Specials

Crashing A Bash

The six hoverboards slipped among the trees with the lightning grace of playing cards thrown flat and spinning. The riders ducked and weaved among ice-heavy branches, laughing, knees bent and arms outstretched. In their wake glowed a crystal rain, tiny icicles shaken from the pine needles to fall behind, aflame with moonlight.

Tally felt everything with an icy clarity: the brittle, freezing wind across her bare hands, the shifting gravities that pressed her feet against the hoverboard. She breathed in the forest, tendrils of pine coating her throat and tongue, thick as syrup.

The cold air seemed to make sounds crisper: The loose tail of her dorm jacket cracked like a wind-whipped flag, her grippy shoes squeaked against the hoverboard surface with every turn. Fausto was pumping dance music straight through her skintenna, but that was silent to the world outside. Over its frantic beat Tally heard every twitch of her new monofilament-sheathed muscles.

She squinted against the cold, eyes watering, but the tears made her vision even sharper. Icicles whipped past in glittering streaks, and moonlight silvered the world, like an old, colorless movie come flickering to life.

That was the thing about being a Cutter: Everything was icy now, as if the world were opening her skin. Shay swooped in beside Tally, their fingers brushing for a moment, and flashed a smile. Tally tried to return it, but something shifted in her stomach as she looked at Shay's face. The five Cutters were undercover tonight, black irises hidden under dull-eyed contacts, cruel-pretty jaws softened by smart-plastic masks. They had turned themselves into uglies because they were crashing a bash in Cleopatra Park. For Tally's brain, it was way too soon to be playing dress-up. She'd only been special a couple of months, but when she looked at Shay she expected to see her best friend's new and marvelous cruel beauty, not tonight's ugly disguise. Tally angled her board sideways to avoid an ice-laden branch, breaking contact. She concentrated on the glittering world, on twisting her body to slip the board among the trees. The rush of cold air helped her refocus on her surroundings rather than the missing feeling inside herself— the one that came from the fact that Zane wasn't here with the rest of them.

"One party-load of uglies up ahead." Shay's words cut through the music, caught by a chip in her jaw and carried through the skintenna network, whisper-close. "You sure you're ready for this, Tally-wa?"

Tally took a deep breath, drinking in the brain-clearing cold. Her nerves still tingled, but it would be totally random to back out now. "Don't worry, Boss. This is going to be icy."

"Should be. It is a party, after all," Shay said. "Let's be happy little uglies."

A few of the Cutters chuckled, glancing at each other's fake faces. Tally became aware again of her own millimeters-thick mask: plastic bumps and lumps that made her face zitted and flawed, covering the gorgeously spinning web of flash tattoos. Uneven dental caps blunted her razor-sharp teeth, and even her tattooed hands were sprayed with fake skin.

A glance in the mirror had shown Tally how she looked: just like an ugly. Ungainly, crook-nosed, with baby-fat cheeks, and an impatient expression—impatient for her next birthday, the bubblehead operation, and a trip across the river. Another random fifteen-year-old, in other words.

This was Tally's first trick since turning special. She'd expected to be ready for anything now—all those operations had filled her with icy new muscles and reflexes tweaked to snakelike speed. And then she'd spent two months training in the Cutters' camp, living in the wild with little sleep and no provisions.

But one look in the mirror had shaken her confidence.

It didn't help that they'd come into town through the Crumblyville burbs, flying over endless rows of darkened houses, all the same. The random tedium of the place she'd grown up in gave her a sticky feeling along the inside of her arms, which wasn't helped by the feel of the recyclable dorm uniform against her sensitive new skin. The manicured trees of the greenbelt seemed to press in around Tally, as if the city were trying to grind her down to averageness again. She liked being special, being outside and icy and better, and couldn't wait to get back to the wild and strip this ugly mask from her face.

Tally clenched her fists and listened to the skintenna network. Fausto's music and the noises of the others washed over her—the soft sounds of breathing, the wind against their faces. She imagined their heartbeats at the very edge of hearing, as if the Cutters' growing excitement were echoing in her bones.

"Split up," Shay said as the lights of the bash grew close. "Don't want to look too cliquey."

The Cutters' formation drifted apart. Tally stayed with Fausto and Shay, while Tachs and Ho broke off toward the top of Cleopatra Park. Fausto adjusted his soundbox and the music faded, leaving only rushing wind and the distant rumble of the bash.

Tally took another nervous breath, and the crowd's scent flashed through her—ugly sweat and spilled alcohol. The party's dance system didn't use skintennas; it blasted music crudely through the air, scattering sound waves into a thousand reflections among the trees. Uglies were always noisy.

From her training, Tally knew that she could close her eyes and use the merest echoes to navigate the forest blind, like a bat following its own chirps. But she needed her special vision tonight. Shay had spies in Uglyville, and they'd heard that outsiders were crashing the party—New Smokies giving out nanos and stirring up trouble.

That's why the Cutters were here: This was a Special Circumstance.

The three landed just outside the strobing lights of the hoverglobes, jumping off onto the forest's floor of pine needles, which crackled with frost. Shay sent their boards up into the treetops to wait, then fixed Tally with an amused stare. "You smell nervous."

Tally shrugged, uncomfortable in her ugly-dorm uniform. Shay could always smell what you were feeling. "Maybe so, Boss."

Here at the party's edge, a sticky bit of memory reminded her how she always felt arriving at a bash. Even as a beautiful bubblehead, Tally had hated the trickle of nerves that visited whenever crowds pressed in around her, the heat of so many bodies, the weight of their eyes upon her. Now her mask felt clingy and strange, a barrier separating her from the world. Very unspecial. Her cheeks flashed hot for a second beneath plastic, like a rush of shame.

Shay reached out to squeeze her hand. "Don't worry, Tally- wa."

"They're only uglies," Fausto's whisper sliced through the air. "And we're right here with you." His hand rested on Tally's shoulder, gently pushing her forward.

Tally nodded, hearing the others' slow, calm breaths through the skintenna link. It was just like Shay had promised: The Cutters were connected, an unbreakable clique. She would never be alone again, even when it felt like something was missing inside her. Even when she felt the lack of Zane like head-spinning panic.

She plunged through the branches, following Shay into the flashing lights.

Tally's memories were perfect now, not like when she'd been a bubblehead, confused and muddled all the time. She remembered what a big deal Spring Bash was for uglies. The approach of spring meant longer days for tricks and hoverboarding, and lots more outdoor parties to come.

But as she and Fausto followed Shay through the crowd, Tally felt none of the energy she remembered from last year. The bash seemed so tame, so listless and random. The uglies just stood around, so shy and self-conscious that anyone actually dancing looked like they were trying too hard. They all seemed flat and artificial, like party extras on a video wall, waiting for the real people to arrive.

Still, it was true what Shay liked to say: Uglies weren't as clueless as bubbleheads. The crowd parted easily, everyone sliding out of her way. However zitty and uneven their faces, the uglies' eyes were sharp, full of nervous stabs of awareness. They were smart enough to sense that the three Cutters were different. No one stared for too long at Tally or realized what she was behind her smart-plastic mask, but bodies moved aside at her lightest touch, shivers playing across their shoulders as she passed, as if the uglies sensed something dangerous in the air.

It was easy seeing the thoughts ripple across their faces. Tally could watch the jealousies and hatreds, rivalry and attraction, all of it written on their expressions and in the way they moved. Now that she was special, everything was laid out clearly, like looking down on a forest path from above.

She found herself smiling, finally relaxing and ready for the hunt. Spotting party-crashers was going to be simple.

Tally scanned the crowd, searching for anyone who seemed out of place: a little too confident, overmuscled, and suntanned from living in the wild. She knew what Smokies looked like.

Last fall, back in ugly days, Shay had run away into the wild to escape the bubblehead operation. Tally had followed to bring her back, and they'd both wound up living in the Old Smoke for a few long weeks. Scrabbling like an animal had been pure torture, but her memories came in handy now. Smokies had an arrogance about them; they thought they were better than people in the city

It took Tally just seconds to spot Ho and Tachs across the crowded field. They stood out like a pair of cats gliding through a waddling flock of ducks.

"You think we're too obvious, Boss?" she whispered, letting the network carry her words.

"Obvious how?"

"They all look so clueless. We look…special."

"We are special." Shay looked back at Tally over her shoulder, a grin playing on her face.

"But I thought we were supposed to be in disguise."

"Doesn't mean we can't have fun!" Shay suddenly darted away through the crowd.

Fausto reached out and touched Tally's shoulder. "Watch and learn."

He'd been special longer than she had. The Cutters were a brand-new part of Special Circumstances, but Tally's operation had taken the longest. She'd done a lot of very average things in her past, and it had taken a while for the doctors to strip away all the built-up guilt and shame. Random leftover emotions could leave your brain muddled, which wasn't very special. Power came from icy clarity, from knowing exactly what you were, from cutting.

So Tally hung back with Fausto, watching and learning.

Shay grabbed a boy at random, yanking him away from the girl he was talking to. His drink sloshed onto the ground as he started to pull away in protest, but then he caught Shay's gaze.

Shay wasn't as ugly as the rest of them, Tally noticed, the violet highlights in her eyes still visible even through her ugly disguise. They glittered like a predator's in the strobe lights as she pulled the boy closer, brushing against him, a flex of muscles gliding down her body like a flick through a rope.

After that, he didn't look away again, even as he handed off his beer to the random girl, who looked on open-mouthed. The ugly boy placed his hands on Shay's shoulders, his body starting to follow her movements.

People were watching them now.

"I don't remember this part of the plan," Tally said softly.

Fausto laughed. "Specials don't need plans. Not sticky ones, anyway." He stood close behind Tally, his arms around her waist. She felt his breath on the back of her neck, and a tingle started moving through her body.

Tally pulled away Cutters touched one another all the time, but she wasn't used to that part of being a Special. It made her feel even stranger that Zane hadn't joined them yet.

Through the skintenna network, Tally could hear Shay whispering to the boy. Her breathing deepened, though Shay could run a klick in two minutes without breaking a sweat. A sharp, unshaven sound sliced through the network when she brushed her cheek against the boy's, and Fausto chuckled when Tally flinched.

"Relax, Tally-wa," he said, rubbing her shoulders. "She knows what she's doing."

That much was obvious: Shay's dance was spreading, sucking in the people around her. Until now, the party had been a nervous bubble hovering in the air, and she'd popped its surface tension, releasing something icy inside. The crowd started to pair off, arms wrapping around each other, moving faster. Whoever was crewing the music must have noticed— the volume went higher, the bass deeper, the hoverglobes overhead pulsing from blackness to blinding radiance. The crowd had started jumping up and down with the beat.

Tally felt her heart accelerate, amazed at how effortlessly Shay had brought them all along. The bash was changing, flipping inside out, and all because of Shay. This wasn't like their stupid tricks in ugly days—sneaking across the river or stealing bungee jackets—this was magic.

Special magic.

So what if she was wearing an ugly face? Like Shay always said in training, the bubbleheads had it all wrong: It didn't matter what you looked like. It was how you carried yourself, how you saw yourself. Strength and reflexes were only part of it—Shay simply knew that she was special, and so she was. Everyone else was just wallpaper, a blurred background of listless chatter, until Shay lit them up with her own private spotlight.

"Come on," Fausto whispered, pulling Tally away from the thickening crowd. They retreated toward the party's edge, sliding unseen past the eyes locked on Shay and her random boy. "You go that way. Stay sharp."

Tally nodded, hearing the other Cutters whisper as they spread out across the party. Suddenly, this all made sense…

The bash had been too dead, too flat to cover the Specials or their prey. But now the crowd's arms were up, waving back and forth with the beat. Plastic cups flew through the air, everything a storm of movement. If the Smokies were planning to crash the party, this moment was what they'd been waiting for.

Moving was tricky now. Tally made her way through a swarm of young girls—practically littlies—all dancing together with eyes closed. The glitter sprayed across their uneven skin flashed in the hoverglobes' pulsing light, and they didn't shiver as Tally pushed through them; her special aura had been drowned out by the party's new energy, by Shay's dance-magic.

The ugly little bodies bouncing against hers reminded Tally how much she had changed inside. Her new bones were made from aircraft ceramics, light as bamboo and hard as diamonds. Her muscles were sheathed whips of self-repairing monofilament. The uglies felt soft and unsubstantial against her, like stuffed toys come to life, boisterous but unthreatening.

A ping sounded inside her head as Fausto boosted the skintenna network's range, and snatches of noise drifted through her ears: screams from a girl dancing next to Tachs, a rumbling beat from where Ho stood close to the speakers, and under it all the distracting things Shay was whispering in her random boy's ear. It was like being five people at once, as if Tally's consciousness were smeared across the party, sucking in its energy in a blend of noise and light.

She took a deep breath and headed toward the edge of the clearing, seeking the darkness outside the hoverglobes' light. She could watch better from out there, keep better hold of her clarity.

As she moved, Tally found it was easier to dance, going with the crowd's motion rather than forcing a path through it. She allowed herself to be pushed randomly through the throng, like when she let high wind currents guide her hoverboard, imagining herself a bird of prey.

Closing her eyes, Tally drank the bash in through her other senses. Maybe this was what being special was really all about: dancing along with the rest of them, while feeling like the only real person in the crowd…

Suddenly, hairs stiffened on the back of Tally's neck, her nostrils flaring. A scent, distinct from the human sweat and spilled beer, sent her mind reeling back to ugly days, to running away, to the first time she'd been alone out in the wild.

She smelled smoke—the clinging reek of a campfire.

Her eyes opened. City uglies didn't burn trees, or even torches; they weren't allowed to. The party's only light came from the strobing hoverglobes and the half-risen moon.

The scent must have come from somewhere Outside.

Tally moved in widening circles, casting her eyes over the crowd, trying to find the source of the smell.

No one stood out. Just a bunch of clueless uglies dancing their heads off, arms flailing, beer flying. No one graceful or confident or strong…

Then Tally saw the girl.

She was slow-dancing with some boy, whispering in his ear intently. His fingers twitched nervously across her back, their movements unconnected to the music's beat—the two looked like littlies on an awkward playdate. The girl's jacket was tied around her waist, as if she didn't mind the cold. And along the inside of her arm lay a pattern of pale squares where sunblock patches had been stuck.

This girl spent a lot of time outside.

As Tally moved closer, she caught the scent of wood smoke again. Her new and perfect eyes saw the coarseness of the girl's shirt, woven from natural fibers, lined with stitched seams and giving off another strange smell…detergent. This garment wasn't designed to be worn and then tossed into a recycler; it had to be washed, lathered up with soap, and pounded against stones in a cold stream. Tally saw the imperfect shape of the girl's hair—cut by hand with metal scissors.

"Boss," she whispered.

Shay's voice came back sleepily. "So soon, Tally-wa? I'm having fun."

"I think I got a Smokey."

"You sure?"

"Positive. She smells like laundry."

"I see her now," Fausto's voice cut through the music. "Brown shirt? Dancing with that guy?"

"Yeah. And she's tanned."

There was an annoyed, distracted sigh, a few mumbled apologies as Shay disentangled herself from her ugly boy. "Any more?"

Tally scanned the crowd again, making her way around the girl in a wide circle, trying to catch another whiff of smoke. "Not as far as I can tell."

"Nobody else looks funny to me." Fausto's head bobbed nearby, winding his own path toward the girl. From the other side of the bash, Tachs and Ho were closing in.

"What's she doing?" Shay asked.

"Dancing, and …" Tally paused, her eyes catching the girl's hand slipping into the boy's pocket. "She just gave him something."

Shay's breath cut off with a little hiss. Until a few weeks ago, Smokies had brought only propaganda into Uglyville, but now they were smuggling something far more deadly: pills loaded with nanos.

The nanos ate the lesions that kept pretties bubbleheaded, ramping up their violent emotions and raw appetites. And unlike some drug that would eventually wear off, the change was permanent. The nanos were hungry, microscopic machines that grew and reproduced, more of them every day If you were unlucky, they could wind up eating the rest of your brain. One pill was all it took to lose your mind.

Tally had seen it happen.

"Take her," Shay said.

Adrenaline flooded Tally's bloodstream, clarity blanking out the music and the motion of the crowd. She'd spotted the girl first, so it was her job, her privilege to make the grab.

She twisted the ring on her middle finger, felt its little stinger flicking out. One prick and the Smokey girl would be stumbling, passing out like she'd had too much to drink. She'd wake up in Special Circumstances headquarters, ready to go under the knife.

That thought made Tally's skin crawl—that the girl would soon be a bubblehead: pretty, beautiful, and happy. And monumentally clueless.

But at least she'd be better off than poor Zane.

Tally cupped her fingers around the needle, careful not to stab some random ugly in the crowd. A few steps closer, and she reached out with her other hand, pulling the boy away. "Can I cut in?" she asked.

His eyes widened, a grin breaking out on his face. "What? You two want to dance?"

"It's okay," the Smokey girl said. "Maybe she wants some too." She untied the jacket from around her waist, pulling it up over her shoulders. Her hands went through its sleeves and into the pockets, and Tally heard the rustle of a plastic bag.

