Extras by Scott Westerfeld Page B

Miki's face and realized that she wasn't watching the metal objects floating past. She was staring wide-eyed at the people down below.
    Aya peered through the darkness, and finally saw that the flashlights weren't distorting the figures'
    shapes as she'd thought. The people hovering in the gloom were simply wrong—t heir legs absurdly stretched and gangly, arms bending in too many places, fingers as long as calligraphy brushes. And their faces…the large eyes were set too wide, the skin hairless and pale.
    As Miki had said: not human.
    Aya let out a shallow gasp, and Miki pulled her back from the edge. They lay there side by side, Aya's eyes squeezed shut, her heart pounding as she imagined one of those spindly hands reaching up onto the top of the train and grasping her.
    She forced herself to breathe slowly, clenching her fists until the panic subsided. Finally she slid to the edge of the train once more and looked down, wishing for the hundredth time tonight that Moggle was hovering at her shoulder. But she had only her own eyes and brain. The inhuman figures still floated there, watching a procession of lifter drones glide from the tunnel door into the train. They carried chairs and wallscreens, food synthesizers and industrial water recyclers, countless garbage canisters. Even a full aquarium balanced between two lifters, the bubbler still rumbling, fish darting around unhappily inside.
    Someone was obviously moving out of the hidden tunnel space…but what were those metal things they'd moved in?
    At last, the train slid shut, and the air began to hum again. Dark strands wove across the opening in the tunnel wall, like a time-lapse of a spider building a web. Then rippling layers began to roll across them, until the gap was completely covered.
    "Smart matter," whispered Miki beside her.
    As Aya nodded, the surface shivered one last time, then turned into a perfect imitation of stone. The flashlights flickered off, dropping the tunnel back into absolute darkness.
    "Come on," Miki whispered, pulling her back toward the centerline of the train. Soon it shuddered into motion, and the wind began to swirl around them again. "We'll be jumping off soon, and we can tell the others."
    "But who were those people, Miki?" Aya said.
    "I think you mean, what were they?"
    "Yeah." Aya lay there exhausted in the rumbling darkness, trying to replay in her mind what she'd seen. She needed time to think; she needed the city interface. And most of all, she needed Moggle. This story had just gotten much more complicated.

    RESCUE

    "You know, when I waterproofed Moggle, I didn't think you'd ever need it."
    "Sorry," Aya sighed. She'd said "sorry" about a thousand times since meeting up with Ren this morning; even she had to admit it was getting old. "Um, I mean, it won't happen again." Ren dropped his gaze back to the motionless black water. "You still haven't told me how it happened in the first place."
    "They must have snuck up on Moggle. They used a lock-down clamp, I'm pretty sure." Aya stepped to the front edge of her hoverboard, peering down. She wasn't even certain if she had the right spot. Her memories of that night were all shadows and chaos, and now Ren's hoverlamps were illuminating the underground reservoir with a cheery glow. Nothing matched the images in her mind.
    "They dropped it here, I think."
    "They…the Sly Girls, you mean?"
    "Yes, Ren, they're real. You just haven't seen them because they don't like kickers very much." She pointed at the black surface. "Hence my hovercam under water." He snorted, thumbs twiddling with the instrument in his hands, his eyescreens spinning. Ren made his own trick-boxes, gadgets that could talk to any machine in the city. "Well, they used a serious clamp. Moggle isn't showing up at all: no city signal, no private feed, not even battery flicker." Aya groaned, and the sound glanced across the still surface of the water, echoed off the ancient brick walls in a chorus of defeat. The reservoir