She squeezed her eyes shut. "Ready?"
Moggie shivered in her arms.
Clinging to the hovercam with all her strength, Aya pushed herself into the void.
Getting out was much simpler these days.
For Aya's fifteenth birthday, Ren Machinoher big brother's best friendhad modified Moggie.
She'd only asked him to make it quick enough to keep up with her hoverboard. But like most tech-heads, Ren took pride in his mods. The new Moggie was waterproof, shockproof, and powerful enough to carry an Aya-size passenger through the air.
Close enough, anyway. With her arms wrapped around the hovercam, she fell no faster than a cherry blossom twirling toward the ground. It was much easier than stealing a bungee jacket. And except for the nervous-making moment of jumping, it was kind of fun.
She watched the windows flicker pastdreary rooms full of standard-requisition squalor. No one famous lived in Akira Hall, just loads of face-missing extras wearing generic designs. A few ego-kickers sat talking into their cams, watched by no one. The average face rank here was six hundred thousand, despair-making and pathetic.
Obscurity in all its horror.
Back in the Prettytime, Aya vaguely remembered, you just asked for awesome clothes or a new hoverboard and they popped out of the hole in the wall like magic. But these days, the hole wouldn't give you anything decent unless you were famous or had merits to spend. And getting merits meant taking classes or doing choreswhatever the Good Citizen Committee commanded, basically.
Moggie's lifters connected with the metal grid beneath the ground, and Aya bent her knees, rolling as she hit. The wet grass squished beneath her like a sodden sponge, soft but shivery cold.