Specials

by Scott Westerfeld

  She had just noticed that one board was acting up, some microscopic flaw in its forward lifting fan causing it to run hot. She’d been watching it carefully for the last few minutes, a detailed infrared overlay blotting her normal vision, and she never even noticed the tree.

  It was a lone pine, its upper leaves sheered by salt spray like a bad haircut. The board she was riding struck a branch dead center, snapping it clean, sending Tally flying head over heels.

  Her crash bracelets found the metal in the rail line just in time. They didn’t snap her up short, like they would have in a straight-down fall, but bounced her along the tracks at speed. For a few wild moments, Tally felt like she’d been strapped to the front of some ancient train, the world rushing by on either side, the dark rails stretching before her into blackness, cross-ties a blur beneath her feet.

  She wondered what would happen if the railroad line curved suddenly, whether the bracelets would carry her through a turn, or dump her unceremoniously on the ground. Or off the cliff . . .

  The track ran doggedly straight, though, and after a hundred meters her momentum petered out. The bracelets set Tally down; her heart was pounding, but she was unhurt. Both boards found her signal a minute later, nosing out of the darkness like sheepish friends who’d run off without telling her.

  Tally realized that she should probably get some sleep. When her next lapse of concentration came, she might not be so lucky. But the sun would be rising soon, and the city was less than a day’s travel away. She stepped onto the overheated board and rode it hard, keeping herself alert by listening carefully to every shift in the sound of the damaged fan.

  Just after dawn, a high-pitched squeal erupted, and Tally leaped from the stricken hoverboard as it disintegrated into a white-hot mass of shrieking metal. She landed on the other board, turning to watch the screaming remains of the first spin out sideways and fall into the sea, where its impact threw up a geyser of spray and steam.

  Tally faced home again, never even slowing.

  • • •

  When the Rusty Ruins came into sight, she headed inland.

  The ancient ghost city was full of metal, so for the first time since leaving Diego, Tally let herself slow down, resting the lifting fans of her remaining board. She moved in silence through the empty streets, staring down at the burnt-out cars that marked the Rusties’ last day. Crumbling buildings rose up around her, all the familiar spots where she had hidden back in her Smokey days. Tally wondered if tricky uglies still snuck out here at night. Maybe the ruins didn’t seem so exciting anymore, now that there was a real-live city to run away to.

  They still felt creepy, though, as if the vast emptiness was full of ghosts. The gaping windows seemed to stare at Tally, taking her back to that first night Shay had brought her here, back when they were both uglies. Shay had learned the secret route from Zane, of course—he was the ultimate reason that Tally Youngblood wasn’t just another bubblehead, happy and clueless among the spires of New Pretty Town.

  Maybe after she confessed to Dr. Cable, Tally would wind up there again, all these unhappy-making memories erased at last. . . .

  Ping.

  Tally slowed to a halt, not quite believing what she’d heard. The ping was on the Cutters’ frequency, but none of them could have made it here before her. The ID was blank, as if the ping had come from no one. It had to be some abandoned beacon left behind on a training mission, nothing but a random signal in the ruins.

  “Hello?” she whispered.

  Ping . . . ping . . . ping.

  Tally raised her eyebrows. That hadn’t been random; it had sounded like an answer. “Can you hear me?”

  Ping.

  “But you can’t say anything?” Tally frowned.

  Ping.

  Tally sighed, realizing what was going on. “Fine. Nice trick, ugly. But I’ve got more important things to do.” She started up her lifting fans again, angling toward town.

  Ping . . . ping.

  Tally slid to a halt, unsure about ignoring this. Any bunch of uglies smart enough to trick the Cutters’ frequency might have useful information. It wouldn’t hurt to find out how things were going in the city before confronting Dr. Cable.

  She checked the signal strength. It was strong and clear. Whoever had rigged it up wasn’t far away.

  Tally drifted down the empty street, watching the signal carefully. It grew slightly stronger on the left. She turned in that direction and glided a block farther.

