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.'
She laughed bitterly. 'The end of Diego, you mean. Once Cable gets her hands on them, they'll wish they'd never seen your mother's little pills.'
'Listen, Tally. Dr. Cable is weaker than you think.' He leaned closer. 'This is what I came to tell you: After the New System came into being, some of Diego's industrial managers helped us out. Mass production. We've smuggled two hundred thousand pills into your city over the last month. If you can knock Special Circumstances off-balance, even for a few days, your city will start to change. Fear is the only thing keeping a New System from happening here, too.'
'Fear of whoever attacked the Armory, you mean.' She sighed. 'So it's all my fault again.'
'Maybe. But if you can dispel that fear here, every city in the world will start paying attention.' He took her hand. 'You aren't just stopping the war, Tally You're about to fix everything.'
'Or screw everything up. Has anyone thought what'll happen to the wild if everyone becomes cured all at once?' She shook her head. 'All I know is I have to stop this war.'
He smiled. 'The world is changing, Tally. You made it happen.'
She pulled away, staying silent for a while. Anything she said might set off another speech about how wonderful she was. She didn't feel wonderful, just exhausted. David seemed content to sit there, probably thinking that his words were sinking in, but Tally's silence meant nothing except that she was too tired to speak.
For Tally Youngblood, the war had already come and gone, leaving a smoking ruin in its wake. She couldn't fix everything, for the simple reason that the only person she cared about was past fixing.
Maddy could cure every bubblehead in the world, and Zane would still be dead.
But one question was niggling at her. 'So, are you saying your mother actually likes me now?'
David smiled. 'She finally realizes how important you are. To the future. And to me.'
Tally shook her head. 'Don't say things like that. About you and me.'
'I'm sorry, Tally. But its true.'
'Your father died because of me, David. Because I betrayed the Smoke.'
He shook his head slowly. 'You didn't betray us—you were manipulated by Special Circumstances, like a lot of other people were. And it was Dr. Cable's experiments that killed my father, not you.'
Tally sighed. She was too exhausted to argue. 'Well, I'm glad Maddy doesn't hate me anymore. And speaking of Dr. Cable, I need to go see her and stop this war. Are we done here?'
'Yes.' He picked up his meal and chopsticks, dropping his eyes to the food, his voice soft. 'That's everything I wanted to say. Except…'
She groaned.
'Listen, Tally, you're not the only person who ever lost someone.' His eyes narrowed. 'After my father died, I wanted to disappear too.'
'I'm not disappearing, David, I'm not running away. I'm doing what I have to, all right?'
'Tally, I'm just saying: I'll be here when you're done.'
'You?' She shook her head.
'You're not alone, Tally. Don't pretend you are.'
Tally tried to stand up, to get away from this nonsense, but suddenly the ruined tower seemed to sway around her. She sank back to her haunches.
Another lame dramatic exit.
'Okay, David, turns out I'm not going anywhere until I get some sleep. Guess I should have taken that helicopter.'
'Use my sleeping bag.' He scooted aside and held up the antenna. 'I'll wake you up if anyone comes sniffing around. You're safe here.'
'Safe.' Tally squeezed past David, for a moment feeling the heat of his body and faintly remembering his smell from when they'd been together, what seemed like years ago.
It was strange. His ugly face had revolted her the last time she'd seen it, but after seeing so many insane surgeries in Diego, his scarred eyebrow and crooked smile just seemed like one more fashion statement. And not an awful one at that.
But he wasn't Zane.
Tally crawled into the sleeping bag, then peered down through the rotted floors of the building to the rubble- filled foundation a hundred meters below.
'Um, just don't let me roll over in my sleep, okay?'
He smiled. 'All right.'
'And give me that.' She took the injector from his hand, zipping it into a pouch of her sneak suit. 'I might need it one day.'
'Maybe you won't, Tally.'
'Don't confuse me,' she murmured.
Tally laid down her head, and slept.
