Specials

Payback

Streams of cannon fire ripped through the air, their traces burning across Tally's vision. Explosions battered her ears, and shock waves thudded against her chest, like something trying to tear her open.

The hovercraft armada rained its fire down onto Town Hall, cascades of projectiles flaring so brightly that for a moment the building disappeared. But Tally could still hear the sound of shattering glass and the shriek of tearing metal through the blinding display.

After a few seconds, the furious onslaught paused, and Tally glimpsed Town Hall through the smoke. Huge holes had appeared—the fires burning inside the building made it look like some insane jack-o'-lantern carved with dozens of glowing eyes.

From below, the cries rose up again, full of terror now. For a dizzying moment she remembered what Shay had said: "It's all our fault, Tally. Yours and mine."

She shook her head slowly What she was seeing couldn't be true.

Wars didn't happen anymore.

"Come on!" Shay cried, leaping onto her board and rising into the air. "Town Hall's empty at night, but we have to get everyone out of the hospital…"

Tally broke from her paralysis, jumping onto her hoverboard as the bombardment began once more. Shay hurtled over the edge of the roof, silhouetted for a moment against the firestorm before dropping out of sight. Tally followed, vaulting the guardrail to hover a few seconds, peering down at the chaos below.

The hospital hadn't been hit, not yet anyway, but crowds of terrified people were still spilling from its doors. The armada didn't have to shoot anyone for people to wind up dead tonight—panic and chaos would do the killing. The other cities would see only a proportionate response to the attack on the Armory: one mostly empty building for another.

Tally cut her lifting fans and dropped, kneeling to hold her board tight. The pounding concussions from the attack had turned the air into something palpable and shuddering, like a choppy sea.

The other Cutters were already below, their sneak suits set to the yellow and black of Diego's warden uniforms. Tachs and Ho were herding the crowd around to the other side of the hospital, away from the debris spilling from Town Hall. The others were rescuing the pedestrians who had fallen between the two buildings; all the slidewalks had jammed, throwing their late-night passengers to the ground.

Tally spun for a moment in the air, overwhelmed and wondering what to do. Then she spotted a stream of littlies pouring from the hospital. They were lining up along the hedgerow barrier around the helicopter landing pad, their minders stopping to count them all before moving on to safety.

She angled her board toward the landing pad and dropped as fast as gravity would take her. Those helicopters had carried runaways from other cities to the Old Smoke and now here to the New System—Tally somehow doubted Dr. Cables attack was going to leave them untouched.

She brought her descent to a halt just over the littlies' heads, lifting fans screaming, terrified faces staring up open-mouthed.

"Get out of here!" she yelled down at the minders, two middle pretties with classic faces: calm and wise.

They looked up at her in disbelief, then Tally remembered to switch her sneak suit to a rough approximation of warden yellow. "The helicopters could be a target!" she cried.

The minders' dumbfounded expressions didn't change, and Tally swore. They hadn't realized yet what this war was about—runaways and the New System and the Old Smoke—all they knew was that the sky had exploded overhead and they had to account for all of their charges before moving on.

She looked up and spotted a glittering hovercraft breaking from the armada. It swept through a wide, leisurely turn, descending toward the landing pad like a lazy bird of prey.

"Get them to the other side of the hospital, now!" she yelled, then reversed course, climbing toward the approaching hovercraft, wondering exactly what she could do against it. This time she had no grenades, no hungry nano-goo. She was alone and bare-handed against a military machine.

But if this war really was her fault, she had to try.

Tally pulled her hood down over her face and switched the suit to infrared camouflage, then shot toward Town Hall. Hopefully, the hovercraft wouldn't see her coming against the background heat of cannon fire and explosions.

As she grew nearer to the disintegrating building, the air shuddered around her, explosive concussions beating against her body. She could feel the searing heat of the fires now, and heard the thunderous sound of floors collapsing one upon another as Town Hall's hoverstruts began to fail. The armada was destroying the entire building, razing it to the ground, just as she and Shay had done to the Armory.

With the inferno at her back, Tally pulled level with the hovercraft and followed its descent, looking for some weakness. It was like the first one she'd seen rising up from the Armory: four lifting fans carrying a bulbous body bristling with weaponry, wings, and claws, its dull black armor reflecting nothing of the firestorm behind her.

It showed scars from recent damage, and Tally realized that Diego must have thrown up some resistance against the armada—a fight that hadn't lasted very long.

Though all the cities had given up war, maybe some had given it up more than others.

Tally glanced down. The landing pad wasn't far below, the line of littlies inching away from it with maddening slowness. She swore and shot toward the hovercraft, hoping to distract it.

