Youngbloods, p.1
Youngbloods, page 1
PRAISE FOR THE IMPOSTORS SERIES
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BESTSELLING UGLIES SERIES
‘High-stakes melodrama, cinematic action and thought-provoking insight into some really thorny questions of human nature … a superb piece of popular art.’
NEW YORK TIMES
‘Teens will sink their teeth into the provocative questions about invasive technology, image-obsessed society, and the ethical quandaries of a mole-turned ally … Ingenious.’
BOOKLIST (starred review)
‘An excellent futuristic thriller that also leaves the reader with plenty to ponder’
TEENREADS
First published by Allen & Unwin in 2022
Copyright © Scott Westerfeld 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
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Cover art © Aykut Aydogdu 2022
Cover and text design by Christopher Stengel
scottwesterfeld.com
To everyone we’ve lost
CONTENTS
PART I: HIDEAWAY
1. BRAND-NEW
2. BOSS TALLY
3. CEREMONY
4. TREE KILLERS
5. CHILDREN OF TRAITORS
6. TROJAN HORSE
7. HIDEAWAY
8. RESCUE
9. TITAN
10. DIVERSION
11. SINGLE ELIMINATION
PART II: EPITAPH
12. FREEDOM
13. FIGHT
14. WELCOME HOME
15. SHREVE HOUSE
16. SOVEREIGN CITY
17. NORMAL
18. PAPER PLANES
19. FLOCK
20. DRONES
21. SARCOPHAGUS
22. CORES
23. CRASH LANDING
24. EXFILTRATION
25. TWO BIRDS
26. SURRENDER
27. CRASH SITE
28. ’FOXES
PART III: SAVIORS
29. OMNISCIENCE IS A VICE
30. SPY
31. RUNAWAYS
32. BASH
33. SAVIORS
34. BUSINESS
35. VERACITY
36. WRECKING BALL
37. ROAD TRIP
38. THE KILL
39. DRONES
40. SEANAN
41. BOSS YANDRE
42. RECONCILIATION
43. PREDATOR
44. STALKER
45. NICE CRUMBLY MAN
46. NECKLACE
PART IV: RUINS
47. SERPENTINE
48. UGLIES
49. TRADE
50. SPLIT
51. CHAOS MERCHANT
52. TRANSMISSION
53. PUNCHES
54. ORBITALS
55. AVATARS
56. PARAGONS
57. BATTLE
PART V: WHOLE TRUTH
58. HOME
59. REUNION
60. EFFIGY
61. PATRIARCH
62. PARTING
63. NUKE
64. COL
65. ICARUS IN FLAMES
66. HOSPITAL
67. SHADOWS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PART I
HIDEAWAY
Those who play with the devil’s toys will be taught by degrees to wield his sword.
—R. Buckminster Fuller
1. BRAND-NEW
Before they start, the doctors put me in a coma—it’s safer that way.
Then they turn me into someone new.
They take out my bones, replace them with unbreakable alloys and spacecraft-hull ceramics. The muscles that I worked so hard to build are stripped away, whipcords of smart plastic threaded in their place.
The surgeons give me tougher skin, dotted with reservoirs of healing nanos. My nervous system is retrained; my reflexes honed to the flitting speed of insect wings.
They ramp up my pain threshold, extinguish all my fears, paint a calm landscape over my grief. My heartbeat is steadied to a slow, undeviating march, except when I need it rampant.
I get a new face—not the one I was born with, but mine alone. My twin sister no longer needs a body double. She has a whole city to protect her now, an army of her own. And I don’t want to see Rafia of Shreve in the mirror anymore.
She killed Col, the boy I loved.
Besides, my new crew likes to fly under the radar. The last thing we need is another famous face to hide.
I step from the surgery tank a new person. Faster and stronger than I’ve ever been. Less breakable, more dangerous. Someone the world has never seen before.
I’m Special now.
Just like the rest of Tally Youngblood’s crew.
Dear Little Shadow,
I hope this ping finds you. I hope the others have too.
Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, I’m still missing you.
The last three months have been hard. I’m free of him, and Shreve is finally mine. But without my little shadow beside me, none of it feels real. Everything I’ve ever wanted is finally in my hands, and you aren’t here to share it.
You were supposed to protect me forever, not run away.
I always thought that once Dad was gone, Shreve would fix itself. But it seems more broken even day.
The free cities were happy to help destroy him, but they’ve been slow to help us rebuild. They all know who I really am and what I did—Diego’s troops recorded what happened that night—so they make me beg and barter for aid.
They’d be more obliging if you were here beside me.
I was wrong to steal your name, I know. But I needed that extra distance from the old days. The citizens need continuity, a familiar face, but also an excuse to go on loving me.
