Pretties

Tally smeared a soap packet onto herself before jumping in, rubbing some into her hair, guessing she would last about ten seconds in the half-frozen spring. She knew she'd have to jump — no dangling of the foot or lowering herself in slowly. Only the laws of gravity would keep her going once her naked flesh hit cold water.

Tally took a breath, held it… and leaped into the spring.

The icy water crushed her like a vice, forcing the breath from her lungs, locking every muscle tight. She hugged herself with her arms, rolling into a ball in the shallow pool, but the cold seemed to cut through her flesh and straight into her bones.

Tally fought to take a breath, but managed only shallow little gasps of air, her entire body shaking as if it would break apart. With a titanic act of will she dunked her head in, erasing all sound, the rasp of her breath and gurgle of the spring replaced by the rumble of roiling water. She rubbed furiously at her hair with trembling hands.

When her head burst into the air again, Tally drew in great breaths and found herself laughing — everything had turned strangely clear, the world more bubbly than a cup of coffee or a glass of champagne could make it, the sensation more intense than falling toward the earth on her hoverboard. She lay there for a moment in the water, amazed at it all — the clarity of the sky and the perfection of a leafless tree nearby.

Tally remembered her first bath in a cold stream on the way to the Smoke, all those months ago. How it had shifted the way she saw the world — even before the operation had put the lesions on her brain, before she'd met David, much less Zane. Even then, her mind had started to change, realizing that nature didn't need an operation to make it beautiful, it just was.

Maybe she didn't need a handsome prince to stay awake— or an ugly one, for that matter. After all, Tally had cured herself without the pill and had made it all the way here on her own. No one else she'd ever heard of had escaped the city twice.

Maybe she'd always been bubbly, somewhere inside. It only took loving someone — or being in the wild, or maybe just a plunge into freezing water — to bring it out.

Tally was still in the pond when she heard the cry: a hoarse shout that came from the air.

She climbed out hurriedly and the wind cutting through her felt colder than the water. The towels Tally had brought were brittle in the chill air, and she was still drying herself when a hoverboard streaked into view, banking to a halt a few meters away.

David hardly seemed to register that she was naked. He jumped from the board and ran toward her, clutching something in his hand. Skidding to a halt by her pack, he waved the device across it — sca

"It's not you," he said. "I knew it wasn't."

Tally was pulling on her clothes. "But you already—" "A signal just started up out of nowhere, broadcasting our location. We picked it up on the radio, but haven't localized it yet." He looked down at her pack, the relieved expression still on his face. "But you didn't bring it."

"Of course I didn't." Tally sat down to yank on her boots. Her pounding heart began to drive the cold from her body. "Don't you scan everyone who joins you?"

"Yeah. But the bug must have been dormant — it only started sending when someone activated it, or maybe it was set to go off at a certain time." His eyes sca

She stood. "So we run."

He shook his head. "We can't go anywhere until we find it."

"Why not?" She pulled on crash bracelets.

"It's taken us months to build up the supplies we've got, Tally. We can't leave them all behind, not with all you Crims having just joined us. But we won't know what's safe to take until we figure out where the signal's coming from. It's not showing up anywhere."

Tally hoisted her pack and snapped her fingers, her board rising into the air. As she stepped on, her mind still racing from the freezing bath, she recalled something from earlier that day. "Toothache," she said.

"What?"

"Zane was in the hospital two weeks ago. It's inside him."

Tracker

They swept back up the mountain, banking hard against the high gravities of their turns. Tally stayed in the lead, positive that she was right. The doctors had made Zane unconscious for a few minutes in the hospital while they'd repaired his broken hand. They must have hidden a tracker in his teeth at the same time. Of course, regular city doctors wouldn't have done something like that on their own — it had to be the work of Special Circumstances.

The camp was bedlam when they arrived. New Smokies and Crims ran in and out of the observatory door with equipment, clothing, and food, making two piles beside Croy and Maddy, who stood waving sca

Tally tipped back her hoverboard and forced it up as high as it would go, launching herself over the chaos, directly at the broken dome. When the board reached its maximum height the lifters shuddered, then firmed up as the magnets found the steel frame of the observatory. The crack in the dome was wide enough to glide through, and Tally dropped straight down through the rising smoke, jumping off next to Zane's makeshift bed.

He looked up at her with a soft smile. "Nice entrance, Tally."

She knelt beside him. "Which tooth hurts?"

"What's going on? Everyone's freaking out."

"Which tooth hurts, Zone? You have to show me."

He frowned, but stuck a trembling finger into his mouth, tenderly probing the right side. Tally pulled his hand away and opened his mouth wider, and he made a whimper of protest.

"Shush. I'll explain in a second."

Even in the dim firelight, she could see it: One tooth stood out from the others, its shade of white imperfectly matched — a rushed bit of dentistry, of course.

The signal was coming from Zane.

The wheep of a sca

"In his tooth! Get your mother."

"But, Tally—" "Get her! You and I can't take out a tooth!"

He put a hand on her shoulder. "Neither can she. Not in a few minutes."

She stood, staring into his ugly face. "What are you saying, David?"

"Well have to leave him behind. They'll be here soon."

"No!" she shouted. "Go get her!"

David swore and turned away, ru

"What's happening?" he asked.

"They put a tracker in you, Zane. At the hospital."

"Oh," he said, rubbing his face. "I didn't know, Tally, honest. I thought my toothache was from all this wild food."

"Of course you didn't know. You were unconscious for those minutes at the hospital, remember?"

"Are they really going to leave me?"

"I won't let them. I promise."

"I can't go back," he said weakly. "I don't want to be pretty-minded again."

Tally swallowed. If Zane was returned to the city now, the doctors would put the lesions back in, right on top of his blank new tissue. His brain would rewire around them…What chance would he have of staying bubbly?