She smiled back at him. “Okay. As long as you promise never to put your hand in a crusher again.”
“Agreed.” Zane looked at his fingers, then made a fist. “I’m scared. I want to stay bubbly.”
“You’ll be bubbly again. I’ll help you.”
He nodded, grasping her hand. His voice shook as he said, “Do you think David was right? My big beautiful eyes are why you chose me?”
“No. I think it was . . . what I said. And what you said, before you jumped off the balloon.” She swallowed. “What’s your opinion?”
Zane lay back and closed his eyes, and was silent so long that Tally thought he had fallen asleep again. But then he said softly, “You and David could both be right. Maybe humans beings are programmed . . . to help one another, even to fall in love. But just because it’s human nature doesn’t make it bad, Tally. Besides, we had a whole city of pretties to choose from, and we chose each other.”
She took his hand and murmured, “I’m glad we did.”
Zane smiled, then closed his eyes again. A moment later, she saw his breathing slow, and realized that he had managed to pass out again. At least brain damage had some advantages.
Tally felt the last scraps of energy leave her body, and wished she could sleep too, just spend the next few hours unconscious and wake up in the city—an imprisoned princess again, as if this had all been a dream. She laid her head onto Zane’s chest and closed her eyes.
Five minutes later, Special Circumstances arrived.
SPECIALS
The scream of hovercars filled the observatory, echoing like the cries of predatory birds. Whirlwinds from their rotors swept through the crack in the dome, sending the fire into a sudden blaze. Dust choked the air, and gray forms charged through the entrance, taking up positions in the shadows.
“I need a doctor here,” Tally announced in a tentative, pretty voice. “Something’s wrong with my friend.”
A Special appeared beside her out of the darkness. He held a weapon. “Don’t move. We don’t want to hurt you, but we will if we have to.”
“Just help my friend,” she said. “He’s sick.” The sooner city doctors looked at Zane, the better. Maybe they could do more than Maddy had.
The Special said something into a handphone, and Tally glanced down at Zane. Fear showed through his slitted eyes.
“It’s okay,” she said. “They’ll help you.”
Zane swallowed, and Tally saw his hands trembling, the last of his brave front crumbling now that their captors had arrived.
“I’ll make sure you’re cured, one way or another,” she said.
“A medical team is coming,” the Special said, and Tally smiled prettily at him. The city doctors might mistake Zane’s condition for some kind of brain disease, or maybe they would figure out that someone had attempted a cure for the lesions, but they would never recognize how Tally had transformed herself. She could pretend that she’d just come along for the ride, as Maddy had put it. Tally was safe from the operation now.
Maybe Zane could be cured again without more pills. Maybe everyone in the city could be changed. After their balloon escape and another “rescue” by the Specials, Tally and Zane would be even more famous. They could start something huge, something the Specials couldn’t stop.
A razor-edged voice came through the shadows, and Tally flinched.
“I thought I might find you here, Tally.” Dr. Cable came into the light, stretching her fingers toward the fire as though she’d stepped inside to get warm.
“Hi, Dr. Cable. Can you help my friend?”
The woman’s wolflike smile gleamed in the dark. “Toothache?”
“Something worse.” Tally shook her head. “He can’t move, can hardly talk. Something’s wrong with him.”
More Specials streamed into the observatory, including three carrying a stretcher, wearing blue silk instead of gray. They pushed Tally out of the way and laid the litter down next to Zane. He closed his eyes.
“Don’t worry,” Dr. Cable said. “He’ll be fine. We know all about his condition from your little trip to the hospital. It seems that someone slipped Zane some brain nanos. Very bad for his pretty head.”
“You knew he was sick?” Tally stood up. “Why didn’t you fix him?”
Dr. Cable patted her shoulder. “We brought the nanos to a halt. But the little implant in his tooth was programmed to give him headaches—false symptoms to keep you motivated.”
“You were playing with us . . . ,” Tally said, watching as the Specials took Zane away.
Dr. Cable was looking around the observatory. “I wanted to see what you were up to and where you would go. I thought you might lead us to those responsible for young Zane’s illness.” She frowned. “I was going to wait a bit longer to activate the tracker, but after you were so rude to my good friend Dr. Valen this morning, I thought we should come out and bring you home. You certainly know how to cause trouble.”
Tally stayed silent, her mind racing. The tracker in Zane’s tooth had been activated remotely, but not until the other scientists had discovered Dr. Valen. Once again, Tally had brought Specials along with her.
“We wanted a car to get away,” she said, trying to sound pretty. “But we got lost.”
“Yes, we found it in the ruins. But I don’t think you made it all the way here on foot. Who helped you, Tally?”
She shook her head. “No one.”
A Special in gray silk appeared beside Cable and gave a quick report. His razored voice made Tally’s flesh crawl, but she couldn’t make out any of the muttered words.
