The buildings and factory tents fell behind themHiro was dragging her across a broad, clear-cut plain, empty except for the girders.
"Look!" Hiro's free hand pointed downward. Huge burn marks darkened the earth, and a charred smell filled Aya's nose.
"They must have tested the rockets here," she yelled.
"I hope that means we're getting close!"
The air itself trembled around them nowAya felt the explosions rumbling through her body.
The flashes threw long shadows from the girders, and half the night sky was shrouded in smoke.
"Aya?" Frizz's voice sounded in her ear. "Moggle and I are right behind you." He paused. "Well, maybe not right behind youHiro's flying like crazy. But we're coming as fast as we can."
"Okay, Frizz. Just make sure that Moggle gets some goodcrap!"
Hiro was pulling her into a sudden climb, wrenching apart her wounded ribs. A black expanse of wall stretched out before them, as wide as Aya could see. They skimmed over its top, then suddenly were flying across what looked like a burning expanse of jungle canopy, treetops waving wildly in the spreading flames But this wasn't jungle at all, Aya realized. An endless camouflage net stretched out beneath them, textured with vines and flowering ferns, as detailed as a vast sneak suit. The flames were real, thoughsheets of them roared across the dark expanse, an eye-watering windstorm of heat and smoke spilling up into the air.
Where the camouflage had already burned away, Aya saw the tops of the Extras' ships thrusting through the camouflage, as black as ashes, the needle sharpness of their nose cones melted.
She and Hiro soared higher above the nearest flames, carried for long seconds by the momentum of their climb but soon began to fall.
"Sneak suit!" she cried, scrambling with her free hand to pull on her hood. She saw Hiro reaching up to do the same.
They descended into the fire, skimming among the metal ships in a shallow dive, clouds of smoke churning in their wake. The boiling air burned Aya's lungs, and she smelled her own stray hairs bursting into flame. Even through the sneak suit's armor, her skin blistered from the heat.
But Hiro was already pulling her out again, hover-bouncing up from the forest of steel and flame.
She looked aroundthere were hundreds of them, a vast fleet of ships stretching in all directions.
A dozen of the Extras' cars hovered over the conflagration, spraying fire-fighting foam in all directions. But new fires were bursting into life much faster than they could put them out.
A boom thundered across the field, shuddering through Aya's body. She saw the shock wave spreading, a growing circle of roiling smoke and flame. At its center was the wreckage of one ship, a tower of steel ripped and twisted from within, slowly tipping over It crashed to the ground with a metal shriek, spilling a fresh sheet of flame across the ground. The burning rocket fuel wrapped around the base of the next ship, traveling up its side like a lit and crawling fuse.
Aya tore her eyes away and flexed her finger, shouting, "Tally!"
The name rasped from her smoke-filled lungs, barely audible. But a moment later a faint answer came through the roaring tumult "Aya?"
"Tally-wa!" she croaked. "It's me!"
"Why aren't you back at the ruin? It's dangerous here!"
Aya coughed. "I noticed!"
Hiro and she were descending again, like a rock skipping across water, plunging back down into the sea of smoke and flame.
"You have to stop!" she said quickly. "I was wrong about" The fire enveloped Aya again, setting her coughing. She could see nothing but smoke and the dark shapes of the Extras' ships surrounding them. Her sneak suit was stiffening around her skin, its armored surface breaking down in the heat.
"Where are you, Aya?" Tally's voice said, the signal stronger now.
Aya felt Hiro's grip tighten, and he pulled her up out of the smoke once more.
"Flying over the ships!"
"What ships?"
Aya coughed again, cursing herself for being brain-missing. "The missiles!
I'm right over them.
But they're not really missiles!"
"Are you sanity-challenged?" Tally shouted. "Get out of there!"
"I think she's this way," Hiro said, yanking Aya into a shoulder-wrenching turn. They wheeled just above the nose cones of the ships, level and steady, Hiro's hover-bouncing finally under control.
Another deafening boom erupted, closer this time, knocking Aya's breath out of her. She lost her grip on Hiro's hand, and shot away from him into an aimless, weaving course in zero-g, buffeted by the windstorms of the raging inferno and the ships' magnetic fields.
"You have to stop, Tally!" Aya yelled, angling her hands like a mag-lev-surfing Sly Girl, guiding herself back toward Hiro. "Wait until we reach you, and I'll explain."
"Some of these missiles are already fueled!" Tally said. "They could start launching the moment we let up!"
"But they're not missiles! They're ships! Stop blowing things up and let me explain!"
"Forget it!" Tally shouted. "If even one of those missiles launches, a whole city dies. Get out of there now!"
Hiro came sweeping toward Aya, reaching for her, but she twisted away and he shot past empty-handed.
"If you don't promise to stop, I'm staying right here," she said flatly. "And you can blow us up too!"
"I can't sacrifice whole cities for you," Tally said. "And I know you, Aya-layou'll save your own skin. You have ten seconds."
"I'm not budging!" she yelled.
"I doubt that."
Hiro had turned around and was cutting back toward her, reaching out his hand again. Aya sobbed with frustration who would believe that a truth-slanting ugly like her would sacrifice herself?
"I'm here too," came another voice. "And I'm not leaving."
"Frizz?" Tally said. "Have you all gone brain-missing?"
"The Extras aren't trying to kill anyone," he said firmly.
"But what if you're wrong?" Tally yelled.
"I'm certain," Frizz said. "And you know I can't lie, Tally."