The machine detected her approach at the last moment, insectlike metal claws reaching out toward the white-hot board. Tally tipped back into a steep climb, but she'd changed course too late. The hovercraft's claws jammed into her forward lifting fan, which ground to a noisy halt, and she was thrown from the riding surface. Other claws grasped blindly in the air, but Tally in her sneak suit soared over them.

She landed on the machine's back, and it tipped wildly, her weight and the force of the hoverboard's impact almost rolling the craft over backward. Tally waved her arms as she skidded across the armor, her sneak suit's grippy soles barely keeping her from falling. She bent her knees and grabbed the first handhold she could find, a thin piece of metal sticking up from the hovercraft's body.

Her ruined board sailed past—one lifting fan working, the other destroyed, making it spin through the air like a throwing knife.

As the hovercraft tried to steady itself, the object that had saved Tally suddenly swiveled in her hand, and she jerked away. A little lens glittered at its tip, like an eye-stalk on a crab. She scooted to the center of the machine's back, hoping it hadn't seen her.

Three other camera-stalks pivoted madly around Tally, looking in all directions, searching the sky for more threats. But none of them turned toward her—they were all pointed outward, not back at the hovercraft itself.

Tally realized that she was sitting in the machine's blind spot. Its eye-stalks couldn't turn to see her, and its armored skin had no nerves to sense her feet. Apparently the hovercraft's designers had never imagined an adversary standing right on top of it.

But the machine knew something was wrong—it was too heavy. The four lifting fans tilted wildly as Tally shifted from side to side, scrambling to stay on. The metal claws that hadn't been mangled by her hoverboard swung randomly in the air, searching like a blind insect's for an opponent.

Under her extra weight, the hovercraft began to descend. Tally leaned hard toward Town Hall, and the machine began to drift in that direction as it dropped. It was like riding the world's wobbliest, most uncooperative hoverboard, but gradually she guided it away from the landing pad and the slow-moving line of littlies.

As Town Hall grew nearer, shock waves from the attack rumbled through the machine. Heat from the burning building began to penetrate her sneak suit, and she felt a film of sweat spring up all over her body. Behind her the littlies seemed to have finally moved clear of the landing pad. All she had to do now was get off the hovercraft without it spotting her and opening fire.

When the ground was only ten meters below, Tally jumped from the machine's back, grabbing one of the damaged claws as she sailed past, yanking that side of the machine downward with the force of her fall. The hovercraft spun in midair over her head, lifting fans screeching in an attempt to keep it upright. But it had already tipped too far over; after a brief struggle, her weight on the lifeless claw flipped the machine over and upside down.

She dropped the short distance, and her crash bracelets stopped her fall, depositing her gently on the ground.

Above, the hovercraft spun sideways toward Town Hall, still careening out of control, claws flailing mindlessly. It crashed into the building's lowest floor, disappearing into a gout of flame that swept across Tally, her sneak suit reporting malfunctions all across its skin. The scales that had absorbed the explosion rippled to a halt, and Tally smelled her own hair singeing inside the hood.

As she ran back toward the hospital, fierce concussions shook the earth, knocking Tally's feet out from under her. Looking back, she saw that Town Hall was finally crumbling. After the long minutes of bombardment, even its alloy skeleton was melting, bowing under the weight of the burning building.

And it was practically on top of her.

She rose to her feet again, turning her skintenna on, her head filling with the Cutters' chatter as they organized the hospital evacuees.

"Town Hall's collapsing!" she said, running. "I need help!"

"What are you doing way over there, Tally-wa?" Shay's voice answered. "Roasting marshmallows?"

"Tell you later!"

"We're on our way."

The rumbling grew, the heat behind her redoubling as tons of burning building collapsed in upon itself. A chunk of fiery debris flew past, setting fire to the motionless slidewalks' grippy surface as it bounced to a halt. The light behind her brightened, Tally's flickering shadow stretching out like a giant's in front of her.

From the direction of the hospital, a pair of shapes shot into view. Tally waved her arms. "Over here!"

They swept around her and circled back, the collapsing building silhouetting their black forms.

"Hands up, Tally-wa," Shay said.

Tally jumped into the air, both hands reaching. The two Cutters grabbed her wrists, pulling her away from Town Hall and toward safety.

"You okay?" Tachs's voice cried.

"Yeah, but it's …" Tally's voice faded. Carried backward, she found herself watching the building's final collapse in awestruck silence. It seemed to fold into itself, like a balloon deflating, then a vast billowing cloud of smoke and debris gushed outward, like a dark tidal wave swallowing the fiery remains.

