Specials u-3

by Скотт Вестерфельд

  The wind hit Tally in a roiling wave, whipping her legs out from under her and sending the hoverboard fluttering away. Her ears popped in the eddies and currents of the helicopter's vortex, and for a terrifying second she saw the giant blades loom close to her in a great blurred wall of force, their ear-shattering beat pounding through her body.

  But instead of cutting her to ribbons, the blades' fury flung her away; she spun in midair, the horizon wheeling around her. For a moment, even her special sense of balance failed, as if the world was whirling into chaos.

  After a few seconds of freefall, Tally felt a tug on her wrists, and made the gesture to recall her hoverboard. It had leveled itself off and was shooting toward her at top speed, its lifting fans so hot they had turned whiter than the sun.

  She made a grab for the board, and the superheated riding surface burned her hands even through gloves, the scent of grippy plastics at their melting point assaulting her nostrils. The heat was so intense that her sneak suit switched itself to armored mode, trying to offer some protection.

  Still spinning, Tally hung from the board for a moment, until its winglike shape stabilized her. Then she rolled herself up onto it and rose to a riding stance.

  She switched the sneak suit back to sky blue and looked ahead—the helicopter was receding into the distance.

  Tally hesitated, realizing that she should give up now, return to the pickup point, and wait for the next group of runaways. Surely helicopters made this trip regularly.

  But Zane was in there, and she couldn't abandon him now. Shay and the rest of Special Circumstances might already be on their way.

  Tally urged her overheating board faster. The helicopter had lost altitude and speed during its turn, and soon she was catching up.

  The heat of her hoverboard's surface began to burn the soles of her feet, and Tally felt its vibration shifting beneath her. The metal fans were expanding in the white heat, changing the board's sound and feel. She pushed it forward, until the tempest swirling around the helicopter began to batter her again, the air rumbling as she made another approach.

  But this time Tally knew what to expect; she had learned the shape of the invisible vortex in her first trip through. Instinct guided her through its whorls and eddies and into the small bubble of protection underneath the machine.

  Her hoverboard was whining furiously now, but she urged it upward toward the undercarriage, arms outstretched…

  Closer and closer.

  Tally felt the moment of breakdown through the soles of her feet, the board's unsteady vibration changing all at once into a wild shudder. A metal scream reached her ears as the lifting fans disintegrated, and she realized it was too late to go any direction but up. She bent her knees and leaped…

  At the peak of her jump, Tally scrambled for something to grab on to, her fingers brushing against the stored hoverboards. But they were packed into thick sandwiches without any handholds, and the helicopter's landing struts were out of reach on either side.

  Tally began to fall…

  She stabbed at her crash bracelets' controls, setting them to exhaust their batteries, to pull her toward the tons of metal above as hard as they could. A sudden, crushing force seized her wrists—the combined magnetics of twenty boards booting up and taking hold. The bracelets dragged her upward, pinning Tally against the nearest riding surface, her arms almost ripped from their sockets by the sudden jerk.

  Below, the screech of her hoverboard turned into a wracking cough, then it dropped away. Tally's ears caught the metal squeal of the board, tearing itself to pieces as it fell, until the helicopter's portable maelstrom whisked the noise away.

  Tally found herself stuck to the underside of the helicopter, its vibration rumbling through her like crashing waves.

  For a moment, she wondered if the pilots and passengers had heard her board disintegrate, but then Tally remembered her own helicopter flight the year before. To make themselves heard, she and the rangers had been forced to shout over the roar of the blades.

  After a few minutes of hanging from her wrists, Tally turned off the magnetics in one of her bracelets and swung out both feet, wrapping them around a landing strut. She switched off the other, then dangled head-down from the strut for a nervous-making moment in the furious wind before pulling herself up into a small gap between the runaways' boards. From there, she watched as the trip unfolded.

  The helicopter proceeded on its inland course, the world growing more lush and forested as the sea slipped away behind. It climbed still higher, moving faster until the trees were nothing but a green blur below. Only a few spots had been touched by the white weed here.

