She felt another smile grow on her face. This was the first time the Cutters had dared to trick the city itself. It was almost like ugly days again.
The roof rushed toward her, and Tally held her board over her head, hanging from it like a parachute. A few seconds before she hit, the lifting fans burst to life, bringing her to a sudden halt. Tally landed softly, as easy as stepping from a slidewalk.
The board cut off and settled into her hands. She lowered it gently to the roof. They could make no sound from now on, communicating only with sign language and through their suits' contacts.
A few meters away, Shay held both thumbs up.
With soft, careful steps, the two made their way to the doors in the center of the roof, where hovercars entered and exited. Tally saw a seam down the middle where they would open up.
She touched her fingertips to Shay's, letting the suits carry her whisper. "Can we cut through this?"
Shay shook her head. "This whole building's made of orbital alloy, Tally. If we could cut through it, we could free Zane ourselves."
Tally scanned the roof, seeing no signs of access doors. "I guess we go with your plan then."
Shay drew her knife. "Get down."
Tally flattened herself against the roof, feeling her suit's scales shift to match its texture.
Shay threw the knife hard, then hit the ground herself. It arced beyond the building's edge, spinning out into the darkness and toward the sensor-strewn grass.
Seconds later, earsplitting alarms shrieked from all directions. The metal surface beneath them jolted, the doors parting with a rusty groan. A tornado of dust and dirt leaped from the gap, a monstrous machine rising in its midst.
It was barely bigger than a pair of hoverboards lashed together, but it looked heavy—four lifting fans screamed with the effort of hauling it through the air. As it emerged, the machine seemed to grow, unfolding wings and claws with shuddering alien movements, like a giant metal insect being born. Its bulbous body bristled with weaponry and sensors.
Tally was used to robots; cleaning and gardening drones were everywhere in New Pretty Town. But those looked like amiable toys. Everything about the mechanism above her—its jerky movements, its black armor, the shrieking blades of its fans—seemed inhuman and dangerous and cruel.
It hovered for a nervous-making moment, and Tally thought it had spotted them, but then the fans twisted at a sharp angle, and the thing shot off in the direction that Shay had thrown her knife.
Tally turned just in time to see Shay rolling through the still-open hovercar doors. She followed, slipping into darkness just as they began to lurch closed…
And found herself falling, tumbling down a lightless shaft. Her infrared only transformed the blackness into an incomprehensible riot of shapes and colors flying past.
She dragged her feet and hands against the smooth metal wall, trying to slow herself, but skidded downward until one grippy toe jammed into a fissure. She came to a momentary halt.
Scrambling for a handhold, Tally found nothing but slick metal. She was tipping over backward, her toe losing its grip…
But the shaft wasn't much wider than she was tall— Tally thrust out her arms overhead, spreading her fingers as both hands struck the opposite wall. The traction of the climbing gloves brought her to a halt, facing upward, muscles straining.
Her back was arched, her body wedged across the width of the shaft like a playing card bent between two fingers. Dull pain throbbed in her wounded hand from the impact.
She twisted her head around, trying to see where Shay had fallen.
There was nothing but darkness below. The shaft smelled of stale air and corrosion.
Tally struggled to get a better look. Shay had to be close—the shaft couldn't go down forever, after all, and Tally hadn't heard anything hit the bottom. But it was impossible to judge perspective; all around her was a mass of meaningless infrared shapes.
Her spine felt like a chicken bone about to snap…
Suddenly, fingertips touched her back.
"Take it easy," Shay's whisper came through the suits' contacts. "You're making noise."
Tally sighed. Shay was just below her in the darkness, invisible in her sneak suit. "Sorry," she whispered.
The hand pulled away for a second, then the touch returned. "Okay. I'm steady. Let yourself drop."
She hesitated.
"Come on, scaredy-cat. I'll catch you."
Tally took a breath, squeezed her eyes shut, then let go. An instant of free fall later, she found herself cradled in Shay's arms.
Shay chuckled. "You are one heavy baby, Tally-wa."
"What are you standing on, anyway? I can't see anything down here."
"Try this." Shay sent an overlay through the suit contacts, and everything shifted around Tally, infrared frequencies rebalancing before her eyes. Slowly the glowing silhouettes around her began to make sense.
The shaft was lined with hovercraft crouched in holding bays, their outlines bristling like the one they'd seen above. There were dozens in all shapes and sizes, a swarm of deadly machines. Tally imagined them all springing to life at once and chopping her to pieces.
She placed a tentative foot on one of the machines, then slipped out of Shay's arms, hands clinging to the barrel of the craft's auto-cannon.
Shay reached out and touched her shoulder, whispering, "How about all this firepower? Icy, huh?"
"Yeah, great. I just hope we don't wake them up."
"Well, our infrared's all the way up, and it's still hard to see, so everything must be pretty cold. There's actually rust on some of them." Against the jumbled background, Tally saw Shay's head turn upward. "But that one outside is plenty awake. We should get moving before it comes back."
"Okay, Boss. Which way?"
"Not down. We need to stay close to our hoverboards." Shay pulled herself upward, grasping weaponry, landing legs, and airfoils like handholds in a climbing gym.
Up was fine with Tally, and now that she could see, the spiny shapes of the sleeping hovercraft made for easy climbing. Clinging to gun barrels was a little nervous-making, though, like entering some sleeping predator's body through its own razor-toothed mouth. She avoided the grasping claws and fan blades, and anything else that looked sharp. The slightest tear in her suit would leave behind dead skin cells, revealing Tally's identity like a fresh thumbprint.
About halfway up, Shay reached down to touch her shoulder. "Access hatch."
Tally heard a metal cha-chunk, and blinding light filled the shaft, falling across two hovercraft. In the light they seemed less threatening—dusty and ill-kept, like stuffed predators in some old nature museum.
Shay slipped through the hatch, and Tally scrambled after her, dropping into a narrow hallway. Her vision adjusted to the orange work lights overhead, her suit shifting to match the pale color of the walls.
The hallway was too narrow for people—hardly wider than Tally's shoulders—and the floor was covered with bar codes, navigation markers for machines. She wondered what nasty contraptions were roaming these halls, searching for intruders.
Shay started up the hallway, waving a finger for Tally to follow.
The hallway soon opened onto a room that was huge— bigger than a soccer field. It was full of motionless vehicles that towered around them like frozen dinosaurs. Their wheels were as tall as Tally, and their bowed cranes brushed the high ceiling. Lifting claws and giant blades shone dully in the orange work lights.
She wondered why the city would keep a bunch of Rusty construction equipment around. These old machines would only be useful for building beyond the city's magnetic grid, where hoverstruts and lifters wouldn't work. The claws and earthmoving scoops around her were tools for attacking nature, not maintaining the city.