"Moggie?" the mean voice asked.
"Uh my hovercam."
"Your hovercam has a name?"
Laughter echoed from every direction. Aya realized that there were more of them than she'd thought. Maybe a dozen hidden in the darkness.
"Hang on a second," Eden's voice said. "How old are you?"
"Um fifteen?"
A flashlight flicked on, blindingly bright in the total darkness.
"Ouch!" She squeezed her eyes shut.
Whoever was holding the flashlight added, "Thought that nose looked big. Even in infrared."
As Aya's eyes adjusted to the flashlight, she began to make out faces. They looked like Plain Janes, the clique for girls who didn't want to be pretty or exotic, just normal as if that concept still existed. Except for Eden Maru's padded and muscular form, the hovering figures around Aya all looked the samegeneric bodies, designed to disappear in a crowd. All of them were girls, as far as Aya could tell, just like the night she'd seen them hitching a ride on the mag-lev train.
"So you like to sneak around at night?" Eden said.
"I guess so. Beats sitting in my dorm room."
"Easily bored?" The other girl drawled the words in her growling voice. "Then maybe you should have a surf sometimes."
"A surf?" Aya swallowed. "You mean I can ride with you?"
A few grumbles came from the darkness.
"But she's only fifteen," the girl holding the flashlight said.
"Are you still back in the Prettytime?" said the growly-voiced girl. "Who cares how old she is?
She crashed Prettyville and came down here all alone. Got more guts than most of you, probably."
"What about the hovercam?" Eden said. "If she kicks a story, we'll have wardens all over us."
"She could still call the wardens if she wants to." The mean-voiced girl slid closer on her board, until her nose was only a few centimeters from Aya's. "So we either leave her down here for good, or get her on our side."
Aya swallowed, glancing down at the shimmering black lake.
"Um, do I get a vote?"
"No one but me gets a vote," the girl said, then smiled. "But how about this? You do get to make a choice."
"Oh?"
The girl held Moggie at arm's length, and Aya saw the lock-down clamp against its skin. It was frozen, brain-dead until someone removed the clamp.
"You can either take your hovercam and go away. Or I drop it right now, and you get to come surfing with us."
Aya blinked, listening to the cold water still trickling from her robe. Ren claimed he'd made Moggie waterproof, but could she find her way back to this exact spot?
"How important is it to you, getting out of that boring little dorm room?"
Aya swallowed. "Very."
"Then choosing should be easy, right?"
"It's just that cam cost me a lot of merits."
"It's a toy. Like face ranks and merits, it doesn't mean anything if you don't let it."
Face rank didn't mean anything? This girl was brain-missing. But she was right about one thing: Nothing was more important than getting out of boring, pathetic Akira Hall.
Maybe Ren could help her find the way back here Aya closed her eyes. "Okay. I want to come with you. Drop it."
The splash echoed like a slap.
"Good choice. That toy isn't what you really need."
Aya opened her eyes. They stung with hidden tears.
"I'm Jai," the girl said, bowing low.
"Aya Fuse." She returned the bow, her eyes falling to the widening ripples beneath them. Moggie was really gone.
"Well see you again soon," Jai said.
"See me soon?
But you said" "I think you've had enough fun for one night, for a fifteen-year-old."
"But you promised!"
"And you said you weren't a kicker. I want to see if you were truth-slanting about that."
Aya started to protest, but the words faded in her mouth. There was no point in arguing nowMoggle was already gone.
"But I don't even know who you are."
Jai smiled. "We're the Sly Girls, and we'll be in touch. Come on, everyonewe've got a train to catch!"
They spun their hoverboards into motion, swirling around Aya, filling the underground chamber with echoing whoops and hollers. The flashlights flickered out, and she heard them shooting away one by one, their cries swallowed by the storm drain mouths.
Aya found herself alone in the dark, swallowing back tears.