It was Dr. Cable.
THE DRAGON
"Do I know you?"
Dr. Cable smiled coldly. "I'm sure you remember me, Tally."
Tally took a step back, letting some of her fear show; even the most innocent new pretty would be frightened by the sight of Dr. Cable. Her cruel features, exaggerated by the moonlight, made her look like a beautiful woman half transformed into a werewolf.
Memories flooded into Tally's mind. Being trapped in Dr. Cable's office that awful first time they'd met, learning of the existence of Special Circumstances, and then again when she had agreed to find and betray Shay, the price for becoming pretty. Then, in the Smoke, after Cable had followed Tally with an army of Specials to burn her new home to the ground.
"Yeah," Tally said. "I think I remember. I used to know you, right?"
"Indeed, you did." Cable's sharp teeth glowed in the moonlight. "But what's more important, Tally, is that I know you."
Tally managed a vacant smile. Dr. Cable no doubt remembered their last meeting - Tally and David's rescue of the Smokies - when it had been necessary to crack her on the head.
Dr. Cable gestured at the black scarf that bound Tally's cuff tightly under her glove and winter coat. "Interesting way to wear a scarf."
"What, are you fashion-missing? Everybody does this."
"But I imagine you started the trend. You always were tricky."
Tally beamed prettily. "I guess. I used to play all kinds of tricks back when I was ugly."
"Nothing like today, though."
"Oh, you saw the feeds? Wasn't that totally bogus? The ice just falling out from under us like that!"
"Yes...just like that." Dr. Cable's eyes narrowed. "I must admit, at first you had me fooled. That floating rink was a typical architectural folly designed to amuse new pretties. An accident waiting to happen. But then 1 thought about the timing - the stadium full, a hundred cameras ready."
Tally blinked, shrugged. "I bet it was those fireworks. You could feel them right through the ice.
Who's missing idea was that?"
Dr. Cable nodded slowly. "An almost believable accident. And then I saw your face on the newsfeeds, Tally. All wide-eyed and innocent and telling your bubbly little tale." Cable's upper lip curled into something that was not a smile. "And I realized that you were still playing tricks."
Tally felt something punch into her stomach, something from ugly days: the old feeling of being caught. She tried to turn her fear into a look of surprise. "Me?"
"That's right, Tally: you. Somehow."
Under Dr. Cable's gaze, Tally imagined herself being hauled into the depths of Special Circumstances, the cure reversed, her memories erased again. Or maybe this time they wouldn't bother returning her to New Pretty Town at all. She tried to swallow, but her mouth felt full of cotton. "Yeah, right. Like everything's my fault," she managed.
Dr. Cable stepped closer, and Tally fought to hold her ground, though her whole body screamed run. The woman gazed at her coldly, as if peering at a specimen cut open on a table. "I certainly hope that it was your fault."
Tally frowned. "You hope what?"
"Let's speak frankly, Tally Youngblood. I've had enough of your pretty act. I'm not here to take you away to my dungeon."
"You're not?"
"Do you really think I care if you break things in New Pretty Town?"
"Um...kind of?"
Dr. Cable snorted. "Maintenance is not my department. Special Circumstances is only interested in outside threats. The city can take care of itself, Tally. There are so many safety backups, it's hardly worth worrying about. Why do you think skaters on that rink had to wear bungee jackets?"
Tally blinked. It hadn't crossed her mind to wonder about the jackets; everything was always ultra-safe in New Pretty Town, otherwise new pretties would kill themselves left and right. She shrugged.
"In case the lifters failed? Like in a power blackout?"
Cable let out a razor-sharp laugh that lasted less than a second. "There hasn't been a blackout in a hundred and fifty years." She shook her head at the thought and continued. "Knock down anything you want, Tally. I don't care about your little tricks...except for what they reveal about you."
The woman's gaze focused on her once more, and Tally again had to fight the urge to run. She wondered if this was simply a way to get her to admit what the Crims had done. Probably she'd said too much already. But something about Dr. Cable's cold stare - her razor voice, her predatory movements, her very existence in the world - made it impossible for Tally to act pretty-minded. By now, any real new pretty would have fled screaming or dissolved into a puddle on the spot.
Besides, if Special Circumstances really wanted Tally to confess her tricks, they wouldn't have bothered with a conversation.
"So why are you here?" Tally said in her normal voice, trying hard to keep it steady
"I've always admired your survival instinct, Tally. You were a good little traitor when you had to be."
"Uh, thanks ... I guess."
Cable nodded. "And now it turns out you have more of a brain than I gave you credit for. You resist conditioning very well."
"Conditioning. That's what you call it?" Tally swore. "Like it's a hair treatment or something?"
"Amazing." Dr. Cable leaned close again, her eyes focusing on Tally's as if trying to bore through to her brain. "Somewhere in there, you're still a tricky little ugly, aren't you? Most impressive. I could use you, I think."
Tally felt a flush of anger, a fire inside her head. "Um, like, didn't you already use me?"