"Knock yourself out," the boy said, and took a step back, leering at them. The expression brought another flash of heat into Tally's cheeks. The boy was smirking at her, amused, like Tally was average and anyone's to think about—like she wasn't special. The uglifying smart plastic on her face began to burn.

This stupid boy thought Tally was here for his entertainment. He needed to find out otherwise.

Tally decided on a new plan.

She stabbed a button on her crash bracelet. Its signal spread through the smart plastic on her face and hands at the speed of sound, the clever molecules unhooking from each other, her ugly mask exploding in a puff of dust to reveal the cruel beauty underneath. She blinked her eyes hard, popping out the contacts and exposing her wolfen, coal black irises to the winter cold. She felt her tooth-caps loosen, and spat them at the boy's feet, returning his smile with unveiled fangs.

The whole transformation had taken less than a second, barely time for his expression to crumble.

She smiled. "Buzz off, ugly. And you"—she turned to the Smokey—"take your hands out of your pockets."

The girl swallowed, spreading her arms out to either side.

Tally felt the sudden rush of eyes drawn to her cruel features, sensed the crowd's dazzlement at the pulsing tattoos that webbed her flesh in scintillating black lace. She finished the arrest script: "I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I have to."

"You won't have to," the girl said calmly, then she did something with her hands, both thumbs turning upward.

"Don't even think…," Tally started, then she saw too late the bulges sewn into the girl's clothes—straps like a bungee jacket's, now moving of their own accord, cinching themselves around her shoulders and thighs.

"The Smoke lives," the girl hissed.

Tally reached out …

…just as the girl shot into the air like a stretched-taut rubber band let go from the bottom. Tally's hand passed through empty space. She stared upward, open-mouthed. The girl was still climbing. Somehow, the bungee jacket's battery had been rigged to throw her into the air from a standstill.

But wouldn't she just fall straight back down?

Tally spotted movement in the dark sky. From the edge of the forest, two hoverboards zoomed over the bash, one ridden by a Smokey dressed in crude skins, the other empty. At the top of the girl's arc, he reached out, hardly slowing as he pulled her from midair onto the riderless board.

A shudder went through Tally as she recognized the Smokey boy's jacket, leather and handmade. In a searing flash from a hoverglobe, her special vision caught the line of a scar running through one of his eyebrows.

David, she thought.

"Tally! Heads up!"

Shay's command pulled Tally from her daze, drew her eyes to more hoverboards shooting over the crowd at just above head level. She felt her crash bracelet register a tug from her own board, and bent her knees, timing the jump for its arrival.

The crowd was pulling away from her, shocked by her cruel-pretty face and the girl's sudden ascent—but the boy who'd been dancing with the Smokey grabbed for her. "She's a Special! Help them get away!"

His try for her arm was slow and clumsy, and Tally flicked out her unspent stinger to stab his palm. The boy pulled his hand back, stared at it with a stupid expression for a moment, then crumpled.

By the time he hit the ground, Tally was in the air. With two hands on the grippy edge of her hoverboard, she kicked her feet up onto its riding surface, her weight shifting to bring it around.

Shay was already on board. "Take him, Ho!" she ordered, pointing down at the unconscious ugly boy, her own mask disappearing in a puff of dust. "The rest of you, with me!"

Tally was already zooming ahead, the chill wind sharp against her bare face, an icy battle cry building in her throat, hundreds of faces looking up at her from the beer-soaked ground, astonished.

David was one of the Smokies' leaders—the best prize the Cutters could have hoped for on this cold night. Tally could hardly believe he had dared come into the city, but she was going to make sure he would never leave again.

She weaved among the flashing hoverglobes, soaring out over the forest. Her eyes adjusted swiftly to the darkness, and she spotted the two Smokies no more than a hundred meters ahead. They were riding low, tipped forward like surfers on a steep wave.

They had a head start, but Tally's hoverboard was special too—the best the city could manufacture. She coaxed it onward, brushing the tips of the wind-tossed trees with its leading edge, smashing them into sudden plumes of ice.

Tally hadn't forgotten that it was David's mother who had invented the nanos, the machines that had left Zane's brain the way it was. Or that it was David who'd lured Shay into the wild all those months ago, had seduced first her and then Tally, doing everything he could to destroy their friendship.

Specials didn't forget their enemies. Not ever.

"I've got you now," she said.

Hunters And Prey

"Spread out," Shay said. "Don't let them cut back toward the river."

Tally squinted into the onrushing wind, running her tongue across the uncovered points of her teeth. Her Cutter board had lifting fans front and back, spinning blades that would keep it flying past the edge of the city. But the Smokies' old-fashioned hoverboards would fall like stones once the magnetic grid ran out. That's what they got for living Outside: sunburn, bug bites, and crappy technology. At some point the two Smokies would have to make a dash for the river and its trail of metal deposits.

"Boss? Want me to call back to camp for reinforcements?" Fausto asked.

"Too far away to get here in time."

"What about Dr. Cable?"

"Forget her," Shay said. "This is a Cutter trick. We don't want any regular Specials taking credit."

"Especially this time, Boss," Tally said. "That's David up there."

There was a long pause, and then Shay's razor-bladed laugh came through the network, running an icy finger down Tally's spine. "Your old boyfriend, huh?"

Tally gritted her teeth against the cold, all the embarrassing dramas of ugly days heavy in her stomach for a moment. Somehow, the old guilt never completely faded. "Yours, too, Boss, I seem to remember."

Shay just laughed again. "Well, I guess both of us have scores to settle. No calls, Fausto, no matter what. This boy is ours."

Tally set a determined expression on her face, but the knot in her stomach remained. Back in the Smoke, Shay and David had been together. But then Tally had arrived and David had decided he liked her better, and the jealousy and neediness that went with being an ugly made a mess of things as usual. Even after the Smoke had been destroyed— even when Shay and Tally were clueless bubbleheads— Shay's anger at that betrayal had never completely disappeared.

Now that they were Specials, ancient dramas weren't supposed to matter anymore. But seeing David had somehow disturbed Tally's iciness, making her suspect that Shay's anger might still be buried deep inside too.

Maybe capturing him would end the trouble between them, once and for all. Tally took a deep breath and leaned forward, urging her hoverboard faster.

The edge of the city was growing closer. Below, the greenbelt changed abruptly into suburbia, the rows of boring houses where middle pretties raised their littlies. The two Smokies dropped to street level, zipping around sharp corners, knees bent and arms out wide.

Tally angled into the first hard turn of the chase, a smile growing on her face as her body flexed and twisted. This was how the Smokies usually got away. Regular Specials in their lame hovercars could only move fast in a straight line. But Cutters were special Specials: every bit as mobile as the Smokies, and every bit as crazy.

"Stick with them, Tally-wa," Shay said. The others were still long seconds behind.

"No problem, Boss." Tally skimmed the narrow streets, only a meter from the concrete. It was lucky that middle pretties were never out this late—if anyone stumbled into the chase, one glancing blow from a hoverboard would turn them into paste.

The tight spaces didn't slow Tally's quarry. She remembered from her own Smokey days how good David was at this, as if he'd been born on a hoverboard. And the girl probably had plenty of practice in the alleys of the Rusty Ruins, the ancient ghost city from which the Smokies launched their incursions into the city.

But Tally was special now. David's reflexes were nothing compared with hers, and all his practice couldn't make up for the fact that he was random: a creature put together by nature. But Tally had been made for this—or remade, anyway—built for tracking down the city's enemies and bringing them to justice. For saving the wild from destruction.

She accelerated into a hard bank, clipping the corner of a darkened house, smashing its rain gutter flat. David was so close that she heard the squeak of his grippy shoes shifting on his board.

In another few seconds, she could jump off and grab him, tumbling until her crash bracelets halted them with a shoulder-wrenching spin. Of course, at this speed, even her special body would feel some hurt, and a normal human might break in a hundred random ways…

Tally clenched her fists, but let her board fade back a bit. She'd have to make her move in an open space. She didn't want to kill David, after all. Just see him tamed, turned into a bubblehead, pretty and clueless and out of her life once and for all.

At the next sharp turn, he dared a quick glance over his shoulder, and Tally caught a glimpse of recognition on his face. Her new cruel-pretty features must be quite the icy shock.

"Yeah, it's me, boyfriend," she whispered.

"Ease off, Tally-wa," Shay said. "Wait for the edge of the city. Just stay close."

"Okay, Boss." Tally let herself drop back a bit more, pleased that David knew who was coming for him now.

At top speed, the chase soon reached the factory belt. They all climbed to avoid the automated delivery trucks rumbling through the darkness, orange underlights reading the road markings to find their destinations. The other three Cutters spread out behind her, cutting off any chance of the Smokies doubling back.

With a glance upward at the stars and a lightning calculation, Tally saw that the two were still headed away from the river, zooming toward certain capture at the city's edge.

"This is kind of weird, Boss," she said. "Why isn't he heading for the river?"

"Maybe he got lost. He's just a random, Tally-wa. Not the brave boy you remember."

Tally heard soft laughter over the network, and her cheeks burned. Why did they keep acting like David still meant something to her? He was just some ugly random. And, anyway, it did show some bravery, sneaking into the city like this…even if it was pretty stupid.

"Maybe they're heading for the Trails," Fausto said.

The Trails were a big preserve on the other side of Crumblyville, the sort of place middle pretties went hiking to pretend they were out in nature. It looked wild, but you could still get picked up by a hovercar when you got tired.

Maybe they thought they could disappear on foot. Didn't David realize that Cutters could fly past the edge of the city? That they could see in the dark?

"Should I move in?" Tally asked. Here in the factory belt, she could yank David off his board without killing him.

"Relax, Tally," Shay said flatly. "That's an order. The grid ends, no matter which way they go from here."

Tally clenched her fists, but didn't argue.

Shay had been special longer than any of them. Her mind was so icy that she'd practically made herself into a Special—brain-wise, anyway—breaking out of bubbleheadness with nothing but a sharp knife against her own skin. And Shay was the one who'd made the deal with Dr. Cable, the arrangement that allowed the Cutters to destroy the New Smoke any way they wanted.

So Shay was the Boss, and obeying wasn't really that bad. It was icier than thinking, which could get you all tangled up.

The neat estates of Crumblyville appeared below. Bare gardens flashed past, waiting for late pretties to plant spring flowers. David and his accomplice dropped to just above ground level, staying low to give their lifters every bit of purchase on the grid.

Tally saw their fingers brush as they hopped a low fence, and wondered if the two of them were together. Probably David had found some new Smokey girl's life to wreck.

That was his thing: going around recruiting uglies to run away, seducing the best and the smartest city kids with the promise of rebellion. And he always had his favorites. First Shay, then Tally…

Tally shook her head to clear it, reminding herself that the social life of Smokies was of no interest to a Special.

Leaning forward, she coaxed her board faster. The black expanse of the Trails was just ahead. This chase was almost over.

The two plunged into the darkness, disappearing into dense trees. Tally climbed to skim the forest canopy, watching for signs of their passage in the sharp light of the moon. In the distance beyond the Trails, the true wilds lay, the utter blackness of Outside.

A shiver played across the treetops, the Smokies' two hoverboards streaking like a gust of wind through the forest….

"They're still headed straight out," she said.

"We're right behind you, Tally-wa," Shay answered. "Care to join us down here?"

"Sure, Boss." Tally covered her face with both hands as she dropped, a spray of needles traveling from foot to head, the caress of pine branches shooting along her body. Then she was among the tree trunks, zipping through the forest, knees bent, eyes wide open.

The other three Cutters had caught up with her, arrayed a hundred meters apart, cruel-pretty faces fiendish in the flickering moonlight.

Ahead, at the border between the Trails and the true wilderness, the two Smokies were already descending, their boards' magnetic lifters running out of metal. Their skidding descent echoed through the brush, followed by the sounds of running feet.

"Game over," Shay said.

The lifting fans of Tally's hoverboard kicked in beneath her, a low thrum drifting through the trees like the growl of some hibernating beast. The Cutters slowed, dropping to a few meters' altitude, scanning the dark horizon for movement.

A shiver of pleasure ran down Tally's spine. The chase had become a game of hide-and-seek.

But not exactly a fair game. She made a finger gesture, and the chips in her hands and brain responded, laying an infrared channel over Tally's vision. The world was transformed—the snow-patched ground turning a cold blue, the trees emitting soft green halos—every object illuminated by its own heat. A few small mammals stood out, red and pulsing, heads twitching, as if they instinctively knew that something dangerous was nearby Not far away, a hovering Fausto glowed, his feverish Special-body bright yellow, and Tally's own hands seemed to course with orange flames.

But in the now-purple darkness ahead of her, nothing of human size appeared.

Tally frowned, flicking back and forth between infrared and normal vision. "Where'd they go?"

"They must have sneak suits," Fausto whispered. "Otherwise we could see them."

"Or smell them, at least," Shay said. "Maybe your boyfriend's not so random after all, Tally-wa."

"What do we do?" Tachs said.

"We get off and use our ears."

Tally let her hoverboard drop to the ground, the lifting blades splintering twigs and dry leaves as they spun to a halt. She stepped from the riding surface as it stilled, and the late winter cold leeched up through her grippy shoes.

She wriggled her toes and listened to the forest, watching her breath curl out in front of her face, waiting for the whine of the other boards to peter out. As the silence deepened, her ears caught a soft sound pattering all around her—the wind rattling pine needles in their tiny sheaths of ice. A few birds disturbed the air, and hungry squirrels who'd woken up from a long winter's sleep scrabbled for buried nuts. The breathing of the other Cutters came through on the skintennas' ghostly channel, separate from the rest of the world.

But nothing that sounded like a human moved on the forest floor.

Tally smiled. At least David was making this interesting, standing perfectly still like this. But even with sneak suits hiding their body heat, the Smokies couldn't remain motionless forever.

Besides, she could feel him out there. He was close.

Tally silenced her skintenna feed, switching off the noise of the other Cutters, leaving herself in a hushed, infrared world. Kneeling, she closed her eyes, placing one bare palm on the hard, frozen ground. Her special hands had chips in them that caught the slightest vibration, and Tally let her whole body listen for stray sounds.

There was something in the air … a hum at the edge of hearing, more an itch in her ears than a real noise. It was one of those ghostly presences she could hear now, like the buzz of her own nervous system or the sizzle of fluorescent lights. So many sounds that were inaudible to uglies and bubbleheads reached a Special's ears, as strange and unexpected as the whorls and ridges of human skin under a microscope.

But what exactly was it? The sound ebbed and flowed with the breeze, like the notes that sang out from the high tension lines stretching from the city's solar arrays. Maybe it was some kind of trap, a wire strung between two trees. Or was it a razor-sharp knife angled so that it caught the wind?

Tally kept her eyes closed, listening harder, and frowned.

More sounds had joined the first, ringing from all directions now. Three, four, then five high-pitched notes began to ring, their combined volume no louder than a hummingbird at a hundred meters.

She opened her eyes, and as they refocused in the gloom, Tally suddenly saw them: a slight displacement silhouetting five human figures spread through the forest, their sneak suits blending almost perfectly into the background.

Then she saw how they were standing—legs braced apart, one arm pulled back, the other outstretched—and realized what the sounds were…

Bowstrings stretched taut and ready to fire.

"Ambush," Tally said, then realized she'd cut off her skintenna feed.

She rebooted it just as the first arrow flew.

Nightfight

Arrows streaked through the air.

Tally rolled to the ground, flattening herself on a bed of icy, fallen needles. Something whistled past, close enough to ruffle her hair.

Twenty meters away, one of the arrows connected, and an electric buzz shot through her hearing like a network overload, choking off a grunt from Tachs. Then an arrow struck Fausto, and Tally heard him gasp before his feed went silent. She scrambled for cover behind the nearest tree, hearing two bodies thudding against the hard ground. "Shay?" she hissed.

"They missed me," came the answer. "Saw it coming."

"Me too. They've definitely got sneak suits." Tally shoved herself back against the wide trunk, scanning for silhouettes among the trees.

"And infrared, too," Shay said. Her voice was calm.

Tally looked down at her hands, glowing fiercely in infrared, and swallowed. "So they can see us perfectly and we can't see them?"

"Guess I didn't give your boyfriend enough credit, Tally- wa."

"Maybe if you bothered to remember that he was your boyfriend too, you'd …" Something shifted in the trees ahead, and as her words faded, Tally heard the snap of a bowstring. She threw herself to one side as the arrow struck the tree, letting out a buzz like a shock-stick and covering the trunk in a web of flickering light.

She scrambled away, rolling to a spot where two trees' branches wound around each other. Squeezing into a narrow crook between them, she said, "What's the plan now, Boss?"

"The plan is we kick their asses, Tally-wa," Shay chided softly. "We're special. They got in the first whack, but they're still just random." Another bowstring snapped and Shay let out a grunt, which was followed by the sound of footsteps sprinting through the brush.

The sound of more bowstrings sent Tally to the ground, but the arrows whipped off into the distance where Shay had retreated. Jittering shadows flickered through the forest, followed by the sounds of electrical discharge.

"Missed again," Shay chuckled to herself.

