Iris left her Monowheel next to her father’s pod on a mag-lock, because here in the Hives anything that isn’t bolted down will vanish the moment you take your eyes off it. She climbs up onto the big red leather seat of her ’wheel and flips the ignition four or five times before realizing it isn’t going to start. Her first thought is that somehow the battery has gone dead. But it hasn’t gone dead. It’s just gone. Someone yanked it out of the vapor-drive and strolled off with it.

“Happy birthday to me,” she sings, a little off-key.

3.

A cannon-train approaches, making that cannon-train sound, a whispery whistle that builds and builds until suddenly it passes below her with a concussive blast. Iris loves the way it hits her, loves to be struck through by the shriek and boom, so all the breath is slammed from her body. Not for the first time, she wonders what would be left of her if she jumped off the stone balustrade. Iris fantasizes about being pulverized into a fine, warm spray and raining gently upon her rotten, selfish mother and sorry, hopeless father, wetting their faces in red tears.

She sits on the balustrade, swinging her feet over the drop, the smooth green ball of sludge resting in her lap. There’ll be another train in a few minutes.

When she looks into her poisoned crystal ball, it isn’t the future she sees but the past. This time last year, she was fifteen, with fifteen of her best friends, fifteen hundred feet underground in the Furnace Club. Magma bubbled beneath the BluDiamond floor. They all traipsed barefoot to feel the warmth of it, guttering streams of liquid gold not half an inch from their heels. The waiter was a floating Clockwork named Bub, a polished copper globe who hovered here and there, opening the bright lid of his head to offer each new course. In the throbbing red light, the faces of the other girls glowed with sweat and excitement, and their laughter echoed off the warm rock walls. They looked as roasted as the piglets they were served for the main course.