"Sooner or later usually means too late," Frizz said.
Hiro turned to glare at him, but Frizz had already jumped from the spot. He drifted up to inspect the pair of chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling, each made from a million shards of glass suffused with soft blue laser light.
Now that Frizz had recovered, he was experimenting with the hoverball rig, swimming across the huge and furniture-missing apartment with broad sweeps of his arms. Aya found the sight unsettling, too much like the freaks in their lifter rigs.
"Hey, Hiro," Frizz called down. "Why does everyone always say these things are so tricky?"
"Because real flying tricky," Hiro said. "All you're doing is bouncing around in zero-g mode."
is "How do I try some real flying?"
"You don't, bubblehead. You'd yank your own arms out!"
"I may have had brain surge," Frizz said. "But I'm not a bubblehead."
"Not technically," Hiro muttered.
Aya snorted. "Who's the bubblehead, Hiro? If it wasn't for Frizz, those paparazzi cams would have caught us back in the reservoir."
"Yeah, I guess so." Hiro sighed and sat up straighter, giving Frizz a tiny bow. "Sorry I called you a bubblehead. You're pretty smart, actually."
Frizz returned the bow from midair. "And you're not as big a snob as Aya said you were."
Hiro's jaw dropped. "You said what, Aya?"
Ren suddenly sat upright on the bare floor. "I found something in your background feed, Aya.
About when you spotted the freaks."
"Great!" Aya eagerly turned away from her brother's glare. "Can you show it to us?"
"Sure, once I find the wallscreen in here."
"Yeah, where's the ?" Aya began, but the floor-to-ceiling window was already shimmering.
"Whoa," Ren said softly. "Diamond into wallscreen. This place is so kick."
An image appeared, shaky and distorted. Aya recognized the view from her button cam. One week ago: Miki studying the mag-lev tunnel wall, looking for the hidden door.
Seeing the Plain Jane face again brought back all the guilt that had been smothered by her sudden fame. Aya wondered what Miki thought of her, now that the whole world could watch the Sly Girls' secret rituals, their private tricks.
Eden Maru's voice came from offscreen, echoing through the tunnel. "This is it. Stand backthere could be anything behind there."
Miki took a slow breath, murmuring, "Or anyone."
Aya's own voice answered, "Those body-crazy freaks were just storing something down here.
Nobody lives in this place."
The shot froze, and Hiro grunted. "'Body-crazy freaks'? So that's how they knew you'd seen them. You told them in your own background layer!"
Aya shook her head. "But it still doesn't make sense. How did they look through all those shots so fast? There were hours and hours of button cam, and they came after us the moment we left the party."
"What if it was the wisdom of the crowd?" Ren said softly.
Aya frowned. "What do you mean?"
"We don't know how many of those inhumans there are," he said. "There could be hundreds.
Maybe there's a mountain full of them somewhere."
"Or a whole city," Frizz said. "That mass driver took some serious building."
A cold finger slid down Aya's spine. She'd thought of the freaks as a small clique. The notion of an entire city of inhumans sent her mind spinning.
"That's brain-missing," Hiro said. "Why would a whole city want to" "Quiet, Hiro!" Ren closed his eyes. "Does anyone else hear that?"
Aya listened, and her ears caught a faint hum echoing through the room.
Frizz pushed off from the ceiling and floated down. "I think it's coming from the wallscreen."
Then Aya tasted it in her mouth: rain and thunderstorms.
"Smart matter," she said. "The window's made of smart matter. " They all spun to face the wallscreen. Its surface was rippling, the frozen image of Miki's face warping like bad reception. The humming grew dissonant, a chord of incompatible tones fighting one another, causing the air itself to tremble. The taste of rain turned bitter in Aya's mouth.
"Someone's hacking your window!" Ren cried, springing to his feet.
Shapes began to emerge, three human figures bulging out from the flat expanse. An arm poked through, wrapped in the frozen image of Miki, like a mummy covered in wallscreen.
Frizz grabbed Aya, began to pull her backward toward the door.
"Wait a second!" she cried. "Look at their bodies " The figures pulling themselves from the wall weren't misshapen like the freaks; they were tall and strong-looking. They stepped out into the room, strangely faceless and still swathed with the colors of the screen, as if the smart matter had stretched around them.
"Are they pixel-heads?" Aya said softly.
They moved with a predatory grace, colors dulling with every step until they had turned a flat gray.
"No," Ren breathed. "They're wearing sneak suits."
The tallest of the three reached up and pulled the layer of gray from its head, revealing a face of cold, intimidating beauty. Her eyes were coal black and wolflike, her skin swathed in flash tattoos, every feature sharp and cruel.
She was the most famous person in the world.
"My name's Tally Youngblood," she said. "Sorry to disturb you, but this is a special circumstance."
Of course, Aya had learned all about Specials in school.