  “Okay, kid. One means yes, and two means no. Got that?”

  Ping.

  “Do I know you?”

  Ping.

  “Hmm.” Tally kept going until the signal weakened, then turned around and made her way slowly back. “Are you a Crim?”

  Ping . . . ping.

  The signal’s strength peaked, and Tally looked up. Towering above her was the tallest building left standing in the ruins, an old Smokey hangout and the logical place to set up a broadcasting station.

  “Are you an ugly?”

  There was a long pause. Then a single ping.

  Tally began her silent ascent, the hoverboard’s magnetics taking hold of the tower’s ancient metal skeleton. Her senses expanded, listening for every sound.

  The wind shifted, and she smelled something familiar, her stomach clenching.

  “SpagBol?” She shook her head. “So you come from this city?”

  Ping . . . ping.

  Then she heard a sound, movement in the rubble of some ruined floor above. Tally stepped from her board through an empty window frame, setting her damaged sneak suit to a rough approximation of broken stone. She took both sides of the frame and leaned in, peering upward.

  There he was above, looking down at her. “Tally?” he called.

  She blinked. It was David.

  DAVID

  “What are you doing here?” she called.

  “Waiting for you. I knew you’d come this way . . . through the ruins one more time.”

  Tally climbed toward him, swinging from one iron beam to the next, covering the distance in a few seconds. He was huddled in the corner of a floor that hadn’t completely collapsed, barely enough room for the sleeping bag splayed out beside him. His sneak suit was set to match the shadows inside the ruin.

  A self-heating meal in his hand chimed that it was ready, and the revolting smell of SpagBol hit Tally again.

  She shook her head. “But how did you . . . ?”

  David held up a crude device in one hand, a directional antenna in the other. “After we cured him, Fausto helped us rig this up. Every time you guys got close, we detected your skintennas. We could even listen in.”

  Tally squatted on a rusty iron beam, her head suddenly spinning from three days of constant travel. “I wasn’t asking how you pinged me. How did you get here so quickly?”

  “Oh, that was easy. When you left without her, Shay realized that you were right: Diego needs her more than you do. But they don’t need me.” He cleared his throat. “So I took the next helicopter to a pickup spot about halfway here.”

  Tally sighed, closing her eyes. “Special-head,” Shay had called her. She could have gotten a ride most of the way. That was one problem with dramatic exits: Sometimes they wound up making you look like a bubblehead. But she was relieved to hear that her fears about the runaways had been unfounded. Diego hadn’t abandoned them yet.

  “So why exactly did you come?”

  David wore a determined look. “I’m here to help you, Tally.”

  “Listen, David, just because we’re sort of on the same side now doesn’t mean I want you around. Shouldn’t you be back in Diego? There’s a war on, you know.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t like cities much, and I don’t know anything about wars.”

  “Well, I don’t either, but I’m doing what I can.” She signaled for her board, which still hovered below. “And if Special Circumstances catches me with a Smokey, it’s not going to make it any easier convincing them I’m telling th
e truth.”

  “But Tally, are you okay?”

  “That’s the second time someone’s asked me that stupid question,” she said softly. “No, I’m not okay.”

  “Yeah, I guess it was stupid. But we’re worried about you.”

  “We who? You and Shay?”

  He shook his head. “No, my mother and me.”

  Tally let out a short, sharp laugh. “Since when was Maddy worried about me?”

  “She’s been thinking about you a lot lately,” he said, setting his untouched SpagBol on the floor. “She had to study the special operation to cure it. She knows quite a bit about what it’s like, being what you are.”

  Tally leaped up, hands curling, and jumped across the void between them in a single bound, sending a shower of rust down into the chasm of the building’s core. Her teeth bared, she said straight to his face, “No one knows what it’s like to be me right now, David. I promise you: no one.”

  He held her gaze without flinching, but Tally could smell his fear, all the weakness leaking out of him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said evenly. “I didn’t mean it that way. . . . This isn’t about Zane.”

