Tally dumped the crumbly into a heap on the floor and checked the ceiling directly overhead. They weren't below the museum anymore, but the silver stuff would keep spreading even through the walls. Was it going to eat the whole building?
Maybe that was Shay's plan. The foam seemed to be working, but Shay leaped from safe spot to safe spot laughing, swinging at the sprayer drones, preventing them from getting the outbreak under control.
The alarm changed tone again, shifting to an evacuation warning.
Which seemed like a good idea to Tally.
She turned to the crumbly. "How do we get out of here?"
He coughed into a fist. The smoke was filling even this giant room. "The trains."
"Trains?"
He pointed downward. "Subways. Just below ground level. How did you get in here? Who are you, anyway?"
Tally groaned. Subway trains? Their boards were on the roof, but the only way up was through the hovercraft bay, full of deadly machines that would be very awake by now…
They were trapped.
Suddenly, one of the huge vehicles sprang to life.
It looked like some piece of old farm equipment, the sharp metal threshers across its front slowly beginning to spin. It struggled to turn, working its way out of its cramped parking space.
"Boss!" Tally called. "We need to get out of here!"
Before Shay could answer, the whole building rumbled. One of the construction machines had been turned entirely into silver goo and was starting to sink through the floor.
"Look out below," Tally said softly.
"This way!" Shay cried, her voice barely audible in all the commotion.
Tally turned to pick up the crumbly.
"Don't touch me!" he cried. "They'll save me if you just get away from me!"
She paused, then saw that two little sprayer drones were hovering protectively over his head
Tally dashed across the room, hoping the floor wasn't about to collapse. Shay was waiting for her, swinging the rifle to protect a growing web of silver on the wall. "We can get through here. Then past the next wall. We have to reach outside sooner or later, right?"
"Right…," Tally said. "Unless that thing crushes us." The farming machine was still struggling free of its parking space. As they watched, a bulldozer next to it started up, rolling out of its way. The larger machine untangled itself and began to roll toward them.
Shay looked back at the wall. "Almost big enough!"
The hole was widening quickly now, its silver edges glowing with heat. Shay pulled something from one of her sneak suit's pouches and hurled it through.
"Duck!"
"What was that?" Tally shouted, crouching down.
"An old grenade. I just hope it still—"
A flash of light and a deafening roar came through the hole.
"… works. Come on!" Shay ran a few steps toward the lumbering farm machine, skidded to a halt, then turned and faced the hole.
"But it's not big enough…"
Shay ignored her, diving through. Tally swallowed. If one drop of the silver stuff had gotten on Shay…
And she was supposed to follow?
The rumble of the farm machine reminded her that she didn't have much choice. It had detoured around the sinking, infected vehicles, and was in the clear now, gaining speed every second. One of wheels was ribboned with silver goo, but wouldn't be eaten away until long minutes after it had smashed Tally flat.
She took two steps back, put her palms together like a diver going into water, and threw herself through the hole.
On the other side, Tally rolled to a stop and sprang to her feet. The floor shook as the farming machine hit the wall, and the glowing hole behind her was suddenly much bigger.
Through it, she saw the huge machine backing up for another attack.
"Come on," Shay said. "That thing's going to get in here pretty quick."
"But I …" Tally strained to turn and look at her own back, her shoulders, the bottoms of her feet.
"Relax. No silver ickies on you. Me either." Shay stuck the barrel of the rifle into a drop of silver goo, then grabbed Tally and dragged her across the room. The floor was covered with the charred remains of foam sprayers and security drones that had been destroyed by Shay's grenade.
At the opposite wall, Shay said, "The building can't be much bigger than this." She pushed the half-consumed rifle against the wall. "Hope not, anyway."
A glob of silver clung, already beginning to grow…
The floor shook with a mighty boom again, and Tally spun around to see the front end of the threshing machine pulling back from the hole. The gap was much wider now, big enough to walk through. Between the hungry goo and the pummeling, the wall wasn't going to last much longer.
The farming machine was now thoroughly infected. Glowing tendrils traveled across its threshers like spinning lightning. She wondered if it would be consumed before it could pound its way through. But a pair of spraying drones shot into view and began to douse it with black foam.
"This place really wants to kill us, huh?" Tally said.
"That's my guess," Shay said. "Of course, you can try surrendering if you want."
"Hmm." The ground shook, and Tally watched as more of the wall crashed to the floor. The hole was almost big enough for the huge machine to roll through. "Got any more grenades?"
"Yeah, but I'm saving them."
"What the hell for?"
"For those."
Tally turned back toward the spreading silver web. The night sky showed through at its center, and Tally saw the running lights of hovercraft outside.
"We're dead," she said softly.
"Not yet." Shay pressed a grenade against the sliver nanos, watched them spread for a moment, then tossed it underarm through the gap, pulling Tally down.
The boom of an explosion battered their ears.