You were the perfect option.
Trust me—I’m paying for my deception. It was fun when I only had to fool some rebels in the wild. But running a city is much trickier.
I have to be both of us at once.
Candid and crafty. Deadly and wise.
Victim and hero.
Because I am the hero in this story, little sister—there was no choice. Throwing that knife was the only way to save our city.
I’m not sorry that I did it, only that it hurt you so much.
And that it was him forcing me to hurt you. Just like when we were littlies, and I had to pretend you weren’t real.
Back then, I never forgot you were hiding in our room, waiting for me to free you. When the rest of the world didn’t know you existed, I held you dear.
It was you I was saving that night from his bomb, more than anyone else.
Don’t hold me guilty for our father’s last crime.
—Rafia of Shreve
2. BOSS TALLY
Six hoverboards skim down the dried-out river, low and fast.
We’re on silent magnetics, pushing against the minerals in the dusty streambed. Boss Tally is in the lead, taking us down the mountainside at a breakneck pace.
I ride carefully, as gracefully as I can. This is my first real mission with the Youngbloods.
It’s been almost three months since Tally came to visit me in the hospital, where I was recovering from the Fall of Shreve, the violent end of my dictator father.
My body was already wrecked, irradiated by his last play for power—a dirty bomb made from dug-up Rusty nuclear waste. So when Tally offered me a chance to join her crew, turning Special seemed easy enough. The surgeons had already stripped me down to the bone.
As a bonus, it made me even more different from my twin sister, the murderer.
Flying down this streambed, a thousand new instincts animate my body, new reflexes, new tricks. When Croy’s board glances from the ground ahead, a flurry of dirt rises in his wake, and the old me wants to blink. But my transparent inner lids flick shut—eyes protected without even a millisecond’s loss of vigilance.
The rush of our boards echoes from the riverbed stones in my exquisite new hearing. The reflections situate me in space, like I’m a ba t navigating the darkness.
This Special body is so powerful—this strength, these ceramic bones. My lizard brain screams, Slow down, as the trees blur past.
I cling to the graceful sight of Tally hurtling down the slope ahead of me. Most Specials’ movements are uncanny, insect-like. But Tally is effortless in flight, like she was born on a hoverboard.
Her surgery is still old-style Special, a cruel beauty. An avenging angel of history, arrived to save the present from my sister—I hope.
All the Youngbloods look like their images in the history feeds. Two decades older than when they began the revolution, but still ready to take on the world.
No one’s told me exactly why Tally and her crew disappeared from view for ten years. I only know they never stopped protecting the wild.
That’s why we’re out here tonight—hunting poachers.
All at once, Tally leans into a skidding halt. A sudden expanse of treeless dark looms beyond her.
The edge of a cliff.
I bank hard, throwing my board sideways, feet slipping on its surface. My lifting fans spin up with an ear-rattling shriek.
Too late. Momentum carries me past Tally and the others, out over the yawning blackness. My echolocation senses a two-hundred-meter fall beneath me, full of trees.
That’s twice the altitude my board can maintain, and heavy forest is the worst for hard landings.
As I start to fall, an ancient, instinctive fear of gravity hits. But it’s off in the distance, somewhere in the discard pile of my pre-Special emotions.
Shiny new reflexes kick in, my left hand flicking a rope made of smart matter from my belt. It uncoils, snakelike, and wraps itself around a gnarled tree stump projecting from the cliff. A swift tug pulls me closer, and my board’s magnetics grasp the iron in the mountain.
The board slowly regains altitude, wafting back to the edge.
I stare down at my hands. They should be shaking, but the ragged buzz of adrenaline has already drained away. This new body is a sieve, shedding doubt and fear like water.
Tally’s crew is lined up along the edge of the cliff. None of them seem concerned that I almost crashed into the darkness below. The only clue that any of them noticed is the smile on Boss X’s face.
My first real mission with the Youngbloods, and I look like a bubblehead.
I land and step off onto the stones, which are smooth beneath my grippy shoes—this cliff was a waterfall before the river dried up.
The smart rope slithers back around my waist, along with a stray piece of memory. Before the operation, I was afraid of snakes.
That’s gone too.
Only grief seems to stick to me, the memory of Col dying in my arms. The rage against my sister, gathering quietly in my marrow.
Tally angles her board, drifting toward me.
‘Nice trick,’ she says.
She thinks I almost crashed on purpose?
A dozen ways to misdirect her come to mind, to make myself look less brain-missing. No surge can cut away a lifetime habit of pretending to be something I’m not.
But this is Tally Youngblood in front of me—the first rebel.
And I’m done with lies.