“Send the youngsters after them,” Dr. Cable ordered, then turned to Tally. “No one, you say? What about the cooking fires and hunting snares and latrines? Quite a few people were camped here, it seems, and they left not long ago.” She shook her head. “Pity we didn’t get here quicker.”
“You won’t catch them,” Tally said with a pretty smile.
“Won’t we?” Dr. Cable’s teeth gleamed red in the firelight. “We’ve got a few new tricks ourselves, Tally.”
The doctor turned and strode toward the entrance. When Tally tried to follow, a Special took her shoulder in a grip of iron and sat her down by the fire. Shouted orders and the sounds of more hovercars landing filtered into the dome, but Tally gave up trying to see what was going on through the entrance, and stared at the flames unhappily.
Now that Zane had been taken away, Tally only felt defeated. She’d been played perfectly by Dr. Cable again, tricked into finding the New Smoke, almost betraying everyone one more time. And after her last words, David probably hated her now.
But at least Fausto and the other Crims had escaped the city, hopefully for good. They and the New Smokies had the benefit of a few minutes’ head start. They couldn’t outrun the Specials’ cars in a straight line, but their hoverboards were more nimble. Without Zane’s tracker to give them away, they could simply disappear into the surrounding forest. Tally and Zane’s rebellion had swelled the ranks of the New Smokies by a couple of dozen members. And now that the cure had been tested, they could bring it to the city, and to other cities, and eventually everyone would be free.
Maybe the city hadn’t won, this time.
And being caught might be the best thing for Zane. The city doctors would be better able to treat him than a band of outlaws on the run. Tally focused her mind on how she would help him recover, making him bubbly all over again if she had to.
Maybe she would start with a kiss. . . .
• • •
An hour or so after the Specials had first arrived, the fire had burned low, and Tally began to feel the cold again. As she turned up her jacket’s heater, a shadow moved in the red shaft of sunset that slanted through the dome’s opening.
Tally started. It was someone coming down on a hoverboard. Was it David returning to save her? She shook her head. Maddy would never let him.
“We got a couple of them,” a harsh voice called from the board. The gray silk of Spec
ial uniforms fluttered in the gloom—two more figures descending through the crack in the dome. The hoverboards were longer than normal, with lifting fans built into their front and back ends. Their rotors stirred the embers of the fire.
So this was their new trick, Tally thought. Specials on hoverboards, perfect for tracking the New Smokies. She wondered who they’d caught.
“Uglies or pretties?” Dr. Cable called. Tally looked up and saw that the doctor had rejoined her by the fire.
“Just a couple of the Crims. The uglies all got away,” came the answer. Tally realized that beneath its razor sharpness, she recognized the sound of the Special’s voice.
“Oh, no,” she said softly.
“Oh, yes, Tally-wa.” The figure hopped off her board and strode into the firelight. “New surge! Do you like it?”
It was Shay. She was Special.
“Dr. C let me get more tattoos. Aren’t they totally dizzying?”
Tally looked at her old friend, awestruck by the transformation. The spinning lines of flash tattoos covered her, as if Shay’s skin were wrapped in a pulsing black net. Her face was lean and cruel, her upper teeth filed down to sharp, triangular points. She was taller, with hard new muscles in her bare arms. The line of the scars where she had cut herself stood out prominently, outlined with swirling tattoos. Shay’s eyes flashed in the firelight like a predator’s, shifting between red and violet as the flames danced.
She was still pretty, of course, but her cruel, inhuman grace sent shivers through Tally, like watching a colorful spider traverse its web.
Behind her, the other hoverboards descended. Ho and Tachs, Shay’s fellow Cutters, each held a limp form. Tally grimaced when she saw that they’d caught Fausto, who’d never been on a hover-board in his life before a few days ago. But most of the others had escaped, at least . . . and David had made it to safety.
The New Smoke still lived.
“Think my new surge is pretty-making, Tally-wa?” Shay said. “Not too much for you?”
Tally shook her head tiredly. “No. It’s bubbly, Shay-la.”
A broad, cruel smile filled Shay’s face. “About a zillion milli-Helens, huh?”
“At least.” Tally turned from her old friend and stared into the fire.
Shay sat down beside her. “Being Special is more bubbly than you can imagine, Tally-wa. Every second is totally spinning. Like, I can hear your heartbeat, can feel the electric buzz of that jacket trying to keep you warm. I can smell your fear.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Shay.”
“You are a little bit, Tally-wa. You can’t lie to me anymore.” Shay put her arm around Tally. “Hey, remember the crazy faces I used to design back when we were uglies? Dr. C will let me do them now. Cutters can surge however we want. Even the Pretty Committee can’t tell us what we can and can’t look like.”
“That must be great for you, Shay-la.”
“Me and my Cutters are the bubbly new thing in Circumstances. Like special Specials. Isn’t that totally happy-making?”
Tally turned to face her, trying to see what was behind the flashing violet-red eyes. Despite the pretty-talk, she heard a cold, serene intelligence in Shay’s voice, a pitiless joy in having snared her old betrayer.
