Specials

by Scott Westerfeld

  This place wasn’t designed to warn trespassers off. It was designed to kill them.

  “Ready for some fun, Tally-wa?”

  Tally looked at Shay’s intense expression, and felt her own heart beating faster. She flexed her wounded hand. “Always, Boss.”

  They crept back through the grass to their hoverboards, which waited behind a giant, automated factory. As they ascended toward its roof, Tally zipped up the front of her sneak suit and felt its scales do a little boot-up dance. Her arms turned black and blurry-looking, the scales angling themselves to deflect radar waves.

  She frowned. “They’ll know that whoever did this had sneak suits, won’t they?”

  “I already told Dr. Cable about the Smokies going invisible on us. So maybe they loaned the Crims some toys.” Shay flashed a razor smile, then pulled her hood over her head, turning herself into a faceless silhouette. Tally did the same.

  “Ready to go ballistic?” Shay asked, pulling on gloves. Her voice was altered by the mask, and she looked like a person-shaped smudge against the horizon, her outline blurred by the random angles of the scales.

  Tally swallowed. The hood over her mouth made her breath hot against her face, like she was suffocating. “Ready when you are, Boss.”

  Shay snapped her fingers, and Tally crouched, counting off ten long seconds in her head. The boards began to buzz as they slowly built magnetic charge, the fan blades spinning up to just below take-off speed. . . .

  On ten, Tally’s board leaped into the air, pushing her down into a squat. The fans screamed all the way up to maximum, angling her toward the Armory like an arcing firework. A few seconds later, they shut down, and Tally found herself soaring through the dark sky in silence, excitement rushing through her once again.

  She knew this plan was crazy, but the danger filled her mind with iciness. And soon Zane would be able to feel this way too. . . .

  Halfway across, Tally grabbed the board and pulled it to her body, hiding its surface behind her radar-deflecting suit. Tally glanced over her shoulder—she and Shay were soaring over the no-fly barrier, high enough to escape the motion sensors on the ground. No alarms sounded as they passed the perimeter, falling silently toward the Armory’s roof.

  Maybe this was going to be easy. It had been two centuries since there had been any serious conflict among the cities—no one really believed that humanity would ever go to war again. Besides, the Armory’s automatic defenses were designed to repel a major attack, not a couple of burglars looking to borrow a handheld tool.

  She felt another smile grow on her face. This was the first time the Cutters had dared to trick the city itself. It was almost like ugly days again.

  The roof rushed toward her, and Tally held her board over her head, hanging from it like a parachute. A few seconds before she hit, the lifting fans burst to life, bringing her to a sudden halt. Tally landed softly, as easy as stepping from a slidewalk.

  The board cut off and settled into her hands. She lowered it gently to the roof. They could make no sound from now on, communicating only with sign language and through their suits’ contacts.

  A few meters away, Shay held both thumbs up.

  With soft, careful steps, the two made their way to the doors in the center of the roof, where hovercars entered and exited. Tally saw a seam down the middle where they would open up.

  She touched her fingertips to Shay’s, letting the suits carry her whisper. “Can we cut through this?”

  Shay shook her head. “This whole building’s made of orbital alloy, Tally. If we could cut through it, we could free Zane ourselves.”

  Tally scanned the roof, seeing no signs of access doors. “I guess we go with your plan then.”

  Shay drew her knife. “Get down.”

  Tally flattened herself against the roof, feeling her suit’s scales shift to match its texture.

  Shay threw the knife hard, then hit the ground herself. It arced beyond the building’s edge, spinning out into the darkness and toward the sensor-strewn grass.

  Seconds later, earsplitting alarms shrieked from all directions. The metal surface beneath them jolted, the doors parting with a rusty groan. A tornado of dust and dirt leaped from the gap, a monstrous machine rising in its midst.

  It was barely bigger than a pair of hoverboards lashed together, but it looked heavy—four lifting fans screamed with the effort of hauling it through the air. As it emerged, the machine seemed to grow, unfolding wings and claws with shuddering alien movements, like a giant metal insect being born. Its bulbous body bristled with weaponry and sensors.