‘Wasn’t intentional. Didn’t spot the cliff in time.’
She shrugs. ‘Yeah, the wild can make you focus-missing, after you first turn Special. Don’t let the stars distract you.’
We both look up.
My new senses have transformed the night sky. The stars have gone wild, the Milky Way turned into a sheet of white fire.
My enhanced vision discerns it all—the smudged-ember galaxies, the piercing stares of planets and planetoids, the binaries teased apart with a squint. Even the Extras’ space habitat is visible, geostationary among the flitting comm satellites, its solar panels splayed like hexagonal wings.
But the dazzling sky isn’t why I failed to spot the cliff. I was too busy watching Tally.
My tenuous new ally, powerful enough to help me against my sister.
‘Sorry, Boss.’
‘It’s all right, Frey. We just rewired your brain.’ Tally looks out at the valley before us, crowded with old-growth trees. ‘But keep your eyes on the forest. Poachers love these moonless nights.’
I scan the horizon, looking for hovercraft or drones.
Nothing but birds, insects, and a scattered haze of pollen lit with starlight. The treetops wave in the cold wind, like an anxious, roiling crowd below us.
Boss Tally stays beside me, and I wonder if she has more to say. I’ve been riding with the Youngbloods long enough to understand the personalities and rhythms of the crew. But Tally and I haven’t had a real conversation yet.
I’m younger than the rest of them, the daughter of a deposed dictator, a total unknown. Tally only let me join because Boss X was part of the deal.
I guess he’s just plain X, now that he’s a Youngblood. He used to have his own crew, who fought beside me and Col against my father. He was a famous rebel boss, but he gave up his rank to help me.
It was X who brought Tally to my bedside when everything was lost. After my father fell, the other cities let Rafi take over Shreve, though they’d promised the city to me. Even after she murdered Col.
They don’t realize—she’s not a replacement for my father.
She’s an extension of him.
X and I have no allies left with the power to fight her, except the Youngbloods.
Tally catches me staring at her.
‘You have a question, Frey?’
‘Yes, Boss,’ I say. ‘How do we know the poachers plan to hit this place?’
She hesitates, long enough for me to wonder how much the Youngbloods really trust me. All I know about tonight’s mission is that we’re on the trail of crims who cut down old-growth forest under cover of darkness. It’s classic Rusty behavior, killing ancient trees for profit. Overnight a habitat is destroyed, turned into luxuries stamped with the unmistakable mark of wealth.
An ecosystem died to make this chair. Doesn’t that feel … fancy? The attacks have made the global feeds, but the free cities haven’t done much to stop them.
So the Youngbloods are here.
‘We don’t know where they’ll turn up next,’ Tally says. ‘But this is the last big stretch of old growth in the area.’
‘We aren’t that far from Shreve,’ I venture.
‘Yeah. And it all started three months ago.’
Exactly when my sister took over.
Poaching is a quick and dirty way to make money, which the broken city of Shreve sorely needs. Maybe Rafi’s becoming a watered-down version of our father, more bandit than warlord, murdering trees instead of people.
I try not to sound too eager. ‘Growing up, Rafi had a lot of rich friends with expensive tastes.’
Tally nods but doesn’t look convinced.
Sometimes it seem like only Boss X and I understand the danger my sister represents. He was there the night Col died, Rafi striking him down to distract our father.
Col’s life … traded for a diversion.
The anger inside me sparks for a moment, flashes through my body. Its passage marks every muscle, every centimeter of skin, a sudden flush of fever.
A minute ago, I almost went over a cliff, and it only took seconds for the arid calm of being a Special to descend again. But my rage, my grief, never eases. It’s buried too deep inside, a defeated general in a bunker, plotting revenge.
My most powerful ally against my father, the intelligent city of Diego, saw everything Rafi did that night. But they don’t care about Col Palafox or my broken heart. The free cities just want everything back to normal.
Which means Rafi in control of Shreve, like she was raised to be.
Tally reaches out to brush my eyebrow, jolting me back from my thoughts.
‘You had a scar here, right?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘My sister got cut in an assassination attempt. Our doctor had to mark me too, to keep us exactly the same.’
Tally turns away, staring across the forest. For a moment, I think she’s considering the dark bond between me and Rafi.
But then she says, ‘I knew that assassin.’
I feel unsteady on my feet.
The assassin was Seanan, my long-lost brother—who died by my hand the day I got this scar. He was also the love of Boss X’s life.
‘You and X go back that far?’
Tally nods. ‘His parents were rebels. He grew up in the wild.’
‘Huh,’ I say. ‘That explains a lot.’
‘I met your brother a few times. He was pretty intense.’
