INVASION

Tally turned from the window and saw nothing but emptybeds. She was alone in the bunkhouse.
She shook her head, foggy from sleep and disbelief. Theground rumbled beneath her bare feet, and the bunkhouseshuddered around her. Suddenly, the plastic in one of thewindows shattered, and the muffled cacophony from outsiderushed in to batter her ears. The entire building shookas if it would collapse.
Where was everyone? Had they already fled the Smoke,leaving her there to face this invasion alone?
Tally ran for the door and threw it open. Before her, ahovercar was landing, blinding her for a moment with aface full of dust. She recognized the machine’s cruel linesfrom the Special Circumstances car that had first taken herto see Dr. Cable. But this one was equipped with four shimmeringblades—one each where the wheels of a groundcarwould be—a cross between a normal hovercar and therangers’ helicopter.
It could travel anywhere, Tally realized, inside a city orout in the wild. She remembered Dr. Cable’s words: We’ll bethere in a few hours. Tally forced the thought from her head.
This attack couldn’t have anything to do with her.
The hovercar struck the dusty ground with a thud.
This was no time to stand there wondering. She turnedand ran.
The camp was a chaos of smoke and running figures.
Cooking fires had been blown from their pits, and scatteredembers burned everywhere. Two of the encampment’s bigbuildings were ablaze. Chickens and rabbits scamperedunderfoot, dust and ashes coiled in rampant whirlwinds.
Dozens of Smokies ran about, some trying to put out thefires, some trying to escape, some simply panicking.
Through everything else, the forms of cruel prettiesmoved. Their gray uniforms passed like fleeting shadowsthrough the confusion. Graceful and unhurried, as ifunaware of the chaos around them, they set about subduingthe panicking Smokies. They moved in a blur, withoutany weapons that Tally could see, leaving everyone in theirwake lying on the ground, bound and dazed.
They were superhumanly fast and strong. The Specialoperation had given them more than just terrible faces.
Near the mess hall, about two dozen Smokies weremaking a stand, holding off a handful of Specials with axesand makeshift clubs. Tally made her way toward the fight,and the incongruous smells of breakfast reached herthrough the choking haze of smoke. Her stomach growled.
288 Scott WesterfeldTally realized that she had slept through the breakfastcall, too exhausted to wake up with everyone else. TheSpecials must have waited until most of the Smokies weregathered in the mess hall before launching their invasion.
Of course. They wanted to capture as many Smokies aspossible in a single stroke.
The Specials weren’t attacking the large group at themess hall. They waited patiently in a ring around thebuilding while their numbers increased, more hovercarslanding every minute. If anyone tried to get past the cordon,they reacted swiftly, disarming and incapacitatingwhoever dared to run. But most of the Smokies were tooshocked to resist, paralyzed by the terrible faces of theiropponents. Even here, most people had never seen a cruelpretty.
Tally pinned herself against a building, trying to disappearnext to a stack of firewood. She shielded her eyesfrom the dust storm, searching for an escape route. Therewas no way to get into the center of the Smoke, where herhoverboard lay on the broad roof of the trading post, chargingin the sun. The forest was the only way out.
A stretch of uncleared trees lay at the closest edge oftown, only a twenty-second dash away. But a Special stoodbetween her and the border of dense trees and brush, waitingto intercept any stray Smokies. The woman’s eyesscanned the approach to the forest, her head moving fromside to side in a weirdly regular motion, like someoneUGLIES 289watching a slow-motion tennis match without muchinterest.
Tally crept closer, staying pressed against the building.
A hovercar passed overhead, blowing a maelstrom of dustand loose wood chips into her eyes.
When she could see again, Tally found an aging uglycrouching next to her, against the wall.
“Hey!” he hissed.
She recognized the sagging features, the bitter expression.
It was the Boss.
“Young lady, we have a problem.” His harsh voice cutthrough the cacophony of the attack.
She glanced in the direction of the waiting Special.
“Yeah, I know.”
Another hovercar roared over them, and he pulled heraround the corner of the building and down behind a drumthat collected rainwater from the gutters.
“You noticed her too?” He grinned, showing a missingtooth. “Maybe if we both run at once, one of us might makeit. If the other puts up a fight.”
Tally swallowed. “I guess.” She peered out at the Special,who stood as calmly as a crumbly waiting for a pleasureferry. “But they’re pretty fast.”
“That depends.” He dropped the duffel bag from hisshoulder. “There’re two things I keep ready for emergencies.”
The Boss unzipped the bag and pulled out a plasticcontainer big enough for a sandwich. “This is one.” He290 Scott Westerfeldpopped open one corner of the top, and a puff of dust roseup. A second later, a wave of fire rushed into Tally’s head.
She covered her face, eyes watering, and tried to cough upthe finger of flame that had crawled down her throat.
“Not bad, eh?” the Boss chuckled. “That’s pure habaneropepper, dried and ground down to dust. Not too badin beans, but hell in your eyes.”
Tally blinked away her tears and managed to speak.
“Are you nuts?”
“The other thing is this bag, which contains a representativesample of two hundred years of Rusty-era visualculture. Priceless and irreplaceable artifacts. So which doyou want?”
“Huh?”
“Do you want the habanero pepper or the bag of magazines?
Do you want to get caught while taking out ourSpecial friend? Or save a precious piece of human heritagefrom these barbarians?”
Tally coughed once more. “I guess . . . I want toescape.”
The Boss smiled. “Good. I’m sick of running. Sick oflosing my hair too, and being short-sighted. I’ve done mybit, and you look pretty fast.”
He handed her the duffel bag. It was heavy, but Tallyhad grown stronger since she’d come to the Smoke. Magazineswere nothing compared with scrap metal.
