"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 its 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.
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.
Or perhaps they were too afraid of Special Circumstances to raise their voices at all.
As she passed through the outer ring of Crumblyville, Tally's skintenna connected with a drone patrolling the city limits. The machine gave her a quick electronic frisk before realizing that she was an agent of Special Circumstances.
She wondered if anyone had figured out how to get past the new patrols yet, or whether all the tricky uglies were gone by now, either run away to Diego or drafted into Special Circumstances.
Everything had changed so much in the few weeks she'd been gone. The closer she got to the city, the less it felt like she was home at all, especially now that Zane would never see this skyline again...
Tally took a deep breath. Time to get this over with. "Message to Dr. Cable."
The ping bounced back to announce that the city interface had put her in a holding queue.
Apparently, the head of Special Circumstances was busy these days.
But a moment later, another voice answered, "Agent Youngblood?"
Tally frowned. It was Maxamilla Feaster, one of Cables subcommanders. The Cutters had always reported directly to Dr. Cable.
"Let me talk to the doctor," Tally said.
"She's not available, Youngblood. She's meeting with the City Council."
"She's downtown?"
"No. At headquarters."
Tally slowed her board to a halt. "Special Circumstances headquarters? Since when does the City Council meet out there?"
"Since we went to war, Youngblood. A lot's happened while you and your miscreants have been wandering around in the wild. Where on earth have you Cutters been?"
"That's a long story, one I have to tell the doctor face-to-face. Tell her I'm coming, and that what I have to say is extremely important."
There was a brief pause, then the woman's voice came back, annoyed. "Listen, Youngblood. We are at war, and Dr. Cable is currently acting chair of the Council. She's got a whole city to run, and doesn't have time to give you Cutters your usual special treatment. So tell me what this is all about, or you won't be seeing 'the doctor' anytime soon. Understand?"
Tally swallowed. Dr. Cable was running the whole city? Maybe confessing to her wasn't going to be enough. What if she was enjoying being in charge too much to believe the truth?
"Okay, Feaster. Just tell her that the Cutters have been in Diego the last week - fighting the war, okay? - and that I have some very important intelligence for the Council. It concerns the safety of the city. Is that good enough for you?"
"You've been in Diego? How did you - " the subcommander started, but Tally gestured to cut the feed. She'd said enough to get the woman's attention.
She leaned forward and engaged the board's lifting fans, heading for the factory belt at top speed, hoping to get there before the City Council meeting had ended.
They were the perfect audience for her confession.
Special Circumstances headquarters stretched across the plain of the factory belt, low and flat and unimpressive. But it was bigger than it looked, descending twelve stories down into the earth. If the City Council was afraid of another attack, it was the logical place to hide. Tally was certain that Dr.
Cable had welcomed the Council with open arms, happy to have the city government cowering in her basement.
Tally stared down from the summit of the long, tilted hill that overlooked the headquarters. Back in ugly days, she and David had jumped on hoverboards from here down to the roof. Since then, motion sensors had been installed to keep another break-in like theirs from happening again. But no fortress was designed to keep one of its own out, especially when she had important news to deliver.
Tally opened her skintenna feed again. "Message to Dr. Cable."
This time, Subcommander Feaster's response was instantaneous. "Quit playing around, Youngblood."