  Keeping a careful grip, Tally pulled off her gloves and checked her hands. The palms were burned, with a few pieces of melted plastic stuck to them, but the flash tattoos still pulsed, even those already broken by her cutting scar. Her medspray had gone down with the hoverboard, along with everything else. Only her crash bracelets, ceremonial knife, and sneak suit had survived.

  But she'd made it. Tally finally allowed herself a slow breath of relief. Watching the scenery pass below, the pleasure of accomplishing a really icy trick washed through her.

  Tally's fingers brushed the old metal belly of the helicopter—Zane was only a few meters from her. He had accomplished quite a trick as well. Despite his lesions and his brain damage, he had almost made it to the New Smoke. Whatever Shay thought of Tally now, she couldn't deny that Zane had earned the right to join Special Circumstances. After all this, Tally wouldn't take no for an answer.

  By Tally's internal software, it was an hour later that the first signs of their destination began to appear below.

  Although the forest was still dense, a few rectangular fields came into view, the trees chopped down and stacked to make way for some sort of building project. Then more marks of new construction: huge diggers tearing at the earth and magnetic lifters moving hoverstruts into place. Tally frowned. The New Smoke was crazy if they thought they could get away with clear-cutting.

  But then more familiar sights began to pass below. The low buildings of a factory belt, then the dense row houses of suburbia. Then a cluster of taller buildings rose up on the horizon, and the air began to fill with hovercars. A ring of soccer fields and dormitories passed below, exactly like Uglyville back in her own city.

  Tally shook her head. All this couldn't have been built by Smokies…

  Then she remembered Shay's words the night they'd snuck into New Pretty Town to see Zane, about how David and his pals had acquired sneak suits from mysterious allies, and she realized the truth.

  The New Smoke wasn't some hidden encampment in the wild, where people crapped into holes and ate dead rabbits, burning trees for fuel. The New Smoke was right here, spread out below her.

  An entire city had joined the rebellion.

  Hard Landing

  Tally had to get off before the helicopter landed.

  She didn't want to be found clinging to the underside when they touched down. Zane would see her, and the rangers would probably know that her cruel beauty marked her as an agent of another city. But as the helicopter settled into a circling approach, headed toward a landing pad, Tally could see nowhere safe to drop.

  In her own city, a river wrapped around the island of New Pretty Town. But she saw no convenient bodies of water to jump into, and she was too high to use crash bracelets safely. The sneak suit's armor might protect Tally, but the landing pad was nestled between two large buildings, surrounded by crowded slidewalks full of fragile pedestrians.

  As the helicopter made its final approach, she spotted the tall hedges surrounded the landing pad—sturdy enough to dampen the wind from the helicopter's blades. They looked prickly, but a few thorns were nothing the sneak suit's armor couldn't handle.

  The helicopter slowed as the pad loomed below, and Tally pulled her hood down to protect her face. As the helicopter banked to bring itself to a halt, she let herself drop, rolling into a ball as she fell, like a li
ttlie jumping into a swimming pool.

  Her left shoulder hit the hedge with a sudden crunch, branches snapping off against the suit's armor, and she bounced away from the barrier in an explosion of leaves, spinning through the air. She managed to land on her feet, but found herself stumbling across an unsteady surface…the quick-moving slidewalk she'd seen on the way down.

  Tally waved her arms, almost regaining her balance, but one last step took her onto another slidewalk going the opposite way, which spun her around and dumped her on her back, spread-eagled and staring dumbfoundedly up at the sky

  "Ouch," she murmured. Specials might have unbreakable ceramic bones, but there was still plenty of flesh to be bruised and nerve endings to complain.

  Two tall buildings crowded the sky above her. They seemed to be moving gracefully past…She was still being carried along by the slidewalk.

  A middle-pretty face came into view, looking down at her with a stern expression. "Young lady! Are you all right?"

  "Yeah. Mostly."

  "Well, I am aware that standards of conduct have changed. But you could still be reported to the wardens for a stunt like that!"

