"Why not?" Tally said. She pulled herself up and peered down through one of the tiny windows.
The other Cutters followed suit.
Moggle was probably shooting from the bottom of the car, but Aya decided to take a look herself. She gulped a deep breath of the dense, muggy air to fight the nausea rising in her stomach, and pulled herself up by the cargo webbing.
"Be careful, Aya," Frizz said.
She nodded, gaining her feet unsteadily. The window was small and streaked with rain, the plastic thick and vision-warping.
The car was passing through a layer of clouds, the window revealing nothing but a dark gray mass and streaks of rain. But gradually the clouds grew thinner, boiling away into tendrils as the car descended.
The view cleared, the hovercar abruptly steadying.
A steely gray ceiling hung just above them, a solid sheet of clouds. Beneath the storm a dense rain forest spread out all the way to a shimmering glimpse of ocean. The mass of jungle was wrapped around the largest rums she'd ever seen. Clusters of huge towers reared up from the wind-whipped treetops, their metal skeletons disappearing into the clouds.
Even with the storm raging, construction lifters were attached to the ancient Rusty buildings, grasping iron beams like birds of prey, as if waiting for a break in the weather to tear them apart.
The car banked hard, tipping the view in a dizzy-making way, the Rusty towers disappearing.
Now Aya could see a broad clearing cut from the jungle. A hoverport sprawled out beneath herhundreds of cars and heavy lifters arrayed across a landing field, mag-lev lines converging from every direction on a central station.
"This is huge," Tally breathed.
"Yes," Udzir said. "We are very proud of all we've done."
"But you're clear-cutting the jungle!" Tally said, and Aya heard razors in her voice.
"We serve a greater cause," Udzir said. "Once you see more, you will understand the sacrifices we've made."
The car banked harder, gyrating around the port like a tiny boat being sucked into a giant whirlpool, and more structures rotated into Aya's view. Long storehouses, prefab housing, automated factories all jumbled together without rhyme or reason. Figures darted among them, wearing heavy plastic coats against the rain and flying.
None of them walkedthey glided from place to place, pushing from poles driven into the ground, gripping with hands and feet to fight the wind.
Aya turned from the window and sank back to the metal floor, her nausea rising again.
"What is it?" Frizz asked.
"You were right, Ren," she said softly. "There really is a whole city of them."
"We're not a city," Udzir said. "We are a movement."
"Sounds bubbly," Tally said. "What kind of movement?"
Udzir spun himself in midair, reaching out a hand to grasp the webbing on the cabin's ceiling.
"We're saving the world from humanity. Perhaps you'll want to join us."
Tally smiled. "Maybe we will."
"I doubt that," Frizz muttered.
Aya recognized the pained look from when Frizz had been trying not to blurt out her face rank; he was about to explode! If only Udzir would shut up and go back into the drivers' cabin.
But both inhumans were looking at Frizz curiously now, as if he'd said one radically honest thing too many.
"Your cities are expanding across the wild like a brushfire, young man," Udzir said. "So don't judge us before you know our purposes."
"I'm not judging you," he said, squeezing Aya's hand so hard it hurt.
Udzir frowned. "Then what exactly are you doing?"
"He's just airsick," Aya said.
"I'm not airsick!" Frizz's voice was choked. "I'm trying not to tell you everything!"
"What the ?" Shay began.
"What are you trying not to tell us?" Udzir said sharply.
Aya saw Frizz's willpower failing, and she reached out to try and stop him. But one of her hands was clenched in his, the other tangled in cargo webbing.
"That this is Tally Youngblood!" Frizz burst out. "And she's here to take you down!"
For a moment no one said anything.
Then Shay broke the silence, yelling at Frizz, "You bogus little moron!"
Tally launched herself across the cargo hold, flying beneath Udzir and into the woman hovering at the door. As she flew, her face seemed to explode, the smart-plastic disguise vanishing in an angry puff.
The woman swung her needle-tipped fingers, but Tally snatched her wrists and propelled a shoulder into the woman's stomach. She crumpled instantly, and Tally rolled past her into the drivers' cabin.
Across the hold, Shay rose almost casually to punch Udzir in the face. As he spun in midair, she slipped past his flailing limbs and after Tally.
Fausto stood up, his mask bursting from his face to reveal cruel-pretty features.
"I don't want to hurt you," he announced. "But nobody move."
"We're not moving!" Hiro said.
Aya turned to Frizz, whose face was pale. "Are you okay?"
"I'm sorry," he said. "I couldn't stop myself."
Suddenly the hovercar banked, twisting into a violent turn. Udzir's unconscious body crashed against the ceiling, then bounced back into the middle of the hold, spinning in midair. As Aya gripped the cargo webbing, her stomach lurching toward her mouth, she realized that he wasn't really spinninghe was steady in the air, the hovercar spinning around him Shay appeared at the drivers' cabin door, shoving the crumpled inhuman woman out of her way.
"A quick question," she said, bracing herself in the frame. "Do any of you bubbleheads know how to fly a hovercar?"