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The spires of the ruins rose up before Tally, the tallest about an hour away on foot She was, of course, arriving almost teeks after the others But hopefully they hadn’t given up on her, or e of so in the tallest building, unwilling to leave while there was still a chance she would show up

Unless, of course, their escape had come too late for him

Tally shouldered her backpack and started to walk

The ruined streets were full of ghosts

Tally had hardly ever walked in the city before She had always cruised around on a hoverboard - ten round level In the last days of Rusty civilization, an artificial plague had spread across the world It didn’t infect hu itself in the gas tanks of groundcars and jet aircraft, slowly ue-transformed petroleuen, and the oily smoke from the sudden fires spread the bacterial spores on the wind, into as tanks, more oil fields, until it had reached every Rusty lobe

The Rusties really hadn’t liked walking, it turned out Even after they’d figured out what the plague was doing, panicked citizens still ju to escape into the wild If Tally looked hard enough, she could see cruh the smeared s of the cars jammed onto the ruins’ streets Only a few of the people back then had been sh to survive the death of their world Whoever had engineered the plague had definitely understood the Rusties’ weakness

"Boy, you guys were stupid," Tallythem names didn’t make the dead Rusties any less ominous The few intact skulls just stared back at her with es grew taller and taller, their steel fraiant and extinct creatures Tally took a winding path through the narrow streets, looking for the tallest building in the ruins The huge spire was easy to spot froled maze

Then she turned a corner and saw it, chunks of old concrete clinging to the toweringdown at her, jagged shapes of bright sky showing through This was definitely the place - Tally remembered when Shay had taken her up to its top the first time she’d come out to the Rusty Ruins There was only one probleet up?

The innards of the building had long since rotted away There were no stairs, and hardly any floors to speak of The steel franetic lifters, but there was no way for a person to cliear If Zane or the New Se for Tally, it would be up there, but she had no way of reaching it

Tally sat down, suddenly exhausted It was like the tower in her dream, without stairs or elevator, and she’d lost the key, which in this case was her hoverboard All she could think of was to hike back to the stolen car and fly it up there Maybe she could bring it close enough beside the buildingbut ould hold it in a steady hover while she climbed out onto the ancient steel frame?

For the thousandth time, Tally wished that her board hadn’t been wrecked

She stared up at the tower What if no one was up there? What if, after traveling all this way, Tally Youngblood was still alone?

She got to her feet and yelled as loud as she could, "Heeeey!"

The sound echoed through the ruins, sending a flock of birds into flight from a distant rooftop

"Hey! It’s me!"

Once the echoes faded, there was no sound in answer Tally’s throat felt sore fro a safety flare out of her backpack A fire would be pretty obvious down here in the shadows of the cavernous buildings

She cracked the flare open, holding its hissing flaain

"It’sshifted in the sky above

Tally blinked away the spots that the flare had left in her eyes and stared into the bright blue sky

A shape drifted away froroly

The underside of a hoverboard So down!

Tally tossed the flare onto a pile of rocks, her heart pounding, suddenly realizing she had no idea as descending to meet her How had she been so dimwitted? It could be anyone up there on the board If the Specials had caught the other Crims andplace, and Tally’s latest escape was about to come to a sudden end

She told herself to calm down It was a hoverboard, after all, and only one Surely if Specials had been lying in wait, they would have rushed out from every direction in a bunch of hovercars

In any case, there was no point in panicking She wasn’t likely to escape on foot now The only thing to do ait The safety flare sizzled out to a sputtering death while the hoverboard descended slowly, hugging the ht she saw a face peering over the edge, but against the bright sky it could have been anyone

When it was only ten ain "Hello?" Her voice sounded shaky in her ears

"Tally," someone called back, the voice familiar

The hoverboard settled beside her, and Tally found herself staring into a thoroughly ugly face: the forehead too high, the sh one eyebrow She stared at hiloom of the broken city

"David?" she said softly

FACES

He stared at her, of course

Even if she hadn’t shouted out her na for Tally, after all, so he must have known from the first cry as down here But the way he stared at her, it was as if he were seeing soain "It’s me"