Extras

The chunk of metal inside the nano-frame began to turn red, its edges softening like a melting ice cube's. A wave of heat spilled out from the tent.

Aya squinted, her eyes stinging. It felt like standing too close to a fire.

"Whoa," Frizz said. "How come my wall never gets this hot?"

"Because you never made anything that big," Hiro said.

The metal was moving now, flowing across the nanoframe like a viscous liquid, taking on its shape. It filled the spaces between the wires, like skin covering a skeleton. When it had stretched across the entire frame, the steel began to cool back into a solid. The inhuman was already guiding the lifting drone, nudging another lump of metal onto the next nano-frame.

"So here's a question," Frizz said. "What do all these shapes make when you put them together?"

Aya looked at the jumble of pieces. All were gently curved, but she couldn't figure out how they went together.

"They look like boat hulls," she said.

Hiro snorted. "Ah, the popular solid steel canoe."

"I said like boats," Aya said.

"There's no point guessing," Frizz said. "Let's keep moving till we get to the end."

The next tent was much larger, as wide as a soccer field.

The pit beneath it was at least forty meters deep, full of finished metal shapes and tangles of circuitry. Several inhumans floated inside, each manipulating a pair of hand-shaped lifting drones. The air was full of clanking and hissing as hot metal collided and fused.

As she crept along the tent, Aya saw how the system worked. Each inhuman added one new piece, then passed it down, hardly pausing before setting to work on the next.

"An assembly line," Frizz said. "Like an old Rusty factory."

"Except much bigger," Hiro said. "Thanks to those drone hands."

Aya nodded, remembering the Rusty term for this: mass production. Instead of making things only when people needed them, like holes in the wall did, Rusty factories had churned out vast quantities of stuff—t he whole world in a giant competition to use up resources as quickly as possible.

The first hundred years of mass production had created more widgets and toys than the rest of history put together, but had also covered the planet with junk and sucked its resources dry. Worse, it was the ultimate way to turn people into extras—sitting all day performing the same task again and again, each worker a minuscule part of the whole machine. Anonymous and invisible.

As they neared the end of the tent, the shape of the assembled pieces gradually became clear.

One finished piece stood there, almost as tall as the pit was deep, with curved sides swelling gently in the middle. It was sleek and aerodynamic, the top tapered to a sharp point. Flight control surfaces stuck out from its sides, like fins on a shark.

Aya remembered this history lesson too—no one could forget it—and realized that the inhumans' plans didn't really need mass drivers, or smart matter, or anything more advanced than classic Rusty technology.

The awful thing that stood before her was a missile— an old-fashioned city killer, pure and simple.

And every few minutes, another one was coming off the assembly line.

Missile

"Huh," Aya murmured. "I was actually right."

Hiro nodded slowly. "Somehow, I wish you weren't."

"But this doesn't make any sense," Frizz said. "Why build all those mass drivers and then use old-fashioned missiles?"

"Maybe chunks of falling steel weren't evil enough for them," Hiro said. "Think of all the stuff Rusty missiles carried. Nanos, bio-warfare bugs, even nukes."

Aya swallowed. "So this isn't about using up metal, or even knocking down a few cities. It's about …" "Killing everyone," Hiro finished.

"So they strip the ruins all over the world, shoot the metal here, then launch it right back at us?"

Frizz shook his head. "Isn't that a little complicated?"

"You heard Fausto," Hiro said. "The equator's the easiest place to launch from."

Aya nodded, feeling a wave of guilty relief. Her story was true, except she'd been too optimistic.

Nukes, nanos, bugs—whatever these missiles were carrying had to be a hundred times worse than falling metal.

"But it only took a single Rusty missile to kill a whole city," Frizz said. "Why are they building so many?"

"Humanity survived the oil plague," Aya said, shivering. "Maybe they want to make sure they kill everyone this time."

"We have to warn Tally," Hiro said.

"How?" Aya asked. "She's probably more than a kilometer away. And the freaks will catch us if we even try to ping her."

"Then we have to go back to the ruin, use that transmitter to kick this place to the whole world."

"But Tally said to wait!"

"She thought the freaks might be on her side," Hiro said. "But it looks like they're not on anyone's side."

Frizz shook his head. "But what if we're wrong? Do you want to make the same mistake twice, Aya?"

He was staring at her, Hiro too, like she was responsible for the whole world's safety. But it was still her story, she supposed. Right or wrong, history would remember Aya Fuse as the one who'd kicked it.

She sighed. "Okay. Before we do anything, let's make absolutely sure. We have to take a closer look."

Down in the pit, three lifting drones had gathered around the newly constructed missile.

Stretching out their metal fingers, they gently tipped it over onto its side, carrying it out of the factory and into the night.

Aya sca

"Those drones must be automatic," Hiro said. His night-black hand stretched out a finger. "Look where they're headed."

In the distance was a taller building. A lot more solid than the tents, it was shrouded in darkness.

Hiro glided ahead, and Aya and Frizz took hold of Moggle. The hovercam towed them through the girders, staying low to the ground.

"It's kind of weird how few people we've seen," Frizz said.

"Mosquitoes, I guess," Aya said. "If we weren't in these suits, we'd have been eaten right now."

"Maybe so. But you'd think anyone pla

Aya remembered what she'd seen from the hovercar— lots of inhumans braving the wind and rain, pushing their way through the girders. But on this still night no one was outside. Were they all busy making weapons?

As they neared the darkened building, the lifting drones slowly angled the missile upright again.

Two huge doors swung open, revealing a vast space within. Orange worklights spilled out across the hard-packed dirt.

The drones carried the missile inside.

The three of them floated to the edge of the huge doorway and peered in.

"Nothing but a bunch of parts," Hiro said softly. "No people, as far as I can see."

The doors began to swing closed.

"What do we do?" Frizz asked.

"We have to get a closer look at that thing," Aya said. She crept along behind one slowly closing door, Frizz and Hiro following. They slipped inside just before the doors met, the boom echoing through the building.