Ping…ping.
Then she heard a sound, movement in the rubble of some ruined floor above. Tally stepped from her board through an empty window frame, setting her damaged sneak suit to a rough approximation of broken stone. She took both sides of the frame and leaned in, peering upward.
There he was above, looking down at her. "Tally?" he called.
She blinked. It was David.
"What are you doing here?" she called.
"Waiting for you. I knew you'd come this way…through the ruins one more time."
Tally climbed toward him, swinging from one iron beam to the next, covering the distance in a few seconds. He was huddled in the corner of a floor that hadn't completely collapsed, barely enough room for the sleeping bag splayed out beside him. His sneak suit was set to match the shadows inside the ruin.
A self-heating meal in his hand chimed that it was ready, and the revolting smell of SpagBol hit Tally again.
She shook her head. "But how did you … ?"
David held up a crude device in one hand, a directional antenna in the other. "After we cured him, Fausto helped us rig this up. Every time you guys got close, we detected your skintennas. We could even listen in."
Tally squatted on a rusty iron beam, her head suddenly spinning from three days of constant travel. "I wasn't asking how you pinged me. How did you get here so quickly?"
"Oh, that was easy. When you left without her, Shay realized that you were right: Diego needs her more than you do. But they don't need me." He cleared his throat. "So I took the next helicopter to a pickup spot about halfway here."
Tally sighed, closing her eyes. "Special-head" Shay had called her. She could have gotten a ride most of the way. That was one problem with dramatic exits: Sometimes they wound up making you look like a bubblehead. But she was relieved to hear that her fears about the runaways had been unfounded. Diego hadn't abandoned them yet.
"So why exactly did you come?"
David wore a determined look. "I'm here to help you, Tally"
"Listen, David, just because we're sort of on the same side now doesn't mean I want you around. Shouldn't you be back in Diego? There's a war on, you know."
He shrugged. "I don't like cities much, and I don't know anything about wars."
"Well, I don't either, but I'm doing what I can." She signaled for her board, which still hovered below. "And if Special Circumstances catches me with a Smokey, it's not going to make it any easier convincing them I'm telling the truth."
"But Tally, are you okay?"
"That's the second time someone's asked me that stupid question," she said softly. "No, I'm not okay."
"Yeah, I guess it was stupid. But we're worried about you."
"We who? You and Shay?"
He shook his head. "No, my mother and me."
Tally let out a short, sharp laugh. "Since when was Maddy worried about me?"
"She's been thinking about you a lot lately," he said, setting his untouched SpagBol on the floor. "She had to study the special operation to cure it. She knows quite a bit about what it's like, being what you are."
Tally leaped up, hands curling, and jumped across the void between them in a single bound, sending a shower of rust down into the chasm of the building's core. Her teeth bared, she said straight to his face, "No one knows what it's like to be me right now, David. I promise you: no one."
He held her gaze without flinching, but Tally could smell his fear, all the weakness leaking out of him.
"I'm sorry," he said evenly "I didn't mean it that way…This isn't about Zane."
At the sound of his name, something fractured inside Tally, and her fury faded. She sank onto her haunches, breathing raggedly. For a moment, it felt as though the burst of rage had shifted something heavy and leaden inside her. It was the first time since Zane's death that anything, even anger, had broken through her despair.
But the feeling had lasted only a few seconds, then the fatigue from her uninterrupted days of travel came tumbling down.
She lowered her head into her hands. "Whatever."
"I brought you something. You might need it."
Tally looked up. In David's hand was an injector.
She shook her head tiredly. "You don't want to cure me, David. Special Circumstances won't listen to me unless I'm one of them."
"I know, Tally. Fausto explained your plan to us." He placed a cap over the needle, snapping it down. "But keep this. Maybe after you tell them what happened, you'll want to change yourself."
Tally frowned. "There doesn't seem like much point thinking about what happens after I confess, David. The city might be a little upset with me, so I might not have much say in the matter."
"I doubt it, Tally. That's what's so amazing about you. No matter what your city does to you, you always seem to have a choice."
"Always?" She snorted. "I didn't seem to have a choice when Zane died."
"No …" David shook his head. "I'm sorry, again. I keep saying stupid things. But remember when you were a pretty? You changed yourself, and you led the Crims out of the city."
"Zane led us."
"He'd taken a pill. You hadn't."
She groaned. "Don't remind me. That's how he wound up in that hospital!"
"Wait, wait." David put up his hands. "I'm trying to say something. You were the one who thought your way out of being pretty."
"Yeah, I know, I know. A lot of good that did me. Or Zane."
"Actually, it did more than a lot of good, Tally. After seeing what you'd done, my mother realized something important about how the operation could be reversed. About the bubblehead cure."
Tally looked up, remembering Zane's theories back in pretty days. "You mean about making yourself bubbly?"
"Exactly. My mother realized that we didn't have to get rid of the lesions, all we had to do was stimulate the brain to work around them. That's why the new cure is much safer, and why it works so fast." He was talking quickly, his eyes bright in the shadows. "That's how we got Diego to change in only two months. Because of what you showed us."
"So I'm to blame for those people turning their little fingers into snakes? Great."
"You're to blame for the freedom they've found, Tally. For the end of the operation."