  "Oh, sorry," Tally said, rising painfully to her feet.

  "I suppose that suit was meant to protect you?" the man continued sternly. "But did you ever stop to think of the rest of us!"

  Tally rubbed her probably bruise-covered back with one hand, held up the other in defense. For a middle pretty, this guy wasn't very understanding. "I said I was sorry. I had to get off that helicopter."

  The man snorted. "Well, if you can't wait to land, next time use a bungee jacket!"

  A sudden wave of annoyance came over Tally. This average, aging middle pretty just wouldn't shut up. She decided she was bored with the conversation and pulled off the sneak suit's hood, baring her teeth. "Maybe next time, I'll aim for you!"

  The man looked straight back into her black and wolfen eyes, her lacework tattoos and razor smile, and only snorted again. "Or maybe you'll break your pretty neck!"

  He made a satisfied little noise and stepped onto the faster lane of the slidewalk, which whisked him away without another glance back at Tally.

  She blinked. That hadn't been the reaction she'd been expecting. In the windows of the passing building, her warped reflection drifted by. She was still a Special, her face still marked with all the signs of cruel beauty, designed to call up all humanity's ancient fears. But the man had hardly noticed.

  Tally shook her head. Maybe in this city Special Circumstances agents didn't keep themselves hidden, and he'd seen cruel pretties before. But what was the point of looking terrifying if everyone had a chance to get used to it?

  She played the conversation back in her mind, realizing how close the man's accent was to how she remembered the rangers'—fast, clipped, and precise. This had to be their home city.

  But if this whole city really was the New Smoke, where was Shay? Tally boosted her skintenna range, but got no answering ping. Of course, cities were big—she might simply be out of range. Or maybe she had switched off, still sulking over Tally's latest betrayal.

  Tally glanced back toward the landing pad. The helicopter's engines were still idling. Perhaps this city wasn't the New Smoke, and was only a refueling stop. Stepping over onto the opposite slidewalk, Tally headed back toward the pad.

  A couple of new pretties glided by, and Tally noticed that they were wearing costume surge. One had skin much paler than any Pretty Committee would ever allow, with red hair and a smattering of freckles across her face, like one of those littlies who always had to worry about sunburn. The other's skin was so dark it was almost black, and his muscles were way too obvious.

  Maybe that explained the middle-pretty man's reaction, or lack of it. There had to be some sort of costume bash happening tonight, one that all the new pretties were surging up for. The costume surgery was more extreme than would ever be allowed back in Tally's city, but at least it meant she wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb while she tried to figure out what was going on.

  Of course, the armored black of her sneak suit wasn't exactly fashionable. With a little fiddling, she tuned it to resemble the clothing the two new pretties had been wearing: striped patterns in bold colors, like you'd dress a littlie in back at home. The garish hues made her feel even more conspicuous, but when a few more young pretties glided past—with translucently pale faces, oversize noses, and wildly colored clothes—Tally almost felt as if she was starting to fit in.

  The buildings here didn't look too different from those she'd grown up with. The two on either side of the landing pad looked like typical government monoliths. In fact, the closer of the two had stone letters cut into it spelling out town hall, and most of the slidewalk step-offs were labeled with the names of city agencies. Ahead of Tally were the hovering party towers and sprawling mansions of what had to be New Pretty Town, and she could see ugly-dorms and soccer fields in the distance.

  It seemed strange, though, not having a river between New Pretty Town and Uglyville. It would be too easy to sneak across, hardly a challenge at all. How would you keep party-crashers out?

  She hadn't seen any wardens so far. Would anyone here know what her cruel beauty meant?

  A young pretty stepped onto the slidewalk beside her, and Tally decided to see if she could pass for a local.

  "Where's the bash tonight?" she asked, trying to imitate the local accent and hoping she didn't sound too random for not knowing.

  "The bash?. You mean a party?"

  Tally shrugged. "Yeah, sure."

  The young woman laughed. "Take your pick. There's mountains of them."

  "Right, mountains. But which one's all the costume surge for?"