  Tally was used to robots; cleaning and gardening drones were everywhere in New Pretty Town. But those looked like amiable toys. Everything about the mechanism above her—its jerky movements, its black armor, the shrieking blades of its fans—seemed inhuman and dangerous and cruel.

  It hovered for a nervous-making moment, and Tally thought it had spotted them, but then the fans twisted at a sharp angle, and the thing shot off in the direction that Shay had thrown her knife.

  Tally turned just in time to see Shay rolling through the still-open hovercar doors. She followed, slipping into darkness just as they began to lurch closed. . . .

  And found herself falling, tumbling down a lightless shaft. Her infrared only transformed the blackness into an incomprehensible riot of shapes and colors flying past.

  She dragged her feet and hands against the smooth metal wall, trying to slow herself, but skidded downward until one grippy toe jammed into a fissure. She came to a momentary halt.

  Scrambling for a handhold, Tally found nothing but slick metal. She was tipping over backward, her toe losing its grip. . . .

  But the shaft wasn’t much wider than she was tall—Tally thrust out her arms overhead, spreading her fingers as both hands struck the opposite wall. The traction of the climbing gloves brought her to a halt, facing upward, muscles straining.

  Her back was arched, her body wedged across the width of the shaft like a playing card bent between two fingers. Dull pain throbbed in her wounded hand from the impact.

  She twisted her head around, trying to see where Shay had fallen.

  There was nothing but darkness below. The shaft smelled of stale air and corrosion.

  Tally struggled to get a better look. Shay had to be close—the shaft couldn’t go down forever, after all, and Tally hadn’t heard anything hit the bottom. But it was impossible to judge perspective; all around her was a mass of meaningless infrared shapes.

  Her spine felt like a chicken bone about to snap. . . .

  Suddenly, fingertips touched her back.

  “Take it easy,” Shay’s whisper came through the suits’ contacts. “You’re making noise.”

  Tally sighed. Shay was just below her in the darkness, invisible in her sneak suit. “Sorry,” she whispered.

  The hand pulled away for a second, then the touch returned. “Okay. I’m steady. Let yourself drop.”

  She hesitated.

  “Come on, scaredy-cat. I’ll catch you.”

  Tally took a breath, squeezed her eyes shut, then let go. An instant of free fall later, she found herself cradled in Shay’s arms.

  Shay chuckled. “You are one heavy baby, Tally-wa.”

  “What are you standing on, anyway? I can’t see anything down here.”

  “Try this.” Shay sent an overlay through the suit contacts, and everything shifted around Tally, infrared frequencies rebalancing before her eyes. Slowly the glowing silhouettes around her began to make sense.

  The shaft was lined with hovercraft crouched in holding bays, their outlines bristling like the one they’d seen above. There were dozens in all shapes and sizes, a swarm of deadly machines. Tally imagined them all springing to life at once and chopping her to pieces.

  She placed a tentative foot on one of the machines, then slipped out of Shay’s arms, hands clinging to the barrel of the craft’s auto-cannon.

  Shay reached out and touched her shoulder, whispering, “H
ow about all this firepower? Icy, huh?”

  “Yeah, great. I just hope we don’t wake them up.”

  “Well, our infrared’s all the way up, and it’s still hard to see, so everything must be pretty cold. There’s actually rust on some of them.” Against the jumbled background, Tally saw Shay’s head turn upward. “But that one outside is plenty awake. We should get moving before it comes back.”

  “Okay, Boss. Which way?”

  “Not down. We need to stay close to our hoverboards.” Shay pulled herself upward, grasping weaponry, landing legs, and airfoils like handholds in a climbing gym.

  Up was fine with Tally, and now that she could see, the spiny shapes of the sleeping hovercraft made for easy climbing. Clinging to gun barrels was a little nervous-making, though, like entering some sleeping predator’s body through its own razor-toothed mouth. She avoided the grasping claws and fan blades, and anything else that looked sharp. The slightest tear in her suit would leave behind dead skin cells, revealing Tally’s identity like a fresh thumbprint.

