Specials

by Scott Westerfeld

  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 winter’s 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 glove’s 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 s
he 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.