Chapter 9

Tally's POV

Sleeping had not even been possible that night. After Zane and I kissed, I sat outside in the chilly night air just thinking. I couldn't walk because of my nearly broken ankle so I sat. Fortunately my special skills had set in and I was healing quickly but not quick enough, it still hurt like hell. I couldn't remember quite what happened but I set to massaging it and attempting to distract myself… that was impossible. The entire night I sat my head swimming. Finally, around three in the morning I laid down for rest and found myself waking with the sunrise. The sleep had been restless and filled with dreams. I was exhausted and wished I could continue sleeping… but it was impossible. The few hours of rest had healed my ankle nearly to perfection, but it left my thoughts to swarm with Zane instead of focusing on the intense pain that was now gone.

"Morning." Zane surprised me by stepping out from under the 'tent' at the crack of dawn.

"Uh, morning." I lightly smiled it wasn't exactly forced but it didn't come easily. I had expected talking to him would be awkward.

"How does your ankle feel?" He asked kneeling beside it and applying pressure. I winced slightly but barely felt the pain.

"How did this happen to me?" I asked straining to remember, and trying to ignore the perfect golden eyes that now looked at me.

"They are much stronger then we expected. They have a lot of special weapons. We weren't expecting it."

"If I remember anything I know they get up early. If we are already up they may wonder why… pretties are use to sleeping late." I reminded him. Thank God I had remembered this; I knew anything slightly out of the ordinary would be extremely suspicious. He nodded in agreement and headed toward the tent. I followed and I lay down beside him on the bedding that was still warm from his body heat. They thought we were "together" so they had only given us one tent. I wasn't sure if I was thankful or upset about this. Closing my eyes I began breathing quietly and I listened. I could hear his attempt to breath heavy as though he was sleeping and I tried to mimic it. It was so odd lying next to him again. It felt so familiar yet so oddly unknown. I felt as he rolled his body on to his stomach and our skin touched. What felt like hours passed before I finally heard the crunching of footsteps outside the tent. I kept my breath steady and leaned in towards Zane. He slung an arm over my body, it was heavy and warm. For a moment I felt like nothing between us had changed.

"We are leaving in 20 minutes better get up for breakfast." I heard a voice yell to us I I pretended to groan and didn't move. The steps came closer and peeked in to the tent. I sat up and rubbed my "sleepy eyes" shocked to find Croy standing there.

"Mmm, ok we'll be right up."

"— Isaac it's time to get up dear." I leaned back in the tent and spoke to him loud enough to be heard and gave him a peck on the cheek.

"Hmmm?" Zane sat up pulling it off perfectly.

"Morning already?" He asked with a smile.

"Be careful." Zane said once Croy was gone. He had notice my pause before speaking to him and he also knew I had been close to slipping up and calling him Zane.

"I know I know. When are we calling in.?"

Zane hesitated before answering, "Soon."

Why had he hesitated?

~…~

"Hey Issac." Garren walked up to us. I was leaning on Zane as we walked up a hill. My heart sped up and I got slightly nervous but tried to conceal it. Garren better not try to get all high and mighty on Zane. I wasn't in the mood to deal with these two at the moment and right now, as horrible as this sounds, I was completely content leaning on Zane. If Garren tried anything Zane wouldn't hesitate to stop him. Did Garren have any idea how powerful Zane is?

"Hey Terry what's up?" Zane said the name easily as if he had been saying it all his life. I hated all the fake name crap.

"How are you guys doing?" Garren didn't hide his annoyance and I could tell that ticked Zane off… it was strange, all of the sudden I felt myself reading Zane's emotions and playing off his feelings like I did in the old days. I loved this, but at the same time I hated it because I knew it would end

"Perfectly fine, how are you dear?" He looked at me. Crap I knew that piss Garren off. The thing about my boy friend was that he was slightly possessive over me, even when it came to things like being undercover, Garren just wouldn't stop.

"Um, I will be fine." I replied thinking things would be much better once Garren left.

"Here, why don't I give you a little rest and help… her… out?" His brow was furrowing and he moved to take me in his arms.