  About halfway up, Shay reached down to touch her shoulder. “Access hatch.”

  Tally heard a metal cha-chunk, and blinding light filled the shaft, falling across two hovercraft. In the light they seemed less threatening—dusty and ill-kept, like stuffed predators in some old nature museum.

  Shay slipped through the hatch, and Tally scrambled after her, dropping into a narrow hallway. Her vision adjusted to the orange work lights overhead, her suit shifting to match the pale color of the walls.

  The hallway was too narrow for people—hardly wider than Tally’s shoulders—and the floor was covered with bar codes, navigation markers for machines. She wondered what nasty contraptions were roaming these halls, searching for intruders.

  Shay started up the hallway, waving a finger for Tally to follow.

  The hallway soon opened onto a room that was huge—bigger than a soccer field. It was full of motionless vehicles that towered around them like frozen dinosaurs. Their wheels were as tall as Tally, and their bowed cranes brushed the high ceiling. Lifting claws and giant blades shone dully in the orange work lights.

  She wondered why the city would keep a bunch of Rusty construction equipment around. These old machines would only be useful for building beyond the city’s magnetic grid, where hoverstruts and lifters wouldn’t work. The claws and earthmoving scoops around her were tools for attacking nature, not maintaining the city.

  There were no doors, but Shay gestured to a column of metal rungs set into the wall—a ladder leading up and down.

  One floor up, they found themselves in a small, crowded room. Floor-to-ceiling shelves were stuffed with a wild assortment of equipment: scuba breathers and night-vision goggles, firefighting canisters and body armor . . . along with a whole slew of things that Tally didn’t recognize.

  Shay was already scrabbling through the gear, slipping objects into her sneak suit’s pouches. She turned around and tossed something to Tally. It looked like a Halloween mask, with huge googly eyes and a nose like an elephant’s trunk. Tally squinted to read the tiny label tied to it:

  CIRC. 21 CENT.

  She puzzled over the words for a moment, then remembered the old-style dating system. This mask was from the Rusties’ twenty-first century, a little over three hundred years ago.

  This part of the Armory wasn’t a storehouse. It was a museum.

  But what was this thing? She turned the label over:

  BIOWARFARE FILTER MASK, USED

  Biowarfare? Used? Tally quickly dropped the mask on the shelf beside her. She saw Shay watching, the shoulders of her suit moving.

  Very funny, Shay-la, she thought.

  Biological warfare had been one of the Rusties’ more brilliant ideas: engineering bacteria and viruses to kill each other. It was about the stupidest kind of weapon you could make, because once the bugs were finished with your enemies, they usually came for you. In fact, the whole Rusty culture had been undone by one artificial oil-eating bacterium.

  Tally hoped that whoever ran this museum hadn’t left any civilization-ending bugs around.

  She crossed the floor, took Shay’s shoulder, and hissed, “Cute.”

  “Yeah, you should have seen your face. Actually, I should have seen your face. Stupid sneak suits.”

  “Find anything?”

  Shay held up a shiny tubelike object. “This should do the job. The label says it works.” She slipped it into one of her sneak-suit pouches.

  “So what’s all that other stuff for?”

  “To throw them off the scent. If we only steal one thing, they might figure out what we want it for.”

  “Oh,” Tally whispered. Shay might be making stupid jokes, but her mind was still icy.

  “Take these.” Shay shoved an armful of objects at her and went back to puzzling over the shelves.

  Tally looked down at the jumble of equipment, wondering if any of it was infected with Tally-eating bacteria. She slipped a few pieces that would fit into the sneak suit’s carrying pouches.

  The largest object looked like some kind of rifle, with a thick barrel and long-range optics. Tally peered down its sight and saw Shay’s silhouette in miniature, crosshairs marking where the bullets would hit if she squeezed the trigger. She felt a moment of disgust. The weapon was designed to make any average person into a killing machine, and life and death seemed like a lot to risk on a slip of some random’s finger.

