This girl spent a lot of time outside.

As Tally moved closer, she caught the scent of wood smoke again. Her new and perfect eyes saw the coarseness of the girl's shirt, woven from natural fibers, lined with stitched seams and giving off another strange smell…detergent. This garment wasn't designed to be worn and then tossed into a recycler; it had to be washed, lathered up with soap, and pounded against stones in a cold stream. Tally saw the imperfect shape of the girl's hair—cut by hand with metal scissors.

"Boss," she whispered.

Shay's voice came back sleepily. "So soon, Tally-wa? I'm having fun."

"I think I got a Smokey."

"You sure?"

"Positive. She smells like laundry."

"I see her now," Fausto's voice cut through the music. "Brown shirt? Dancing with that guy?"

"Yeah. And she's tanned."

There was an annoyed, distracted sigh, a few mumbled apologies as Shay disentangled herself from her ugly boy. "Any more?"

Tally scanned the crowd again, making her way around the girl in a wide circle, trying to catch another whiff of smoke. "Not as far as I can tell."

"Nobody else looks funny to me." Fausto's head bobbed nearby, winding his own path toward the girl. From the other side of the bash, Tachs and Ho were closing in.

"What's she doing?" Shay asked.

"Dancing, and …" Tally paused, her eyes catching the girl's hand slipping into the boy's pocket. "She just gave him something."

Shay's breath cut off with a little hiss. Until a few weeks ago, Smokies had brought only propaganda into Uglyville, but now they were smuggling something far more deadly: pills loaded with nanos.

The nanos ate the lesions that kept pretties bubbleheaded, ramping up their violent emotions and raw appetites. And unlike some drug that would eventually wear off, the change was permanent. The nanos were hungry, microscopic machines that grew and reproduced, more of them every day If you were unlucky, they could wind up eating the rest of your brain. One pill was all it took to lose your mind.