Another arrow shot past her in a blur, missing her face by centimeters…

She glanced up: Shay had landed on the hoverboard, setting it teeter-tottering wildly. The lifting fans shrieked at its triple load. Shay raised a stinger hand, but David's dark silhouette shoved Tachs toward her, forcing her to catch his limp form. She danced at the board's edge, trying to keep them both from tumbling off.

Then David lashed out, catching Shay in the shoulder with a handheld shock-stick. Another web of sparks lit the night sky.

Tally rose to her feet, running back toward the struggle. The Smokies were not fighting fair!

Above her, a bright yellow form was tumbling from the board, headfirst…Tally leaped forward, stretching out her hands. The dead weight thudded into her arms—the special bones as hard as a sack of baseball bats—and sent her sprawling to the ground. "Shay?" she whispered, but it was Tachs.

Tally glanced up. The hoverboard was ten meters up now, hopelessly out of reach, Shay's limp form wrapped around David’s sneak-suited darkness in an awkward embrace.

"Shay!" Tally screamed as the hoverboard rose still higher. Then her ears caught the snap of a bowstring, and she threw herself to the ground again.

The arrow missed wildly—whoever had fired it was running. Sneak-suited forms were everywhere, and more boards were buzzing to life all around her, the Smokies lifting into the air.

She twisted her crash bracelet, but there was no responding tug. They had taken all four of the Specials' boards—Tally was stranded on the ground, like some random hiker lost in the forest.

She shook her head in disbelief. Where had the Smokies gotten sneak suits? Since when did they shoot people? How had this easy trick gone so wrong? She connected her skintenna to the city network, about to call Dr.