Shay was a new kind of cruel pretty, Tally could see. Something even worse than Dr. Cable. Less human.
“Are you really happy, Shay?”
Shay’s mouth quivered, her sharp teeth running along her lower lip for a moment, and she nodded. “I am, now that I’ve got you back, Tally-wa. It wasn’t very nice, all of you running off like that without me. Totally sad-making.”
“We wanted you along, Shay, I swear. I left you all those pings.”
“I was busy.” Shay kicked at the dying fire with one boot. “Cutting myself. Searching for a cure.” She snorted. “Besides, I’ve had enough of the camping thing. And, anyway, we’re together now, you and me.”
“We’re against each other.” Tally barely whispered the words.
“No way, Tally-wa.” Shay’s hand squeezed her shoulder roughly. “I’m sick of all the mix-ups and bad blood between us. From now on, you and I are going to be best friends forever.”
Tally closed her eyes; so this was Shay’s revenge.
“I need you in the Cutters, Tally. It’s so bubbly-making!”
“You can’t do this to me,” Tally whispered, trying to pull away.
Shay held her firmly. “That’s the thing, Tally-wa. I can.”
“No!” Tally cried, lashing out and trying to struggle to her feet.
Quick as lightning, Shay’s hand shot forward, and Tally felt a sharp sting on her neck. Seconds later, a thick fog began to settle over her. She managed to pull away and take a few stumbling steps, but her limbs seemed to fill with liquid lead, and she fell to the ground. A shroud of gray descended across the fire in front of her, the world growing dark.
Words tumbled at her through the void, carried on a razor voice: “Face it, Tally-wa, you’re . . .”
BOGUS DREAMS
Over the next few weeks, Tally never quite awoke. She would stir sometimes, and realize from the feel of sheets and pillows that she was in bed, but mostly her mind floated free of her body, drifting in and out of disjointed versions of the same dream. . . .
• • •
There was this beautiful princess locked in a high tower, one with mirrored walls that wouldn’t shut up. There was no elevator or any other way down, but when the princess grew bored of staring at her own pretty face in the mirrors, she decided to jump. She invited all her friends to come along, and they all followed her down—except her best friend, whose invitation had been lost.
The tower was guarded by a gray dragon with jeweled eyes and a hungry maw. It had many legs and moved almost too fast to see, but it pretended to be asleep, and let the princess and her friends sneak past.
And you couldn’t have this dream without a prince.
He was both handsome and ugly, bubbly and serious, cautious and brave. In the beginning he lived with the princess in the tower, but later in the dream he seemed to have been outside all along, waiting for her. And in a dream-logic way he was often two princes, which she had to choose between. Sometimes the princess chose the handsome prince, and sometimes the ugly one. Either way, her heart was broken.
And whomever she picked, the dream’s ending never changed. The best friend, the one whose invitation had been lost, always tried to follow the princess. But the gray dragon woke up and swallowed her, and liked her taste so much that it came after the rest of them, hungry for more. From inside its stomach, the best friend looked out through the dragon’s eyes, and spoke with its mouth, swearing it would find the princess and punish her for leaving a friend behind.
And over all those sleepy weeks, the dream always ended the same way, with the dragon coming for the princess, saying the same words every time. . . .
“Face it, Tally-wa, you’re Special.”
LOOK FOR THE THIRD BOOK IN THE UGLIES SERIES:
SCOTT WESTERFELD
ugliesprettiesspecialsextras
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, aflame with moonlight.
Tally felt everything with a wild clarity: the brittle, freezing wind across her bare hands, the shifting gravities that pressed her feet against the hoverboard. She breathed in the forest, icy tendrils of pine coating her throat and tongue, thick as syrup.
The cold air seemed to make sounds crisper: The loose tail of her costume 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, and Tally heard every servomotor twitch in her new ceramic bones.
She squin
ted against the cold, eyes watering, but the tears made her vision even sharper. Icicles flashed past in glittering streaks, and moonlight silvered the world, like an old, colorless movie come flickering to life.
That was the thing about being Special: Everything was pretty now.
Shay swooped in beside Tally, their fingers brushing for a moment. She offered a reassuring smile, but when Tally tried to return it, her gaze flicked nervously away. 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 an ugly bash in Cleopatra Park.
But for Tally’s brain, it was way too soon to be playing dress-up. She’d only been special a month, and when she looked at Shay she still expected to see the old, regular-pretty Shay—not a Special, and certainly 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 mind refocus, trying to forget the missing feeling inside herself—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 wicked.”
“Should be. It is a party, after all,” Shay said. “Let’s all be happy little uglies.”
A few of the Cutters chuckled, amused by the fake faces they wore. Tally became aware again of her own millimeters-thick mask: plastic bumps and lumps to make her face zitted and flawed. Uneven dental caps blunted her razor-sharp teeth, and the gorgeously spinning web of flash tattoos covering her hands was sprayed over with fake skin.