Tally swallowed, trying to listen through the frantic pounding of her heart, cursing the fact that the Cutters hadn't bothered to bring sneak suits, or throwing weapons, or hardly anything Tally could use right now. All she had was her cutting knife, fingernails, special reflexes, and muscles.

The embarrassing thing was, she'd gotten turned around somehow. Was she really hidden behind these trees? Or was an attacker looking straight at her, calmly notching another arrow to take her down?

Tally glanced up to try to read the stars, but branches broke the sky into unreadable patterns. She waited, trying to take slow, steadying breaths. If they hadn't fired at her again, she must be out of sight.

But should she run? Or sit tight?

Pressed between the trees, Tally felt naked. The Smokies had never fought this way before; they always ran away and hid when Specials showed up. Her Cutter training was all about tracking and capturing; no one had ever mentioned invisible attackers.

She glimpsed Shay's hot-yellow form slipping deeper into the Trails, moving farther away, leaving her alone.

"Boss?" she whispered. "Maybe we should call in some regular Specials."

"Forget it, Tally. Don't you dare embarrass me in front of Dr. Cable. Just stay where you are, and I'll swing around from the side. Maybe we can pull off a little ambush of our own."

"Okay. But how's that going to work? I mean, they're invisible and were not even—"

"Patience, Tally-wa. And a little quiet, please."

Tally sighed and forced her eyes closed, willing her heart to beat softer. She listened for the hum of drawn bowstrings.

A wavering pitch sounded not far behind her, a bow pulled taut, its arrow notched and ready to fly. Then another pitch joined in, and a third…but were they aimed at her? She counted a slow ten, waiting for the snap of a loosed arrow.

But no sound came.

She must be hidden here. But she'd counted five Smokies in all. If three had their bows drawn, where were the other two?

Then, even softer than Shay's calm and steady breathing, her ears caught the sound of footsteps moving through the pine needles. But they were too careful, too quiet for a city-born random. Only someone who'd grown up in the wild could move that softly.

David.

Tally stood slowly, sliding her back up the tree trunk, eyes opening.

The footsteps grew closer, coming up on her right. She eased herself sideways, keeping the trees' bulk between herself and the sound.

Daring a quick glance upward, Tally wondered if the branches were thick enough to shield her body heat from infrared optics. But there was no way she could climb without David hearing.

He was close…Maybe if she darted out and stung him before the other Smokies loosed their arrows. After all, they were just uglies, cocky randoms who no longer had the advantage of surprise.

Tally gave her stinger ring a twist, flipping out a freshly charged needle. "Shay where is he?" she whispered.

"Twelve meters from you." The words were carried on the slightest breath. "Kneeling, looking at the ground."

Even from a standstill, Tally could run twelve meters in a few seconds…Would she be too fast a target for the other Smokies to hit?

"Bad news," Shay breathed. "He's found Tachs's board."

Tally's teeth closed on her lower lip, realizing what the ambush was all about: The Smokies wanted to get hold of a Special Circumstances hoverboard.

"Get ready," Shay said. "I'm headed back toward you." In the distance her glowing form flickered between two trees, brilliantly obvious but too fast and far away to be caught by anything as slow as an arrow.

Tally forced her eyes closed again, listening hard. She heard more footsteps, louder and clumsier than David's— the fifth Smokey searching for another of the Cutters' boards.

It was time to make her move. She opened her eyes…

A sickening sound rumbled through the forest: the lifting fans of a hoverboard starting up, spitting out chopped-up twigs and pine needles.

"Stop him!" Shay hissed.

Tally was already in motion, streaking toward the noise, realizing with a sick feeling that the lifting fans were loud enough to drown out the snap of bowstrings. The board rose before her, a hot-yellow figure on it sagging in the arms of a black silhouette. "He's taking Tachs!" she shouted. Two more steps and she could jump…"Tally, duck!"

She dived for the ground, an arrow's feathers skimming past one shoulder as she twisted through the air, the sizzle of its electric charge raising the hairs on her scalp. Another shot past as Tally rolled to her feet, blindly hoping that more weren't on the way.

The board was three meters up and climbing slowly, wavering under its double load. She jumped straight up, the furious wind of the fans blowing straight down on her. At the last moment Tally imagined her fingers thrusting into the lifting fans—chopped into a spray of blood and gristle— and her nerve faltered. Her fingertips caught the riding surface's edge, barely clinging, and her added weight began to pull the board slowly earthward.

In her peripheral vision, Tally saw an arrow flying toward her, and twisted wildly in midair to dodge it. It shot past, but her fingers had lost their grip. One hand slipped, then the other…

As Tally fell, the growl of a second hoverboard ripped the air. They were stealing another one.

Shay's cry shot through the noise: "Give me a boost!"

Tally landed in a crouch inside the whirlwind of pine needles and saw Shay's yellow-glowing form running full tilt right at her. Tally laced her fingers together and cupped her hands waist-high, ready to throw Shay up at the board, which was straining to climb again.

Another missile streaked toward Tally from the darkness. But if she ducked, Shay would take the arrow in midleap. Her teeth clenched, waiting for the agony of a shock-stick slamming into her spine.

But the board's rotor-wash eased the arrow downward like an invisible hand. It struck between Tally's feet, exploding into a brilliant spiderweb on the icy ground. She tasted electricity in the damp air, and tiny and invisible fingers played across her skin, but her feet were insulated by the soles of her grippy shoes. Then Shay's weight landed in her cupped hands, and Tally grunted, flinging upward with all her strength. Shay screamed as she soared into the air. Tally threw herself to one side, imagining more arrows in flight, her feet skipping across the still-buzzing shockstick. She spun around and fell backward to the ground.

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. Cable. Then she hesitated a moment, remembering Shay's orders. No calls, no matter what—she couldn't disobey. All four hoverboards were in the air now, their lifting fans giving off orange glimmers of heat. She could see Shay unconscious in David's arms, and the glowing form of another Special being carried off on a different board. Tally cursed. Tachs still lay on the ground, so they'd gotten Fausto, too. She had to call for reinforcements, but that would be breaking orders…A ping came through the network. "Tally?" the distant voice asked. "What's going on out there?"

"Ho! Where are you?"

"Following your locators. A couple of minutes away."

He laughed. "You're not going to believe what that boy at the bash told me. The one your Smokey was dancing with?"

"Never mind! Just get here fast!" Tally scanned the air, watching in frustration as the Cutters' boards lifted higher into the dark sky. In a minute, the Smokies would be gone for good. It was too late for regular Specials to get here, too late for anything…

Rage and frustration surged through Tally, almost overwhelming her. David was not going to beat her, not this time! She couldn't afford to lose her head. She knew what to do.

Making a claw with her right hand, Tally dug her fingernails into the flesh of her left arm. The delicate nerves woven into her skin screamed, a torrent of pain piling through her, overloading her brain.

But then the special moment struck, icy clarity replacing panic and confusion. She drew in the cold air in gasps…

Of course. David and the girl had ditched their own hoverboards. They had to have left them close by

She turned and ran back toward the city, hunting in the darkness for the half-remembered smell of David.

"What happened?" Ho said. "How come you're the only one online?"

"We got jumped. Be quiet."

Long seconds later, Tally's nose caught something: David’s scent lingering where his hands had polished and tuned, where his sweat had fallen in the chase. The Smokies hadn't bothered to recover their old-fashioned boards. She wasn't completely helpless.

At the snap of her fingers, David's board rose from its hasty covering of pine needles and into the air. She jumped on and it wobbled unsteadily like the end of a diving board, without the sense of power that the lifting fans gave. But Tally had ridden one just like it all those months ago, and it was enough for now.

"Ho, I'm coming to meet you!" The board shot along the city's edge, speeding up as its lifters grabbed hold of the magnetic grid.

She climbed up through the trees, scanning the horizon. The Smokies flickered in the distance, the bodies of their two captives glowing like embers in a fire.

Glancing up at the stars, she calculated angles and directions…

The Smokies were headed out toward the river, where they could use magnetics. Carrying two passengers per board, they needed all the lift they could get. "Ho, head for the western edge of the Trails. Fast!"

"Why?"

"To save time!" She had to keep her quarry in sight. The Smokies might be invisible, but the two captive Specials shone like infrared beacons.

"Okay, I'm coming," Ho answered. "But what's going on again?"

Tally didn't respond, whipping through the treetops like a slalom rider. Ho wasn't going to like what Tally had to do, but there was no other choice. That was Shay out there, being dragged away by David. This was Tally's chance to pay her back for all those old mistakes.

To prove that she was really special.

Ho was there, waiting where the dark trees of the Trails began to thin.

"Hey, Tally," he said as she zoomed toward him. "Why are you riding that piece of junk?"

"Long story." She twisted to a halt beside him.

"Yeah, well, could you please tell me what's—" He let out a startled cry as Tally pushed him off his board, sending him tumbling into the darkness below.

"Sorry, Ho-la," she said, stepping from the Smokey board onto his and angling it toward the river. Its lifting fans spun to life as she crossed the city's border. "Need to borrow your ride. Don't have time to explain."

Another grunt reached her ears as Ho's bracelets brought his fall to a halt. "Tally! What the—"

"They've got Shay Fausto, too. Tachs is back in the Trails, unconscious. Go make sure he's okay"

"What?" Ho's voice was fading as Tally shot out into the wild, leaving the city's network repeaters behind. She scanned the horizon and caught distant flickers of infrared, like two glowing eyes ahead—Fausto and Shay.

The hunt was still on.

"We got jumped. Aren't you listening?" She bared her teeth. "And Shay said no calls to Dr. Cable. We don't want any help with this." Tally was certain Shay would hate for Special Circumstances to find out that the Cutters—Dr. Cable's very special Specials—had been made fools of.

For that matter, a squadron of screaming hovercars would only let the Smokies know that they were being followed. All alone, Tally might be able to sneak up on them.

She leaned forward, coaxing every bit of speed from her borrowed board, Ho's protests fading behind her.

She was going to catch them. There were five Smokies and two captives on four boards; no way could they make top speed. Tally just had to remember that they were random, and she was special.

She still had a chance to rescue Shay capture David, and make this all okay.

Rescue

Tally flew low and fast, barely skimming the surface of the river, staring into the dark trees on either side.

Where were they?

The Smokies couldn't be that far in front—not with only a couple of minutes' head start. But like her, they were flying low, using the mineral deposits in the winding riverbed for extra push, keeping under cover of the trees. Even the special-hot infrared glow of Shay's and Fausto's bodies couldn't penetrate the dark cloak of the forest. And that was a problem.

What if they'd already pulled off the river, sneaking into the trees to watch her fly past? On their stolen boards, the Smokies could head off in any direction they wanted.

Tally needed a few seconds up in the sky, looking down. But the Smokies also had infrared. To take a peek without giving herself away, she would have to cool her body temperature way down.

She looked into the dark water rushing past her feet and shivered.

This was not going to be fun.

Tally spun to a stop, freezing spray spitting up from the tail of her board, tickling her arms and face, sending another shiver through her bones. The river was running fast, filled to the brim with melted snow rolling down from the mountains, as chill as a champagne bucket back in bubblehead days.

"Wonderful," Tally said with a scowl, then stepped from the board.

With toes pointed, she barely made a splash, but the freezing water set her heart pounding madly. In seconds her teeth began to chatter, her muscles clenching, threatening to snap her bones. She pulled Ho's board down into the water beside her, and the lifting fans spat out tendrils of steam as they cooled.

Tally began an endless, torturous count of ten, wishing bad luck and destruction down on David, the Smokies, and whoever it was who'd first invented freezing water. The cold seeped into her body, making her nerves scream and leeching deep into her bones.

But then it hit her, the special moment. It was like when she cut herself, the pain building until she could hardly stand it anymore…then suddenly flipping inside out. And hidden within the agony the strange clarity came again, as if the world had ordered itself into something that made perfect sense.

Just as Dr. Cable had promised so long ago, this was better than bubbly. All of Tally's senses were on fire, but her mind seemed to stand apart from them, observing their sensations without being overwhelmed.

She was non-random, above average…almost beyond human. And she had been made to save the world.

Tally stopped counting and let out a slow, calm breath, and bit by bit, her shivering faded away. The icy water had lost its power.

She pulled herself back onto Ho's board, grasping its edges with bone-pale knuckles. It took three tries to snap her numbed fingers loud enough, but finally the hoverboard began to rise into the dark sky, climbing as high as the cool and silent magnetic lifters would take it. As she cleared the trees, the wind hit like an avalanche of cold, but Tally ignored it, her eyes sweeping across the marvelously clear world below.

There they were—only a kilometer or so ahead—a flicker of boards against the black water, a glimpse of a glowing human in infrared. The Smokies seemed to be going slowly, hardly moving at all. Maybe they were resting, unaware that they were being followed. But to Tally, it was as if her moment of icy focus had stopped them in their tracks.

She let the board drop, falling out of sight before her body heat could cut through the chill of soaked clothes. The costume dorm uniform clung to her like a wet woolen blanket. Pulling off the jacket, Tally let it fall into the river.

Her board roared back to life, skimming forward with fans fully engaged, leaving a meter-high wake.

Tally might be soaking and frozen to the bone, and only one against five, but the dunking had cleared her head. She felt her special senses dissecting the forest around her, her instincts spinning, her mind calculating from the stars overhead exactly how long it would take to catch up.

Her hands flexed numbly, but Tally knew that they were the only weapons she needed, no matter what other little tricks the Smokies had brought along.

She was ready for this fight.

Sixty seconds later, she saw it: a lone hoverboard waiting for her, just past a bend in the river. Its rider stood calmly, black silhouette holding the glowing form of a Special.

Tally swirled to a halt, whipping in a tight circle to scan the trees. The forest's deep purple background was filled with half-glimpsed shapes whipped into motion by the wind, but no human forms.

She looked at the dark figure blocking the river before her. The sneak suit hid his face, but Tally remembered the way David stood on a hoverboard: his back foot pointed forty-five degrees out, like a dancer waiting for the music to start. And she could feel that it was him.

The glowing-hot form sagging in his arms had to be Shay, still unconscious.

"You saw me following you?" she asked.

He shook his head. "No, but I knew you would."

"What is this? Another ambush?"

"We need to talk."

"While your friends get farther away?" Tally's hands flexed, but she didn't shoot forward and attack. It was strange to hear David's voice again. It traveled clearly over the rushing water, carrying a hint of nerves.

She realized that he was scared of her.

Of course he was, but it still felt strange…

"Can you remember me?" he asked.

"What do you think, David?" Tally scowled. "I remembered you even when I was a bubblehead. You always made a big impression."

"Good," he said, like she'd meant that as a compliment. "Then you remember the last time you saw me. You'd figured out how the city had messed up your head. You forced yourself to think clearly again, not like a pretty. And you escaped. Remember?"

"I remember my boyfriend lying on a pile of blankets, half-brain-dead," she said. "Thanks to those pills your mother cooked up."

At the mention of Zane, a tremor went through David's dark form. "That was a mistake."

"A mistake? You mean, you sent those pills to me accidentally?"

He shifted on the board. "No. But we warned you about the risks. Don't you remember?"

"I remember everything now, David! I can finally see." Her mind was clear, Special-clear, untangled from wild, ugly emotions and bubbleheadedness, fully realizing the truth of what the Smokies were. They weren't revolutionaries; they were nothing but egomaniacs, playing with lives, leaving broken people in their wake.

"Tally," he pleaded softly, but she just laughed. Tally's flash tattoos were spinning wildly, pushed into furious motion by the freezing water and her anger. Her mind focused to a razor point, and saw his outline clearer with every beat of her pounding heart.

"You steal children, David, city kids who don't know how dangerous it is out in the wild. And you play games with them."

He shook his head. "I never … I never meant to play games with you, Tally. I'm sorry."

She started to answer, but saw David's signal just in time. It was nothing but a flicker of one finger, but her mind was so sharp that the tiny movement bloomed like fireworks against the dark.

Tally's awareness shot out in all directions, searching the blackness around her. The Smokies had chosen a spot where half-submerged rocks added to the water's roar, covering any subtle sounds, but somehow Tally felt the moment of attack.

An instant later, her peripheral vision caught the arrows on their way: one from each side, like two fingers crushing a bug. Her mind slowed time to a half-dead crawl. Less than a second from hitting, the missiles were too close for gravity to pull her down, no matter how fast she bent her knees. But Tally didn't need gravity…

Her hands shot up from her sides, elbows bending, fingers curling into fists around the arrow shafts. They slid a few centimeters through her palms, the friction burning like snuffing a candle, but their momentum choked in her grip.

The electric buzz in their tips sputtered for an angry moment, close enough that Tally felt the heat on both cheeks, and then the arrows fizzled in frustration.

Her eyes were still locked on David, and even through the sneak suit she saw his jaw drop open, a small, amazed sound carrying across the water.

She let out a sharp laugh.

His voice was shaking. "What have they done to you now, Tally?"

"They made me see," she said

He shook his head sadly, then pushed Shay into the river.

She fell forward limply, smacking the water face-first and hard. David whirled around on his board, kicking up a spray as he bolted away. The two archers zoomed out from the trees and followed, boards roaring to life.

