Uglies 03 - Specials by Scott Westerfeld Read Free Book Online Page A

the original Smoke had been destroyed, the Smokies kept moving from one spot to another. And now that they had four brand-new Special Circumstances hoverboards, they'd be even harder to pin down.
    While Shay and Tally wrung out their wet clothes, Ho and Tachs wandered around the darkness of the Trails, looking for clues. Soon they found the hoverboard that the Smokey girl had abandoned.
    "Check the charge on that thing," Shay ordered Tachs. "At least we can figure out how far they had to fly to get here."
    "Good idea, Boss," Tally said. "No solar recharging at night, after all."
    "Yeah, I'm feeling really brilliant," Shay said. "But a distance doesn't tell us much. We need more."
    "We've got more, Boss," Ho said. "Like I was trying to tell Tally right before she shoved me off my board, I had a conversation with that ugly kid at the bash. The one the Smokey girl was giving nanos?
    Before I handed him over to the wardens, I managed to scare him a little."
    Tally didn't doubt that. Ho's flash tattoos included a demon's face drawn over his own features, its bloodred lines shifting through a sequence of wild expressions in time with his pulse.
    Shay snorted. "That little punk knew where the New Smoke was?"
    "Not a chance. But he knew where he was supposed to take the nanos."
    "Let me guess, Ho-la," Shay said. "New Pretty Town?"

    "Yeah, of course." He held up the plastic bag. "But these weren't just for anyone, Boss. He was supposed to take them to the Crims."
    Tally and Shay looked at each other. All but a few of the Cutters had been Crims back in their pretty days. The clique was all about making trouble: acting like an ugly, beating the lesions, keeping the shallowness of New Pretty Town from erasing your brain.
    Shay shrugged. "The Crims are huge these days. There are hundreds of them." She smiled. "Ever since me and Tally made them famous."
    Ho nodded. "Hey, I was one too, remember? But that ugly kid mentioned a name, someone he was supposed to give them to specially."
    "Anyone we know?" Tally said.
    "Yeah…Zane. He said the nanos were for Zane."

THE PROMISE
    "Why didn't you tell me Zane was back?"
    "Because I didn't know. It's only been two weeks." Tally expelled a long sigh through her teeth.
    "What's the matter?" Shay said. "Don't believe me?" Tally turned away to stare into the fire, unsure how to answer. Not trusting other Cutters wasn't very icy—it led to doubts and muddled thoughts. But for the first time since becoming a Special, she felt out of place, uncomfortable in her own skin. Her fingers moved restlessly up and down the cutting scars along her arms, and sounds from the forest around them were making her jumpy.
    Zane was back from the hospital, but he wasn't here with her at the Cutters' camp, out in the wild where he should be. And that felt wrong…
    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