Marisa suppressed a grin; Francisca’s father called her Pancha, but the girl despised it. Pulling that out here would be the perfect way to put her in her place . . . and then she noticed that La Princesa was watching Saif with obvious interest, her eyes roaming over his body as he reached inside his jodhpuri coat for more Bluescreen drives. The nickname was good, but if this entitled little brat was after Saif, there were much better ways of hurting her. Marisa glanced around, looking for something she could use, and her eyes lit on Saif’s Candy Apple, held out in his right hand while he searched in his pockets with his left. The drink was so close she could practically touch it, and in a sudden fit of courage she did.
“Let me hold that for you, babe.” She gently plucked the drink from his hand and took a small sip; it caught in her throat like a mouthful of syrup, even thicker and sweeter than she’d imagined, but she hid her hesitation expertly, and swallowed the cloying liquid as if it had cleared her throat refreshingly. “Thanks for stopping by, Pancha, it was great to see you.”
The dark look that came over Francisca’s face was like a thunderstorm of rage, incensed at the idea that Marisa and Saif were together. Marisa wondered for a moment if she’d gone too far, and La Princesa was about to attack her. Instead Francisca took a calming breath, visibly restraining herself as she prepared what was sure to be a brutal verbal counterattack.
“Where’s Anja?” asked Sahara suddenly.
Marisa looked at the couch, but the girl was gone. “What?”
“She was right here,” said Saif.
“The door,” said Sahara, her eyes unfocused as she checked something on her djinni. “She’s headed outside.”
She’s sleepwalking again, thought Marisa, jumping up to follow Sahara as they wove through the pulsing crowd, Saif and Francisca forgotten behind them. She caught a glimpse of Anja’s hair as she disappeared out the door, and ran to catch up. Trancing out in her own home was one thing, but here in the middle of the city there was no telling what kind of danger she could be in. Sahara took the lead, shoving her way through the press of dancers with more fierce authority than Marisa could ever muster, and the two girls burst out onto the sidewalk, looking around wildly. Marisa saw Anja nearly a block away, walking—no, flat-out running—straight toward the entrance to Highway 110.
“Anja!” shouted Marisa, and tore off her shoes, breaking into a sprint to try to catch her. Sahara kept the same desperate pace beside her. “We’re lucky you noticed she was gone,” Marisa panted. They reached the corner and spared only a tiny glance at the lone oncoming car, trusting its navigation software to avoid them as they bolted past it and across the street. “I thought she was still passed out.”
“It wasn’t me,” said Sahara, arms pumping as she ran, “it was someone named FakeJakeHooper.”
“The movie star?”
“No, some guy who watches the vidcast. The angle from Cameron’s feed showed her standing up behind us and walking away, and he pinged the chatroom with a comment.” They were gaining on Anja, but only slightly; she’d already turned up onto the slow incline of the freeway on-ramp, and Marisa didn’t think they could reach her before she got to the freeway. “Saif said this never happened! When we get back I’m going to feed that blowhole his own testicles in a sandwich.”
A car roared past them, headed for the same freeway, and Marisa felt the fear grow thicker in her chest, like a twisted lump of cold iron. Traffic accidents were rare, as the network of self-driving sensors could keep up with almost anything, rerouting at lightning speed around any obstacle, but no system was perfect, and mistakes still happened; it didn’t matter how fast your processor was if your tires couldn’t respond in time. A freeway like this would have thousands of cars, moving at hundreds of miles an hour, and Anja was running straight toward them.
What was going on?
Another car roared by, its horn blaring a warning, and then another, and then two more, and suddenly the girls were standing at the top of the on-ramp, the freeway rushing past them like a river of light and steel. Autocars sped by up the ramp, merging seamlessly into the freeway traffic. Marisa searched for Anja, finding her all too easy to spot—she was in a narrow gap in the third lane over, like a rock in a stream, the cars swerving deftly around her. On the street that led to the on-ramp the cars had honked, their onboard computers blaring a warning to anyone who got too close, but here in the freeway there was no such courtesy—the cars were moving too fast, their control programs hurtling them along at two hundred miles an hour. Passenger cars mingled with larger trucks and delivery vans, all barreling down the tightly packed road like bullets through a gun, each vehicle warning the others of the frail, fleshy obstacle in their path, giving them just barely enough time to move around it.
“She might be safe,” said Sahara, but she sounded completely unconvinced. “The cars can avoid her, and in a couple of minutes the emergency nulis will airlift her right out of the road.”
“Except she’s moving,” said Marisa, pointing. “She’s running against the traffic, and swerving back and forth between lanes. It’s almost like she’s . . .” Marisa scowled. “Like she’s trying to get hit.” She shook her head. “The cars can’t dodge that forever.”
Sahara grimaced. “Can’t you . . . hack it, or something?”
“The entire freeway?”