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Tally reached out toward the door, her hand shaking If a siren started blaring, everyone would be staring at her and whispering as the wardens arrived and evacuated the tower It would be a really bubbly end to her career as a Crius criminal if she couldn’t set off an alarm every once in a while

She pushed the door open It didn’t make a sound

Tally stepped into the stairwell The door closed behind her,the tumult of the party In the sudden quiet, she could feel her heart pounding in her chest and hear her own breath, still ragged from the chase The beat of thethe concrete floor shudder

The figure sat on the stairs, a few steps up "You made it" It was a boy’s voice, indistinct behind the h the door"

"It wasn’t exactly locked" She tried to stare her way through the jeweled eyes of the mask

"Who are you?"

"You don’t recognize enuinely puzzled, as if he were an old friend, someone ore a mask all the time "What do I look like?"

Tally sed and said softly, "Special Circumstances"

"Good You reme slowly and carefully, as if she were some kind of idiot

"Of course I remember Are you one of them? Do I know you?" Tally couldn’t recall any individual Specials; in her ether into one cruel and pretty blur

"Why don’t you take a look?" The figure didn’t move to take off his oing on here Recognizing what the costu the alarmed door - all of it had been a test So if she would dare pull off his mask

Tally was sick of tests "Just stay away from me," she said

"Tally - "

"I don’t want to work for Special Circumstances I just want to live here in New Pretty Town"

"I’ her fists The cry echoed off the concrete walls, leaving a moment of silence, as if it had surprised theh the stairwell, h thefor you If you’re ready for it Do you want it, Tally?"

"I don’t want anything fro sounds ca up the stairs

The two of the over the handrail down the narrow stairwell shaft A long way down, Tally saw flashes of gray silk and hands grasping the rails, half a dozen people cli the stairs incredibly fast, their footsteps barely audible over the

Tally blinked He pushed her aside, spooked by the sight of real Specials So as he?

Before his fingers reached the doorknob, Tally snatched the ly

His face was nothing like the costu noses or squinty eyes It wasn’t just exaggerated features that , as if he were made of some utterly different substance In those seconds, Tally’s pretty-perfect eyesight caught every gaping pore, the randoles in his hair, the crude imbalance of his disjointed face Her skin crawled at his ied teeth, the eruptions on his forehead screa out disease She wanted to pull away to put distance between herself and his unlucky unclean, unhealthy ugliness

But somehow she knew his name

"Croy?" she said

FALL

"Later, Tally," Croy said, snatching back his mask He yanked open the door, and the noise of the party rushed into the stairwell as he darted through, the gray silk of his costu into the crowd

Tally just stood there as the door swung closed again, too stunned to liness all wrong: Cray’s face was e of the S skin carried angry red ainst it

But then the door sla the echoes Tally heard the footsteps still cli toward her, real Specials on their way up, and for the first tih her head

Run

She pulled open the door and plunged into the crowd

The elevator was just spilling open, and Tally stumbled into a clique of Naturals plastered with brittle leaves, walking last days of autuh the - the floor was sticky with spilled charay silk

Croy was headed toward the balcony and the Cri her, panicking her at parties, tangling her memories when she needed to be bubbly She had to catch Croy and tell hilyville or the S out of her ugly past

And there was another reason she was running: the Specials It had only taken a glih alert Their inhu a cockroach skitter across a plate Croy’s ht have see out in a party full of new pretties, but the Specials were another species altogether

Tally burst out onto the balcony just in ti his arot his balance, bent his knees, and pushed off into the night