  "Costume surge?" The woman looked at Tally like she'd said something totally random. "Did you just get off the chopper or something?"

  Tally's eyebrows rose. "Um, the helicopter? Yeah, sort of."

  "With a face like that?" The woman frowned. Her own skin was dark brown, her fingernails decorated with tiny video screens, each showing a different flickering image.

  Tally could only shrug again.

  "Oh, I see. Couldn't wait to look like one of us?" She laughed again. "Listen, kid, you should really be hanging out with the other newbies, at least until you know what's going on here." She squinted her eyes, her fingers making an interface gesture. "Diego says they're all up at the Overlook tonight."

  "Diego?"

  "The city." She laughed again, her fingernails flashing in tandem with the sound. "Wow, kid, you really are just off the chopper."

  "Yeah, I guess. Thanks," Tally said, suddenly feeling very average and helpless, not special at all. Trying to navigate this new city her strength and speed meant nothing, and even her cruel beauty didn't seem to impress anyone. It was like being an ugly again, when things like knowing the best bashes and how to dress had been more important than being superhuman.

  "Well, welcome to Diego," the young pretty called, and stepped into a high-speed lane, waving good-bye with the vague embarrassment of ditching a loser at a party.

  As she approached the landing pad, Tally kept a wary eye out for the runaway Crims. She stepped off the slidewalk where the hedge showed damage from her collision, and peeked through one of the gaps she'd left behind.

  The runaways had unloaded from the helicopter, but they were still getting themselves sorted. Like typical bubbleheads, they were having trouble figuring out which hoverboard was whose. They clustered around the ranger who was trying to organize things, like littlies after ice cream.

  Zane was waiting patiently, looking the happiest Tally had seen him since they'd escaped the city. A few of the other Crims crowded around him, slapping him on the back and congratulating one another.

  One of the Crims brought Zane his board, and all eight of them set off toward the huge building across from Town Hall.

  Tally saw that it was a hospital. That made sense. Anyone from outside would be checked for diseases, and for injuries a
nd food poisoning from the trip. And since this city really was the New Smoke, newcomers would have their bubblehead lesions taken away as well.

  Of course, Tally thought. Maddy's pills didn't have to work perfectly anymore. The runaways would all wind up here, where a city hospital staffed with real doctors could take care of their lesions.

  She took a step back, breathing out slowly, finally admitting it to herself: The New Smoke was a thousand times larger and more powerful than she and Shay had expected.

  The authorities here were taking in other cities' runaways, curing them of bubbleheadness. Now that she thought about it, none of the people she'd met so far had the lesions. All of them had expressed their opinions openly, not like bubbleheads at all.

  That would explain why this city—"Diego," the woman had called it—had thrown out the Pretty Committee's standards, letting everyone look the way they wanted. They'd even started to build new structures in the surrounding forests, expanding out into the wild.

  If that was all true, it was no wonder that Shay was no longer here. She'd probably gone home to report all this to Dr. Cable and Special Circumstances.

  But what could they do about it? Cities couldn't tell one another how to run their affairs, after all.

  This New Smoke could last forever.

  Random Town

  Tally spent the day walking around the city, marveling at how different it was from her own.

  She saw new pretties and uglies hanging out together, friends that the operation hadn't separated. And littlies clinging to their ugly older brothers and sisters instead of being stuck in Crumblyville with their parents. Those small changes were almost as surprising as the wild facial structures, skin textures, and body mods she encountered. Almost. It might take a while to get used to coats of downy feathers, pinkie fingers replaced with tiny snakes, skin every shade between deep black and alabaster, and hair that writhed like some sinuous creature under the sea.

  Whole cliques wore the same skin color, or shared similar faces, like families used to before the operation. It reminded Tally uncomfortably of how people grouped themselves back in pre-Rusty days, into tribes and clans and so-called races who all looked more or less alike, and made a big point of hating anyone who didn't look like them. But everyone seemed to be getting along so far—for every clique of people who looked alike, there was another of wild variations.