She thought of the first day she had arrived there,UGLIES 291seeing a magazine for the first time in the library, realizingwith horror what humanity had once looked like. The pictureshad made her sick that first day, and now here she wasready to save them.
“Here’s the plan,” the Boss said. “I’ll go first, and whenthat Special grabs me, I’ll give her a face full of pepper.
You run straight and fast and don’t look back. Got that?”
“Yeah.”
“With any luck, we both might make it. Though Iwouldn’t mind a face-lift. Ready?”
Tally pulled the bag farther up on her shoulder.
“Let’s go.”
“One . . . two . . .” The Boss paused. “Oh, dear. There’sa problem, young lady.”
“What?”
“You haven’t got any shoes.”
Tally looked down. In her confusion, she had stumbledbarefoot out of the bunkhouse. The packed dirt of theSmoke compound was easy enough to walk on, but in theforest . . .
“You won’t make it ten meters, kid.”
The Boss pulled the duffel bag away from her andhanded her the plastic container. “Now get going.”
“But I . . . ,” Tally said. “I don’t want to go back tothe city.”
“Yes, young lady, and I wouldn’t mind getting somedecent dental work. But we all have to make sacrifices.
292 Scott WesterfeldStarting now!” On the last word, he shoved her out frombehind the drum.
Tally stumbled forward, utterly exposed in the middle ofthe street. The roar of a hovercar seemed to pass right overher head, and she instinctively ducked, dashing toward thecover of the forest.
The Special cocked her head toward Tally, calmlyfolded her arms, and frowned like a teacher spotting littliesplaying where they shouldn’t.
Tally wondered if the pepper would do anything to thewoman. If it affected the Special like it had Tally, she mightstill make it into the forest. Even if she was supposed to bethe bait. Even if she had no shoes.
Even if it turned out David had already been caughtand she’d never see him again . . .
The thought unleashed a sudden torrent of anger insideher, and she ran straight at the woman, the containerclenched in both hands.
A smile broke out on the Special’s cruel features.
A split second before they collided, the Special seemedto disappear, slipping out of sight like a coin in a magician’shand. In her next stride Tally felt something hard connectwith her shin, and pain shot up her leg. Her body tumbledforward, hands reaching out to break her fall, the containerslipping from her grasp.
She hit the ground hard, skidding on her palms. Asshe rolled through the dirt, Tally glimpsed the SpecialUGLIES 293crouching behind her. The woman had simply ducked,invisibly fast, and Tally had tripped over her like some awkwardlittlie in a brawl.
Shaking her head and spitting the dirt out of her mouth,Tally spotted the container just out of reach. She scrambledtoward it, but a staggering weight crashed down on her, drivingher face-first into the ground. She felt her wrists pulledback and bound, hard plastic cuffs cutting into her flesh.
She struggled, but couldn’t move.
Then the awful weight lifted, and a nudge from a bootflipped her over effortlessly. The Special stood over her,smiling coldly, holding the container. “Now, now, ugly,” thecruel pretty said. “You just calm down. We don’t want tohurt you. But we will if we have to.”
Tally started to speak, but her jaw clenched with pain.
It had plowed into the ground when she’d fallen.
“What’s so important about this?” the Special asked,shaking the container and trying to peer through its translucentplastic.
Out of the corner of her eye, Tally saw the Boss makinghis way toward the forest. His run was slow and tortured,the duffel bag too heavy for him.
“Open it and see,” Tally spat painfully.
“I will,” she said, still smiling. “But first things first.”
She turned her attention toward the Boss, and her posturesuddenly transformed into something animal, crouchedand coiled like a cat ready to spring.
294 Scott WesterfeldTally rolled back onto her shoulders, thrashing outwildly with both feet. Her kick connected with the container,and it popped open, a puff of brownish-green dustspraying out over the Special.
For a second, a disbelieving expression spread over thewoman’s face. She made a gagging noise, her whole bodyshuddering. Then her eyes and fists clamped shut, and shescreamed.
The sound wasn’t human. It cut into Tally’s ears like avibrasaw striking metal, and every muscle in her bodyfought to get free of the handcuffs, her instincts demandingthat she cover her ears. With another wild kick, she rolledherself over and stumbled to her feet, staggering in thedirection of the forest.
A tickle grew in Tally’s throat as the pepper dust dispersedon the wind. She coughed as she ran, eyes wateringand stinging until she was half-blind. With her hands tiedbehind her, Tally lurched into the brush off-balance, tumblingto the ground as her bare feet caught on something inthe dense vegetation.
She struggled forward, trying to drag herself out ofsight.
Blinking away tears, she saw that the Special’s inhumanscream had been some kind of alarm. Three more of thecruel pretties had responded. One led the pepper-coveredSpecial away at arm’s length, and the others approached theforest.
UGLIES 295Tally froze, the brush barely concealing her.
Then she felt a tickle in her throat, a slowly growingirritation. Tally held her breath, closing her eyes. But herchest began to shudder, her body twitching, demanding toexpel traces of the pepper from her lungs.
She had to cough.
Tally swallowed again and again, hoping spit could putout the fire in her throat. Her lungs demanded oxygen, butshe didn’t dare breathe. One of the Specials was only astone’s throw away, scanning the forest with slow back-andforthsweeps of his head, his eyes searching the dense treesrelentlessly.
Gradually, painfully, the flames seemed to expire inTally’s chest, the cough dying a quiet death inside her. Sherelaxed, finally letting out her breath.
Over the thunder of hovercars and crackle of burningbuildings and sounds of battle, the Special somehow heardher soft exhalation. His head turned swiftly, eyes narrowing,and in what seemed like a single motion he was by her side,a hand on the back of her neck. “You’re a tricky one,” he said.
She tried to answer, but wound up coughing savagelyinstead, and he forced her face down in the dirt before shecould manage another breath.