Extras

The cars seemed to pause overhead, and Aya heard voices—probably freaks in hoverball rigs gliding alongside, looking down into the jungle. She focused on the ground below, trying not to breathe.

But finally the shadows floated past, the creaking of the jungle slipping into the distance.

Long seconds after the sound had faded, Tally released Aya and Frizz. Her suit folded around her body again, slivers of Tally's skin showing as it restructured itself. Aya glimpsed rows of thin scars lining her arms.

"That's why we can't use pings," Tally said.

"You know, they also might have noticed you beating up their workers," Aya said, taking a painful breath. Tally's grasp had left her feeling like a crumpled piece of paper.

"Good point." Tally smiled. "But they know we're somewhere on this line. We have to stay down here until those cars are out of sight."

They floated there, listening to the constant insect buzz of the jungle. Aya was growing more comfortable in the hoverball rig. She practiced stirring the air like the inhumans did, drifting in the cool treetop breezes.

Up here in the highest layer of the trees, the jungle was much less dismal. The vines sprouted flowers, and shafts of sunlight caught the iridescence of insect wings. A flock of pink-crested birds fluttered just overhead. They squawked and fought over the best branches, baring white bellies inside green wings. One stared suspiciously down at Aya, a bright yellow beak between its beady eyes.

Maybe the jungle wasn't so bad after all—once you could float above the mud and slime. Of course, its magnificence just made Aya feel even more cam-missing.

"Tally-wa," Frizz said softly. "May I ask you a question?"

"Can I stop you?"

"Probably not," he said. "Those cylinders Aya found, what if they weren't really weapons?"

"What else could they be?" Aya asked.

Frizz paused for a moment, staring at the cables strung around them. "What if they were just metal? That's what this is all about, right?"

"But Frizz,'' Aya said. "They had smart matter in them, remember? That proved they were weapons!"

He shook his head. "That proved they had a guidance system. But what if they were programmed to fly to this island?"' "Why would anyone bomb themselves!"

Aya asked.

"They wouldn't have to aim for the buildings," he said.

"That's true," Tally said. "This is an island, after all. The cylinders could fall into the ocean. That would cool them off after reentry, then you could salvage the metal."

Frizz spun in midair to face her, his hands stirring the ferns around him. "You said the inhumans were salvaging metal everywhere. So maybe the mass drivers are just a way to get it all here."

"Easier than smuggling it halfway around the world," Tally said. "Maybe all those empty mountains we found had already launched all their metal."

Frizz nodded. "That would explain why they were moving out of the place you found, Aya-chan.

They were almost ready to send the cylinders here."

"Frizz!" Aya cried. "Why are you on her side?"

"It's not about sides." He shrugged. "It's about what's true."

"What's the matter, Aya-la? Afraid your little story won't hold up?" Tally chuckled. "I wouldn't be surprised if you got it wrong. If you see everything through hovercams and feed stories, you wind up blind to what's right in front of you."

Aya tried to answer, but found herself sputtering. She glared at Frizz.

He cleared his throat. "Well, we still haven't got a clue why they want all this metal."

"They're not building anything here," Aya said. "All we've seen is a few factories and some storage buildings."

Tally pondered for a moment.

"You heard what Udzir said about making sacrifices, right?" Aya said. "Didn't that sounded a little ominous to you?"

"He said they wanted to save humanity" Tally sighed. "Historically speaking, that can mean anything from solar power to worldwide brain damage."

"Or worldwide destruction!" Aya said.

"With the cities expanding like crazy, David and I have been tempted to do a little destruction ourselves." Tally shook her head. "Sometimes it looks like we're headed back to Rusty days."

"But you can't be Rusty without metal," Frizz said quietly.

Tally looked at him. "You think the inhumans are trying to slow down the expansion?"

Frizz shrugged. "You need metal for buildings and mag-levs, after all."

"And without a steel grid, nothing hovers," Tally said. "No cars, no boards, no new fancy floating mansions."

"But wouldn't everyone just start strip-mining again?" Aya asked.

"It's easier to blow up a mining robot than someone's mansion," Tally said softly.

Aya raised an eyebrow.

"If blowing up things was what you were inclined to do … in special circumstances." Tally shrugged. "If that's what the freaks are up to, I might even be on their side. Once they stop kidnapping people."

Aya stared through the leaves at the cluster of towering ruins being taken apart, stu

If the mass drivers weren't weapons, that meant the world wasn't descending into a horrific new age of warfare. If the freaks had figured out a way to stop the cities from ruining the wild, it meant that some human beings really were sane, and that Toshi Banana and his kind could shut up for good.

But unfortunately it also meant one other thing: that a brain-missing fifteen-year-old named Aya Fuse had completely blown the biggest story since the mind-rain.

Make Like A Monkey

They flew across the treetops, Aya and Frizz each holding one of Tally's hands.

Brilliant flocks of birds burst up from the jungle as they passed, and wild monkeys screeched at them from below. Tally had to drag them into the trees to hide from hovercars again, down among a shimmering cloud of butterflies whose radiant orange wings were bigger than Aya's hands.

But she hardly saw any of it.

The City Killer story had seemed so logical: a whole mountain hollowed out, like some Rusty command post from three centuries ago. A mass driver pointed at the sky, ready to launch cylinders full of smart matter and steel.

But what if she'd gotten it wrong?

Aya tried to remember the exact moment when she'd become certain that no more proof was needed.

When she'd realized how famous a city-killing weapon would make her?

The greatest outrage was always the biggest story, after all. She'd learned that from Toshi Banana, with his earth-shattering alerts about new cliques and poodle hairstyles. That was why every feed in the city had jumped on her story without question. Of course they'd just as gleefully jump on Aya if she was proven wrong.

Reigning as Slime Queen for a day would be nothing compared to that humiliation. Maybe the city interface didn't care why people were talking about you—because you were talented or merely beautiful, ingenious or just crazy, concerned about the planet or outraged over nothing at all—but Aya cared.

And she didn't want to be famous for a false alarm.

They spent the next few hours navigating the network of cables, hiding from construction lifters and hovercars, backtracking when they reached dead ends.