Specials Read online

  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?

  “Sh
ould 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?”