She flexed her finger and the city interface flickered to life, layering across her vision.
"Uh-oh," she said to Moggie. "Almost midnight."
She didn't remember dozing off, but the tech-head bash must have already started. It was probably crowded by now, packed enough with surge-monkeys and manga-heads that nobody would notice one ugly extra snooping around.
Besides, Aya Fuse was an expert at being invisible. Her face rank was proof of that. It sat unmoving in the corner of her vision: 451,396.
She let out a slow sigh. In a city of a million, that was total extra-land. She'd had her own feed for almost two years now, had kicked a great story just a week ago, and was still anonymous.
Well, tonight was finally going to change that.
"Let's go, Moggie," she whispered, and slipped out of bed.
A gray robe lay in a shapeless puddle at her feet. Aya pulled it over her dorm uniform and tied it at the waist, then perched on the windowsill. She turned to face the night sky slowly, easing one leg, then the other, out into the cool air.
She slipped on her crash bracelets, glancing at the ground fifty meters below.
"Okay, that's dizzy-making."
At least no monitors were skulking around down there. That was the kick thing about a thirteenth-story roomno one expected you to sneak out your window.
Thick clouds hung low in the sky, reflecting worklights from the construction site across town.
The cold tasted of pine needles and rain, and Aya wondered if she was going to freeze in her disguise.
But she couldn't exactly throw a dorm jacket over the robe and expect people not to notice.
"Hope you're all charged up, Moggie. It's drop-time."
The hovercam drifted past her shoulder and out the window, settling close against her chest. It was the size of half a soccer ball, sheathed in hard plastic and warm to the touch. As Aya wrapped her arms around Moggie, she felt her bracelets trembling, caught in the magnetic currents of the hovercam's lifters.