Tally felt another a wave of shame. She had disobeyed Shay and betrayed Fausto to babysit these bubbleheads?
She opened her skintenna to the city's official channels, and instantly picked up chatter coming from a warden's car on a slow, lazy patrol along the river. The city had realized by now that last night's pranks had been diversions for yet another escape. All the obvious routes away from the city— rivers and old rail lines—would be under scrutiny. If the wardens spotted the unfurled hoverboards, Zane's escape would come to an ignominious end, and Tally would have gone against Shay for nothing.
She wondered how to get the Crims' attention without revealing herself. She could throw a few rocks, hoping to wake them up with a convincingly random noise, but they probably didn't have a city-band radio with them. The runaways wouldn't recognize the danger they were in—they'd just go back to sleep.
Tally sighed. She was going to have to fix this herself.
Pulling her hood down, she took a few steps to the riverbank and slipped into the water. The sneak suit's scales began to undulate as she swam, mimicking the ripples around her and turning as reflective as the slow, glassy river.
Closer to the camp, the smell of extinguished fire and discarded food packs met her nostrils. Tally took a deep breath and submerged completely, swimming underwater until she reached the riverbank.
She belly-crawled up from the water, raising her head slowly, letting the suit adjust itself to every change around her. It turned brown and soft, scales burrowing into the mud and pushing her along like a slug.
The Crims were asleep, but buzzing flies and the occasional stir of wind brought soft murmurs from them. New pretties might have lots of practice sleeping until noon, but never on hard ground. The slightest noise could bring them all awake.
Their camo-mottled sleeping bags would be invisible from the air, at least. But the unfurled boards only shone brighter as the sun climbed, eight of them crowding the riverbank. Wind tugged at the corners, which were weighted with stones and clumps of mud, making them flash like glitterbombs.
To recharge a hoverboard, you pulled it apart like a paper doll, exposing the maximum surface area to the sun. Fully unfurled, they were as thin and light as kite plastic, and a gust of wind might carry them into the trees—at least, if the Crims woke up and found their boards moved into the forest, they might believe that was what had happened.
Tally crawled to the nearest board and plucked the rocks from its corners. Rising slowly to her feet, she dragged it into the shade. After a few minutes' work, she had it wedged between two trees in a way that she hoped looked random, but was secure enough that the wind wouldn't carry it away for good.
Only seven more to go.
The work was excruciatingly slow. Tally had to consider every step she took among the sleeping bodies, and every accidental sound made her heart flutter. All the while she half-listened to the warden's car approaching on her skintenna feed.
Finally, the last of the eight hoverboards had been carefully dragged into the shade. They were tangled together, like crumpled umbrellas after a windstorm, the bright solar arrays turned facedown in the brush.
Before slipping back into the river, Tally stood for a moment regarding Zane. Asleep, he looked more like his old self; the random shakes didn't trouble him in unconsciousness. Without his thoughts traveling across his face, he looked smarter, almost special. She imagined his eyes sharpened to cruel-pretty angles, and let her mind trace lacework flash tattoos across his face. Tally smiled and turned, taking a step back toward the river…
Then she heard a sound, and froze.
It was a soft, sudden intake of breath, a noise of surprise. She waited motionless, hoping it had been a nightmare, and that the breathing would settle back into sleep. But her senses told her that someone was awake.
Finally she turned her head with excruciating slowness to look over her shoulder.
It was Zane.
His eyes were open, sleepy and squinting in the sunlight. He stared straight at her, dazed and half-asleep, unsure if she was real.
Tally stood absolutely still, but the sneak suit didn't have much to work with. It might show a blurry version of the water behind Tally, but in broad daylight Zane would still see a transparent humanoid figure, like a statue of solid glass standing half in the river. To make things worse, mud still clung to the suit, clods of brown hovering against the background.
He rubbed his eyes and looked around the empty riverbank, realizing that the hoverboards were missing. Then he looked up at her again, a puzzled expression still on his face.
Tally remained motionless, hoping that Zane would decide this was nothing but a strange dream.
"Hey," he said softly. His voice came out croaking, and he cleared his throat to speak louder.
Tally didn't let him. She took three swift steps through the mud, whisking off one glove, flicking out the stinger from her ring.
As the tiny needle plunged into his throat, Zane managed to let out a soft and startled cry, but then his eyes rolled back up into his head and he sank back to the ground, fast asleep again. He began to snore softly.
"Just a dream," Tally whispered into his ear. Then she lowered herself onto her belly and slithered back into the river.
Half an hour later, the warden's hovercar passed, moving from side to side like a lazy snake. It didn't spot the Crims, never pausing for a moment in the sky.
Tally stayed close to the camp, hidden in a tree about ten meters away from Zane, her sneak suit prickly with the texture of pine needles.
As the afternoon wore on, the Crims started to wake up. No one appeared to worry too much about the windblown hoverboards, just dragged them back out into the sunlight and went on with the process of breaking camp.
As she watched, the runaways wandered off into the woods to pee, cooked themselves meals, or took quick swims in the cold river, trying to clean off the mud and sweat of travel and the general greasiness of sleeping rough.
All except Zane. He stayed unconscious longer than the rest, the knockout drugs slowly working their way through his system. He didn't wake up until the sun was setting, when Peris finally leaned over him to give him a shake.
Zane sat up slowly, holding his head in his hands, the perfect picture of a pretty with a bad hangover. Tally wondered what he remembered. Peris and the others so far believed the wind had moved their hoverboards, but they might change their minds after hearing about Zane’s little dream.
Peris and Zane huddled together for a while, and Tally slid slowly around her tree, gaining a vantage where she could almost read their lips. Peris seemed to be asking if Zane was all right. New pretties hardly ever got sick—the operation made them too healthy for trivial infections—but with his condition and all …
Zane shook his head and gestured down at the riverbank, where the hoverboards were soaking up the last rays of sun. Peris pointed toward the spot where Tally had arranged them. The two walked over to it, coming alarmingly close to where Tally clung to her tree. The expression on Zane's face looked unconvinced. He knew that at least one part of his dream—the missing boards— had been real.
After a few long, tense minutes, Peris returned to packing up camp. But Zane stayed, sweeping his gaze slowly around the horizon. Even invisible in her suit, Tally flinched as his eyes slid past her hiding place.
He wasn't certain of anything, but Zane suspected what he'd seen had been more than a dream.
Tally would have to be very careful from now on.