"Shay!" Tally cried, but the unmoving body was already slipping under, dragged down by the weight of crash bracelets and soaked clothing. Shay's infrared colors began to change in the cold water, hands fading from bright yellow to orange. The fast current carried her under Tally, who threw the spent arrows aside, spun on one heel, and dove into the freezing river.

A few panicked strokes brought her up beside the dimly glowing form, and she reached out to grab Shay's hair, yanking her head out of the water. Flash tattoos hardly moved on the pale face, but then Shay shuddered and emptied her lungs with a sudden cough.

"Shay-la!" Tally twisted in the water, getting a better grip.

Shay waved her arms weakly, then coughed up more water. But her flash tattoos were gradually coming back to life, spinning faster as her heartbeat strengthened. Her face glowed brighter in infrared as flowing blood began to warm it back up.

Tally shifted her grip, struggling to keep both their heads above water, signaling with her crash bracelet. Her borrowed board responded with a magnetic tug, on its way.

Shay's eyes opened, blinking a few times. "That you, Tally-wa?"

"Yes, it's me."

"Quit pulling my hair." Shay coughed again.

"Oh, sorry." Tally untangled her fingers from the wet strands. When the hoverboard nudged her from behind, she slung an arm over it, wrapping the other around Shay. A long shiver traveled through them both.

"Waters cold…," Shay said. Her lips were almost blue in Tally's infrared.

"No kidding. But it woke you up, at least." She managed to lift Shay onto the board, getting her upright. She sat there, huddled miserably against the breeze while Tally stayed in the river, staring up into her glassy eyes. "Shay-la? Do you know where you are?"

"You woke me up, so I was…asleep?" Shay shook her head, closing her eyes in concentration. "Crap. That means they got me with one of those stupid arrows."

"Not an arrow; David had a shock-stick in his hand."

Shay spat into the river. "He cheated. Throwing Tachs at me." She frowned, opening her eyes again. "Is Tachs okay?"

"Yeah. I caught him before he hit the ground. Then David tried to take you away. But I got you back."

Shay managed a thin smile. "Good job, Tally-wa."

Tally felt a thin, shivery grin on her face.

"What about Fausto?"

Tally sighed again as she pulled herself up onto the board, its fans spinning into motion under her weight. "They took him, too." She glanced up the river, seeing nothing but darkness. "And they're long gone by now, I guess."

Shay wrapped a shivering, wet arm around Tally. "Don't worry. We'll get him back." She glanced down, confused. "So how did I get in the river?"

"They flew you out here, used you as bait. They wanted to capture me, too. But I was too fast for them, so David pushed you in to distract me, I suppose. Or maybe he was trying to give the other Smokies time to get away, the ones with Fausto."

"Hmm. That's a little insulting," Shay said.

"What is?"

"They used me as a decoy instead of Fausto?"

Tally grinned and squeezed Shay harder. "Maybe they were more sure I'd stop for you."

Shay coughed into a fist. "Well, when I catch them, they're going to wish they'd dumped me off a cliff instead." She took a deep breath, her lungs finally drawing clear. "Funny though. It's not like the Smokies, throwing someone into freezing water while they're unconscious. Know what I mean?"

Tally nodded. "Maybe they're getting desperate."

"Maybe." Shay shivered again. "It's like living out in nature is turning them into Rusties. You can Ml people with bows and arrows, after all. I kind of liked them better the old way"

"Me too," Tally sighed. The razor-sharpness of her anger was fading, leaving her spirit as soggy as her clothing. No matter how hard she'd tried to fix everything, Fausto was still gone, and David too.

"Anyway, thanks for the rescue, Tally-wa."

"That's okay, Boss." Tally took her friend's hand. "So…are we even now?"

Shay laughed, wrapping her arm around Tally, her grin widening to reveal every one of her pointed teeth. "You and I don't have to worry about being even, Tally-wa."

Tally felt a burst of warmth, like she always did when Shay smiled. "Really?"

Shay nodded. "We're too busy being special."

They met Ho back at the ambush site. He'd managed to get Tachs awake, and had put in a call to the rest of the Cutters. They were twenty minutes away, bringing extra boards and screaming for revenge.

"Don't worry about getting even, we'll be visiting the Smokies soon enough," Shay said, without bothering to mention the problem with that plan: No one knew where the New Smoke was. In fact, no one was sure if it was anywhere at all. Since the original Smoke had been destroyed, the Smokies kept moving from one spot to another. And now that they had four brand-new Special Circumstances hoverboards, they'd be even harder to pin down.

While Shay and Tally wrung out their wet clothes, Ho and Tachs wandered around the darkness of the Trails, looking for clues. Soon they found the hoverboard that the Smokey girl had abandoned.

"Check the charge on that thing," Shay ordered Tachs. "At least we can figure out how far they had to fly to get here."

"Good idea, Boss," Tally said. "No solar recharging at night, after all."

"Yeah, I'm feeling really brilliant," Shay said. "But a distance doesn't tell us much. We need more."

"We've got more, Boss," Ho said. "Like I was trying to tell Tally right before she shoved me off my board, I had a conversation with that ugly kid at the bash. The one the Smokey girl was giving nanos? Before I handed him over to the wardens, I managed to scare him a little."

Tally didn't doubt that. Ho's flash tattoos included a demon's face drawn over his own features, its bloodred lines shifting through a sequence of wild expressions in time with his pulse.

Shay snorted. "That little punk knew where the New Smoke was?"

"Not a chance. But he knew where he was supposed to take the nanos."

"Let me guess, Ho-la," Shay said. "New Pretty Town?"

"Yeah, of course." He held up the plastic bag. "But these weren't just for anyone, Boss. He was supposed to take them to the Crims."

Tally and Shay looked at each other. All but a few of the Cutters had been Crims back in their pretty days. The clique was all about making trouble: acting like an ugly, beating the lesions, keeping the shallowness of New Pretty Town from erasing your brain.

Shay shrugged. "The Crims are huge these days. There are hundreds of them." She smiled. "Ever since me and Tally made them famous."

Ho nodded. "Hey, I was one too, remember? But that ugly kid mentioned a name, someone he was supposed to give them to specially."

"Anyone we know?" Tally said.

"Yeah…Zane. He said the nanos were for Zane."

The Promise

"Why didn't you tell me Zane was back?"

"Because I didn't know. It's only been two weeks." Tally expelled a long sigh through her teeth. "What's the matter?" Shay said. "Don't believe me?" Tally turned away to stare into the fire, unsure how to answer. Not trusting other Cutters wasn't very icy—it led to doubts and muddled thoughts. But for the first time since becoming a Special, she felt out of place, uncomfortable in her own skin. Her fingers moved restlessly up and down the cutting scars along her arms, and sounds from the forest around them were making her jumpy.

Zane was back from the hospital, but he wasn't here with her at the Cutters' camp, out in the wild where he should be. And that felt wrong…

All around them, the other Cutters were keeping themselves icy. They'd made a bonfire of fallen trees tonight, Shay's way of building morale after last night's ambush. All sixteen of them—minus Fausto—were gathered around, daring one another to dash through the flames barefoot, boasting about what they were going to do to the Smokies when they finally caught them.

And yet Tally felt outside it all, somehow.

Usually, she loved bonfires, the way they made the shadows jump like living things, the real wickedness of burning trees. That was the whole point of being special: You existed to make sure everyone else behaved, but that didn't mean you had to.

But tonight the bonfire smell kept triggering memories of her Smokey days. A few of the Cutters had recently switched from cutting to branding, marking their arms with the red-hot ends of firebrands. Like cutting, it kept your mind icy. But for Tally, the smell was too much like when they'd cooked dead animals back in the Smoke. So she stuck to knives.

She kicked a stick into the flames. "Of course I trust you, Shay. But for the last two months I figured that Zane would join Special Circumstances the moment he got better. The thought of him in New Pretty Town, wearing some cookie-cutter face …" She shook her head.

"If I could get him here, Tally-wa, I would."

"So you'll talk to Dr. Cable about it?"

Shay spread her hands. "Tally, you know the rules: To join Special Circumstances, you have to prove you're special. You have to think your way out of being a bubblehead."

"But Zane was practically special back when he led the Crims. Doesn't Cable understand that?"

"But he didn't really change until after he took Maddy's pill." Shay scooted closer and put her arm around Tally's shoulder, her eyes flickering red in the firelight. "You and I thought our way out, without any help."

"Zane and I started changing from the first time we kissed," Tally said, pulling away. "If he hadn't gotten his brain toasted, he'd be one of us by now."

"So what are you worried about?" Shay shrugged. "He did it once, he can do it again."

Tally turned to glare at Shay, unable to say what they were both wondering. Was Zane still the bubbly guy who'd started the Crims? Or had his brain damage changed all that, dooming him to stay a bubblehead for the rest of his life?

The whole thing was totally unfair. Completely random.

When the Smokies had brought the first nanos into New Pretty Town, they'd left two pills for Tally to find, along with a letter from herself warning about the dangers, but saying she'd given 'informed consent.' She'd been too scared at first, but Zane was always bubbly, always trying to escape from being pretty-minded. He'd offered to take the untried pills.

The nanos were supposed to free the pretties, turning them from bubbleheads into…well, no one had ever bothered to figure out what exactly. What would you do with a bunch of spoiled, superbeautiful people with no limits on their appetites? Let them loose on the fragile world, to destroy it the way the Rusties almost had three centuries before?

In any case, the cure hadn't really worked like it was supposed to. Tally and Zane had split the pills, and Zane had gotten the unlucky one. The nanos in it had eaten the lesions that made him a bubblehead, but then they'd kept right on going, eating away more and more of his mind…

Tally shuddered at the thought of how lucky she'd been. The only purpose of her pill had been to switch off the nanos in the other one. Alone, it hadn't done anything— she'd only thought she'd taken the cure. And yet she'd managed to stop being a bubblehead all on her own—no nanos, no operation, not even cutting herself like Shay's crew had.

That was why she was in Special Circumstances.

"But either one of us could have taken that pill," Tally said softly. "It's not fair."

"Sure, it's not fair. But that doesn't make it your fault, Tally." A laughing, barefoot Cutter ran through the coals before them, scattering sparks. "You were the lucky one. That's what happens when you're special. Why feel guilty?"

"I never said I felt guilty." Tally snapped a stick in two. "I just want to do something about it. So I'm coming with you tonight, okay?"

"I'm not sure you're up to it, Tally-wa."

"I'm fine. As long as I don't have to stick any plastic on my face."

Shay laughed, reaching out to trace the sweeping lines of Tally's flash tattoos with her pinkie-nail. "I'm not worried about your face—just your brain. Two ex-boyfriends in a row could mess with it."

Tally turned away. "Zane's not an ex-boyfriend. He might be a bubblehead right now, but hell think his way out."

"Look at you," Shay said. "You're shaking. That's not very icy."

Tally looked down at her hands. Made fists to control them.

She kicked a hefty log onto the fire, scattering sparks. Watching as the flames wrapped around it, she opened her hands to the heat. Somehow, the freezing river had given her a chill that wouldn't leave, no matter how close she sat to the blaze.

She just needed to see Zane again, and this weird feeling in her bones would go away.

"Are you shivering because you saw David?"

"David?" Tally snorted. "What gave you that idea?"

"Don't be embarrassed, Tally-wa. No one can be icy all the time. Maybe you just need a cut." Shay drew her knife.

Tally wanted to, but she snorted and spat into the fire. Shay wasn't going to make her feel weak this way. "I handled David just fine…better than you did, I seem to remember."

Shay laughed and punched Tally on the shoulder playfully, except it actually hurt.

"Ouch, Boss," Tally said. Apparently, Shay was still unhappy about being beaten in hand-to-hand combat by a random the night before.

Shay looked down at her fist. "Sorry. Didn't mean that, really."

"Whatever. So are we even now? Can I go see Zane with you?"

Shay groaned. "Not while he's still a bubblehead, Tally-wa. It'll only freak you out. Why don't you go help look for Fausto instead?"

"You don't really think they'll find anything, do you?"

Shay shrugged, then flicked off her skintenna connection to the other Cutters. "Have to give them something to do," she said softly.

Later, the others were going to head out on their hoverboards and scan the wild. The Smokies couldn't remove Fausto's skintenna without killing him, so his signal would read from a kilometer or so away. But mere kilometers meant nothing in the wild, Tally knew. On her way to the Smoke, she'd traveled at hoverboard speeds for days without encountering any sign of humanity had seen whole cities submerged in desert sands and jungle. If the Smokies wanted to disappear, the natural world was more than big enough.

Tally snorted. "Doesn't mean you have to waste my time too."

"How many times do I have to explain this, Tally-wa? You're special now. You shouldn't be mooning over some bubblehead. You're a Cutter, Zane's not—it's as simple as that."

"If it's so simple, then why do I feel this way?"

Shay let out a groan. "Because, Tally, you're up to your usual trick: making things complicated."

Tally sighed and kicked at the fire, sending a stream of sparks into the air. She remembered a lot of times when she'd been contented—as a bubblehead, even as a Smokey But somehow her satisfaction never lasted very long. She always found herself changing, pushing against the limits, and ruining things for everyone around her.

"It's not always my fault," she said softly. "Things just get complicated, sometimes."

"Well, trust me on this one, Tally. Seeing Zane is going to make things really complicated. Just give him time to find his own way here. Aren't you happy with us?"

Tally nodded slowly—she was happy. Her special senses made the whole world icy, and every moment spent in this new body was better than a year of being pretty. But now that she knew Zane was healthy, his absence muddled everything. Suddenly, she felt unfinished and unreal.

"I'm happy, Shay-la. But remember when Zane and I escaped the city last time? And we left you behind? Well, I can't do that again."

Shay shook her head. "Sometimes you have to let people go, Tally-wa."

"So I should have let you go last night, Shay? Just let you drown?"

Shay groaned. "Great example, Tally. Look, this is for your own good. Believe me, you don't want this complication."

"Then let's make it simple, Shay-la." Tally put the tip of her thumb between her razor teeth and bit down. With a prick of pain, the iron taste of blood spread across her tongue, and her mind cleared a little.

"Once Zane is special, I'll stop. I'll never make things complicated again." She held out her hand. "I promise, blood for blood."

Shay stared at the little drop of blood. "You swear to that?"

"Yes. I'll be a good little Cutter and do whatever you and Dr. Cable tell me. Just give me Zane."

Shay paused for a moment, then flicked her own thumb across her knife, watching thoughtfully as the blood welled up. "All I ever wanted was for us to be on the same side, Tally."

"Me too. I just want Zane here with us."

"Anything to make you happy." Shay smiled and took Tally's hand, squeezing their thumbs together…hard. "Blood for blood."

As the pain pushed through her, Tally felt her mind grow icy for the first time all day. She could see her future now, a clear path with no more reversals or confusions. She'd fought being ugly and she'd fought being pretty, but that was all over—she just wanted to be special from now on.

"Thank you, Shay-la," Tally said softly. "I'll keep this promise."

Shay released her, cleaning the knife with a few quick swipes across her thigh. "I'll make sure that you do."

Tally swallowed, then licked her still-throbbing thumb. "So can I come with you tonight, Boss? Please?"

"I suppose you have to now," Shay said, smiling sadly. "But you might not like what you see."

New Pretty Town

After the others headed into the wild, Shay and Tally banked the bonfire, jumped on their boards, and flew toward the city.

New Pretty Town was lit with colorful explosions in the sky, just like every other night. Tethered hot-air balloons floated above the party spires, and gas torches lit the pleasure gardens, like bright snakes ascending the island's sloping sides. The tallest buildings cast jittering shadows in the fireworks' momentary light, reshaping the city's silhouette with every burst.

As they approached New Pretty Town, the ragged cheers of drunken bubbleheads scattered down to meet them. For a moment, the joyous sound made Tally feel like an envious ugly watching from across the river, waiting to turn sixteen. This was her first trip back to New Pretty Town since becoming a Special.

"Do you ever miss pretty days, Shay-la?" she said. They'd only spent a couple of months together in bubblehead paradise before everything had gotten complicated. "It was kind of fun."

"It was bogus," Shay said. "I'd rather have a brain."

Tally sighed. She couldn't disagree—but having a brain hurt so much sometimes. She licked her thumb, where a red spot still marked her promise.

Climbing the island's slope through a pleasure garden, the two of them kept to the shadows, heading for the center of town. They glided right above a few entangled couples, but no one spotted them overhead.

"Told you we didn't need to switch on our sneak suits, Tally-wa." Shay chuckled softly, letting the skintenna network carry her words. "When it comes to bubbleheads, we're already invisible."

Tally didn't answer, just looked down at the new pretties passing below. They looked so clueless, so completely unaware of all the dangers they had to be protected from. Their lives might be full of pleasure, but they seemed so meaningless to her now. She couldn't let Zane live like this.

Suddenly, laughter and screams came through the trees, approaching fast … at hoverboard speed. Flicking her sneak suit on, Tally angled into the thick pine needles of the nearest treetops. A line of boarders came slaloming through the garden, laughing like hysterical demons. She crouched lower, feeling her suit sprout dappled camouflage and wondering how so many uglies had snuck over to New Pretty Town all at once. Not a bad trick…

Maybe this bunch would be worth following.