The wave raced toward them, closer and closer…

"Uh, guys?" Tally said. "Can you go any—?"

The shock wave broke over the Cutters, full of swirling debris and furious winds, knocking Shay and Tachs from their boards and hurling all three of them to the ground. As she rolled, the burn-damaged scales of Tally's sneak suit jabbed into her like sharp elbows, until she finally tumbled to a halt.

She lay on the ground, her breath knocked out of her. Darkness had swallowed them.

"You guys okay?" Shay asked.

"Yeah, icy," said Tachs.

Tally tried to speak, but wound up coughing; her sneak-suit mask had stopping filtering the air. She pulled it off, the smoke stinging her eyes, and spat out the taste of burnt plastic. "No board, and my suit's ruined," she managed. "But I'm okay."

"You're welcome," Shay said.

"Oh, yeah. Thanks, guys."

"Hang on," Tachs said. "You hear that?"

Tally's ears were still ringing, but a moment later she realized that the barrage of cannon fire had ceased. The quiet was almost eerie. She flicked down an infrared overlay and looked up. A glowing vortex of hovercraft was forming above, like a galaxy gathering itself into a spiral.

"What are they going to do now?" Tally asked. "Destroy something else?"

"No," Shay said softly. "Not yet."

"Before we came here, we Cutters were in on Dr. Cable's plans," Tachs said. "She doesn't want to demolish Diego. She wants to remake it. Turn it into another city just like ours: strict and controlled, everyone a bubblehead."

"When things start to fall apart," Shay said, "she'll be here to take over."

"But cities don't take each other over!" Tally said.

"Not normally, Tally, but don't you see?" Shay turned toward the still-burning wreck of Town Hall. "Runaways running free, the New System out of control, and now the city government in ruins…this is a Special Circumstance."

Blame

The hospital was full of broken glass.

All the windows on the Town Hall side had been blown inward by the building's final collapse. Their shattered remains crunched underfoot as Tally and the other Cutters checked each room for anyone left behind.

"Got a crumbly up here," Ho said from two floors above.

"Does he need a doctor?" Shay's voice asked.

"Just a few cuts. Medspray should do it."

"Let a doctor take a look, Ho."

Tally tuned out the skintenna chatter and peered into the next abandoned hospital room, staring once more through the empty window frames at the glowing wreckage. Two helicopters hovered overhead, spraying foam down onto the fire.

She could escape now, simply turn off her skintenna and disappear into the chaos. The Cutters were too busy to chase her, and the rest of the city was hardly functioning at all. She knew where the Cutters' hoverboards waited, and the crash bracelets Shay had given her were keyed to unlock them.

But after what had happened here tonight, there was nowhere left to go. If Special Circumstances was really behind this attack, running back to Dr. Cable was out of the question.

Tally would almost have understood if the armada had gone after the new developments, teaching Diego a lesson about expanding into the wild. Whatever else was happening in Random Town, that had to be stopped. Cities couldn't just start grabbing land whenever they wanted.

But cities couldn't just attack each other like this either, blowing up buildings in the middle of town. That was how the insane, doomed Rusties had solved their disputes. Tally wondered how her own city had forgotten the lessons of history so easily.

On the other hand, she couldn't bring herself to doubt what Tachs had said, that Dr. Cable's purpose in destroying Town Hall was to bring the New System to its knees. Of all the cities, only Tally's had bothered to hunt down the Old Smoke. Only Tally's would think that a few runaways were worth obsessing over.

She was beginning to wonder if all cities had Special Circumstances, or whether most were like Diego, willing to let people come and go. Maybe the special operation—the one that had made Tally the way she was—was something Dr. Cable had invented herself. Which would mean that Tally really was an aberration, a dangerous weapon, someone who needed to be cured.

She and Shay had started this bogus war, after all. Normal, healthy people wouldn't do something like that, would they?

The next room was also empty, strewn with the remains of a late meal interrupted by the evacuation. The windows were decorated with curtains stirring in the wind from the distant helicopter. They had been shredded by flying glass, and now they were like tattered white flags waving in surrender. A pile of life-support equipment sat in the corner, still thrumming but disconnected. Tally hoped that whoever was supposed to be attached to all those tubes and wires was still okay.

It was strange, worrying about some nameless, fading crumbly. But the aftermath of the attack had been head-spinning: People didn't look like crumblies or randoms anymore. For the first time since Tally had become a Cutter, being average didn't seem pathetic to her. Seeing what her own city had done had somehow made her feel less special, at least for now.

She remembered back in ugly days, how living in the Smoke for a few weeks had transformed the way she saw the world. Perhaps coming to Diego, with all its messy discords and differences (and its absence of bubbleheads), had already started to make her a different person. If Zane was right, she was rewiring herself once again.

