, so I had to change."

"That's so courage-missing!" Tally said. "Couldn't you just learn to tell the truth?"

"Truth-telling what I'm learning, Tally."

is "But you aren't making a choice!" Tally pointed at her temple. "I've still got Special wiring in my head, but I fight it every day."

"And sometimes you lose, I've noticed," Frizz said.

Tally's lips curled. "You haven't seen me really lose it, bubblehead. You better hope you never do."

"Technically, I'm not a—" Aya stepped between them. "Maybe instead of comparing brain surge, we should figure out which way to go? The rain's clearing a little."

Tally glared at Frizz for a long moment, then looked up. The steady drumbeat of rain on the leaves above had lessened.

"Fine with me," she spat.

She spun away and bounded toward the nearest tree, launching herself at its trunk and scrambling up toward the treetops. Frizz and Aya watched in silence—it was mesmerizing when Tally moved quickly, slipping through the ferns with deadly grace, scuttling along branches that seemed hardly strong enough to hold her weight.

"I keep upsetting her," Frizz said.

Aya sighed. "I guess Tally and Radical Honesty don't mix. She and Shay have been through a lot.

They fought a war when they were our age, after all."

He dropped his eyes from the treetops. "What if she's right? Maybe I'm just too lazy to tell the truth without surge."

"You're not lazy, Frizz. Not everyone starts their own clique."

"Maybe," he said, slapping a mosquito on his arm. "But if it wasn't for my Radical Honesty, we wouldn't be stuck out here in this jungle."

"No, we'd still be captives." Aya turned to him, looking into his manga eyes. "And if it wasn't for your Radical Honesty, you probably wouldn't have stopped me that night to compliment my nose."

"Don't say that," Frizz said, pulling her closer. "Sometimes it scares me, that we met by accident.

If you'd left that party a minute earlier, we wouldn't even know each other."

She pulled a wet fern leaf from his hair. "Then you wouldn't be stuck out in this mud-plastering jungle."

"I'd rather be here with you than anywhere else," he said.

Aya wrapped her arms around his shoulders. His jacket was soaked, ripped down the back from their wild landing, and her sore ribs still throbbed, but she squeezed him hard. "I don't care what Tally-wa thinks. When you say stuff like that, I'm glad you can't lie."

He gently pulled her closer, and their lips met in a kiss. For a moment the buzzing gnats and dripping rain faded around Aya, leaving only Frizz's shivering warmth in her arms.

There was a sudden thrashing in the trees above. They glanced up.

It was Tally…dropping through the air, hands darting out to catch branches and vines, swinging and tumbling from perch to perch, handhold to handhold.

She alighted a few meters away, landing softly among the ferns. For a moment she stared at them, her Cutter features intense and unguarded.

"What's wrong?" Aya asked, pulling away from Frizz.

"I spotted some inhumans near here."

"Did they see you?"

"Of course not." Tally turned away, her face clouded.

"But you're upset," Frizz said.

"Its nothing."

Aya decided not to ask, but Frizz, of course, had other ideas.

"Our kissing upset you, didn't it?"

Tally turned to him, shifting from wide-eyed surprise to anger, and then to something else "Frizz," Aya said softly. "I don't think that Tally-wa cares if we—" "The last time I kissed someone, I wound up watching him die," Tally said simply. "And I was just thinking: Dying's one of those things that can't be fixed. Not by talking about it, not with all the brain surge in the world."

Aya swallowed, holding Frizz tighter, her heart pounding.

"I'm sorry, Tally-wa," he said. "That's sad."

"Tell me about it." She looked away. "I can't believe I just said that. Is your brain-missing surge contagious or something?"

Aya nodded slowly.

"But you shouldn't give up kissing," Frizz said. "Just because of that."