But then she saw their faces: beautiful and huge-eyed, perfect in symmetry, absolutely clear of blemishes. They were pretties.

They shot past unaware, shrieking at the top of their lungs, zooming toward the river. Their screams faded, leaving only the smell of perfume and champagne.

"Boss, did you see—"

"Yeah, Tally-wa, I did." Shay was silent for a moment.

Tally swallowed. Bubbleheads didn't hoverboard. You needed all your reflexes to stay on; you couldn't be all fuzzy-brained and easily distracted. When new pretties wanted thrills, they jumped off buildings wearing bungee jackets or rode in hot-air balloons, things that didn't require any skill.

But these pretties hadn't simply been boarding; they'd been doing it well. Things had changed in New Pretty Town since the last time Tally had been here. She remembered Special Circumstance's latest report, that there were more runaways leaving the city every week, an epidemic of uglies disappearing into the wild. But what would happen if pretties got it into their heads to run away? Shay emerged from her hiding place, her suit shifting from dappled green to matte black. "Maybe the Smokies have been passing out more pills than we thought," she said. "They could be doing it right here in New Pretty Town. After all, if they've got sneak suits, they can go anywhere."

Tally's eyes scanned the trees around them. In a well-tuned suit, as David's ambush had proven, you could hide even from a Special's senses. "That reminds me, Boss. Where did the Smokies get hold of those suits? They couldn't make them, could they?"

"No way. And they didn't steal them either. Dr. Cable said that all the cities keep track of their military equipment. But nobody's reporting anything missing, not anywhere on the continent."

"You told her about last night?"

"About the sneak suits, yes. But not about losing Fausto or our boards."

Tally pondered this, floating in a lazy arc above a flickering torch. "So…you think the Smokies found some old Rusty technology?"

"Sneak suits are too clever for the Rusties. They were only good at killing." Shay's voice faded, and she stayed silent for a moment as a group of Bashers walked through the trees below, drumming loudly as they headed to some party by the river. Tally peered down, wondering if they looked more lively than normal Bashers. Was everyone in town getting more bubbly? Maybe the nanos' effects would rub off even on pretties who hadn't taken a pill—just as being around Zane had always made her bubblier.

After the group had passed, Shay said, "Dr. C thinks the Smokies have some new friends. City friends."

"But only Special Circumstances has sneak suits. Why would one of us—?"

"I didn't say this city, Tally-wa."

"Oh," Tally murmured. Cities didn't usually mess with one another's business—that sort of conflict was too dangerous. It could wind up like the wars the Rusties used to have, with whole continents vying for control, trying to kill one another. Just the thought of fighting with another city's Special Circumstances sent a nervous trickle down her spine…

They landed on top of Pulcher Mansion, coming down among solar cells and air extractors. A few bubbleheads stood on the roof, but they were transfixed by the dance of hot-air balloons and fireworks overhead and didn't see a thing.

It felt strange being on the roof of Pulcher again. Tally had practically lived here with Zane last winter, but she saw everything differently now. Smelled it differently too— scents of human habitation came from the spinning air extractors that dotted the roof. Totally unlike the fresh air of the wild, it made her feel anxious and crowded.

"Check this out, Tally-wa," Shay said, sending a vision overlay through her skintenna. Tally opened it, and the building underfoot faded to transparency, revealing a grid of blue lines marked with glowing blobs.

She blinked a few times, trying to make sense of the overlay. "Is this some kind of infrared?"

Shay laughed. "No, Tally-wa. It's a feed from the city interface." She pointed to a cluster of blobs two floors below. "That's Zane-la and some friends. He's still in his old room, see?"

As Tally focused on each blob in turn, a name popped up beside it. She remembered the interface rings that bubbleheads and uglies wore, and how the city used them to keep track of people. Like all troublemaking pretties, though, Zane had probably been fitted with a bracelet, which was basically an interface ring that you couldn't take off.

The other blobs in Zane's room were labeled with names, most of which she didn't recognize. All her old Crim friends had been part of last winters big escape into the wild. Like Tally, they'd thought their way out of being bubbleheads, so they were Specials now—except for those who were still out in the wild, still Smokies.

Peris's name hovered right next to Zane's. Peris had been Tally's best friend since they were littlies, but during the escape he'd backed out at the last minute, deciding to stay a bubblehead. He was one pretty who would never be special, that much Tally knew.

But at least Zane had a familiar face around.

She frowned. "It must be weird for Zane. Everyone can recognize him from all the tricks we pulled, but he might not even remember any of it…" She let her whisper fade, pushing the awful thoughts away.

"At least he's got some standards," Shay said. "There's about a dozen bashes happening in New Pretty Town tonight, but apparently none of them are bubbly enough for Zane and his crew."

"But they're just sitting around in his room." None of the blobs looked to be moving much. Whatever they were up to, it didn't look very bubbly.

"Yeah. Talking in private is going to be tricky." Shay had planned to trail Zane for a while, then pull him aside in some dark spot between parties.

"Why are they all doing nothing?"

Shay touched Tally's shoulder. "Relax, Tally-wa. If they let him come back to New Pretty Town, Zane's fit to party. What would be the point otherwise? Maybe it's too early, and going out would be bogus."

"I hope so."

Shay made a gesture, and the vision overlay faded a little, the real world around them coming back into focus. She pulled on her climbing gloves. "Come on, Tally-wa. Let's go find out for ourselves."

"Can't we hear them through the city interface?"

"Not unless we want Dr. Cable listening in. I'd rather keep this between us Cutters."

Tally smiled. "Okay, Shay-la. So, between us Cutters, what exactly is the plan tonight?"

"I thought you wanted to see Zane," Shay said, then shrugged. "Anyway, Specials don't need plans."

Climbing was easy these days.

Tally didn't fear heights anymore—they didn't even make her icy There was only the slightest sensation of warning as she looked over the edge of the roof. Nothing panicky or nervous-making—more like a little reminder from her brain to be careful.

She swung both legs over and lowered herself, letting her feet slide down Pulcher Mansion's smooth wall. One grippy-shoed toe wedged into a seam between two sections of ceramic, and she paused, letting the sneak suit turn itself the color of the mansion. She felt its scales shifting to match the building's texture.

When the suit finished its adjustments, Tally released her hold on the roof-ledge. She half-fell and half-slid, hands and feet scraping down the ceramic, darting out madly to catch more seams, the edges of window frames, half-repaired cracks in the wall. None of the imperfections was sturdy enough to hold her weight, but each momentary hand- or foothold slowed her just a little, the descent always under control. It was thrillingly tenuous, as if Tally were a bug running across water too quickly to sink.

By the time she reached Zane's window, Tally was falling fast, but her fingers shot out and caught the ledge easily. She swung in a wide arc, grippy gloves sticking to the ledge as if glued there, her momentum slowly expending itself as she pendulummed back and forth.

When she looked up, Tally saw Shay perched a meter above, balanced on a tiny ridge of window frame that stuck out no more than a centimeter from the wall. Her gloved hands were splayed behind her like five-legged spiders, but Tally couldn't see how there was enough total friction to hold her weight. "How are you doing that?" she whispered.

Shay giggled. "Can't tell you all my secrets, Tally-wa. But it's a bit slippy up here. Quick, take a listen."

Hanging from one hand, Tally clamped her other gloves fingertips between her teeth. She pulled it off and stretched out a finger to touch the corner of the window. The chips in her hand registered the vibrations there, turning the expanse of glass into one big microphone. She closed her eyes, hearing the noises inside the room with a sudden intimacy, like pressing one ear to a drinking glass against a thin wall. She heard a ping as Shay listened in through her skintenna.

Zane was talking, and the sound sent a little tremor through Tally. It was so familiar—yet distorted, either by her eavesdropping hardware or the months they'd been apart. She could make out the words, but not what they meant.

"All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away," he was saying. "All new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify …"

"What's he babbling about?" Shay hissed, adjusting her grip.

"I don't know. Sounds like Rusty-talk. Like some old book."

"Don't tell me Zane's…reading to the Crims?"

Tally looked up at Shay in puzzlement. A dramatic reading didn't sound very Crim, actually. Or very anything but random. And yet Zane's voice kept going, droning on about something melting.

"Take a peek, Tally-wa."

Tally nodded, pulling herself up until her eyes cleared the window ledge.

Zane sat in a big, soft-cushioned chair, holding a tattered old paper book in one hand and waving the other around like an orchestra conductor as he declaimed. But where the city interface had placed the other Crims, there was only empty space.

"Oh, Shay," she whispered. "You're going to love this."

"What I'm going to do is fall on your head, Tally-wa, in about ten seconds. What's going on?"

"He's all alone. Those other Crims are just…" She squinted into the gloom outside Zane's reading light. There they were, spread around the room like an attentive audience. "Rings. They're all just interface rings, except for Zane."

Despite Shay's wobbly grip on her perch, she let out a long snicker. "Maybe he's bubblier than we thought."

Tally nodded, grinning to herself. "Should I knock?"

"Please."

"Might startle him."

"Startled is good, Tally-wa. We want him bubbly. Now hurry up, I'm starting to slip."

Tally pulled herself higher, getting one knee onto the narrow ledge outside the window. She took a deep breath, then rapped twice, trying to smile without showing the razor sharpness of her teeth.

Zane looked up at the sound, startled for a moment, then his eyes widened. He made a gesture, and the window slid open.

A grin spread across his face.

"Tally-wa," he said. "You've changed."

Zane-la

Zane was still beautiful.

His cheekbones were sharp, his stare hungry and intense, like he was still using calorie purgers to keep himself alert. His lips were as full as any bubblehead's, and as Zane stared at Tally, he pursed them in childlike concentration. His hair hadn't changed at all; she remembered how he'd dyed it with calligraphy ink, turning it a bluish black that was way beyond the Pretty Committee's standards of good taste.

But there was something different about his face. Tally's mind spun, trying to figure out what it was.

"You brought Shay-la with you?" he said as the squeak of grippy shoes came from the window behind Tally. "How happy-making."

Tally nodded slowly, hearing in his voice that he wished she'd come alone. Of course. They had so much to talk about, hardly any of which she wanted to say in front of Shay.

It suddenly seemed like years since she'd seen Zane. Tally felt all the differences in her body—the ultralight bones and flash tattoos, the cutting scars along her arms— as reminders of how she'd changed in the time they'd been apart. Of how different they were now.

Shay grinned at the interface rings. "Aren't your friends finding that musty old book a little boring?"

"I've got more friends than you think, Shay-la." His eyes swept across the four walls of the room.

Shay shook her head, pulling a small black device from her belt. Tally's sharp ears caught its barely audible hum, a sizzling like wet leaves thrown onto a fire. "Relax, Zane-la. The city can't hear us."

His eyes widened. "You're allowed to do that?"

"Haven't you heard?" Shay smiled. "We're special."

"Oh. Well, as long as it's just us three…" He dropped the book onto the empty chair beside him, where it set Peris's ring jiggling. "The others are off on a little trick tonight. I'm covering, in case the wardens are monitoring us."

Shay laughed. "So the wardens are supposed to believe the Crims have a reading group?"

He shrugged. "It's not real wardens, as far as we can tell, only software. As long as someone's talking, it stays happy."

Tally sat down on Zane's unmade bed slowly, a shiver moving through her. Zane wasn't talking like some clueless pretty at all. And if he was covering for his friends while they did something criminal, then he was still bubbly, still the sort of tricky pretty who could one day become a Special…

She breathed in the familiar scent of him from the bedclothes, wondering what her tattoos were doing—probably spinning halfway off her face

But Zane wasn't wearing an interface ring himself, or a bracelet. How were the wardens tracking him?

"Your new face is about a mega-Helen, Tally-wa," Zane said, his gaze traveling the web of flash tattoos on her face and arms. "It could launch a billion ships. But pirate ships, probably."

She smiled at the lame joke, trying to think of something to say. She'd been waiting for this moment for two months, and suddenly all she could do was sit here like an idiot.

But it wasn't just her nerves that were making her word-missing. The more she looked at him, the more Zane looked wrong, somehow, and his voice sounded like it was coming from another room.

"I was hoping you'd come," he added softly.

"She insisted," Shay said, her words whisper-close.

Tally realized why Zane sounded so distant. With no skintenna in his flesh, his words didn't come through like the other Cutters'. He wasn't part of her clique anymore. He wasn't special.

Shay sat down next to Tally on the bed. "But if you don't mind, you two can be all bubbleheaded some other time." She pulled out the small plastic bag of nano pills that Ho had taken from the ugly boy the night before. "We came about these."

Zane half-rose from the chair and held out his hand for them, but Shay just laughed. "Not so fast, Zane-la. You have a bad habit of taking the wrong pills."

"Don't remind me," he said wearily.

Another shudder went through Tally. As he eased himself back into the chair, Zane moved slowly, deliberately, almost like a crumbly.

Tally remembered how Maddy's nanos had damaged his motor control, disrupting the part of his brain in charge of reflexes and motion. Maybe that's all it was, minor tremors left by the tiny machines. Nothing to freak out about.

But again, when she looked into his face, something was missing there, too. It had no gorgeous web of flash tattoos, and gave her none of the thrill she felt when she looked into another Cutter's coal black eyes. He looked sleepy in a way that Specials never did, as if he were wallpaper, just another pretty.

But this was Zane, not some random bubblehead…

Tally dropped her eyes to the floor, wishing she could turn off the perfect clarity of her vision. She didn't want to see all these unsettling details.

"Where did those pills come from?" he said. His voice still sounded so far away.

"From a Smokey girl," Shay answered.

He glanced at Tally. "Anyone we know?"

She shook her head, not looking up from the floor. The girl hadn't been a former Crim or anyone from the Old Smoke. Tally had a flash of wondering if she'd come from another city. Maybe she was one of the Smokies' mysterious new allies…

"But she knew your name, Zane-la," Shay said. "Said these were for you specifically. Expecting a delivery?"

He took a slow breath. "Maybe you should ask her."

"She got away," Tally said, and heard Shay let out a tiny hiss.

Zane laughed. "So Special Circumstances needs my help?"

"We're not the same as … ," Tally started, but her voice faded. She was in Special Circumstances, Zane could see that for himself. But suddenly she wished she could explain how the Cutters were different, not like the regular Specials who'd pushed him around when he was an ugly. The Cutters played by their own rules. They'd found everything that Zane had always wanted—living in the wild outside the city's dictates, their minds icy, free from the imperfections of ugliness…

Free of the averageness that seemed to be leaking out of Zane.

Her mouth closed, and Shay rested a hand on her shoulder.

Tally could feel her heart beating faster.

"Sure, we need your help," Shay said. "We need to stop these"—she held up the bag of pills—"from making more pretties like you." At the last word, she threw it toward him.

Tally saw every centimeter of the bag's flight, watching as it shot past him—his hands coming up a full second too late to catch it. The pills skidded along the wall, dropping into the corner.

Zane let his empty hands fall back into his lap, where they lay curled like dead slugs.

"Nice catch," Shay said.

Tally swallowed. Zane was crippled.

He shrugged. "I don't need pills, anyway, Shay-la. I'm permanently bubbly." He gestured at his forehead. "The nanos damaged me right here, where the lesions are supposed to go. I think the doctors put more in, but as far as I can tell, they don't have much to grab on to. That part of my brain is all new and changing."

"But what about your …" Tally's throat closed up around the question.

"My memories? My thoughts?" He shrugged again. "Brains are good at rewiring themselves. The way yours did, Tally, when you thought your way out of being pretty And yours, Shay-la, when you cut yourself." One hand lifted from his lap, soaring like a trembling bird. "Controlling someone by changing their brain is like trying to stop a hovercar by digging a ditch. If they think hard enough, they can fly right over."

"But Zane…," Tally said. Her eyes felt hot. "You're shaking."

And it wasn't just the infirmity of his movements—it was his face, his eyes, his voice…Zane wasn't special.

His gaze fixed on her. "You can do it again, Tally."

"Do what?" she said.

"Undo what they did to you. That's what my Crims are doing—rewiring themselves."

"I don't have any lesions."

"Are you sure?"

"Save it for your lame new Crim pals, Zane-la," Shay said. "We're not here to talk about your brain damage. Where did those pills come from?"

"You want to know about the pills?" He smiled. "Why not? You can't stop us. They come from the New Smoke."

"Thanks, genius," Shay said. "But where is it?"

He looked down at his quivering hand. "I wish I knew. Could use their help right now."

Shay nodded. "Is that why you're helping them? Hoping they'll fix you?"

He shook his head. "It's a lot more important than me, Shay-la. But, yeah, we Crims are passing out the cure. That's what these five are doing right now while they're supposedly sitting here." He gestured at the interface rings. "But it's bigger than us—half the cliques in town are helping. We've given out thousands so far."

"Thousands?" Shay said. "That's impossible, Zane! How're the Smokies making that many? Last I saw, they didn't have flush toilets, much less factories."