  At the sound of his name, something fractured inside Tally, and her fury faded. She sank onto her haunches, breathing raggedly. For a moment, it felt as though the burst of rage had shifted something heavy and leaden inside her. It was the first time since Zane’s death that anything, even anger, had broken through her despair.

  But the feeling had lasted only a few seconds, then the fatigue from her uninterrupted days of travel came tumbling down.

  She lowered her head into her hands. “Whatever.”

  “I brought you something. You might need it.”

  Tally looked up. In David’s hand was an injector.

  She shook her head tiredly. “You don’t want to cure me, David. Special Circumstances won’t listen to me unless I’m one of them.”

  “I know, Tally. Fausto explained your plan to us.” He placed a cap over the needle, snapping it down. “But keep this. Maybe after you tell them what happened, you’ll want to change yourself.”

  Tally frowned. “There doesn’t seem like much point thinking about what happens after I confess, David. The city might be a little upset with me, so I might not have much say in the matter.”

  “I doubt it, Tally. That’s what’s so amazing about you. No matter what your city does to you, you always seem to have a choice.”

  “Always?” She snorted. “I didn’t seem to have a choice when Zane died.”

  “No . . .” David shook his head. “I’m sorry, again. I keep saying stupid things. But remember when you were a pretty? You changed yourself, and you led the Crims out of the city.”

  “Zane led us.”

  “He’d taken a pill. You hadn’t.”

  She groaned. “Don’t remind me. That’s how he wound up in that hospital!”

  “Wait, wait.” David put up his hands. “I’m trying to say something. You were the one who thought your way out of being pretty.”

  “Yeah, I know, I know. A lot of good that did me. Or Zane.”

  “Actually, it did more than a lot of good, Tally. After seeing what you’d done, my mother realized something important about how the operation could be reversed. About the bubblehead cure.”

  Tally looked up, remembering Zane’s theories back in pretty days. “You mean about making yourself bubbly?”

  “Exactly. My mother realized that we didn’t have to get rid of the lesions, all we had to do was stimulate the brain to work around them. That’s why the new cure is much safer, and why it works so fast.” He was talking quickly, his eyes bright in the shadows. “That’s how we got Diego to change in only two months. Because of what you showed us.”

  “So I’m to blame for those people turning their little fingers into snakes? Great.”

  “You’re to blame for the freedom they’ve found, Tally. For the end of the operation.”

  She laughed bitterly. “The end of Diego, you mean. Once Cable gets her hands on them, they’ll wish they’d never seen your mother’s little pills.”

  “Listen, Tally. Dr. Cable is weaker than you think.” He leaned closer. “This is what I came to tell you: After the New System came into being, some of Diego’s industrial managers helped us out. Mass production. We’ve smuggled two hundred thousand pills into your city over the last month. If you can knock Special Circumstances off-balance, even for a few days, your city will start to change. Fear is the only thing keeping a New System from happening here, too.”

  “Fear of whoever attacked the Armory, you mean.” She sighed. “So it’s all my fault again.”

  “Maybe. But if you can dispel that fear here, every city in the world will start paying attention.” He took her hand. “You aren’t just stopping the war, Tally. You’re about to fix everything.”

  “Or screw everything up. Has anyone thought what’ll happen to the wild if everyone becomes cured all at once?” She shook her head. “All I know is I have to stop this war.”

  He smiled. “The world is changing, Tally. You made it happen.”

  She pulled away, staying silent for a while. Anything she said might set off another speech about how wonderful she was. She didn’t feel wonderful, just exhausted. David seemed content to sit there, probably thinking that his words were sinking in, but Tally’s silence meant nothing except that she was too tired to speak.

  For Tally Youngblood, the war had already come and gone, leaving a smoking ruin in its wake. She couldn’t fix everything, for the simple reason that the only person she cared about was past fixing.

  Maddy could cure every bubblehead in the world, and Zane would still be dead.

  But one question was niggling at her. “So, are you saying your mother actually likes me now?”

  David smiled. “She finally realizes how important you are. To the future. And to me.”