"No it's perfectly fine." Zane replied. "I'd rather stay by her side."

"Seriously man, we have a long journey let me help you out."

"No!" I jumped in. "I'd rather stay with my... Isaac." I told him. Garren's jaw tightened and his expression glazed over. He turned and walked away allowing me to let out the breath I had been holding. Zane didn't speak but I felt his muscles tense up and I could feel the definition under his shirt. I wanted to scream at Garren… for some reason I wasn't wanting to scream at Zane but I was so angry at Garren.

Tally's POV

I woke up people running all over the place. I struggled to my feet and found that Zane was gone.

"What's going on?" I asked someone.

"They are here!"

I knew what that meant… the specials. More from HQ had come and that meant it was time to… take them down? I was really confused that was my job right? I had come here to take them down. This really felt like deja vou. I took off towards who knows where, I wasn't really sure, and found myself heading towards the special copter. My ankle was killing me.

"Tally!" I heard someone from the copter yell. It was Garren. I almost turned and ran the other way, but I didn't. I continued towards the machine and he helped me in. I looked around,

"Where's Zane?"

"Who cares he'll be fine."

"Did he call them?" I asked. Garren was silent. I didn't think Zane was going to call them this soon. I thought we were going to take our time, and ease in to things. I knew we couldn't waste time, but in all honesty I was not ready to go back.

"Garren! Did he call them?" I knew the answer to my question already. Why was he making me so angry.

"No I did." Garren replied simply. "You know, as well as I, that they needed to be called, and frankly I was tired of him always at your side." Unfortunately I couldn't argue we were together and if he had any idea of how I had been feeling for Zane lately…or of the kiss.

"Let's take a look at that ankle." I was hustled out of the copter before it had even taken off and quickly taken in to a hover car.

"The rest of the specials are rounding up the rusties." Someone said, as I was set inside the hovercraft. Someone began prodding around at my ankle and the pain was making me dizzy. They were rebraking it because it had healed wrong. The probably with special healing is, if it doesn't heal right it has to heal again. I watched the blur of people as they run by rusties running into the woods or being stuffed into copters and hover cars. I didn't even care as I watched some run into the woods, I personally didn't care if they got away but I had a feeling not many would.

"Does this hurt?" I looked down at my ankle and was grossed out to find them under my skin basically performing an operation.

"Uh… NO!" I was special remember nothing was suppose to hurt me (YEAH RIGHT IT HURT LIKE HELL!) Garren, who was sitting next to me, grabbed my hand.

"We're taking off." Someone yelled from in front of the craft. I looked around once more seeing if I could find Zane, and then suddenly I found myself looking for David and his parents, Croy, and the rest of them. We began lifting into the air and I almost became frantic. Why was I freaking out so much? Everything would be fine and everyone would make it back safe. Suddenly, I felt a thud and the hover car dipped down grazing the ground. Zane swung his body into the machine and smiled.

"Wow," I saw him watch as they slipped a screw into me. I felt like some kind of machine UGH!

"What's going on down there?" I nearly forgot my REAL boyfriend was sitting next to me as I stared into Zane's eyes.

"They are getting taken in." He answered, and I could hint a tone of annoyance, but it was masked by his grin.

"Yeah thanks to me." Garren had a cocky smile and pulled me closer to him.

"Yeah, right… good job." I told him softly. The ride was spent in silence. I worked on not wincing as the fixed me up and by the end of the trip I was sown up with a huge scar on my ankle.

"We will fake skin spray this so the scar is covered." They reassured me. "I am sure you wouldn't want to damage your special complexion.

"No," I said icily and they obeyed.

"Whatever you say, but we would advice you to spray it." The doctor told me.

"I want the scar… at least for now."

"That's Tally for you." Zane laughed and Garren wrapped his arms tighter around my body. I rolled my eyes.

We touched down on the ground and were soon followed by craft after craft and copter after copter. This was absolutely insane, had we really taken down the entire smoke? The smokies were here, in this city, and I had one question. Would they be turned pretty? Then suddenly I felt my heart stop as I thought popped in to my mind… where was David, would he be turned pretty?