He shrugged. "Search me. But it's much too late to stop us. The new pills work too fast. There are already too many pretties who can think."

Tally glanced at Shay. This really was bigger than Zane. If what he was saying was true, no wonder the whole city seemed to be changing.

Zane held out his quivering hands in front of him, the wrists close together. "Want to arrest me now?"

Shay paused for a moment, her flash tattoos pulsing on her face and arms. Finally, she shrugged. "I'd never arrest you, Zane-la. Tally wouldn't let me. And besides, at the moment I don't really care about your little pills."

He raised an eyebrow. "So what do you Cutters care about, Shay-la?"

"Other Cutters," Shay said flatly. "Your Smokey pals kidnapped Fausto last night, and we're not happy about it."

Zane s eyebrows rose, and he flashed Tally a look. "That's…interesting. What do you think they're going to do with him?"

"Experiment. Make him all shaky like you, probably," Shay said. "Unless we find him in time."

Zane shook his head. "They don't experiment without consent."

"Consent? What part of 'kidnapped' did you not catch, Zane-la?" Shay said. "These aren't the old wimpy Smokies anymore. They've got military gear and an icy new attitude. They ambushed us with shock-sticks."

"They almost drowned Shay," Tally said. "Pushed her into the river unconscious."

"Unconscious?" The smile on Zane's face grew. "Sleeping on the job, Shay-la."

Shay's muscles tensed, and for a moment Tally thought she was going to spring up from the bed and strike—her diamond-hard fingernails and teeth against Zane's defenseless flesh.

But she only laughed, hands uncurling from fighting position to stroke Tally's hair. "Something like that. But I'm very awake now."

Zane shrugged, as if he hadn't noticed how close she'd come to ripping his throat out. "Well, I don't know where the New Smoke is. I can't help you."

"Yes, you can," Shay said.

"How?"

"You can escape."

"Escape?" Zane's fingers went to his throat. Around his neck was a metal chain, its links a dull silver. "That would be tricky, I'm afraid."

Tally closed her eyes for a moment. So that was how they were tracking him. Zane was not only infirm and unspecial, he was collared like a dog. It was all she could do to keep herself from jumping up and diving out the window. The smell of the room—recycled clothing, the musty book, the sticky sweetness of champagne—all of it was making her sick.

"We can get you something to cut that off," Shay said.

Zane shook his head. "I doubt it. I've tested this in the shop shed; it's the same alloy they use on orbital craft."

"Trust me," Shay said. "Tally and I can do whatever we want."

Tally glanced at Shay. Cut orbital alloy? For technology that serious, they'd have to ask Dr. Cable for help.

Zane fondled the chain. "And for this little favor, you want me to betray the Smoke?"

"You wouldn't do that for your own freedom, Zane," Shay said, and put her hands on Tally's shoulders. "But you'd do it for her."

Tally felt the two sets of eyes on her—Shay's black and deep and special, Zane's watery and average.

"What do you mean?" he said slowly.

Shay just stood there silent, but through the skintenna, Tally heard her lips mouth a few words, carried on a breath of air.

"They'll make him special. …"

Tally nodded, searching for the words. He'd never listen to anyone else.

She cleared her throat. "Zane, if you escape, it'll prove to them that you're still bubbly. And when they capture you, they'll make you like us. You wouldn't believe how good it feels, how icy. And we can be together."

"Why can't we be together now?" he asked softly.

Tally tried to imagine kissing his childlike lips, stroking his shaking hands, and the thought disgusted her.

She shook her head. "I'm sorry…but not the way you are."

He spoke softly, as if to a child. "You can change yourself, Tally—"

"And you can escape, Zane," Shay interrupted. "Get out into the wild and let the Smokies find you." She pointed into the corner. "You can even keep that bag of pills, bubbly up some of your Crim friends if you want."

His eyes didn't leave Tally. "And then betray them?"

"You don't have to do anything, Zane. Along with the cutting tool, I'll give you a tracker," Shay said. "Once you reach the New Smoke, we'll come get you, and the city will make you strong and fast and perfect. Bubbly forever."

"I'm already bubbly," he said coldly.

"Yeah, but you're not strong, or fast, or perfect, Zane-la," Shay said. "You're not even average."

"Do you really think I'll betray the Smoke?" he said.

Shay squeezed Tally's shoulders. "For her, you will."

He looked at Tally, a lost expression on his face for a moment, like he really was unsure. Then he stared down at his hands and sighed, nodding slowly.

But Tally saw them clear as day, the thoughts passing across Zane's face: He would accept the offer, then try to trick them once he had escaped. He really believed that he could fool them both, then somehow rescue Tally and bring her back to averageness.

It was so simple seeing into his mind, as easy to read as the uglies' pathetic rivalries back at the Spring Bash. His infirm body let his thoughts leak out, like a random sweating on a hot day.

Tally looked away.

"Okay," he said. "For you, Tally."

"Meet us at midnight tomorrow, where the river splits," Shay said. "The Smokies are going to be suspicious of runaways, so bring enough supplies for a long wait. But they'll eventually come for you, Zane."

He nodded. "I know what to do."

"And bring as many friends as you want, the more the better. You might need some help out there."

He didn't argue with the insult, just nodded, trying to catch Tally's eyes. She looked away, but forced a weak smile onto her face. "You'll be happier when you're special, Zane-la. You don't understand how good it is." She flexed her hands, watching the tattoos spin. "Every second is so icy, so beautiful."

Shay stood, pulling Tally to her feet and striding to the window. She paused, one foot on the sill.

Zane just looked at Tally. "We'll be together soon." All Tally could do was nod.

The Cut

"You were right. That was horrible."

"Poor Tally-wa …" Shay swept her hoverboard closer. In the water below, the moon's reflection kept pace with them, warping madly with the ripples of the current. "I'm really sorry."

"Why does he look so different? It's like he's not the same person."

"You're not the same person, Tally. You're special now, and he's just average."

Tally shook her head, trying to remember Zane back in their pretty days. How bubbly he was, how his face glowed with excitement as he talked, and how that thrilled her, made her want to touch him…Even when he was being annoying, there'd never been anything average about Zane. But tonight he'd seemed emptied of something essential, like champagne with all the bubbles gone flat.

There was a split screen in her brain: the way she remembered Zane and the way she saw him now, two pictures crashing against each other. The endless minutes with him had left her feeling as if her head were about to break in half.

"I don't want this," she said softly. Her stomach was uneasy and the moonlight on the water was too bright, its lines too sharp in her perfect vision. "I don't want to be this way."

Shay angled her board sideways, sweeping directly into Tally's path and spinning to a sudden, dangerous stop. Tally leaned back, and both hoverboards shrieked like buzz saws as they halted, coming to rest only centimeters apart.

"What way? Annoying? Pathetic?" Shay shouted, her voice all razors and ground glass. "I tried to tell you not to come!"

Tally's heart was pounding from the near collision, and anger rushed through her in a torrent. "You knew that seeing him would do this to me!"

"You think I know everything?" Shay said coldly. "I'm not the one in love. Haven't been since you stole David from me. But maybe I thought love might make a difference. Well, Tally-wa, did it make Zane special for you?"

Tally flinched, something inside her flipping over. She looked down at the black water, feeling like she was going to throw up. She tried to stay icy, to remember how Zane had made her feel back in pretty days. "What did Dr. Cable do to us, Shay? Do we have some kind of special lesions in our brains? Something that makes everyone else look pathetic? Like we're better than them?"

"We are better than them, Tally-wa!" Shay's eyes shone like coins, reflecting the lights of New Pretty Town. "The operation gives us the clarity to see that. That's why everyone else looks confused and pitiful, because that's how most people are.'"

"Not Zane," Tally said. "He was never pitiful."

"He's changed too, Tally-wa."

"But it's not his fault…" Tally turned away. "I don't want to see this way! I don't want to be disgusted by everyone who's not part of our clique, Shay!"

Shay smiled. "You'd rather be all happy and loving, like a clueless bubblehead? Or live like a Smokey crapping in holes and eating dead rabbits and feeling all virtuous about it? What part of being special don't you like?"

Tally's fingers curled into fighting position. "I don't like the part where Zane looks wrong to me."

"Do you think he looks right to anyone, Tally? His brain's a mess!"

Tally felt tears burning inside, but the heat didn't spill into her eyes. She'd never seen a Special cry, and didn't even know if she could. "Just answer me: Is there something in my head that makes him look wrong? What did Cable do to us?"

Shay let out a frustrated sigh. "Tally, in every conflict both sides do things to people's heads. But at least our side gets it right. The city makes bubbleheads the way they are to keep them happy and the planet safe. They make us Specials see the world so clearly that its beauty almost hurts, so we won't let humanity try to destroy it again." Shay edged her board closer, reaching out to take Tally's shoulders. "But the Smokies are amateurs. They experiment on people, turn them into freaks like Zane."

"He's not a…," Tally began, but couldn't finish. The part of her that despised his weakness was too strong—she couldn't deny the way Zane sickened her, like something that shouldn't be allowed to live.

But it wasn't his fault. It was Dr. Cable's, for not making him special. For following her stupid rules.

"Stay icy," Shay said softly.

Tally took a deep breath, trying to get her anger and frustration under control. She let her senses expand, until she could hear the wind playing in the pine needles. Scents rose up from the water—the algae on its surface, the ancient minerals down below. Her heartbeat slowed a little.

"Tell me, Tally: Are you certain you really love Zane, and not just some leftover memory of him?"

Tally winced, closing her eyes. Inside her, the images of Zane still warred with each other. She was trapped between them, and clarity wouldn't come.

"It makes me sick to look at him," she whispered. "But I know that's not right. I want to go back … to how I felt before."

Shay's voice lowered. "Then listen, Tally. I have a plan— a way to get that necklace off."

Tally opened her eyes again, gritting her teeth at the thought of the collar around his throat. "I'll do anything, Shay."

"But it has to look like Zane escaped on his own— otherwise Cable won't want him. Which means tricking Special Circumstances."

Tally swallowed. "And we can really do that?"

"You mean will our brains let us?" Shay snorted. "Of course. We're not bubbleheads. But we're risking everything we have. Understand?"

"And you'd do that for Zane?"

"For you, Tally-wa." Shay grinned, her eyes flashing. "And for the fun of it. But I need you absolutely icy."

Shay drew her knife.

Tally closed her eyes again, nodding. She wanted clarity so badly. She reached out to grasp Shay's knife by the blade.

"Hang on, not your hand…"

But Tally squeezed down hard, driving the razor edge into her flesh. The delicate and fine-tuned nerves woven into her palm, a hundred times more sensitive than any random's, split apart, screaming. She heard herself cry out.

The special moment came with its wild clarity, and Tally could finally see through her own tangled thoughts: Deep inside herself were threads of permanence, the things that had remained unchanged whether she was ugly or pretty or special—and love was one of them. She longed to be with Zane again, feeling everything she'd felt with him before, but amplified a thousandfold by her new senses. She wanted Zane to know what it was like to be a Special, to see the world in all its icy clarity.

"Okay." Her breath was ragged. She opened her eyes. "I'm with you."

Shay's face was radiant. "Good girl. But it's traditional to use the arms."

Tally opened her hand, the skin of her palm tugging free from the knife, setting off a fresh wave of pain. She sucked in breath.

"I know it hurts, Tally-wa." Shay was whispering now, staring in fascination at the blood-slicked blade. "It made me sick too, seeing Zane like that. I didn't know he'd be so messed up, honest." Her board slid a little closer, and she placed her hand softly over Tally's wounded palm. "But I'm not going to let this break you, Tally-wa. I don't want you turning all mushy and average. We'll make him one of us and save the city too; we'll fix everything." She pulled her medical kit from a sneak-suit pouch. "Just like I'm going to fix you now."

"But he won't give the Smokies up."

"He doesn't have to." Shay sprayed the wound, and the pain quickly faded to a faraway tingling. "He only has to prove he's bubbly, and we'll do the rest—get him and Fausto back, then capture David and the rest of them. It's the only way to stop what's happening. Like Zane said, arresting a bunch of pretties won't help. We have to cut this off at the source: We have to find the New Smoke."

"I know." Tally nodded, her mind still icy. "But Zane's so crippled, the Smokies will know that we let him escape. They'll pull apart everything he's carrying, scan every bone in his body."

Shay smiled. "Of course they will. But he'll be clean."

"Then how will we track him?" Tally asked.

"The old-fashioned way." Shay turned her board around, reaching out to take Tally by her unbloodied hand. They climbed, lifting fans thrumming to life underfoot as Shay pulled her higher and higher, until the city was spread out around them, a great bowl of light surrounded by darkness.

Tally glanced down at her hand. The pain had faded to a dull pounding that throbbed in time with her heartbeat, and the medspray was congealing her spilled blood, turning it to a dust that blew away as they rose. The wound had already sealed, leaving nothing but a ridge of raised skin. The scar cut straight across her flash tattoos, breaking the dermal circuitry that made them dance. Her palm was a jittering mess of lines, like a computer screen after a hard crash.

But Tally's thoughts were still clear. She flexed her fingers, sending little pings of pain up her arm.

"See that blackness out there, Tally-wa?" Shay pointed toward the city's nearest edge. "That's our space, not the randoms'. We were designed for the wild, and we're going to be tracking Zane-la and his pals every step of the way."

"But I thought you said—"

"Not with electronics, Tally-wa. We'll use sight and smell, and all the other old ways of the forest." Her eyes flashed. "Like the pre-Rusties used to do."

Tally looked across the orange glow of factories, out to where darkness marked the Outside. "Pre-Rusties? You mean, look for bent branches or something? People on hoverboards don't leave a lot of footprints behind, Shay-la."

"True. Which is why they'll never suspect someone's following them, because no one's done that kind of tracking for at least three hundred years." Shay's eyes flashed. "But you and I can smell an unwashed human from a kilometer away, a burnt-out campfire from ten. We can see in the dark and hear better than bats." Her sneak suit flickered to night black. "We can make ourselves invisible and move without a sound. Think about it, Tally-wa."

Tally nodded slowly. The Smokies would never imagine anyone watching from the darkness, listening for every step, sniffing out every campfire and chemically cooked meal.

"And with us along," Tally said, "Zane will be okay even if he gets lost or hurt."

"Exactly. And after we find the New Smoke, you two can be together."

"Are you sure Dr. Cable will make him special?"

Shay pushed off from Tally, laughing as her board dropped. "After what I've got planned, she'll probably give him my job."

Tally looked down at her still-tingling hand. Then she reached out with it and touched Shay's cheek. "Thank you."

Shay shook her head. "No thanks necessary, Tally-wa. Not after the way you looked back in Zane's room. I hate seeing you all miserable like that. It's just not special."

"Sorry, Boss."

Shay laughed and tugged her into motion again, off the river and toward the factory belt, descending to normal flying height. "Like you said, you didn't leave me behind last night, Tally-wa. So we're not leaving Zane behind either."

"And we'll get Fausto back, too."

Shay turned back toward her and half-grinned. "Oh right, let's not forget about poor Fausto. And that other little bonus…what was that again?"

Tally took a deep breath. "The end of the New Smoke."

"Good girl. Any more questions?"

"Yeah, one: Where are we going to find something that can cut orbital alloy?"

Shay spun in one complete circle on her board, holding a finger in front of her lips.

"Somewhere very special, Tally-wa," she whispered. "Follow me, and all will be revealed."

The Armory

"You weren't kidding about dangerous, were you, Boss?" Shay chuckled. "Backing out already, Tally-wa?"

"Not a chance," Tally whispered. The cutting had left her restless, full of energy demanding to be expended.

"Good girl." Shay grinned at her through the tall grass. Their skintennas were shut down so that the city records wouldn't reveal they'd been here tonight, and Shay's voice sounded tinny and far away. "Zane will get mega-bubbly points if they think he organized a trick like this."

"That's for sure," Tally whispered, staring up at the formidable building before them.

Back when she was little, older uglies had sometimes joked about sneaking into the Armory. But no one had ever been stupid enough to actually try.

She remembered all the rumors. The Armory held every registered piece of hardware the city possessed: handguns and armored vehicles, spy-tech, ancient tools and technologies, even strategic, city-killing weapons. Only a select few people had ever been allowed inside; the defenses were mostly automatic.

The dark, windowless building was surrounded by a wide-open field marked with the flashing red lights of a no-fly zone. The grounds were ringed with sensors, and four auto-cannon guarded the Armory's corners, serious defenses in case some unthinkable war ever broke out between the cities.

This place wasn't designed to warn trespassers off. It was designed to kill them.

"Ready for some fun, Tally-wa? "

Tally looked at Shay's intense expression, and felt her own heart beating faster. She flexed her wounded hand. "Always, Boss."

They crept back through the grass to their hoverboards, which waited behind a giant, automated factory. As they ascended toward its roof, Tally zipped up the front of her sneak suit and felt its scales do a little boot-up dance. Her arms turned black and blurry-looking, the scales angling themselves to deflect radar waves.

She frowned. "They'll know that whoever did this had sneak suits, won't they?"