"So, you do remember. Superb." The woman's cruel-pretty eyes, flat and lusterless and cold, somehow showed pleasure. "I know that was an unpleasant experience, Tally. But it was necessary We needed to take our children back from the Smoke, and only you could help us. But I do apologize."
"Apologize?" Tally said. "For blackmailing me into betraying my friends, for destroying the Smoke, for killing David's father?" She felt an expression of disgust on her face. "I don't think you'll be using me, Dr. Cable. I've already" done you enough favors."
The woman only smiled again. "I agree. So it's time I did you a favor. What I am offering is something quite...bubbly."
The word on Cable's thin, cruel lips made Tally laugh dryly. "What would you know about being bubbly?"
"You'd be surprised. We at Special Circumstances know all about sensations, especially the ones you and your so-called Crims are always searching for. I can give it to you, Tally. All day, every day, bubblier than you can imagine. The real thing. Not just an escape from the haze of being pretty - something better."
"What are you talking about?"
"Remember flying on a hoverboard, Tally?" Cable said, her dull eyes igniting with cold fire. "That feeling of being alive? Yes, we can make people pretty inside - empty and lazy and vapid - but we can also make them bubbly, as you call it. More intense than you ever felt as an ugly, more alive than a wolf taking its prey even bubblier than ancient Rusty soldiers killing one another over some plot of oil-rich desert. Your senses sharper, your body faster than any athlete's in history, your muscles as strong as any human's in the world."
The woman's razor voice fell silent, and Tally could suddenly hear the night around them perfectly - icicles dripping against hard ground, trees creaking in the wind, the bonfire below spitting out random showers of sparks. She could hear the party perfectly: Crims shouting about the exploits of the day, arguing about who had bounced highest or landed hardest. Cable's words had left the world as sharp as broken crystal.
"You should see the world as I see it, Tally."
"You're offering me a ... job? As a Special?"
"Not a job. A whole new being." Dr. Cable said each word with deliberate care. "You can be one of us."
Tally was breathing hard, her pulse pounding through her entire body, as if the very idea was already changing her. She bared her teeth at Dr. Cable. "You think I'd work for you?"
"Consider your other choice, Tally. Spending your life looking for cheap thrills, managing a few moments at a time truly awake. Never clearing your head completely. But you'd make a fine Special.
Traveling to the Smoke on your own was impressive; I always had hopes for you. But now that I see you're still tricky even after the operation" - Dr. Cable shook her head - "I realize that you're a natural.
Join us."
A ping went through Tally as she understood something at last. "Tell me something. What were you like as an ugly?"
"Outstanding, Tally." The woman barked her one-second laugh. "You already know the answer, don't you?"
"You were tricky."
Cable nodded. "I was just like you. All of us were. We went to the ruins, tried to run farther, had to be brought back. That's why we let uglies play their little tricks - to see who's cleverest. To see which of you fights your way out of the cage. That's what your rebellion is all about, Tally - graduating to Special Circumstances."
Tally closed her eyes, and knew the woman was telling the truth. She remembered being an ugly, how easy it had always been to fool the dorm minders, how everyone always found ways around the rules. She took a deep breath. "But why?"
"Because someone has to keep things under control, Tally."
"That's not what I meant. What I want to know is, why do you do it to pretties? Why change their brains?"
"Goodness, Tally, isn't that obvious?" Dr. Cable shook her head in disappointment. "What do they teach in school these days?"
"That the Rusties almost destroyed the world," Tally recited.
"There's your answer."
"But we're better than them, we leave the wild alone, we don't strip-mine or burn oil. We don't have wars..." Tally's voice sputtered out as she began to see.
Dr. Cable nodded. "We art under control, Tally, because of the operation. Left alone, human beings are a plague. They multiply relentlessly, consuming every resource, destroying everything they touch. Without the operation, human beings always become Rusties."
"Not in the Smoke."
"Think back, Tally. The Smokies clear-cut the land, they killed animals for food. When we landed, they were burning trees."
"Not that many." Tally heard her voice break.
"What if there had been millions of Smokies? Billions of them, soon enough? Outside of our self-contained cities, humanity is a disease, a cancer on the body of the world. But we ..." She reached out and stroked Tally's cheek, her fingers strangely hot in the winter air. "Special Circumstances ... we are the cure."
Tally shook her head, stumbling back from Dr. Cable. "Forget it."
"This is what you've always wanted."
"You're wrong!" Tally shouted. "All I ever wanted was to be pretty. You're the one who keeps getting in my way!"
Her cry left them both in surprised silence, the last words echoing through the park. A hush settled over the party below, everyone probably wondering who was screaming her head off up in the trees.
Dr. Cable recovered first, sighing softly. "Goodness, Tally. Relax. There's no need to shout. If you don't want what I'm offering, I'll leave you to your party. Feel free to age into a smug middle pretty.
Soon enough, being bubbly won't matter so much; you'll forget this little conversation."
Tally held the doctor's cruel-pretty stare, almost wanting to tell her about the cure, to spit it back in her face. Tally's mind wasn't going to fade away, not tomorrow, not in fifty years; she wasn't going to forget who she was. And she didn't need Special Circumstances to feel alive.