"Just wait downstairs. We're almost out the door."
"What's the rush?" Ren sounded amused. "City Killer doesn't kick for an hour."
"I know. I've been staring at the clock all night."
"Clock-staring makes him grumpy," Aya cut in, spinning in place on her platforms. "It's my story, you know, and you don't see me getting all shaky."
Hiro sighed. "She refused to hide the sled sequence in the background layer, Ren. It's going to give my parents brain damage."
"And Hiro keeps forgetting whose story this is!" Aya said. "But don't worry. I keep reminding him."
Ren's laughter boomed. "I'll remind him too, Aya-chan!"
Hiro snorted, cut the connection with a snap of his fingers, and turned the giant wallscreen into a mirror. He'd borrowed one of their fathers old formal jackets: black spider silk and real bamboo buttons.
He didn't look half bad.
Aya skated across the room on her platforms, watching her dress trail sparkles in the wallscreen, Moggle tracking the motion. She'd paid for the dress with Hire's reputation, but paying him back was going to be a cinch.
She didn't get why Hire was so nervous. Tonight felt long overdue to Aya, more real than all the merit-grubbing and obscurity of her life so far. All that had merely been preparation for this for fame.
Best of all, Frizz was coming to the bash. He still felt bad about the Slime Queen story, but tonight would banish all that awkwardness. Though Frizz didn't know it yet, Aya and he were finally going to be face-equal, not to mention headed to the Thousand Faces Party together next week.
"Stop skating around like that!" Hiro said. "You look like an ugly about to kick some pictures of your cat!"
She skidded to a halt. "Oh, no!"
"What? Did you forget an edit?"
"No, it's just that maybe this story would be better with a cat!"
Hiro finally cracked a smile, then turned back to the mirror. "Actually, it's pretty much perfect, Aya-chan. Even if it does give Mom and Dad a heart attack."
"Perfect?" she asked, hoping Moggle was getting this. "Really?"
"Really." He shrugged. "If it wasn't, I wouldn't be rekicking it. Want to see something?"
He flicked his finger, and the screen changeda schematic of an apartment. It was huge, with walk-in closets and smart-matter windows, and a hole in the wall that could grind out almost anything.
"What's that?" she asked.
"An apartment in Shuffle Mansion. It just opened up."
Aya blinked. Shuffle Mansion was where the absolute biggest faces in the city lived. It had the best views and the strongest privacy, and even its walls were profoundly status-conscious. Every few weeks they moved a little, giving the mansion its name, every square centimeter reflecting the latest updates in the face ranks.
"Shuffle Mansion? You think I'll be that famous?"
He shrugged again. "You may have stopped a war, Aya-chan. That means merits on top of fame.
Ready to go?"
Aya felt heat on her cheeks, not just from the new flash tattoos. She glanced into the wallscreen one last time and gestured, changing the view back to her profile. Tonight, somehow, she almost looked like a pretty. Even her nose seemed perfect.
She nodded. "Yeah, I'm totally ready."
It was time.
Ten hovercams were drifting overhead, and dozens more waited over the mansion's steps. Their lenses flickered with torchlight as they swiveled to focus on Hiro, Aya, and Ren. Everyone knew that Hiro Fuse's new story was going up tonight, and rumors were flying that it was even bigger than immortality. What nobody knew was that the story was blank except for a rekick to his little sister's feed.
Piggybacking on Hiro's face rank annoyed Aya, but she had to admit it was the quickest way to spread the news.
As they reached the mansion's steps, she pushed her dress's sparkling into overdrive.
"Don't run down your batteries," Ren whispered, smiling for the cams.
"But Hiro said I needed to make a big entrance!" Her own smile faltered a little as she climbed the stairs. Her right ankle was still sprained from being dragged across rocks and brush by that stupid parachute. "Maybe I shouldn't have worn this," she mumbled.
"You look fantastic," Hiro said. "Just keep the friction on those shoes turned upfalling on your face is the wrong kind of famous-making."
"And remember," Ren added quietly "one hour from now, you'll have the biggest face in the room."
Aya glanced nervously at Hiro, and he took her hand.
She checked her eyescreen: The average face rank of the party was already at two thousand, much higher than the one she'd crashed ten days ago. And that number would only climb as the big faces arrived, the popular tech-kickers who could explain mass drivers in terms that extras could understand.
Inside, the air was so thick with hovercams that Aya wondered how any of them could get a clear shot. Whole swarms moved together, like minnows in an overcrowded fish tank. Moggle joined the dance overhead, looking oversize and clumsy amid the finger-size cams.
The funny thing was, she'd watched a million parties like this on the feeds, and she'd never once noticed all the hovercams. But now their flitting forms were as distracting as mosquitoes in the rainy season.
But she could understand why they were here. The surge-monkeys alone were eye-boggling.
Dozens of new skin textures abounded: fur, scales, strange colors, and translucent membraneseven a stony crust, as if living statues had joined the party. Aya spotted face-types based on animals, historical figures, and she-didn't-know-what, all vying for the attention of the swarming cams.
With Nana Love's party only a week away, everyone was pulling out all the stops, trying to eye-kick their way into the top one thousand.
Somehow, though, none of the surge-monkeys here was as unnerving as the figures she and Miki had glimpsed in the mag-lev tunnel. This party was all about fashion and eye-kicks, but those freaks were something inhuman.
She took a deep breath, banishing body mods from her mind. Not everyone here was a surge-monkey. There were also the geniuses: math-heads playing with puzzle cubes and airscreen mazes, science cliques in lab wear, all blended together in a tech-kicker's paradise.
Aya scanned the crowd for Frizz, but extraordinary sights kept arresting her gaze.
"Look at those pixel-skins!" she cried. Across the room a couple stood half naked, blurry images moving across their backs. Somehow they were changing their skin cells' colors fast enough to show a feed channel, like chameleon lizards clinging to a wall screen.
"It's rude to point," Ren said. "And that's old news. Check out those four in the corner."
Aya followed his gaze. "What do you mean? I don't see anyone."