"I already told Dr. Cable about the Smokies going invisible on us. So maybe they loaned the Crims some toys." Shay flashed a razor smile, then pulled her hood over her head, turning herself into a faceless silhouette. Tally did the same.

"Ready to go ballistic?" Shay asked, pulling on gloves. Her voice was altered by the mask, and she looked like a person-shaped smudge against the horizon, her outline blurred by the random angles of the scales.

Tally swallowed. The hood over her mouth made her breath hot against her face, like she was suffocating. "Ready when you are, Boss."

Shay snapped her fingers, and Tally crouched, counting off ten long seconds in her head. The boards began to buzz as they slowly built magnetic charge, the fan blades spinning up to just below take-off speed…

On ten, Tally's board leaped into the air, pushing her down into a squat. The fans screamed all the way up to maximum, angling her toward the Armory like an arcing firework. A few seconds later, they shut down, and Tally found herself soaring through the dark sky in silence, excitement rushing through her once again.

She knew this plan was crazy, but the danger filled her mind with iciness. And soon Zane would be able to feel this way too…Halfway across, Tally grabbed the board and pulled it to her body, hiding its surface behind her radar-deflecting suit. Tally glanced over her shoulder—she and Shay were soaring over the no-fly barrier, high enough to escape the motion sensors on the ground. No alarms sounded as they passed the perimeter, falling silently toward the Armory's roof. Maybe this was going to be easy. It had been two centuries since there had been any serious conflict among the cities—no one really believed that humanity would ever go to war again. Besides, the Armory's automatic defenses were designed to repel a major attack, not a couple of burglars looking to borrow a handheld tool.

She felt another smile grow on her face. This was the first time the Cutters had dared to trick the city itself. It was almost like ugly days again.

The roof rushed toward her, and Tally held her board over her head, hanging from it like a parachute. A few seconds before she hit, the lifting fans burst to life, bringing her to a sudden halt. Tally landed softly, as easy as stepping from a slidewalk.

The board cut off and settled into her hands. She lowered it gently to the roof. They could make no sound from now on, communicating only with sign language and through their suits' contacts.

A few meters away, Shay held both thumbs up.

With soft, careful steps, the two made their way to the doors in the center of the roof, where hovercars entered and exited. Tally saw a seam down the middle where they would open up.

She touched her fingertips to Shay's, letting the suits carry her whisper. "Can we cut through this?"

Shay shook her head. "This whole building's made of orbital alloy, Tally. If we could cut through it, we could free Zane ourselves."

Tally scanned the roof, seeing no signs of access doors. "I guess we go with your plan then."

Shay drew her knife. "Get down."

Tally flattened herself against the roof, feeling her suit's scales shift to match its texture.

Shay threw the knife hard, then hit the ground herself. It arced beyond the building's edge, spinning out into the darkness and toward the sensor-strewn grass.

Seconds later, earsplitting alarms shrieked from all directions. The metal surface beneath them jolted, the doors parting with a rusty groan. A tornado of dust and dirt leaped from the gap, a monstrous machine rising in its midst.

It was barely bigger than a pair of hoverboards lashed together, but it looked heavy—four lifting fans screamed with the effort of hauling it through the air. As it emerged, the machine seemed to grow, unfolding wings and claws with shuddering alien movements, like a giant metal insect being born. Its bulbous body bristled with weaponry and sensors.

Tally was used to robots; cleaning and gardening drones were everywhere in New Pretty Town. But those looked like amiable toys. Everything about the mechanism above her—its jerky movements, its black armor, the shrieking blades of its fans—seemed inhuman and dangerous and cruel.

It hovered for a nervous-making moment, and Tally thought it had spotted them, but then the fans twisted at a sharp angle, and the thing shot off in the direction that Shay had thrown her knife.

Tally turned just in time to see Shay rolling through the still-open hovercar doors. She followed, slipping into darkness just as they began to lurch closed…

And found herself falling, tumbling down a lightless shaft. Her infrared only transformed the blackness into an incomprehensible riot of shapes and colors flying past.

She dragged her feet and hands against the smooth metal wall, trying to slow herself, but skidded downward until one grippy toe jammed into a fissure. She came to a momentary halt.

Scrambling for a handhold, Tally found nothing but slick metal. She was tipping over backward, her toe losing its grip…

But the shaft wasn't much wider than she was tall— Tally thrust out her arms overhead, spreading her fingers as both hands struck the opposite wall. The traction of the climbing gloves brought her to a halt, facing upward, muscles straining.

Her back was arched, her body wedged across the width of the shaft like a playing card bent between two fingers. Dull pain throbbed in her wounded hand from the impact.

She twisted her head around, trying to see where Shay had fallen.

There was nothing but darkness below. The shaft smelled of stale air and corrosion.

Tally struggled to get a better look. Shay had to be close—the shaft couldn't go down forever, after all, and Tally hadn't heard anything hit the bottom. But it was impossible to judge perspective; all around her was a mass of meaningless infrared shapes.

Her spine felt like a chicken bone about to snap…

Suddenly, fingertips touched her back.

"Take it easy," Shay's whisper came through the suits' contacts. "You're making noise."

Tally sighed. Shay was just below her in the darkness, invisible in her sneak suit. "Sorry," she whispered.

The hand pulled away for a second, then the touch returned. "Okay. I'm steady. Let yourself drop."

She hesitated.

"Come on, scaredy-cat. I'll catch you."

Tally took a breath, squeezed her eyes shut, then let go. An instant of free fall later, she found herself cradled in Shay's arms.

Shay chuckled. "You are one heavy baby, Tally-wa."

"What are you standing on, anyway? I can't see anything down here."

"Try this." Shay sent an overlay through the suit contacts, and everything shifted around Tally, infrared frequencies rebalancing before her eyes. Slowly the glowing silhouettes around her began to make sense.

The shaft was lined with hovercraft crouched in holding bays, their outlines bristling like the one they'd seen above. There were dozens in all shapes and sizes, a swarm of deadly machines. Tally imagined them all springing to life at once and chopping her to pieces.

She placed a tentative foot on one of the machines, then slipped out of Shay's arms, hands clinging to the barrel of the craft's auto-cannon.

Shay reached out and touched her shoulder, whispering, "How about all this firepower? Icy, huh?"

"Yeah, great. I just hope we don't wake them up."

"Well, our infrared's all the way up, and it's still hard to see, so everything must be pretty cold. There's actually rust on some of them." Against the jumbled background, Tally saw Shay's head turn upward. "But that one outside is plenty awake. We should get moving before it comes back."

"Okay, Boss. Which way?"

"Not down. We need to stay close to our hoverboards." Shay pulled herself upward, grasping weaponry, landing legs, and airfoils like handholds in a climbing gym.

Up was fine with Tally, and now that she could see, the spiny shapes of the sleeping hovercraft made for easy climbing. Clinging to gun barrels was a little nervous-making, though, like entering some sleeping predator's body through its own razor-toothed mouth. She avoided the grasping claws and fan blades, and anything else that looked sharp. The slightest tear in her suit would leave behind dead skin cells, revealing Tally's identity like a fresh thumbprint.

About halfway up, Shay reached down to touch her shoulder. "Access hatch."

Tally heard a metal cha-chunk, and blinding light filled the shaft, falling across two hovercraft. In the light they seemed less threatening—dusty and ill-kept, like stuffed predators in some old nature museum.

Shay slipped through the hatch, and Tally scrambled after her, dropping into a narrow hallway. Her vision adjusted to the orange work lights overhead, her suit shifting to match the pale color of the walls.

The hallway was too narrow for people—hardly wider than Tally's shoulders—and the floor was covered with bar codes, navigation markers for machines. She wondered what nasty contraptions were roaming these halls, searching for intruders.

Shay started up the hallway, waving a finger for Tally to follow.

The hallway soon opened onto a room that was huge— bigger than a soccer field. It was full of motionless vehicles that towered around them like frozen dinosaurs. Their wheels were as tall as Tally, and their bowed cranes brushed the high ceiling. Lifting claws and giant blades shone dully in the orange work lights.

She wondered why the city would keep a bunch of Rusty construction equipment around. These old machines would only be useful for building beyond the city's magnetic grid, where hoverstruts and lifters wouldn't work. The claws and earthmoving scoops around her were tools for attacking nature, not maintaining the city.

There were no doors, but Shay gestured to a column of metal rungs set into the wall—a ladder leading up and down.

One floor up, they found themselves in a small, crowded room. Floor-to-ceiling shelves were stuffed with a wild assortment of equipment: scuba breathers and night-vision goggles, firefighting canisters and body armor…along with a whole slew of things that Tally didn't recognize.

Shay was already scrabbling through the gear, slipping objects into her sneak suit's pouches. She turned around and tossed something to Tally. It looked like a Halloween mask, with huge googly eyes and a nose like an elephant's trunk. Tally squinted to read the tiny label tied to it:

CIRC. 21 CENT.

She puzzled over the words for a moment, then remembered the old-style dating system. This mask was from the Rusties' twenty-first century, a little over three hundred years ago.

This part of the Armory wasn't a storehouse. It was a museum.

But what was this thing? She turned the label over:

BIOWARFARE FILTER MASK, USED

Biowarfare? Used? Tally quickly dropped the mask on the shelf beside her. She saw Shay watching, the shoulders of her suit moving.

Very funny, Shay-la, she thought.

Biological warfare had been one of the Rusties' more brilliant ideas: engineering bacteria and viruses to kill each other. It was about the stupidest kind of weapon you could make, because once the bugs were finished with your enemies, they usually came for you. In fact, the whole Rusty culture had been undone by one artificial oil-eating bacterium.

Tally hoped that whoever ran this museum hadn't left any civilization-ending bugs around.

She crossed the floor, took Shay's shoulder, and hissed, "Cute."

"Yeah, you should have seen your face. Actually, I should have seen your face. Stupid sneak suits."

"Find anything?"

Shay held up a shiny tubelike object. "This should do the job. The label says it works." She slipped it into one of her sneak-suit pouches.

"So what's all that other stuff for?"

"To throw them off the scent. If we only steal one thing, they might figure out what we want it for."

"Oh," Tally whispered. Shay might be making stupid jokes, but her mind was still icy.

"Take these." Shay shoved an armful of objects at her and went back to puzzling over the shelves.

Tally looked down at the jumble of equipment, wondering if any of it was infected with Tally-eating bacteria. She slipped a few pieces that would fit into the sneak suit's carrying pouches.

The largest object looked like some kind of rifle, with a thick barrel and long-range optics. Tally peered down its sight and saw Shay's silhouette in miniature, crosshairs marking where the bullets would hit if she squeezed the trigger. She felt a moment of disgust. The weapon was designed to make any average person into a killing machine, and life and death seemed like a lot to risk on a slip of some random's finger.

Her nerves were jumping. Shay had already found what they needed. It was time to get out of here.

Then Tally realized what was making her nervous. She smelled something through the sneak suit's filter, something human. She took a step toward Shay…

The lights overhead began to flicker, bright white chasing away the room's orange glow, and footsteps clanged from the ladder rungs. Someone was climbing toward the museum.

Shay crouched, rolling onto the lowest shelf beside her, stretching across the jumble of tools. Tally looked around frantically for a place to hide, then wedged herself into a corner where two shelves didn't quite meet, the rifle hidden behind her. Her sneak suit's scales writhed, trying to fade into the shadows.

Across the room, Shay's suit was sprouting jagged lines to break up her outline. By the time the light steadied overhead, she was almost invisible.

But Tally was not. She looked down at herself. Sneak suits were designed for hiding in complex environments— jungles and forests and battle-wrecked cities, not in the corners of brightly lit rooms.

But it was too late to find another spot.

A man was stepping off the ladder.

Break Out

He wasn't very scary.

He seemed to be an average late pretty, with the same gray hair and wrinkled hands as Tally's great-grandfathers. His face showed the usual signs of life-extension treatments: crinkly skin around the eyes, and veiny hands.

But he didn't seem calm or wise to Tally, the way crumblies had before she'd become a Special—just old. She realized that she could knock him cold without regret if she had to.

More nervous-making than the crumbly were the three little hovercams that floated above his head. They shadowed him as he strode unseeing past Tally toward one of the shelves. He reached to take something down, and the cameras shifted in the air, zipping in closer, like a rapt audience watching a magician's every movement, always staying focused on his hands. He ignored the cameras, as if he was used to their attentions.

Of course, Tally thought. The hovercams were part of the building's security system, but they weren't looking for intruders. They were designed to watch the staff, making sure nobody snuck off with any of the horrible old weapons stored here. They glided smoothly over his head, watching everything this historian—or museum curator, or whatever he was—did here in the Armory.

Tally relaxed a little. Some crumbly boffin who himself was under guard was a lot less threatening than the squad of Specials she'd been expecting.

He handled the objects delicately, and the care he took with them made her vaguely nauseous, as if he saw them as valuable works of art instead of killing machines.

Then suddenly the crumbly froze, a frown on his face. He checked a glowing palmbook in his hand, then started sifting through the objects one by one…

He'd noticed something missing.

Tally wondered if it was the rifle poking into her back. But it couldn't be: Shay had taken the weapon from the other side of the museum.

But then he picked up the biowarfare filter mask. Tally swallowed—she'd put it back in the wrong place.

His eyes slowly swept the room.

Somehow, he didn't see Tally wedged into her corner. The sneak suit must have melded her outline into the shadows on the wall, like an insect against a tree limb.

He carried the mask over to where Shay was hidden, his knees centimeters from her face. Tally was certain he'd notice all the objects she'd borrowed, but once the crumbly had put the mask back in its proper place, he nodded and turned around, a satisfied expression on his face.

Tally breathed a slow sigh of relief.

Then she saw the hovercam staring down at her.

It still floated just above the crumbly's head, but its little lens was no longer watching him. Either Tally's imagination was running wild, or it was pointed straight at her, slowly focusing and refocusing.

The crumbly walked back to where he'd started, but the camera stayed where it was, no longer interested in him. It drifted closer to Tally flitting back and forth, like some hummingbird unsure about a flower. The old man didn't notice its nervous little dance, but Tally's heart was pounding, her vision blurring as she struggled not to breathe.

The camera flew still closer, and past its flitting eye Tally saw Shay's form shifting. She'd also seen the little hovercam—things were about to get very tricky.

The camera stared at Tally, still unsure. Was it smart enough to know about sneak suits? Would it just chalk her up to a smudge on its lens?

Apparently, Shay wasn't waiting to find out. Her suit's camouflage had changed into the sleek black of armor. She pulled herself silently out into the open, pointed at the camera, and drew her finger across her throat.

Tally knew what she had to do.

In a single motion, she whipped the rifle from behind her back. It struck the hovercam with a crack, sending it flying across the museum, past the astonished crumbly's head, and careening into a wall. It dropped to the floor, stone-cold dead.

Instantly, a screaming alarm filled the room.

Shay burst into motion, running toward the ladder. Tally squeezed out of her corner and followed, ignoring the astonished crumbly's cries. But as Shay jumped for the ladder, a metal sheath snapped shut around it. She bounced back with a hollow clang, her suit cycling through a sequence of random colors from the impact.

Tally swept her eyes around the museum—there was no other way out.

One of the two remaining hovercams buzzed straight up to her face, and she smashed it with another blow from the rifle butt. She swung at the other one, but it shot away into a corner of the ceiling, like a nervous housefly trying not to get swatted.

"What are you doing here?" the crumbly shouted.

Shay ignored him, gesturing at the remaining hovercam. "Kill that!" she ordered, her voice distorted by the sneak suit's mask, then spun back toward the shelves, riffling through them as fast as she could.

Tally grabbed the heaviest-looking object she could find—some sort of power hammer—and took aim. The camera was flitting back and forth in a panic, swinging its lens one way and then the other, trying to keep track of both her and Shay. Tally took a deep breath, watching the pattern of its movements for a moment, her mind racing through calculations…

The next time the hovercam's lens left her for Shay, she threw.

The hammer hit the camera dead center, and it dropped to the floor, sputtering like a dying bird. The crumbly jumped away from it, as if a wounded hovercam were the most dangerous thing in this museum of horrors.

"Be careful!" he shrieked. "Don't you know where you are? This place is deadly!"

"No kidding," Tally said, looking down at the rifle. Was it powerful enough to cut through metal? She took aim at the sheath that had covered the ladder, braced herself, and pulled the trigger…

It made a clicking sound.

Bubblehead, thought Tally. No one kept loaded guns in a museum. She wondered how long it would be before the ladder would open back up to reveal one of the evil machines from the shaft, fully awake and primed to kill.

Shay knelt in the middle of the museum, a small ceramic bottle clutched in her hands. She placed it on the floor and grabbed the rifle from Tally, lifting it over her head.

"No!" the crumbly cried as the rifle butt swung down, hitting the bottle with a dull thud. Shay raised the weapon for another swing.

"Are you crazy?" the crumbly yelled. "Do you know what that is?"

"Actually, I do," Shay said, and Tally could hear the smirk in her voice. The bottle was making its own beeping noise, the little red warning light on it flashing furiously.

The crumbly turned away and started climbing up the shelves behind him, throwing aside ancient weapons to clear space for his hands.

