That was his thing: going around recruiting uglies to run away, seducing the best and the smartest city kids with the promise of rebellion. And he always had his favorites. First Shay, then Tally…
Tally shook her head to clear it, reminding herself that the social life of Smokies was of no interest to a Special.
Leaning forward, she coaxed her board faster. The black expanse of the Trails was just ahead. This chase was almost over.
The two plunged into the darkness, disappearing into dense trees. Tally climbed to skim the forest canopy, watching for signs of their passage in the sharp light of the moon. In the distance beyond the Trails, the true wilds lay, the utter blackness of Outside.
A shiver played across the treetops, the Smokies' two hoverboards streaking like a gust of wind through the forest….
'They're still headed straight out,' she said.
'We're right behind you, Tally-wa,' Shay answered. 'Care to join us down here?'
'Sure, Boss.' Tally covered her face with both hands as she dropped, a spray of needles traveling from foot to head, the caress of pine branches shooting along her body. Then she was among the tree trunks, zipping through the forest, knees bent, eyes wide open.
The other three Cutters had caught up with her, arrayed a hundred meters apart, cruel-pretty faces fiendish in the flickering moonlight.
Ahead, at the border between the Trails and the true wilderness, the two Smokies were already descending, their boards' magnetic lifters running out of metal. Their skidding descent echoed through the brush, followed by the sounds of running feet.
'Game over,' Shay said.
The lifting fans of Tally's hoverboard kicked in beneath her, a low thrum drifting through the trees like the growl of some hibernating beast. The Cutters slowed, dropping to a few meters' altitude, scanning the dark horizon for movement.
A shiver of pleasure ran down Tally's spine. The chase had become a game of hide-and-seek.
But not exactly a fair game. She made a finger gesture, and the chips in her hands and brain responded, laying an infrared channel over Tally's vision. The world was transformed—the snow-patched ground turning a cold blue, the trees emitting soft green halos—every object illuminated by its own heat. A few small mammals stood out, red and pulsing, heads twitching, as if they instinctively knew that something dangerous was nearby Not far away, a hovering Fausto glowed, his feverish Special-body bright yellow, and Tally's own hands seemed to course with orange flames.
But in the now-purple darkness ahead of her, nothing of human size appeared.
Tally frowned, flicking back and forth between infrared and normal vision. 'Where'd they go?'
'They must have sneak suits,' Fausto whispered. 'Otherwise we could see them.'
'Or smell them, at least,' Shay said. 'Maybe your boyfriend's not so random after all, Tally-wa.'
'What do we do?' Tachs said.
'We get off and use our ears.'
Tally let her hoverboard drop to the ground, the lifting blades splintering twigs and dry leaves as they spun to a halt. She stepped from the riding surface as it stilled, and the late winter cold leeched up through her grippy shoes.
She wriggled her toes and listened to the forest, watching her breath curl out in front of her face, waiting for the whine of the other boards to peter out. As the silence deepened, her ears caught a soft sound pattering all around her—the wind rattling pine needles in their tiny sheaths of ice. A few birds disturbed the air, and hungry squirrels who'd woken up from a long winter's sleep scrabbled for buried nuts. The breathing of the other Cutters came through on the skintennas' ghostly channel, separate from the rest of the world.
But nothing that sounded like a human moved on the forest floor.
Tally smiled. At least David was making this interesting, standing perfectly still like this. But even with sneak suits hiding their body heat, the Smokies couldn't remain motionless forever.
Besides, she could feel him out there. He was close.
Tally silenced her skintenna feed, switching off the noise of the other Cutters, leaving herself in a hushed, infrared world. Kneeling, she closed her eyes, placing one bare palm on the hard, frozen ground. Her special hands had chips in them that caught the slightest vibration, and Tally let her whole body listen for stray sounds.
There was something in the air … a hum at the edge of hearing, more an itch in her ears than a real noise. It was one of those ghostly presences she could hear now, like the buzz of her own nervous system or the sizzle of fluorescent lights. So many sounds that were inaudible to uglies and bubbleheads reached a Special's ears, as strange and unexpected as the whorls and ridges of human skin under a microscope.
But what exactly was it? The sound ebbed and flowed with the breeze, like the notes that sang out from the high tension lines stretching from the city's solar arrays. Maybe it was some kind of trap, a wire strung between two trees. Or was it a razor-sharp knife angled so that it caught the wind?
Tally kept her eyes closed, listening harder, and frowned.
More sounds had joined the first, ringing from all directions now. Three, four, then five high-pitched notes began to ring, their combined volume no louder than a hummingbird at a hundred meters.
She opened her eyes, and as they refocused in the gloom, Tally suddenly saw them: a slight displacement silhouetting five human figures spread through the forest, their sneak suits blending almost perfectly into the background.
Then she saw how they were standing—legs braced apart, one arm pulled back, the other outstretched—and realized what the sounds were…
Bowstrings stretched taut and ready to fire.
'Ambush,' Tally said, then realized she'd cut off her skintenna feed.
She rebooted it just as the first arrow flew.
Arrows streaked through the air.
Tally rolled to the ground, flattening herself on a bed of icy, fallen needles. Something whistled past, close enough to ruffle her hair.
Twenty meters away, one of the arrows connected, and an electric buzz shot through her hearing like a network overload, choking off a grunt from Tachs. Then an arrow struck Fausto, and Tally heard him gasp before his feed went silent. She scrambled for cover behind the nearest tree, hearing two bodies thudding against the hard ground. 'Shay?' she hissed.
'They missed me,' came the answer. 'Saw it coming.'
'Me too. They've definitely got sneak suits.' Tally shoved herself back against the wide trunk, scanning for silhouettes among the trees.
'And infrared, too,' Shay said. Her voice was calm.
Tally looked down at her hands, glowing fiercely in infrared, and swallowed. 'So they can see us perfectly and we can't see them?'
'Guess I didn't give your boyfriend enough credit, Tally- wa.'
'Maybe if you bothered to remember that he was your boyfriend too, you'd …' Something shifted in the trees ahead, and as her words faded, Tally heard the snap of a bowstring. She threw herself to one side as the arrow struck the tree, letting out a buzz like a shock-stick and covering the trunk in a web of flickering light.
She scrambled away, rolling to a spot where two trees' branches wound around each other. Squeezing into a narrow crook between them, she said, 'What's the plan now, Boss?'
'The plan is we kick their asses, Tally-wa,' Shay chided softly. 'We're special. They got in the first whack, but they're still just random.' Another bowstring snapped and Shay let out a grunt, which was followed by the sound of footsteps sprinting through the brush.
The sound of more bowstrings sent Tally to the ground, but the arrows whipped off into the distance where Shay had retreated. Jittering shadows flickered through the forest, followed by the sounds of electrical discharge.
'Missed again,' Shay chuckled to herself.
Tally swallowed, trying to listen through the frantic pounding of her heart, cursing the fact that the Cutters
