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"Are you all right?"
"Feel weird," he murmured. "Heavy."
"Tell me about it!" Aya strained. "If only we had a way to " She glanced at the inhuman lying next to Frizz.
Hiro stepped off his board beside her, staring down at the inhuman. "Whoa. You left this out of your story?"
"Help me get the hoverball rig off this freak." Aya grunted, tugging at the inhuman's shin lifter.
"We can put it on Frizz!"
"All right," Hiro said, kneeling. "Here's how you do it."
He loosened the straps with practiced fingers, pulling the lifter pad free and slipping it onto Frizz's leg.
"What happened to him?" Ren asked, joining in the scramble.
"That freak stuck him with those needle fingers." Aya glanced up at the hovercar. Its side door was opening again, light spilling out around two more silhouettes. "Crap. More coming!"
"I'm done." Hiro was strapping the last forearm pad into place. "I've set the rig to neutral. He should be zero-g."
Frizz lifted easily from the ground, suddenly weightless. She wrestled his drifting body onto her board and knelt across him.
Hiro and Ren slipped up on either side and reached out their hands, pulling her forward like a littlie between two parents. Soon they were shooting ahead through a gap in the trees.
"Are they following us?" Aya asked.
Ren looked back. "I don't think so. They're picking up the other two."
"Two freaky bodies are worse than one live witness, I guess," Hiro said. "Speaking of which, you have some explaining to do, Aya."
"When we get to safety."
"Which is back at the party, right?"
"No. We're doing what Tally sayswe're hiding."
"Where?" Ren asked.
Aya bit her lip, holding tight to keep Frizz's unconscious form from slipping off the board. "The underground reservoir."
"Cold and wet," Ren said. "But it's the one place in the city with no cams."
"Exactly," Aya said. Something was skimming through the trees in the corner of her eye, and she dared a glance. It was a camo-black hovercam, still wobbly from a recent collision.
It flashed its night-lights happily, and shaky images began to spill across Aya's vision. Whatever the inhuman creatures were, this time they'd been caught by more than just her eyes. She found herself smiling.
Moggle had gotten the shot.
The new construction site glowed dull orange, the earthmoving machines resting quietly in their foundation pits.
"Check your pings again," Hiro said. "Before we get cut off."
Aya scanned her eyescreen, then shook her head. A few priority pings had come in on the wardens' channeland maybe ten thousand more asking her what was going on, not to mention a million theories burning up the feeds but nothing from Tally Youngblood.
"If she's coming on a suborbital, she'll be out of contact for a few hours," Ren said.
Aya sighed. "As long as she gets here fast."
They dropped toward the tunnel below them and slipped inside.
"Hey, am I passing out again?" Frizz groaned, his weight shifting as the darkness closed around them.
"No, we're just going underground." Aya squeezed him tighter. "No lights, Moggle. Too obvious."
"Your dress," Frizz murmured. "Sparkles."
Aya nodded, flexing her fingers, and the party dress sputtered to life. The battery was down to its last dregs, but the flickering embers were enough cut the gloom.
"Told you this was the right dress, Hiro," she said.
"Very funny. Are you going to tell us about what happened back there?"
"Not yet."
They descended, the orange worklights of the surface fading behind them. After long minutes, the echoes of trickling water reached their ears, then the tunnel opened over the reservoir's huge expanse.
Aya brought her board to a halt in midair.
The cavern flickered with the dying lights of her dress, the ceiling shimmering with the water's trembling reflections. Moggle seemed to remember the place, and was soon drifting in nervous circles around the cavern, checking for hidden Sly Girls with lock-down clamps.
Hiro slid to a stop close by, sitting cross-legged on his board. "Great hiding place, Aya. There's no actual ground to stand on, is there?"
"No," Ren said. "But we've got plenty of water."
"It's not exactly Shuffle Mansion." Aya sighed. The apartment Hiro had shown her lingered in her mind's eye the huge open spaces, the perfect city views. And here she was on her first night of fame, skulking underground.
Frizz's slow breathing echoed from the stone arches. He stirred beneath her, the effects of the needle-stab fading. She checked the mark on his neckthe redness had almost disappeared.
"Whatever was in those needles was designed to knock you out, Aya," Ren said. "But Frizz is a pretty. He'll be okay."
She nodded. The operation made pretties' bodies stronger and quicker to heal as well as beautiful.
"So who were those people?" Hiro asked.
"I have no idea," she said. "I only saw them once before."