a couple of hours after dawn, they came and got her.

tally saw them hiking through the orchids, four figurescarrying hoverboards and dressed all in white. broad whitehats in a dappled pattern hid their heads, and she realizedthat if they ducked down into the flowers, they would practicallydisappear.

these people went to a lot of trouble to stay hidden.

as the party drew close, she recognized shay’s pigtailsbobbing under one of the hats and waved frantically. tallyhad planned to take the note literally and wait on the hilltop,but at the sight of her friend, she grabbed her boardand dashed down to meet them.

infiltrator or not, tally couldn’t wait to see shay.

the tall, lanky form broke from the others and rantoward her, and the two embraced, laughing.

“it is you! i knew it was!”

“of course it is, shay. i couldn’t stand missing you.”

which was pretty much true.

shay couldn’t stop smiling. “when we spotted thehelicopter last night, most people said it had to be anothergroup. they said you’d taken too long, and that i shouldgive up.”

tally tried to smile back, wondering if she hadn’t madeup enough time. she could hardly admit starting four daysafter her sixteenth birthday.

“i kind of got turned around. could your note havebeen any more obscure?”

“oh.” shay’s face fell. “i thought you’d understand it.”

unable to bear shay blaming herself, tally shook herhead. “actually, the note was okay. i’m just a moron. andthe biggest problem was when i got to the flowers. therangers didn’t see me at first, and i almost got roasted.”

shay’s eyes widened as she took in tally’s scratched andsunburned face, the blisters on her hands, and her patchy,scorched hair. “oh, tally! you look like you went through awar zone.”

“just about.”

the other three uglies walked up. they stood back abit, one boy holding a device in the air. “she’s carryinga bug,” he said.

tally’s heart froze. “a what?”

shay gently took tally’s board from her and handed itto the boy. he swept his device across it, nodded, andpulled one of the stabilizer fins off. “here it is.”

“they sometimes put trackers on the long-rangeboards,” shay said. “trying to find the smoke.”

188 scott westerfeld“oh, i’m really . . . i didn’t know. i swear!”

“relax, tally,” the boy said. “it’s not your fault. shay’sboard had one too. that’s why we meet you newbies downhere.” he held up the bug. “we’ll take it away in some randomdirection and stick it on a migrating bird. see how thespecials like south america.” the smokies all laughed.

he stepped closer and swept the device up and downher body. tally flinched when it passed close to the pendant.

but he smiled. “it’s okay. you’re clean.”

tally sighed with relief. of course, she hadn’t activatedthe pendant yet, so his device couldn’t detect it. the otherbug was just dr. cable’s way of misleading the smokies,getting them to drop their guard. tally herself was the realdanger.

shay stepped up next to the boy, taking his hand inhers. “tally, this is david.”

the boy smiled again. he was an ugly, but he had a nicesmile. and his face held a kind of confidence that tally hadnever seen in an ugly before. maybe he was a few yearsolder than she was. tally had never watched anyone maturenaturally past age sixteen. she wondered how much ofbeing ugly was just an awkward age.

of course, david was hardly a pretty. his smile wascrooked, and his forehead too high. but, uglies or not, itwas good to see shay, david—all of them. except for acouple of stunned hours with the rangers, she hadn’t seenhuman faces in what seemed like years.

uglies 189f f f“so, what’ve you got?”

“huh?”

croy was one of the other uglies who’d come to meether. he also looked older than sixteen, but it didn’t suit himlike it did david. some people needed the operation morethan others. he reached out a hand for her knapsack.

“oh, thanks.” her shoulders were sore from beingstrapped to the thing for the last week.

he pulled it open as they hiked, looking inside.

“purifier. position-finder.” croy pulled out the waterproofbag and opened it. “spagbol! yum!”

tally groaned. “you can have it.”

his eyes widened. “i can?”

shay pulled the knapsack away from him. “no, you can’t.”

“listen, i’ve eaten that stuff three times a day for thepast . . . what seems like forever,” tally said.

“yeah, but dehydrated food’s hard to get in the smoke,”

shay explained. “you should save it to trade.”

