Soli wiped fresh streaks of grime from her goggles, squeezing her thighs against Whisperjack's ethanol tank until adrenaline cut a tight smile across her face. Green rows of hypermaize ripped through her peripheral vision and she shifted her weight, letting the wind and the dust blow the sickly-sweet smell of corn from her nostrils.

Krause had said she was ready, turned her loose. “Time to earn your swill,” he'd said. Soli knew she'd soon be something freer and fiercer than “the girl from Houston.” She pinned her bike's throttle and her doubt melted into Whisper's motor-whine, her fear dissolving into the vibrations of hot metal. The sun licked heat down the line of her back.

The satnav on Whisper's bars chirped as Soli counted a hundred miles swallowed by the Green—they were close. It was one of Grow-Tek's nodes, an autofarm that thrust out of the Earth's carcass like the hilt of a blade. This one was dormant—'least that's what Krause's scouts had told her—and it was ripe with old circuitry and battery cells: parts that would keep Smyrna's lights on, its motors running, moonshine stills hissing and spouting.

The polymer stock of a rifle clanked against Whisper's frame and Soli tensed. Mama had picked over the ammo like a bag of beans and tossed the cracked shells, her face stern, eyes slits. “One rattle out of place, Solecita,” she'd said, “you turn back to me.”

Soli slung Whisper low and fast through the next corner, hanging off the bike like a circus queen, tires tearing through ochre mud until the throttle loosened. A pang of vertigo blew through her as wheels slipped and she kicked down on the bike's shifter, felt the clutch grind and kicked again, sharper now. Blissful torque came rushing back and she gunned it out of the turn, heart pounding.

Temperamental, just like Uncle Eli'd said. They'd knelt in the mud together back at Camp Smyrna, under the Old Growth trees, Eli's greased arm draped over Whisper's seat, torque wrench in hand and moonshine on his breath. “She's wily,” he'd said, fingers tracing Whisper's frame until his eyes flashed at her from beneath that shock of blonde hair. “Don't push her.”

Soli flicked the handlebars and dropped through another bend, 'shineburner screaming underneath her as they carved together, woman and machine. Her machine. She licked sweat from her lips and braced as they jumped from gravel onto smooth tarmac. Grow-Tek's spindly pesticide rigs crawled the endless Green around them now, their tusks spewing a blend of gene-shredding petrochemicals that Soli wished she could pump down some distant technocrat's throat.

Soli downshifted, dug her knees into the tank, searching, reaching through the fumes for that diamond high, that speed, like the first time she'd ridden on the back of Javi's bike, cold and soft and shivering and still wet behind the ears, just two weeks parted from her old city life. She'd wrapped her arms around his waist and felt, for the first time since leaving that damned place, like maybe she could laugh or cry or scream. That was six years ago. Six grueling years since Mama dragged her from their Houston mega-rise apartment, choking clouds of sulfur hanging deadly still outside the window.

The distant whoosh of rotors yanked Soli back to the present.

“Mierda.” She thumped her palm against Whisper's tank and sparks of pain flicked up her wrist. Fuel. “They said no spooks!” Guess Krause wasn't always right, after all.

Whisper's motor growled as Soli pulled the clutch lever and bled speed, dropping down the steep shoulder of the roadway into the tangled biomass of an irrigation ditch. Stalks snapped against bare arms and molding fruit popped beneath Whisper's tires.

“Come on, come on… Not today, assholes.” Soli dug the soles of her boots into Whisper's footpegs, pumping the throttle and thrusting the bike through the mire, that distant whoosh sharpening into the unmistakable thrum of a Grow-Tek hunter-killer.

Panic curdled in Soli's throat as Whisper's roar softened to a growl. She couldn't stall, not now. They'd find her. They'd ruin it.

The wide maw of a drainage culvert beckoned ahead as aerial engines howled, making Whisper's grunt feel small.

“Push, girl,” she whispered.

Soli pumped the throttle again and threw her weight back, wrenching Whisper's front tire from the mud and flinging them toward the culvert's lip. Sparks sprayed as the bike's exhaust pipe bit steel. Tires landed. And then Whisper screeched to a halt.

“Yes. Órale!”

Whisper groaned, then hushed as Soli pulled the clutch and cut the power.

Stalks bent and ripples danced across the mud as the hunter-killer's rotorwash sprayed fine, cool droplets against Soli's grimed skin, the tick-tick-tick of Whisper's cooling motor quieting as Soli pleaded with it, shushing and soothing.

And then it was over, the silence of the Green broken only by Soli's ragged breaths and the drip of polluted water. Tension and runoff drained its way down Soli's legs and out her soggy boots and she flicked Whisper's ignition, smiling into the purr of that beautiful four-stroke engine.

“It's time to ride.”

They were back on the road, soaring. Soli's hair came loose but she didn't care, didn't slow—she was a feral now, a salvaje, out where yokels and migrants mingled. They hid their scars under loose braids, their neural implants removed, digital signatures erased. Ghosts. The census called it 'unable to interface.' She called it blissfully free of corporate streamfeeds. Soli leaned, knees scraping tarmac, the slash on her scalp ablaze. She'd laughed while they'd done it.

Another bend ahead, another twist, another chance to rip and tear and dance and fling sticky clods of mud all over Grow-Tek's great Green carpet. They shot toward it like a comet, all heat and speed. Whisperjack whined but Soli only heard the rush of blood in her ears. Disc brakes sang as Soli's foot groped for the gear lever—she flicked her toes, missed, then again, and a slick patch of grass caught them mid-shift. She yanked the brakes.

Bad instinct.

Whisperjack bucked her hard, bars ripped from her hands, the world tumbled, and ribs met wood with a crack that emptied her lungs and smashed the salvaje's daydream into glittering debris.