  Tally shook her head. “Don’t say things like that. About you and me.”

  “I’m sorry, Tally. But it’s true.”

  “Your father died because of me, David. Because I betrayed the Smoke.”

  He shook his head slowly. “You didn’t betray us—you were manipulated by Special Circumstances, like a lot of other people were. And it was Dr. Cable’s experiments that killed my father, not you.”

  Tally sighed. She was too exhausted to argue. “Well, I’m glad Maddy doesn’t hate me anymore. And speaking of Dr. Cable, I need to go see her and stop this war. Are we done here?”

  “Yes.” He picked up his meal and chopsticks, dropping his eyes to the food, his voice soft. “That’s everything I wanted to say. Except . . .”

  She groaned.

  “Listen, Tally, you’re not the only person who ever lost someone.” His eyes narrowed. “After my father died, I wanted to disappear too.”

  “I’m not disappearing, David, I’m not running away. I’m doing what I have to, all right?”

  “Tally, I’m just saying: I’ll be here when you’re done.”

  “You?” She shook her head.

  “You’re not alone, Tally. Don’t pretend you are.”

  Tally tried to stand up, to get away from this nonsense, but suddenly the ruined tower seemed to sway around her. She sank back to her haunches.

  Another lame dramatic exit.

  “Okay, David, turns out I’m not going anywhere until I get some sleep. Guess I should have taken that helicopter.”

  “Use my sleeping bag.” He scooted aside and held up the antenna. “I’ll wake you up if anyone comes sniffing around. You’re safe here.”

  “Safe.” Tally squeezed past David, for a moment feeling the heat of his body and faintly remembering his smell from when they’d been together, what seemed like years ago.

  It was strange. His ugly face had revolted her the last time she’d seen it, but after seeing so many insane surgeries in Diego, his scarred eyebrow and crooked smile just seemed like one more fashion statement. And not an awful one at that.<
br />
  But he wasn’t Zane.

  Tally crawled into the sleeping bag, then peered down through the rotted floors of the building to the rubble-filled foundation a hundred meters below.

  “Um, just don’t let me roll over in my sleep, okay?”

  He smiled. “All right.”

  “And give me that.” She took the injector from his hand, zipping it into a pouch of her sneak suit. “I might need it one day.”

  “Maybe you won’t, Tally.”

  “Don’t confuse me,” she murmured.

  Tally laid down her head, and slept.

  EMERGENCY MEETING

  She took the river home.

  Crashing through white water, the familiar skyline of New Pretty Town before her, Tally wondered if this would be the last time she’d ever see her home from the outside. How long did they lock you up for attacking your own city, accidentally destroying its armed forces, and getting it into a bogus war?

  The moment she reached the city’s repeater network, the newsfeeds rolled over Tally’s skintenna like a tidal wave. More than fifty channels were covering the war, describing breathlessly how the hovercraft armada had broken through Diego’s defenses and sent its Town Hall tumbling to the ground. Everyone was so happy about it, as if the bombardment of a helpless foe had been fireworks at the end of some long-awaited celebration.

  It was weird hearing Special Circumstances mentioned every five seconds—how they’d stepped in after the Armory had been destroyed, how they would keep everyone safe. Until a week ago, most people hadn’t even believed in Specials, and suddenly they were the saviors of the city.

  The new wartime regulations actually had their own channel, a cheerless scrolling list of rules to be memorized. Curfew restrictions on uglies were stricter than ever, and for the first time in Tally’s memory, new pretties had limits on where they could go and what they could do. Ballooning was completely forbidden, hoverboards restricted to parks and sports fields. And ever since the disintegrating Armory had lit the sky, New Pretty Town’s nightly fireworks displays had been canceled.

  No one seemed to be complaining, though, not even cliques like the Hot-airs, who practically lived in their balloons during the summer. Of course, even if two hundred thousand people had been cured, that still left about a million bubbleheads. Maybe those who wanted to protest were still too outnumbered to make themselves heard.