Closer and closer.
Tally felt the moment of breakdown through the soles of her feet, the board's unsteady vibration changing all at once into a wild shudder. A metal scream reached her ears as the lifting fans disintegrated, and she realized it was too late to go any direction but up. She bent her knees and leaped…
At the peak of her jump, Tally scrambled for something to grab on to, her fingers brushing against the stored hoverboards. But they were packed into thick sandwiches without any handholds, and the helicopter's landing struts were out of reach on either side.
Tally began to fall…
She stabbed at her crash bracelets' controls, setting them to exhaust their batteries, to pull her toward the tons of metal above as hard as they could. A sudden, crushing force seized her wrists—the combined magnetics of twenty boards booting up and taking hold. The bracelets dragged her upward, pinning Tally against the nearest riding surface, her arms almost ripped from their sockets by the sudden jerk.
Below, the screech of her hoverboard turned into a wracking cough, then it dropped away. Tally's ears caught the metal squeal of the board, tearing itself to pieces as it fell, until the helicopter's portable maelstrom whisked the noise away.
Tally found herself stuck to the underside of the helicopter, its vibration rumbling through her like crashing waves.
For a moment, she wondered if the pilots and passengers had heard her board disintegrate, but then Tally remembered her own helicopter flight the year before. To make themselves heard, she and the rangers had been forced to shout over the roar of the blades.
After a few minutes of hanging from her wrists, Tally turned off the magnetics in one of her bracelets and swung out both feet, wrapping them around a landing strut. She switched off the other, then dangled head-down from the strut for a nervous-making moment in the furious wind before pulling herself up into a small gap between the runaways' boards. From there, she watched as the trip unfolded.
The helicopter proceeded on its inland course, the world growing more lush and forested as the sea slipped away behind. It climbed still higher, moving faster until the trees were nothing but a green blur below. Only a few spots had been touched by the white weed here.
Keeping a careful grip, Tally pulled off her gloves and checked her hands. The palms were burned, with a few pieces of melted plastic stuck to them, but the flash tattoos still pulsed, even those already broken by her cutting scar. Her medspray had gone down with the hoverboard, along with everything else. Only her crash bracelets, ceremonial knife, and sneak suit had survived.
But she'd made it. Tally finally allowed herself a slow breath of relief. Watching the scenery pass below, the pleasure of accomplishing a really icy trick washed through her.
Tally's fingers brushed the old metal belly of the helicopter—Zane was only a few meters from her. He had accomplished quite a trick as well. Despite his lesions and his brain damage, he had almost made it to the New Smoke. Whatever Shay thought of Tally now, she couldn't deny that Zane had earned the right to join Special Circumstances. After all this, Tally wouldn't take no for an answer.
By Tally's internal software, it was an hour later that the first signs of their destination began to appear below.
Although the forest was still dense, a few rectangular fields came into view, the trees chopped down and stacked to make way for some sort of building project. Then more marks of new construction: huge diggers tearing at the earth and magnetic lifters moving hoverstruts into place. Tally frowned. The New Smoke was crazy if they thought they could get away with clear-cutting.
But then more familiar sights began to pass below. The low buildings of a factory belt, then the dense row houses of suburbia. Then a cluster of taller buildings rose up on the horizon, and the air began to fill with hovercars. A ring of soccer fields and dormitories passed below, exactly like Uglyville back in her own city.
Tally shook her head. All this couldn't have been built by Smokies…
Then she remembered Shay's words the night they'd snuck into New Pretty Town to see Zane, about how David and his pals had acquired sneak suits from mysterious allies, and she realized the truth.
The New Smoke wasn't some hidden encampment in the wild, where people crapped into holes and ate dead rabbits, burning trees for fuel. The New Smoke was right here, spread out below her.
An entire city had joined the rebellion.
Hard Landing
Tally had to get off before the helicopter landed.
She didn't want to be found clinging to the underside when they touched down. Zane would see her, and the rangers would probably know that her cruel beauty marked her as an agent of another city. But as the helicopter settled into a circling approach, headed toward a landing pad, Tally could see nowhere safe to drop.
In her own city, a river wrapped around the island of New Pretty Town. But she saw no convenient bodies of water to jump into, and she was too high to use crash bracelets safely. The sneak suit's armor might protect Tally, but the landing pad was nestled between two large buildings, surrounded by crowded slidewalks full of fragile pedestrians.
As the helicopter made its final approach, she spotted the tall hedges surrounded the landing pad—sturdy enough to dampen the wind from the helicopter's blades. They looked prickly, but a few thorns were nothing the sneak suit's armor couldn't handle.
The helicopter slowed as the pad loomed below, and Tally pulled her hood down to protect her face. As the helicopter banked to bring itself to a halt, she let herself drop, rolling into a ball as she fell, like a littlie jumping into a swimming pool.
Her left shoulder hit the hedge with a sudden crunch, branches snapping off against the suit's armor, and she bounced away from the barrier in an explosion of leaves, spinning through the air. She managed to land on her feet, but found herself stumbling across an unsteady surface…the quick-moving slidewalk she'd seen on the way down.
Tally waved her arms, almost regaining her balance, but one last step took her onto another slidewalk going the opposite way, which spun her around and dumped her on her back, spread-eagled and staring dumbfoundedly up at the sky
"Ouch," she murmured. Specials might have unbreakable ceramic bones, but there was still plenty of flesh to be bruised and nerve endings to complain.
Two tall buildings crowded the sky above her. They seemed to be moving gracefully past…She was still being carried along by the slidewalk.
A middle-pretty face came into view, looking down at her with a stern expression. "Young lady! Are you all right?"
"Yeah. Mostly."
"Well, I am aware that standards of conduct have changed. But you could still be reported to the wardens for a stunt like that!"
"Oh, sorry," Tally said, rising painfully to her feet.
"I suppose that suit was meant to protect you?" the man continued sternly. "But did you ever stop to think of the rest of us!"
Tally rubbed her probably bruise-covered back with one hand, held up the other in defense. For a middle pretty, this guy wasn't very understanding. "I said I was sorry. I had to get off that helicopter."
The man snorted. "Well, if you can't wait to land, next time use a bungee jacket!"
A sudden wave of annoyance came over Tally. This average, aging middle pretty just wouldn't shut up. She decided she was bored with the conversation and pulled off the sneak suit's hood, baring her teeth. "Maybe next time, I'll aim for you!"
The man looked straight back into her black and wolfen eyes, her lacework tattoos and razor smile, and only snorted again. "Or maybe you'll break your pretty neck!"