Tally turned to Aya and Frizz, a smile breaking across her face.
"This is David. He's here to rescue us."
It was David who'd brought the hoverboards. He'd also brought real city-made food, and the air was already full of slurping sounds and the scent of self-heating meals.
Aya and the others were halfway up the Rusty skyscraper, on a mostly intact floor. The nearest deconstruction crew was a hundred meters above, their metal-chewing blades whining in the background. But there was no chance of being discovered: David's rescue equipment included lots of sneak suits. Aya's felt as smooth as silk pajamas against her skin, though the outer scales were steel-hard to the touch. Everyone was almost invisible from the neck down, bodies blending into the half-missing walls, heads floating eerily as they ate.
"David followed us here," Tally explained between bites of CurryNoods. "In case we couldn't break out on our own."
Aya looked at David. She remembered him from mind-rain class, of course. His name was mentioned in Tally's famous manifesto, when she'd declared her plan to save the world. During the Prettytime he'd been one of the Smokies, a group who'd lived in the wild, fighting the evil Specials and helping runaways from the cities. So it was natural that Tally would want him around, now that she lived in the wild too. But Aya couldn't figure out why he was wearing an ugly mask.
"Like anyone could keep you three locked up," David said. "My real job was to bring extra equipment and a hovercar."
"Any trouble tracking us?" Tally asked.
David shook his head. "Never more than fifty klicks behind you. The plan would've worked perfectly if you hadn't decided to jump out." He glanced at Frizz.
"It's okay," Hiro said, slurping his own noodles. "I already explained Radical Honesty to them."
"What is it with you city kids and surgery?" David muttered.
"But how did you find each other?" Aya asked. "I thought we couldn't use pings."
"When I got into town, these ruins looked like they had burning flares on top." David laughed, looking out through the crumbling wall at sparks falling past. "I thought it was you signaling me!"
"That's how we got in touch with David in the old days," Shay explained.
"After I figured out what the sparks were, I waited here anyway," David said. "Just in case you decided to come to the usual place."
"You always know where to find me," Tally said with a soft smile.
Aya frowned. "One thing I don't get, David. Why are you in disguise?"
"Excuse me?"
"Why are you still wearing ?" Aya began. "Oh, that's not smart plastic? You're really an ugly?"
David rolled his eyes, and Shay said quietly, "David's never had any surge at all. But I wouldn't use the word uglyTally might eat you."
"I just figured he was a Cutter, but with ," she began, but found herself silenced by Tally's death-threatening stare.
Aya went back to slurping her PadThai, wishing she'd paid more attention in mind-rain history.
David pointed at a shiny satellite dish on the floor. "We're set up to call in help if you want, Tally.
That antenna is focused on a comm satellite, and it transmits as straight as a laserno one else will hear a thing."
Everyone looked at Tally, who paused, chopsticks halfway to her mouth.
"I don't want any help yet," she said. "We still don't know what the inhumans are up to. And I'm starting to think Aya-la's City Killer story might be a false alarm."
Their stares turned to Aya, who was chewing a mouthful of noodles. She swallowed them slowly, hoping Tally would keep going. It seemed a million times more shaming to explain the mistake herself.
"Yeah," Aya finally said. "The mass drivers might not be weapons."
"What else would they be?" Hiro asked.
"A way to slow down the cities," Tally said. "To strip the world of metal and send it here. No more cheap metal, no more expansion."
"You've got to be kidding!" Shay cried. "You mean these weirdos are on our side?"
"It makes sense," Fausto said. "They could even get rid of the metal permanentlyjust shoot it into orbit. Those cylinders don't have to come down."
Hiro let out a disgusted sigh. "You mean you got this story wrong, Aya?"
"I got it wrong?" Aya cried. "You and Ren were the ones who came up with the city killer angle!"
"But it was your story, Aya!" Hiro said. "We just gave you an idea!"
"But before you guys started talking about reentry speeds and TNT, I just wanted to kick the Sly Girls mag-lev surfing!"
Frizz frowned. "I thought you said you weren't going to kick that?"
"Would you randoms be quiet?"
Tally said, her voice suddenly full of razors. "You want those freaks up there to hear us?"
Aya fell silent, glaring at Hiro. It was bad enough that every feed in the city would blame this bogus story on her; she didn't need her own brother piling on. She glanced at Frizz, hoping he understood what she'd meant.
"Don't forget, we aren't sure of anything yet," Tally said. "They could be building a hundred mass drivers right here, getting ready to bombard every city in the world. We may have to blow something up, after all."
"We're almost at the equator," Fausto said.
"The equator?" Tally shook her head. "What does that have to do with it?"
"The closer you are to the equator, the faster the Earths spinningmore centrifugal force."
Fausto made a whirling motion over his head. "Like a pre-Rusty slingthe longer it is, the more momentum it gives the stone. Right here's the best place to shoot something into orbit."
"So maybe there are mass drivers here!" Aya said. Maybe her story hadn't been totally truth-missing "Don't get too excited, Aya-chan." Ren stood up and crossed to the largest opening in the wall. "I haven't see any mountains on this island."
"The nearest ones I saw were more than a hundred klicks north," David said.
"If you drill a mass driver shaft at sea level, your projectile starts too low," said Ren. "And on a tropical island you'd have to worry about flooding. It'd be a nightmare."
Aya sighed. This island wasn't the best place to destroy the world from, and it was guilty-making how that fact filled her with sadness. If only the inhumans had been up to something world-threatening here "So why are they salvaging these ruins?" Frizz paused, listening for a moment to the shriek of saws echoing through the ruin. "And why are they on a schedule? In the hovercar, Udzir told us that they'd let us go soon."