Across the room, the thresher struck for the last time, the entire wall collapsing into glowing silver rubble. The machine rolled forward slowly now, struggling along on half-eaten wheels covered with black foam and shimmering sliver.
Through the hole behind her, Tally saw the shapes of more hovercraft than she could count.
"They'll kill us if we go out there!" Tally said.
"Get down!" Shay barked. "That goo could hit a lifting fan any second."
"Hit a what?"
At that moment, a horrible sound came from outside, like gears grinding wrong on a bicycle. Shay pulled Tally down again as another explosion rang out. A spray of silver droplets came through the hole.
"Oh," Tally said softly. The nanos on Shay's grenade had been blown onto some unlucky hovercraft's lifting fans, which had let loose a deadly shower as they'd been consumed. By now, every machine waiting for them outside must have been infected.
"Call your hoverboard!"
Tally flicked her crash bracelet. Shay was readying to jump, hopping between the spreading droplets of silver that covered the room. She took three careful steps, then threw herself into the gap.
Tally took one step back from the hole—all she had room for. The lumbering threshing machine was so close that she could feel the heat of its disintegration.
She took a breath and dived into the breach…
Flight
Tally tumbled into darkness.
The night silence enveloped her, and for a moment she simply let herself fall. Maybe she'd brushed against the deadly silver goo on her way through the hole, or was about to be blown from the sky, or was falling to her death, but at least it was cool and quiet out here.
Then a tug came on her wrist, and the familiar shape of her hoverboard hurtled out of the darkness. Tally spun herself in midair, landing in a perfect riding stance.
Shay was already speeding toward the closest edge of the city. Angling her board to follow, Tally engaged its lifting fans, the thrum beneath her feet building swiftly to a howl.
The sky around them was filled with glowing shapes, all headed away from Tally. Every single hovercraft was trying to put distance between itself and its fellow machines; none of them knew which had been spattered with the silver goo and which were clean. The most obviously contaminated were grounding themselves in the no-fly area, stilling their spinning fans before they infected the rest.
She and Shay would have a few minutes' head start while the armada got itself organized.
Imagining pinpricks of heat on her arms and hands, Tally glanced down to check herself for growing silver dots. She wondered if the sprayers inside were getting the hungry nanos under control, or whether the whole building was going to sink into the earth.
If the silver goo was the sort of stuff the Armory kept in its museum, what were the "serious" weapons stored deep underground like? Of course, destroying one building wasn't much by Rusty standards. They'd killed whole cities with a single bomb, sickened generations with radioactivity and poisons. Next to that, the silver stuff really was a museum piece.
Behind her, firefighting hovercars from the city were arriving, spraying out vast clouds of the black foam across the whole Armory.
Tally turned away from the chaos and shot after Shay in the dark sky, relieved to see that no glowing droplets clung to her night black sneak suit. "You're clean," she called out.
Shay took a quick spin around Tally. "You too. Told you that Specials are born lucky!"
Tally swallowed, glancing over her shoulder. A few surviving hovercraft were zooming out from the pandemonium of the Armory grounds, chasing them. She and Shay might be invisible in their suits, but their hoverboards would still show up as bright slivers of heat. "I wouldn't call this good luck yet," she yelled across the void.
"Don't worry, Tally-wa. If they want to play, I've got more grenades." As the two of them hit the edge of Crumblyville, Shay dropped to roof level to take better advantage of the grid.
Tally followed her down, taking a slow breath. That Shay in possession of hand grenades was a comforting thought showed what kind of a night this had turned into.
She could hear the roar of hovercraft building now. Apparently, the goo hadn't gotten them all. "They're getting closer. "
"They're faster than we are, but they won't mess with us over the city. They don't want to kill any innocent bystanders."
Which doesn't include us, Tally thought. "So how do we get away?"
"If we can find a river outside of town, we can jump."
"Jump?"
"They can't see us, Tally—just our boards. Falling through the air in sneak suits, we'll be completely invisible." She was fiddling with one of the grenades. "Just find me a river."
Tally flipped a map overlay across her vision.
"All that firepower will chop our boards to pieces," Shay said. "They won't have enough left to …" Shay's voice faded. All at once, the hovercraft had winked out of existence, leaving the night sky empty.
Tally flipped through various infrared overlays, but could see nothing. "Shay?"
"They must have turned their lifting fans off. They're running on magnetics, totally stealthy."
"But why? We know that they're following us."
"Maybe they don't want to freak out the crumblies," Shay said. "They're pacing us, surrounding us, waiting for us to leave the city. Then they'll start shooting."
Tally swallowed. In the momentary silence, her adrenaline was fading, and the magnitude of what they'd done finally struck home. Because of them, the military was in an uproar, probably thinking the city was under attack. For a moment, the icy glamour of being special slipped away. "Shay, if this goes wrong, thanks for trying to help Zane."
"Hush, Tally-wa." Shay hissed. "Just find me that river."