Uglies

He smiled and took a big bite.

"It gets clearer every day."

Familiar Sights

They reached the edge of the desert the next night, on schedule, then followed a river for three days, all the way to the sea. It took them still farther north, and the October chill turned as cold as any winter Tally had ever felt.

David unpacked city-made arctic gear of shiny silver Mylar, which Tally wore over her handmade sweater, her only possession left from the Smoke. She was glad she'd dropped off to sleep in it the night before the Specials had invaded, so it hadn't been lost that day like everything else.

The nights spent on board seemed to pass quickly. On this journey, there were none of Shay's cryptic clues to puzzle through, no brush fires to escape, and no antique Rusty machines descending to scare her to death. The world seemed to be empty except for the occasional ruins, as if Tally and David were the last people alive.

They augmented their diet with fish caught from the river, and Tally roasted a rabbit on a fire she'd built herself. She watched David repair his leather clothes and decided she would never be able to manage a needle and thread well. He taught her how to tell time and direction from the stars, and she showed him how to open the expert software in the boards to optimize them for night travel.

At the sea they turned south, heading down the northern reaches of the same coastal railway that Tally had followed on her way to the Smoke. David said it had once stretched unbroken all the way back to Tally's home city and beyond. But now there were large gaps in the track, and new cities built on the sea, so they had to travel inland more than once. But David knew the rivers, the spurs of the railroad, and the other metal paths the Rusties had left behind, so they made good time toward their goal.

Only the weather stopped them. After a few days' travel down the coast, a dark and threatening mountain of clouds appeared over the ocean. At first, the storm seemed reluctant to come ashore, building up its nerve over a slow twenty-four hours, the air pressure changing in a way that made the hoverboards jittery to ride. The storm gave plenty of warning, but when it finally arrived, it was much worse than Tally had imagined weather could be.

She'd never faced the full force of a hurricane, except from within the solid structures of her inland city.

It was another lesson in nature's savage power.

For three days Tally and David huddled in a plastic tent in the shelter of a rock outcrop, burning chemical glowsticks for heat and light, hoping the magnets in the hoverboards wouldn't bring down a lightning strike. For the first hours, the drama of the storm kept them fascinated, amazed at its power, wondering when the next peal of thunder would shake the cliffs.

Then the driving rain became simply monotonous, and they spent a whole day talking to each other about anything and everything, but especially their childhoods, until Tally was sure that she understood David better than anyone she'd ever known. On their third day trapped in the tent they had a terrible fight-Tally could never remember about what-that ended when David stormed out and stood alone in the icy wind for a solid hour.

When he finally returned, it took him hours to stop shivering, even wrapped in her arms.

"We're taking too long," he finally said.

Tally squeezed tighter. It took time to prepare subjects for the operation, especially if they were older than sixteen. But Dr. Cable wouldn't wait forever to turn David's parents.

Every day the storm delayed them, there was a greater chance that Maddy and Az had already gone under the knife. For Shay, the perfect age for turning, the odds were even worse.

"We'll get there, don't worry. They measured me every week for a year before I was supposed to turn.

It takes time to do it right."

A shudder passed through his body.

"Tally, what if they don't bother to do it right?"

The storm ended the next morning, and they emerged to find that the world's colors had been transformed. The clouds were bright pink, the grass an unearthly green, and the ocean darker than Tally had ever seen it, marked only by the foam crests of waves and a peppering of driftwood driven into the sea by the wind. They rode all day to make up for lost time, in a state of shock, amazed that the world could still exist after the storm.

Then the railway turned inland, and a few nights later they reached the Rusty Ruins.

The ruins looked smaller, as if the spires had shrunk since Tally had left them behind more than a month before, headed to the Smoke with nothing but Shay's note and a knapsack full of SpagBol. As she and David passed through the dark streets, the ghosts of the Rusties no longer seemed to threaten from the windows.

"The first time I came here at night, this place really scared me," she said.

David nodded. "It's kind of creepy how well preserved it is. Of all the ruins I've seen, it looks the most recent."

"They sprayed it with something to keep it up for school trips." And that was her city in a nutshell, Tally realized. Nothing left to itself. Everything turned into a bribe, a warning, or a lesson.

They stowed most of their gear in a collapsed building far from the center, a crumbling place that even truant uglies would probably avoid, packing only water purifiers, a flashlight, and a few food packets.

David had never been any closer to the city than the ruins, so Tally took the lead for once, following the vein of iron that Shay had shown her months before.

"Do you think we'll ever be friends again?" she asked as they hiked toward the river, lugging their boards for the first time the entire trip.

"You and Shay? Of course."

"Even after…you and me?"

"Once we've rescued her from the Specials, I figure she'll forgive you for just about anything."

Tally was silent. Shay had already guessed that Tally had betrayed the Smoke. She doubted anything would ever make up for that.

Once they reached the river, they shot down the white water at top speed, glad to be finally free of the heavy saddlebags. With the spray hitting her face, the roar of water all around her, Tally could almost imagine this was one of her expeditions, back when she was a carefree city kid and not a…

What was she now? No longer a spy, and she couldn't call herself a Smokey anymore.

Hardly a pretty, but she didn't feel like an ugly, either. She was nothing in particular. But at least she had a purpose.

The city came into view.

"There it is," she called to David over the churning water. "But you've seen cities before, right?"

"I've been this close to a few. But not much closer."

Tally gazed down at the familiar skyline, the slender trails of fireworks silhouetting the party towers and mansions. She felt a pang of something like homesickness, but much worse. The sight of New Pretty Town had once filled her with longing. Now the skyline was like a vacant shell, all its promises gone. Like David, she had lost her home. But unlike the Smoke, her city still existed, right in front of her eyes-but emptied of everything it had once meant.

"We've got a few hours before sunrise," she said. "Want to take a look at Special Circumstances?"

"The sooner the better," David said.

Tally nodded, her eyes tracing the familiar patterns of light and darkness surrounding the city. There was time to make it there and back before daybreak.

"Let's go."

They followed the river as far as the ring of trees and brush that separated Uglyville from the suburbs.