Tally turned to Shay, remembering not to use her name aloud. "Why is that guy climbing the walls?

Shay didn't respond, but on the next swing of the rifle, Tally got her answer.

The bottle broke open, and a silvery liquid streamed from it, spreading out across the floor. The liquid flowed into many rivulets, stretching out like some hundred-legged spider after a long nap.

Shay hopped away from the spill, and Tally took a few steps back herself, unable to take her eyes from the mesmerizing sight.

The crumbly looked down and let out a horrible howl. "You let it out? Are you insane?"

The liquid began to sizzle, and the smell of burning plastic filled the museum.

The alarm changed tone, and in one corner of the room a tiny door popped open, disgorging two little hoverdrones. Shay leaped toward them and whacked one with the rifle butt, sending it into the wall. The second dodged around her and let loose a spray of black foam at the silver liquid.

Shay's next swing choked the spray off. She leaped across the growing silver spider on the floor. "Get ready to jump."

"Jump where?"

"Down."

Tally looked at the floor again, and saw that the spilled liquid was sinking. The silvery spider was melting its way straight through the ceramic floor.

Even inside the cool of her sneak suit, Tally felt the heat from wild chemical reactions. The smell of burnt plastic and charred ceramic had become choking.

Tally took another step back. "What is that stuff?"

"It's hunger, in nano form. It eats pretty much everything, and makes more of itself."

Tally took another step back. "What stops it?"

"What am I, a historian?" Shay rubbed her feet in a patch of the black foam. "This stuff should help. Whoever runs this place probably has an emergency plan."

Tally looked up at the crumbly, who had reached the top shelf, his eyes wide with fear. She hoped that climbing the walls and panicking wasn't the whole plan.

The floor groaned underneath them, then cracked, and the center of the slivery spider dropped out of sight. Tally gawked for a moment, realizing that the nanos had eaten their way through the floor in less than a minute. Tendrils of silver remained behind, still spreading in all directions, still hungry.

"Down we go," Shay cried. She stepped gingerly to the edge of the hole, peered down, then cannonballed through.

Tally took a step forward.

"Wait!" the crumbly cried. "Don't leave me!"

She looked back—one of the tendrils had reached the shelf he was clinging to, and was swiftly spreading up into the jumble of ancient weapons and equipment.

Tally sighed, leaping up onto the shelf next to him. She whispered in his ear, "I'm saving you. But if you mess with me I'll feed you to that stuff!"

The voice distortion that hid her identity turned the words into a monstrous growl, and the man only whimpered. She prized his fingers from the shelf, balanced his weight across her shoulders, and jumped back down to an untouched part of the museum floor.

Smoke filled the room now, and the crumbly was coughing hard. It was as hot as a sauna, and it was dripping inside Tally's sneak suit, the first time she'd sweated since turning special.

Another section of the museum floor fell through with a crash, leaving a gaping view of the room below. The soccer field full of machines was ribboned with silver tendrils, one of the giant vehicles already half-consumed.

The Armory was fighting back against the hungry nanos in earnest now. Small flying craft filled the air, frantically spraying black foam. Shay hopped from machine to machine, whacking them with the rifle, helping the goo spread.

It was a long drop, but Tally didn't have much choice. The shelves had begun to tilt as the nanos consumed their bases.

She took a deep breath and jumped, the old man on her shoulders screaming the whole way down.

Landing atop one of the machines, she grunted under the crumbly's weight, then dropped to an untouched bit of floor. The hungry silver goo was close, but she managed to dance to a halt, grippy shoes squeaking like panicked mice.

Shay paused in her battle with the sprayer drones for a moment and pointed over Tally's head. "Watch out!"

Before Tally could even look up, she heard the creaking sound of another collapse. She hopped away, avoiding tendrils of silver and blotches of slippery-looking black foam. It was like some littlies' game of hopscotch, but with lethal consequences if she made a mistake.

Reaching the other end of the room, Tally heard more of the ceiling collapse behind her. The contents of the museum's shelves rained down on the construction machines, two of which had been turned into boiling masses of silver. The sprayer drones were trying to cover them with black foam.

Tally dumped the crumbly into a heap on the floor and checked the ceiling directly overhead. They weren't below the museum anymore, but the silver stuff would keep spreading even through the walls. Was it going to eat the whole building?

Maybe that was Shay's plan. The foam seemed to be working, but Shay leaped from safe spot to safe spot laughing, swinging at the sprayer drones, preventing them from getting the outbreak under control.

The alarm changed tone again, shifting to an evacuation warning.

Which seemed like a good idea to Tally.

She turned to the crumbly. "How do we get out of here?"

He coughed into a fist. The smoke was filling even this giant room. "The trains."

"Trains?"

He pointed downward. "Subways. Just below ground level. How did you get in here? Who are you, anyway?"

Tally groaned. Subway trains? Their boards were on the roof, but the only way up was through the hovercraft bay, full of deadly machines that would be very awake by now…

They were trapped.

Suddenly, one of the huge vehicles sprang to life.

It looked like some piece of old farm equipment, the sharp metal threshers across its front slowly beginning to spin. It struggled to turn, working its way out of its cramped parking space.

"Boss!" Tally called. "We need to get out of here!"

Before Shay could answer, the whole building rumbled. One of the construction machines had been turned entirely into silver goo and was starting to sink through the floor.

"Look out below," Tally said softly.

"This way!" Shay cried, her voice barely audible in all the commotion.

Tally turned to pick up the crumbly.

"Don't touch me!" he cried. "They'll save me if you just get away from me!"

She paused, then saw that two little sprayer drones were hovering protectively over his head

Tally dashed across the room, hoping the floor wasn't about to collapse. Shay was waiting for her, swinging the rifle to protect a growing web of silver on the wall. "We can get through here. Then past the next wall. We have to reach outside sooner or later, right?"

"Right…," Tally said. "Unless that thing crushes us." The farming machine was still struggling free of its parking space. As they watched, a bulldozer next to it started up, rolling out of its way. The larger machine untangled itself and began to roll toward them.

Shay looked back at the wall. "Almost big enough!"

The hole was widening quickly now, its silver edges glowing with heat. Shay pulled something from one of her sneak suit's pouches and hurled it through.

"Duck!"

"What was that?" Tally shouted, crouching down.

"An old grenade. I just hope it still—"

A flash of light and a deafening roar came through the hole.

"… works. Come on!" Shay ran a few steps toward the lumbering farm machine, skidded to a halt, then turned and faced the hole.

"But it's not big enough…"

Shay ignored her, diving through. Tally swallowed. If one drop of the silver stuff had gotten on Shay…

And she was supposed to follow?

The rumble of the farm machine reminded her that she didn't have much choice. It had detoured around the sinking, infected vehicles, and was in the clear now, gaining speed every second. One of wheels was ribboned with silver goo, but wouldn't be eaten away until long minutes after it had smashed Tally flat.

She took two steps back, put her palms together like a diver going into water, and threw herself through the hole.

On the other side, Tally rolled to a stop and sprang to her feet. The floor shook as the farming machine hit the wall, and the glowing hole behind her was suddenly much bigger.

Through it, she saw the huge machine backing up for another attack.

"Come on," Shay said. "That thing's going to get in here pretty quick."

"But I …" Tally strained to turn and look at her own back, her shoulders, the bottoms of her feet.

"Relax. No silver ickies on you. Me either." Shay stuck the barrel of the rifle into a drop of silver goo, then grabbed Tally and dragged her across the room. The floor was covered with the charred remains of foam sprayers and security drones that had been destroyed by Shay's grenade.

At the opposite wall, Shay said, "The building can't be much bigger than this." She pushed the half-consumed rifle against the wall. "Hope not, anyway."

A glob of silver clung, already beginning to grow…

The floor shook with a mighty boom again, and Tally spun around to see the front end of the threshing machine pulling back from the hole. The gap was much wider now, big enough to walk through. Between the hungry goo and the pummeling, the wall wasn't going to last much longer.

The farming machine was now thoroughly infected. Glowing tendrils traveled across its threshers like spinning lightning. She wondered if it would be consumed before it could pound its way through. But a pair of spraying drones shot into view and began to douse it with black foam.

"This place really wants to kill us, huh?" Tally said.

"That's my guess," Shay said. "Of course, you can try surrendering if you want."

"Hmm." The ground shook, and Tally watched as more of the wall crashed to the floor. The hole was almost big enough for the huge machine to roll through. "Got any more grenades?"

"Yeah, but I'm saving them."

"What the hell for?"

"For those."

Tally turned back toward the spreading silver web. The night sky showed through at its center, and Tally saw the running lights of hovercraft outside.

"We're dead," she said softly.

"Not yet." Shay pressed a grenade against the sliver nanos, watched them spread for a moment, then tossed it underarm through the gap, pulling Tally down.

The boom of an explosion battered their ears.

Across the room, the thresher struck for the last time, the entire wall collapsing into glowing silver rubble. The machine rolled forward slowly now, struggling along on half-eaten wheels covered with black foam and shimmering sliver.

Through the hole behind her, Tally saw the shapes of more hovercraft than she could count.

"They'll kill us if we go out there!" Tally said.

"Get down!" Shay barked. "That goo could hit a lifting fan any second."

"Hit a what?"

At that moment, a horrible sound came from outside, like gears grinding wrong on a bicycle. Shay pulled Tally down again as another explosion rang out. A spray of silver droplets came through the hole.

"Oh," Tally said softly. The nanos on Shay's grenade had been blown onto some unlucky hovercraft's lifting fans, which had let loose a deadly shower as they'd been consumed. By now, every machine waiting for them outside must have been infected.

"Call your hoverboard!"

Tally flicked her crash bracelet. Shay was readying to jump, hopping between the spreading droplets of silver that covered the room. She took three careful steps, then threw herself into the gap.

Tally took one step back from the hole—all she had room for. The lumbering threshing machine was so close that she could feel the heat of its disintegration.

She took a breath and dived into the breach…

Flight

Tally tumbled into darkness.

The night silence enveloped her, and for a moment she simply let herself fall. Maybe she'd brushed against the deadly silver goo on her way through the hole, or was about to be blown from the sky, or was falling to her death, but at least it was cool and quiet out here.

Then a tug came on her wrist, and the familiar shape of her hoverboard hurtled out of the darkness. Tally spun herself in midair, landing in a perfect riding stance.

Shay was already speeding toward the closest edge of the city. Angling her board to follow, Tally engaged its lifting fans, the thrum beneath her feet building swiftly to a howl.

The sky around them was filled with glowing shapes, all headed away from Tally. Every single hovercraft was trying to put distance between itself and its fellow machines; none of them knew which had been spattered with the silver goo and which were clean. The most obviously contaminated were grounding themselves in the no-fly area, stilling their spinning fans before they infected the rest.

She and Shay would have a few minutes' head start while the armada got itself organized.

Imagining pinpricks of heat on her arms and hands, Tally glanced down to check herself for growing silver dots. She wondered if the sprayers inside were getting the hungry nanos under control, or whether the whole building was going to sink into the earth.

If the silver goo was the sort of stuff the Armory kept in its museum, what were the "serious" weapons stored deep underground like? Of course, destroying one building wasn't much by Rusty standards. They'd killed whole cities with a single bomb, sickened generations with radioactivity and poisons. Next to that, the silver stuff really was a museum piece.

Behind her, firefighting hovercars from the city were arriving, spraying out vast clouds of the black foam across the whole Armory.

Tally turned away from the chaos and shot after Shay in the dark sky, relieved to see that no glowing droplets clung to her night black sneak suit. "You're clean," she called out.

Shay took a quick spin around Tally. "You too. Told you that Specials are born lucky!"

Tally swallowed, glancing over her shoulder. A few surviving hovercraft were zooming out from the pandemonium of the Armory grounds, chasing them. She and Shay might be invisible in their suits, but their hoverboards would still show up as bright slivers of heat. "I wouldn't call this good luck yet," she yelled across the void.

"Don't worry, Tally-wa. If they want to play, I've got more grenades." As the two of them hit the edge of Crumblyville, Shay dropped to roof level to take better advantage of the grid.

Tally followed her down, taking a slow breath. That Shay in possession of hand grenades was a comforting thought showed what kind of a night this had turned into.

She could hear the roar of hovercraft building now. Apparently, the goo hadn't gotten them all. "They're getting closer. "

"They're faster than we are, but they won't mess with us over the city. They don't want to kill any innocent bystanders."

Which doesn't include us, Tally thought. "So how do we get away?"

"If we can find a river outside of town, we can jump."

"Jump?"

"They can't see us, Tally—just our boards. Falling through the air in sneak suits, we'll be completely invisible." She was fiddling with one of the grenades. "Just find me a river."

Tally flipped a map overlay across her vision.

"All that firepower will chop our boards to pieces," Shay said. "They won't have enough left to …" Shay's voice faded. All at once, the hovercraft had winked out of existence, leaving the night sky empty.

Tally flipped through various infrared overlays, but could see nothing. "Shay?"

"They must have turned their lifting fans off. They're running on magnetics, totally stealthy."

"But why? We know that they're following us."

"Maybe they don't want to freak out the crumblies," Shay said. "They're pacing us, surrounding us, waiting for us to leave the city. Then they'll start shooting."

Tally swallowed. In the momentary silence, her adrenaline was fading, and the magnitude of what they'd done finally struck home. Because of them, the military was in an uproar, probably thinking the city was under attack. For a moment, the icy glamour of being special slipped away. "Shay, if this goes wrong, thanks for trying to help Zane."

"Hush, Tally-wa." Shay hissed. "Just find me that river."

Tally counted down the seconds. The city limit was less than a minute away.

She remembered the other night, the thrill of chasing the Smokies to the edge of the wild. But now she was the one being hunted, outnumbered, and outgunned…

"Here we go," Shay warned.

As they shot out over the dark edge of the city, glowing forms winked into existence all around them. First Tally heard the roar of lifting fans spinning to life, and then bright lances of heat began to streak across the sky.

"Don't make it easy for them!" Shay cried.

Tally began to weave, slipping around the arcs of blazing projectiles that filled the air. A stream of cannon fire shot past her, hot as a desert wind on her cheek, splintering the trees below like matchsticks. She veered and climbed, barely avoiding another barrage from the opposite direction.

Shay threw a grenade straight up into the air. A few seconds later, it burst behind them, and a concussion wave hit Tally like a fist, setting her board wobbling. She heard the plaintive shrieking of lifting fans knocked awry—Shay had hit one of the hovercraft without even aiming!

Which only proved, of course, how many of them there were…

Two arcing trails of cannon fire streaked across Tally's path, searing the air, and she twisted hard to avoid them, barely staying on her board.

In the distance ahead, a band of reflected moonlight glimmered.

"The river!"

"I see it," Shay called. "Set your board to fly straight and level once you jump."

Tally banked again, another spray of projectiles narrowly missing her. She stabbed at her crash bracelets' controls, setting the board to fly ahead without her.

"Try not to make a splash!" Shay cried. "Three…two…"

Tally jumped.

The dark river shone below her as she fell, a winding black mirror reflecting the chaos in the sky. She sucked in deep breaths, storing up oxygen, pressing her hands together to split the water cleanly.

The river's surface slapped her hard, then its watery roar erased the screams of gunfire and lifting fans. Tally plunged deep into the darkness, its cold and silence enveloping her.

She waved her arms in circles to keep herself from floating too quickly to the top, staying down as long as her lungs could stand it. When she finally surfaced, her eyes scanned the sky, but found only flickers on the dark horizon, kilometers away. The river's current was brisk and smooth.

They had escaped.

"Tally?" a shout bounced across the water.

"Over here," she answered softly, paddling to face the sound.

Shay reached her with a few powerful strokes. "You okay, Tally-wa?

"Yeah." Tally did a quick internal diagnostic on her bones and muscles. "Nothing broken."

"Me neither." Shay was smiling tiredly. "Let's head for shore. We've got a long walk ahead of us."

As they swam slowly shoreward, Tally watched the sky anxiously—she'd had enough of fighting off the city's armed forces for one night.

"That was truly icy, Tally-wa," Shay said as they dragged themselves onto the muddy riverbank. She pulled out the tool she'd found in the museum. "By this time tomorrow night, Zane will be on his way into the wild. And we'll be right behind him."

Tally looked at the alloy-cutter, hardly believing they'd almost gotten killed for something smaller than a finger. "But after everything we did back there, will anyone really believe it was a bunch of Crims?"

"Maybe not." Shay shrugged, then giggled. "But by the time they get around to stopping that silver goo, they won't have much evidence left. And whether they think it was Crims or Smokies or a bunch of commando Specials from another city, they'll know Zane-la has some bad-ass friends."

Tally frowned. They'd only meant to make Zane seem bubbly, not involve him in a major attack.

Of course, with the city threatened this way, Dr. Cable would probably be thinking about recruiting a few more Specials as soon as possible. And Zane would make a logical candidate.

Tally smiled. "He does have some bad-ass friends, Shay-la. He has you and me."

Shay laughed as they started into the woods, sneak suits shifting to match the dappled shafts of moonlight. "Tell me about it, Tally-wa. That boy doesn't know how lucky he is."