Tally nodded slowly. The Smokies would never imagine anyone watching from the darkness, listening for every step, sniffing out every campfire and chemically cooked meal.

"And with us along," Tally said, "Zane will be okay even if he gets lost or hurt."

"Exactly. And after we find the New Smoke, you two can be together."

"Are you sure Dr. Cable will make him special?"

Shay pushed off from Tally, laughing as her board dropped. "After what I've got planned, she'll probably give him my job."

Tally looked down at her still-tingling hand. Then she reached out with it and touched Shay's cheek. "Thank you."

Shay shook her head. "No thanks necessary, Tally-wa. Not after the way you looked back in Zane's room. I hate seeing you all miserable like that. It's just not special."

"Sorry, Boss."

Shay laughed and tugged her into motion again, off the river and toward the factory belt, descending to normal flying height. "Like you said, you didn't leave me behind last night, Tally-wa. So we're not leaving Zane behind either."

"And we'll get Fausto back, too."

Shay turned back toward her and half-grinned. "Oh right, let's not forget about poor Fausto. And that other little bonus...what was that again?"

Tally took a deep breath. "The end of the New Smoke."

"Good girl. Any more questions?"

"Yeah, one: Where are we going to find something that can cut orbital alloy?"

Shay spun in one complete circle on her board, holding a finger in front of her lips.

"Somewhere very special, Tally-wa," she whispered. "Follow me, and all will be revealed."

THE ARMORY

"You weren't kidding about dangerous, were you, Boss?" Shay chuckled. "Backing out already, Tally-wa?"

"Not a chance," Tally whispered. The cutting had left her restless, full of energy demanding to be expended.

"Good girl." Shay grinned at her through the tall grass. Their skintennas were shut down so that the city records wouldn't reveal they'd been here tonight, and Shay's voice sounded tinny and far away.

"Zane will get mega-bubbly points if they think he organized a trick like this."

"That's for sure," Tally whispered, staring up at the formidable building before them.

Back when she was little, older uglies had sometimes joked about sneaking into the Armory. But no one had ever been stupid enough to actually try.

She remembered all the rumors. The Armory held every registered piece of hardware the city possessed: handguns and armored vehicles, spy-tech, ancient tools and technologies, even strategic, city-killing weapons. Only a select few people had ever been allowed inside; the defenses were mostly automatic.

The dark, windowless building was surrounded by a wide-open field marked with the flashing red lights of a no-fly zone. The grounds were ringed with sensors, and four auto-cannon guarded the Armory's corners, serious defenses in case some unthinkable war ever broke out between the cities.

This place wasn't designed to warn trespassers off. It was designed to kill them.

"Ready for some fun, Tally-wa? "

Tally looked at Shay's intense expression, and felt her own heart beating faster. She flexed her wounded hand. "Always, Boss."

They crept back through the grass to their hoverboards, which waited behind a giant, automated factory. As they ascended toward its roof, Tally zipped up the front of her sneak suit and felt its scales do a little boot-up dance. Her arms turned black and blurry-looking, the scales angling themselves to deflect radar waves.

She frowned. "They'll know that whoever did this had sneak suits, won't they?"

"I already told Dr. Cable about the Smokies going invisible on us. So maybe they loaned the Crims some toys." Shay flashed a razor smile, then pulled her hood over her head, turning herself into a faceless silhouette. Tally did the same.

"Ready to go ballistic?" Shay asked, pulling on gloves. Her voice was altered by the mask, and she looked like a person-shaped smudge against the horizon, her outline blurred by the random angles of the scales.

Tally swallowed. The hood over her mouth made her breath hot against her face, like she was suffocating. "Ready when you are, Boss."

Shay snapped her fingers, and Tally crouched, counting off ten long seconds in her head. The boards began to buzz as they slowly built magnetic charge, the fan blades spinning up to just below take-off speed...

On ten, Tally's board leaped into the air, pushing her down into a squat. The fans screamed all the way up to maximum, angling her toward the Armory like an arcing firework. A few seconds later, they shut down, and Tally found herself soaring through the dark sky in silence, excitement rushing through her once again.

She knew this plan was crazy, but the danger filled her mind with iciness. And soon Zane would be able to feel this way too...Halfway across, Tally grabbed the board and pulled it to her body, hiding its surface behind her radar-deflecting suit. Tally glanced over her shoulder - she and Shay were soaring over the no-fly barrier, high enough to escape the motion sensors on the ground. No alarms sounded as they passed the perimeter, falling silently toward the Armory's roof. Maybe this was going to be easy. It had been two centuries since there had been any serious conflict among the cities - no one really believed that humanity would ever go to war again. Besides, the Armory's automatic defenses were designed to repel a major attack, not a couple of burglars looking to borrow a handheld tool.

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.