now.'
'It could have been you in that bed, Tally.' Maddy shook her head. 'A fifty-fifty chance. You just got lucky.'
'That's me. Little Miss Lucky,' Tally said softly.
Of course, she had to admit to herself that it was true. They'd split the two pills randomly, assuming they were the same. The nanos could have been eating away at Tally's brain all this time instead of Zane's. Lucky her.
She let her eyes close, realizing at last how hard Zane must have worked to hide what was happening to him. All those long silences when they'd been wearing the cuffs, he'd been fighting, struggling to keep his mind together, unsure of exactly what was happening, but risking everything to escape becoming pretty-minded again.
Tally gazed down at him, wishing for a moment it had been the other way around. Anything was better than seeing him like this. If only she'd taken the nano pill, and he had taken the one that…had done what? 'Wait a second. If Zane got the nanos, how did my pill cure me?'
'It didn't,' Maddy said. 'Without the other pill, the anti-nanos you took would have no effect whatsoever.'
'But …'
'It was you, Tally,' came a soft voice from the bed. Zane's eyes had opened a slit, catching the sunlight like the edges of gold coins. He gave her a weary smile. 'You got bubbly on your own.'
'But I felt so different after we …' She fell silent, remembering that day — their kiss, sneaking into Valentino Mansion, climbing the tower. But, of course, all those things had happened before they'd taken the pills. Being with Zane had changed her from the beginning, from that first kiss.
Tally remembered how her 'cure' always seemed to come and go. She'd had to work to stay bubbly, more like the other Crims than Zane.
'He's right, Tally,' Maddy said. 'Somehow, you cured yourself. '
Tally stayed at Zane's bedside. He was awake and talking now, and it was easier to be here than dealing with everything that she and David still had to work out. The others left them alone.
'Did you know what was happening to you?'
Zane took a moment before answering. His speech was full of long silences now, almost like Andrew's epic pauses. 'I knew that everything was getting harder. Sometimes I had to concentrate just to walk. But I hadn't felt so alive since I'd turned pretty; it was worth it, being bubbly with you. I figured once we found the New Smoke, they could help me.'
'They are helping. Maddy said that she put in some new …' Tally swallowed.
'Brain tissue?' he supplied, and smiled. 'Sure, blank neurons fresh out of the oven. Just got to fill them up now.'
'We will. We'll do bubbly-making things,' Tally said, but the promise felt strange in her mouth—'we' meant she and Zane, as if David didn't exist.
'If there's enough left of me to be bubbly,' he said tiredly. 'It's not like all my memories are gone. It was mostly my cognition centers that were affected, and some motor skills.'
'Cognition? You mean like thinking?' Tally said.
'Yeah, and motor skills, like walking.' He shrugged. 'But the brain's built to take damage, Tally. It's wired so that everything is stored everywhere, sort of. When a part of it gets damaged, things don't get lost, just fuzzier. Like a hangover.' He laughed. 'A really bad one. On top of which, I'm sore from lying in bed all day. And it feels like I've got a toothache from all this Smokey food. It's just phantom pains from brain damage, Maddy says.' He rubbed one cheek with a scowl.
She took his hand. 'I can't believe you're so brave about this. It's incredible.'
'You should talk, Tally.' He struggled to sit up, his movements shaky and infirm. 'You managed to cure yourself without getting your brain chewed up. That's what I'd call incredible.'
Tally looked down at their clasped hands. She didn't feel very incredible. She felt smelly and dirty, and horrible that she hadn't had the guts to take both pills, which would have prevented all of this from happening. She didn't even have the guts to talk to Zane about David, or vice versa. Which was just pathetic.
'Is it strange, seeing him?' he asked.
She looked at Zane, and he chuckled at her surprise. 'Come on, Tally. It's not like I'm reading your mind. I had plenty of warning about this. You told me about the guy the first time we kissed, remember?'
'Oh, yeah.' So Zane had been expecting this all along. Tally should have foreseen it herself. Maybe she simply hadn't wanted to face the obvious. 'Yeah, it is strange seeing him. I definitely didn't expect to find him waiting for me in the ruins. Just me and him alone.'
Zane nodded. 'It was interesting, waiting for you. His mother said you wouldn't come at all. That you must have chickened out, because you hadn't really been cured. Like you were just playing along with me, imitating my bubbliness.'
Tally rolled her eyes. 'She doesn't much like me.'
'You don't say?' He grinned. 'But David and me figured you'd show up sooner or later. We figured that—' Tally groaned. 'So are you guys like friends now?'
Zane took one of his excruciatingly long pauses. 'I guess so. He asked me a lot about you when we first got here. I think he wanted to know how being pretty has changed you.'
'Really?'
'Really. He was the one who met us when we arrived in the ruins. Him and Croy, camping out and watching for flares. It turns out that those two left the magazines for the city uglies to find, so they'd know the ruins were being visited again.' Zane's voice had gotten dreamy, as if he was falling asleep. 'At least I finally got to see him again, after chickening out all those months ago.' He turned to her. 'David really missed you, you know.'
'I ruined his life,' Tally said softly.
'You didn't do anything on purpose; David understands that now. I told him how when you'd planned to betray the Smoke, it was because the Specials threatened to keep you ugly for life.'
'You told him that?' Tally let out a slow breath. 'Thanks. I never really had a chance to explain why I'd come to the Smoke, how they'd forced me. Maddy made me leave the same night I confessed everything.'
'Yeah. David wasn't happy with her about that. He wanted to talk to you again.'
'Oh,' she said. There was so much that she and David hadn't gotten straight between them. Of course, the thought of Zane and him discussing her history in great detail didn't exactly thrill Tally, but at least David knew the whole story now. She sighed. 'Thanks for telling me all this. It must be weird.'
'A little. But you shouldn't feel so bad. About what happened back then.'
'Why not? I destroyed the Smoke, and David's father died because of me.'
'Tally, everyone in the city is manipulated. The purpose of everything we're taught is to make us afraid of change. I've been trying to explain it to David, how from the day we're born, the whole place is a machine for keeping us under control.'
She shook her head. 'That doesn't make it right to betray your friends.'
'Yeah, well, I did, long before you even met Shay. When it comes to the Smoke, I'm just as much at fault as you.'
She looked at him in disbelief. 'You? How?'
'Did I ever tell you how I met Dr. Cable?'
Tally looked at him, realizing that this was one conversation they'd never had a chance to finish. 'No. You didn't.'
'After the night that Shay and I chickened out, most of my friends were gone away to the Smoke. The dorm minders knew I was the leader, so they asked me where everyone had run off to. I played tough, and didn't say a word. So Special Circumstances came for me.' His voice grew softer, as if the cuff were still around his wrist. 'They took me to that headquarters of theirs out in the factory belt, same as you. I tried to be strong, but they threatened me. Said they'd make me into one of them.'
'One of them? A Special?' Tally swallowed.
'Yeah. After that, being a pretty-head didn't seem so bad anymore. So I told them everything I knew. I told