“trade?” tally frowned. “what do you mean?” in thecity, uglies might trade chores or stuff they’d stolen, buttrade food?

shay laughed. “you’ll get used to the idea. in thesmoke, things don’t just come out of the wall. you’ve got tohang on to the stuff you brought with you. don’t go givingit away to anyone who asks.” shay glared at croy, wholooked down sheepishly.

190 scott westerfeld“i was going to give her something for it,” he insisted.

“sure you were,” david said.

tally noticed his hand on shay’s shoulder, touching hersoftly as they hiked. she remembered the way shay hadalways talked about david, kind of dreamily. maybe itwasn’t just the promise of freedom that had brought herfriend here.

they reached the edge of the flowers, a dense growthof trees and brush that started at the foot of a toweringmountain.

“how do you keep the orchids from spreading?” tallyasked.

david’s eyes lit up, as if this was his favorite subject.

“this old-growth forest stops them. it’s been around forcenturies, probably even before the rusties.”

“it’s got lots and lots of species,” shay said. “so it’sstrong enough to keep out the weed.” she looked at davidfor approval.

“the rest of this land used to be farms or grazing pasture,”

he continued, gesturing back at the expanse of whitebehind them. “the rusties had already broken its backbefore the weed arrived.”

a few minutes into the forest, tally realized why theorchids were no match for it. the tangled brush and thicktrees were knotted together into an impassable wall oneither side. even on the narrow path, she was constantlyshoving past branches and twigs, tripping over roots anduglies 191rocks. she’d never seen any woodlands this raw and inhospitable.

vines dotted with cruel thorns ran through thesemidarkness like barbed wire. “you guys live in here?”

shay laughed. “don’t worry. we’ve got a ways to go.

we’re just making sure you weren’t followed. the smoke’smuch higher, where the trees aren’t so intense. but thecreek’s coming up. we’ll be on board soon.”

“good,” tally said. her feet were already chafing in thenew shoes. but they were warmer than her destroyed grippies,she realized, and were better for hiking. she wonderedwhat would have happened if the rangers hadn’t given themto her. how did you get new shoes in the smoke? tradesomeone all your food? make them yourself? she lookeddown at the feet ahead of her, david’s, and saw that hisshoes did look handmade, like a couple of pieces of leathercrudely sewn together. strangely, though, he moved gracefullythrough the undergrowth, silent and sure while therest of them crashed along like elephants.

the very idea of making a pair of shoes by hand boggledher mind.

it didn’t matter, tally reminded herself, taking a deepbreath. once in the smoke, she could activate the pendantand be home within a day, maybe within hours. all the foodand clothes she would ever need, hers for the asking. herface pretty at long last, and peris and all their old friendsaround her.

finally, this nightmare would be over.

192 scott westerfeldf f fsoon, the sound of running water filled the forest, and theyreached a small clearing. david pulled his device out again,pointing it back toward the path. “still nothing.” hegrinned at tally. “congratulations, you’re one of us now.”

shay giggled and hugged tally again as the others readiedtheir boards. “i still can’t believe you came. i thought i’dmessed everything up, waiting so long to tell you aboutrunning away. and i was so stupid, getting into a fightinstead of just telling you what i was going to do.”

tally shook her head. “you’d said everything already, ijust wasn’t listening. once i realized you were serious, ineeded a chance to think about it. it just took me awhile . . . every minute, until the last night before my birthday.”

she took a deep breath, wondering why she wassaying all this, lying to shay when she didn’t really have to.

she should just shut up, get to the smoke, and get it overwith. but tally found herself continuing. “then i realizedi’d never see you again if i didn’t come. and i’d alwayswonder.”

that last part was true, at least.

as they boarded higher up into the mountain the creekwidened, cutting an archway of trees into the dense forest.

the gnarled, smaller trees became taller pines, the undergrowththinning, the brook breaking into occasional rapids.

shay cried out as she rode through the spray of churningwhite water.

uglies 193“i’ve been dying to show you this! and the really goodrapids are on the other side.”

eventually, they left the creek, following a vein of ironover a ridge. from the top, they looked down into a smallvalley that was mostly clear of forest.

shay held tally’s hand. “there it is. home.”

the smoke lay below them.