Скотт Вестерфельд - Specials

All around them, the other Cutters were keeping themselves icy. They'd made a bonfire of fallen trees tonight, Shay's way of building morale after last night's ambush. All sixteen of them—minus Fausto—were gathered around, daring one another to dash through the flames barefoot, boasting about what they were going to do to the Smokies when they finally caught them.

And yet Tally felt outside it all, somehow.

Usually, she loved bonfires, the way they made the shadows jump like living things, the real wickedness of burning trees. That was the whole point of being special: You existed to make sure everyone else behaved, but that didn't mean you had to.

But tonight the bonfire smell kept triggering memories of her Smokey days. A few of the Cutters had recently switched from cutting to branding, marking their arms with the red-hot ends of firebrands. Like cutting, it kept your mind icy. But for Tally, the smell was too much like when they'd cooked dead animals back in the Smoke. So she stuck to knives.

She kicked a stick into the flames. "Of course I trust you, Shay. But for the last two months I figured that Zane would join Special Circumstances the moment he got better. The thought of him in New Pretty Town, wearing some cookie-cutter face …" She shook her head.

"If I could get him here, Tally-wa, I would."

"So you'll talk to Dr. Cable about it?"

Shay spread her hands. "Tally, you know the rules: To join Special Circumstances, you have to prove you're special. You have to think your way out of being a bubblehead."

"But Zane was practically special back when he led the Crims. Doesn't Cable understand that?"

"But he didn't really change until after he took Maddy's pill." Shay scooted closer and put her arm around Tally's shoulder, her eyes flickering red in the firelight. "You and I thought our way out, without any help."

"Zane and I started changing from the first time we kissed," Tally said, pulling away. "If he hadn't gotten his brain toasted, he'd be one of us by now."

"So what are you worried about?" Shay shrugged. "He did it once, he can do it again."

Tally turned to glare at Shay, unable to say what they were both wondering. Was Zane still the bubbly guy who'd started the Crims? Or had his brain damage changed all that, dooming him to stay a bubblehead for the rest of his life?

The whole thing was totally unfair. Completely random.

When the Smokies had brought the first nanos into New Pretty Town, they'd left two pills for Tally to find, along with a letter from herself warning about the dangers, but saying she'd given 'informed consent.' She'd been too scared at first, but Zane was always bubbly, always trying to escape from being pretty-minded. He'd offered to take the untried pills.

The nanos were supposed to free the pretties, turning them from bubbleheads into…well, no one had ever bothered to figure out what exactly. What would you do with a bunch of spoiled, superbeautiful people with no limits on their appetites? Let them loose on the fragile world, to destroy it the way the Rusties almost had three centuries before?

In any case, the cure hadn't really worked like it was supposed to. Tally and Zane had split the pills, and Zane had gotten the unlucky one. The nanos in it had eaten the lesions that made him a bubblehead, but then they'd kept right on going, eating away more and more of his mind…

Tally shuddered at the thought of how lucky she'd been. The only purpose of her pill had been to switch off the nanos in the other one. Alone, it hadn't done anything— she'd only thought she'd taken the cure. And yet she'd managed to stop being a bubblehead all on her own—no nanos, no operation, not even cutting herself like Shay's crew had.

That was why she was in Special Circumstances.

"But either one of us could have taken that pill," Tally said softly. "It's not fair."

"Sure, it's not fair. But that doesn't make it your fault, Tally." A laughing, barefoot Cutter ran through the coals before them, scattering sparks. "You were the lucky one. That's what happens when you're special. Why feel guilty?"

"I never said I felt guilty." Tally snapped a stick in two. "I just want to do something about it. So I'm coming with you tonight, okay?"

"I'm not sure you're up to it, Tally-wa."

"I'm fine. As long as I don't have to stick any plastic on my face."

Shay laughed, reaching out to trace the sweeping lines of Tally's flash tattoos with her pinkie-nail. "I'm not worried about your face—just your brain. Two ex-boyfriends in a row could mess with it."

Tally turned away. "Zane's not an ex-boyfriend. He might be a bubblehead right now, but hell think his way out."

"Look at you," Shay said. "You're shaking. That's not very icy."

Tally looked down at her hands. Made fists to control them.

She kicked a hefty log onto the fire, scattering sparks. Watching as the flames wrapped around it, she opened her hands to the heat. Somehow, the freezing river had given her a chill that wouldn't leave, no matter how close she sat to the blaze.

She just needed to see Zane again, and this weird feeling in her bones would go away.

"Are you shivering because you saw David?"

"David?" Tally snorted. "What gave you that idea?"

"Don't be embarrassed, Tally-wa. No one can be icy all the time. Maybe you just need a cut." Shay drew her knife.

Tally wanted to, but she snorted and spat into the fire. Shay wasn't going to make her feel weak this way. "I handled David just fine…better than you did, I seem to remember."

Shay laughed and punched Tally on the shoulder playfully, except it actually hurt.

"Ouch, Boss," Tally said. Apparently, Shay was still unhappy about being beaten in hand-to-hand combat by a random the night before.

Shay looked down at her fist. "Sorry. Didn't mean that, really."

"Whatever. So are we even now? Can I go see Zane with you?"

Shay groaned. "Not while he's still a bubblehead, Tally-wa. It'll only freak you out. Why don't you go help look for Fausto instead?"

"You don't really think they'll find anything, do you?"

Shay shrugged, then flicked off her skintenna connection to the other Cutters. "Have to give them something to do," she said softly.

Later, the others were going to head out on their hoverboards and scan the wild. The Smokies couldn't remove Fausto's skintenna without killing him, so his signal would read from a kilometer or so away. But mere kilometers meant nothing in the wild, Tally knew. On her way to the Smoke, she'd traveled at hoverboard speeds for days without encountering any sign of humanity had seen whole cities submerged in desert sands and jungle. If the Smokies wanted to disappear, the natural world was more than big enough.

Tally snorted. "Doesn't mean you have to waste my time too."

"How many times do I have to explain this, Tally-wa? You're special now. You shouldn't be mooning over some bubblehead. You're a Cutter, Zane's not—it's as simple as that."

"If it's so simple, then why do I feel this way?"

Shay let out a groan. "Because, Tally, you're up to your usual trick: making things complicated."

Tally sighed and kicked at the fire, sending a stream of sparks into the air. She remembered a lot of times when she'd been contented—as a bubblehead, even as a Smokey But somehow her satisfaction never lasted very long. She always found herself changing, pushing against the limits, and ruining things for everyone around her.

"It's not always my fault," she said softly. "Things just get complicated, sometimes."

"Well, trust me on this one, Tally. Seeing Zane is going to make things really complicated. Just give him time to find his own way here. Aren't you happy with us?"

Tally nodded slowly—she was happy. Her special senses made the whole world icy, and every moment spent in this new body was better than a year of being pretty. But now that she knew Zane was healthy, his absence muddled everything. Suddenly, she felt unfinished and unreal.