Tally nodded, grinning to herself. "Should I knock?"
"Please."
"Might startle him."
"Startled is good, Tally-wa. We want him bubbly. Now hurry up, I'm starting to slip."
Tally pulled herself higher, getting one knee onto the narrow ledge outside the window. She took a deep breath, then rapped twice, trying to smile without showing the razor sharpness of her teeth.
Zane looked up at the sound, startled for a moment, then his eyes widened. He made a gesture, and the window slid open.
A grin spread across his face.
"Tally-wa," he said. "You've changed."
Zane-la
Zane was still beautiful.
His cheekbones were sharp, his stare hungry and intense, like he was still using calorie purgers to keep himself alert. His lips were as full as any bubblehead's, and as Zane stared at Tally, he pursed them in childlike concentration. His hair hadn't changed at all; she remembered how he'd dyed it with calligraphy ink, turning it a bluish black that was way beyond the Pretty Committee's standards of good taste.
But there was something different about his face. Tally's mind spun, trying to figure out what it was.
"You brought Shay-la with you?" he said as the squeak of grippy shoes came from the window behind Tally. "How happy-making."
Tally nodded slowly, hearing in his voice that he wished she'd come alone. Of course. They had so much to talk about, hardly any of which she wanted to say in front of Shay.
It suddenly seemed like years since she'd seen Zane. Tally felt all the differences in her body—the ultralight bones and flash tattoos, the cutting scars along her arms— as reminders of how she'd changed in the time they'd been apart. Of how different they were now.
Shay grinned at the interface rings. "Aren't your friends finding that musty old book a little boring?"
"I've got more friends than you think, Shay-la." His eyes swept across the four walls of the room.
Shay shook her head, pulling a small black device from her belt. Tally's sharp ears caught its barely audible hum, a sizzling like wet leaves thrown onto a fire. "Relax, Zane-la. The city can't hear us."
His eyes widened. "You're allowed to do that?"
"Haven't you heard?" Shay smiled. "We're special."
"Oh. Well, as long as it's just us three…" He dropped the book onto the empty chair beside him, where it set Peris's ring jiggling. "The others are off on a little trick tonight. I'm covering, in case the wardens are monitoring us."
Shay laughed. "So the wardens are supposed to believe the Crims have a reading group?"
He shrugged. "It's not real wardens, as far as we can tell, only software. As long as someone's talking, it stays happy."
Tally sat down on Zane's unmade bed slowly, a shiver moving through her. Zane wasn't talking like some clueless pretty at all. And if he was covering for his friends while they did something criminal, then he was still bubbly, still the sort of tricky pretty who could one day become a Special…
She breathed in the familiar scent of him from the bedclothes, wondering what her tattoos were doing—probably spinning halfway off her face
But Zane wasn't wearing an interface ring himself, or a bracelet. How were the wardens tracking him?
"Your new face is about a mega-Helen, Tally-wa," Zane said, his gaze traveling the web of flash tattoos on her face and arms. "It could launch a billion ships. But pirate ships, probably."
She smiled at the lame joke, trying to think of something to say. She'd been waiting for this moment for two months, and suddenly all she could do was sit here like an idiot.
But it wasn't just her nerves that were making her word-missing. The more she looked at him, the more Zane looked wrong, somehow, and his voice sounded like it was coming from another room.
"I was hoping you'd come," he added softly.
"She insisted," Shay said, her words whisper-close.
Tally realized why Zane sounded so distant. With no skintenna in his flesh, his words didn't come through like the other Cutters'. He wasn't part of her clique anymore. He wasn't special.
Shay sat down next to Tally on the bed. "But if you don't mind, you two can be all bubbleheaded some other time." She pulled out the small plastic bag of nano pills that Ho had taken from the ugly boy the night before. "We came about these."
Zane half-rose from the chair and held out his hand for them, but Shay just laughed. "Not so fast, Zane-la. You have a bad habit of taking the wrong pills."
"Don't remind me," he said wearily.
Another shudder went through Tally. As he eased himself back into the chair, Zane moved slowly, deliberately, almost like a crumbly.
Tally remembered how Maddy's nanos had damaged his motor control, disrupting the part of his brain in charge of reflexes and motion. Maybe that's all it was, minor tremors left by the tiny machines. Nothing to freak out about.
But again, when she looked into his face, something was missing there, too. It had no gorgeous web of flash tattoos, and gave her none of the thrill she felt when she looked into another Cutter's coal black eyes. He looked sleepy in a way that Specials never did, as if he were wallpaper, just another pretty.
But this was Zane, not some random bubblehead…
Tally dropped her eyes to the floor, wishing she could turn off the perfect clarity of her vision. She didn't want to see all these unsettling details.
"Where did those pills come from?" he said. His voice still sounded so far away.
"From a Smokey girl," Shay answered.
He glanced at Tally. "Anyone we know?"
She shook her head, not looking up from the floor. The girl hadn't been a former Crim or anyone from the Old Smoke. Tally had a flash of wondering if she'd come from another city. Maybe she was one of the Smokies' mysterious new allies…
"But she knew your name, Zane-la," Shay said. "Said these were for you specifically. Expecting a delivery?"
He took a slow breath. "Maybe you should ask her."
"She got away," Tally said, and heard Shay let out a tiny hiss.
Zane laughed. "So Special Circumstances needs my help?"
"We're not the same as … ," Tally started, but her voice faded. She was in Special Circumstances, Zane could see that for himself. But suddenly she wished she could explain how the Cutters were different, not like the regular Specials who'd pushed him around when he was an ugly. The Cutters played by their own rules. They'd found everything that Zane had always wanted—living in the wild outside the city's dictates, their minds icy, free from the imperfections of ugliness…
Free of the averageness that seemed to be leaking out of Zane.
Her mouth closed, and Shay rested a hand on her shoulder.
Tally could feel her heart beating faster.
"Sure, we need your help," Shay said. "We need to stop these"—she held up the bag of pills—"from making more pretties like you." At the last word, she threw it toward him.
Tally saw every centimeter of the bag's flight, watching as it shot past him—his hands coming up a full second too late to catch it. The pills skidded along the wall, dropping into the corner.
Zane let his empty hands fall back into his lap, where they lay curled like dead slugs.
"Nice catch," Shay said.
Tally swallowed. Zane was crippled.
He shrugged. "I don't need pills, anyway, Shay-la. I'm permanently bubbly." He gestured at his forehead. "The nanos damaged me right here, where the lesions are supposed to go. I think the doctors put more in, but as far as I can tell, they don't have much to grab on to. That part of my brain is all new and changing."
"But what about your …" Tally's throat closed up around the question.
"My memories? My thoughts?" He shrugged again. "Brains are good at rewiring themselves. The way yours did, Tally, when you thought your way out of being pretty And yours, Shay-la, when you cut yourself." One hand lifted from his lap, soaring like a trembling bird. "Controlling someone by changing their brain is like trying to stop a hovercar by digging a ditch. If they think hard enough, they can fly right over."