  Her nerves were jumping. Shay had already found what they needed. It was time to get out of here.

  Then Tally realized what was making her nervous. She smelled something through the sneak suit’s filter, something human. She took a step toward Shay. . . .

  The lights overhead began to flicker, bright white chasing away the room’s orange glow, and footsteps clanged from the ladder rungs. Someone was climbing toward the museum.

  Shay crouched, rolling onto the lowest shelf beside her, stretching across the jumble of tools. Tally looked around frantically for a place to hide, then wedged herself into a corner where two shelves didn’t quite meet, the rifle hidden behind her. Her sneak suit’s scales writhed, trying to fade into the shadows.

  Across the room, Shay’s suit was sprouting jagged lines to break up her outline. By the time the light steadied overhead, she was almost invisible.

  But Tally was not. She looked down at herself. Sneak suits were designed for hiding in complex environments—jungles and forests and battle-wrecked cities, not in the corners of brightly lit rooms.

  But it was too late to find another spot.

  A man was stepping off the ladder.

  BREAK OUT

  He wasn’t very scary.

  He seemed to be an average late pretty, with the same gray hair and wrinkled hands as Tally’s great-grandfathers. His face showed the usual signs of life-extension treatments: crinkly skin around the eyes, and veiny hands.

  But he didn’t seem calm or wise to Tally, the way crumblies had before she’d become a Special—just old. She realized that she could knock him cold without regret if she had to.

  More nervous-making than the crumbly were the three little hovercams that floated above his head. They shadowed him as he strode unseeing past Tally toward one of the shelves. He reached to take something down, and the cameras shifted in the air, zipping in closer, like a rapt audience watching a magician’s every movement, always staying focused on his hands. He ignored the cameras, as if he was used to their attentions.

  Of course, Tally thought. The hovercams were part of the building’s security system, but they weren’t looking for intruders. They were designed to watch the staff, making sure nobody snuck off with any of the horrible old weapons stored here. They glided smoothly over his head, watching everything this historian—or museum curator, or whatever he was—did here in the Armory.

  Tally relaxed a little. Some crumbly boffin who himself was under guard was a lot less threatening than the squad of Specials she’d been expecting.

  He hand
led the objects delicately, and the care he took with them made her vaguely nauseous, as if he saw them as valuable works of art instead of killing machines.

  Then suddenly the crumbly froze, a frown on his face. He checked a glowing palmbook in his hand, then started sifting through the objects one by one. . . .

  He’d noticed something missing.

  Tally wondered if it was the rifle poking into her back. But it couldn’t be: Shay had taken the weapon from the other side of the museum.

  But then he picked up the biowarfare filter mask. Tally swallowed—she’d put it back in the wrong place.

  His eyes slowly swept the room.

  Somehow, he didn’t see Tally wedged into her corner. The sneak suit must have melded her outline into the shadows on the wall, like an insect against a tree limb.

  He carried the mask over to where Shay was hidden, his knees centimeters from her face. Tally was certain he’d notice all the objects she’d borrowed, but once the crumbly had put the mask back in its proper place, he nodded and turned around, a satisfied expression on his face.

  Tally breathed a slow sigh of relief.

  Then she saw the hovercam staring down at her.

  It still floated just above the crumbly’s head, but its little lens was no longer watching him. Either Tally’s imagination was running wild, or it was pointed straight at her, slowly focusing and refocusing.

  The crumbly walked back to where he’d started, but the camera stayed where it was, no longer interested in him. It drifted closer to Tally, flitting back and forth, like some hummingbird unsure about a flower. The old man didn’t notice its nervous little dance, but Tally’s heart was pounding, her vision blurring as she struggled not to breathe.

  The camera flew still closer, and past its flitting eye Tally saw Shay’s form shifting. She’d also seen the little hovercam—things were about to get very tricky.

  The camera stared at Tally, still unsure. Was it smart enough to know about sneak suits? Would it just chalk her up to a smudge on its lens?