Moonlight illuminated the white water, each burst of spray glittering around her like an explosion of diamonds. The icicles had all melted in the warm air of early summer, releasing the pine smell of the forest to coat her tongue like syrup. Tally didn't gesture for infrared vision, letting her other senses probe the darkness unassisted.
Amid all this beauty, Tally knew exactly what she had to do.
Her lifting fans sprang to life as she took the old familiar path, down the trail that led to the natural vein of iron discovered by some tricky ugly generations ago. She skimmed across it on magnetics, down into the dark bowl of the Rusty Ruins.
The dead buildings rose up around her, towering monuments to the people who had once let themselves grow too greedy and too many, hungry billions of them spreading across the globe.
Tally stared long and hard as she passed the burnt-out cars and gaping windows, her special eyes returning the blank gaze of a crumbling skull. She never wanted to forget this place.
Not with all these changes coming…
Her hoverboard climbed the iron frame of the tallest building, the place Shay had brought her that first night she'd been Outside, almost exactly a year ago. On silent magnetics, Tally drifted up through its empty shell, the silent city sprawling around her through the empty window frames.
But when she reached the top, David was gone.
His sleeping bag and other equipment had all disappeared, only empty self-heating meals remained scattered around the half-crumbled section of floor. There were a lot of them—he'd waited for her a long time.
He'd also taken the crude antenna he'd pinged her with.
Tally flicked on her skintenna and felt it reach out across the dead and empty city, waiting with her eyes closed for some kind of reply.
But no ping came. A kilometer was nothing in the wild.
She went higher, up to the summit of the tower, slipping through one of the gaping holes in the roof up into the rushing wind. Her board kept climbing until its magnetics lost their grip on the skyscraper's iron frame. Then her lifting fans spun to life, turning red-hot as they strained to push her higher.
"David?" she said softly.
Still no answer.
Then she remembered Shay's old trick, back in ugly days.
Tally knelt on the wavering, windblown board and reached a hand into its storage compartment. Dr. Cable had loaded it with medspray, smart plastic, firestarters, and even a single meal of SpagBol, just for old times' sake.
Then Tally's fingers closed around a safety flare.
She lit it, raising it in one hand, the fierce wind scattering a stream of sparks behind her as long as a kite string. "I'm not alone," she said.
She held it there until the hoverboard grew white-hot beneath her feet, the flare finally sputtering out to a single glowing ember.
Then Tally dropped back into the Rusty skyscraper and curled up on the high section of broken floor, suddenly overwhelmed by her escape, almost too exhausted to care if anyone had seen her signal.
David came at dawn.
The Plan
"Where were you?" she said sleepily.
He stepped from his board, exhausted and unshaven. But David's eyes were wide. "I've been trying to get into the city. Trying to find you." Tally frowned. "The borders are open again, aren't they?"
"Maybe if you know how cities work …" She laughed. David had spent all of his eighteen years out in the wild. He didn't know how to deal with simple things like security drones.
"I made it in finally," he continued. "But then I had some trouble finding Special Circumstances headquarters." He sat down wearily.
"But you saw my flare."
"Yeah, I did." He smiled, but he was watching her closely. "The reason I was trying to …" He swallowed. "I can pick up the city feeds on my antenna. It said they were going to change you all. Turn you into something less dangerous. Are you still … ?" She gazed at him. "What do you think, David?" He peered into her eyes for a long moment, then sighed and shook his head. "You just look like Tally to me."
She looked down, her vision blurring.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing, David." She shook her head. "You just took on five million years of evolution again."
"I what? Did I say something wrong?"
"No." She smiled. "You said something right."
They ate a meal of city food, Tally swapping the SpagBol in her storage compartment for a can of David's PadThai.
She told him how she'd used his injector to change Dr. Cable, and about her month of captivity, and how she'd finally escaped. She explained that the debates David had heard on the newsfeeds meant that the cure was taking hold, the city transforming at last.
The Smokies had won, even here.
"So you're still special?" he finally asked.
"My body is. But the rest of me, I think that's all…" She had to swallow before using Zane's word. "Rewired."
David smiled. "I knew you'd manage."
"That's why you waited here, isn't it?"
"Of course. Someone had to." He cleared his throat. "My mom thinks I'm busy seeing the world, spreading the revolution."
Tally looked out at the ruined city. "The revolution's going pretty well on its own, David. It's unstoppable now."
"Yeah." Then he sighed. "But it's not like I did a very good job of saving you."
"I'm not the one who needs saving, David," Tally said. "Not anymore. Oh, right! I forgot to mention, Maddy sent me a message for you."
His eyebrows went up. "She sent you a message for me?"
"Yeah. 'I love you…'" Tally swallowed again. "She said to say that. So maybe she knows where you are, after all."
"Maybe so."
"You randoms can be awfully predictable," Tally said, smiling. She'd been watching him closely, her eyes cataloging all his imperfections, the asymmetry of his features, the pores of his skin, his too-big nose. His scar.
He wasn't an ugly anymore; to her he was just David. And maybe he had been right. Maybe she didn't have to do this alone.
David hated cities, after all. He didn't know how to use an interface or call a hovercar, and his handmade clothes would always look pretty bogus at a bash. And he certainly wasn't cut out to live in a place where people had snakes for pinkies.
Most important, Tally knew that no matter how her plan turned out, whatever awful things the world forced her to do, David would remember who she really was.
"I have this idea," she said.
"About where you're going next?"
"Yeah." Tally nodded. "It's kind of this plan … to save the world."
David paused, chopsticks halfway to his mouth, the SpagBol slithering off them and back into the container. His face shifted through emotions, as easy to read as any ugly's: confusion, curiosity, then a hint of understanding. "Can I help?" he asked simply.
She nodded. "Please. You're the right man for the job."
And then she explained everything.
That night, she and David hoverboarded to the very edge of the city, slowing to a halt when the repeater network picked up her skintenna. The three messages from Shay, Pens, and Maddy were still there, waiting for her. Tally flexed her fingers nervously.
"Look at that!" David said, pointing.
The skyline of New Pretty Town was aglow, rockets shooting high and bursting into vast, sparkling flowers of red and purple. The fireworks were back.
Maybe they were celebrating the end of Dr. Cable's rule, or the new transformations sweeping through the city or the end of the war. Or perhaps this display marked the final days of Special Circumstances, now that the last Special had run off into the wild.