Maybe the next time she saw him, things would be different.

Tally flicked her skintenna to a private channel. "Shay-la? I need to ask you a question."

"Sure, Tally."

"How is it different? Being cured."

Shay paused, and through the skintenna Tally heard her slow breathing and the crunch of glass underfoot. "Well, when Fausto first stuck me, I didn't even notice. It took a couple of days to realize what was happening, that I was starting to see things differently. The funny thing was, when he explained what he'd done to me, it was mostly a relief. Everything's less intense now, less extreme. I don't have to cut myself just to make sense of it all; none of us do. But even though things aren't as icy at least I don't get furious over nothing anymore."

Tally nodded. "When they had me in my padded cell, that's how they described it: anger and euphoria. But right now, I just feel numb."

"Me too, Tally-wa."

"And there was one other thing the doctors said," Tally added. "Something about 'feelings of superiority'"

"Yeah, that's the whole point of Special Circumstances, Tally-wa. It's like they always taught us in school, how in Rusty days some people were 'rich'? They got all the best stuff, lived longer, and didn't have to follow the usual rules—and everyone thought that was perfectly okay, even if these people hadn't done anything to deserve it except have the right crumblies. Thinking like a Special is partly just human nature. It doesn't take much convincing to make someone believe they're better than everyone else."

Tally started to agree, then remembered what Shay had yelled at her when they'd split up back on the river. "But you said I was already that way, didn't you? Even back in ugly days."

Shay laughed. "No, Tally-wa. You don't think you're better than everyone else, just that you're the center of the universe. It's totally different."

Tally forced a laugh. "So why didn't you cure me? You had the chance, when I was out cold."

There was another pause, the faraway whirr of the helicopter filtering through Shay's skintenna link. "Because I'm sorry about what I did."

"When?"

"Making you special." Shay's voice was shaking. "It's all my fault what you are, and I didn't want to force you to change again. I think you can cure yourself this time."

"Oh." Tally swallowed. "Thanks, Shay."

"And there's one other thing: It'll help if you're still a Special when we go back home to stop this war."

Tally frowned. Shay hadn't explained that plan in detail yet. "How exactly will me being a psycho help?"

"Dr. Cable will scan us, to see if we're telling the truth," Shay said. "It would be better if one of us was still a real Special."

Tally came to a halt at the next doorway. "Telling the truth? I didn't know we were going to talk about this with her. I was imagining something involving hungry nanos. Or grenades, at least."

Shay sighed. "You're being a Special-head, Tally-wa. Violence isn't going to help. If we attack, they'll just think it's Diego fighting back, and this war will only get worse. We have to confess."

"Confess?" Tally found herself facing another empty room, lit only by the flickering fires of Town Hall. Flowers were everywhere, their vases shattered on the floor, colorful shards and dead flowers mixing with the broken window-glass.

"That's right, Tally-wa. We have to tell everyone that it was you and me who attacked the Armory," Shay said. "That Diego didn't have anything to do with it."

"Oh. Great." Tally stared out the window.

The fires inside Town Hall still glowed, no matter how much foam the helicopters sprayed. Shay had said the wreckage would burn for days, the pressure of the collapsed building creating its own heat, as if the attack had given birth to a tiny sun.

The awful sight was their fault—the realization kept hitting Tally, as if she would never get used to it. She and Shay had made this happen, and only they could undo it.

But at the thought of confessing to Dr. Cable, Tally had to fight the urge to flee, to run toward the open windows and jump, letting her crash bracelets catch her. She could disappear into the wild and never be caught. Not by Shay. Not by Dr. Cable. Invisible again.

But that would mean leaving Zane behind in this battered, threatened city.

"And if they're going to believe you," Shay continued, "it can't look like anyone's been messing with your brain. We need to keep you special."

Suddenly, Tally needed fresh air. But as she walked toward the window, the sweet scent of dead and dying flowers assaulted her nose like a crumbly's perfume. Her eyes watered, and Tally closed them, crossing the room using the echoes of her own footsteps.

"But what will they do to us, Shay-la?" she asked softly.

"I don't know, Tally. No one's ever admitted starting a bogus war before, not as far as I know. But what else can we do?"

Tally opened her eyes and leaned out the blown-out window. She sucked up fresh air, though it was tainted with the smell of burning. "It's not like we meant for it to go that far," she whispered.

"I know, Tally-wa. And it was all my idea, my fault that you were special in the first place. If I could go alone, I would. But they won't believe me. Once they scan my brain, they'll see I'm different, cured. Dr. Cable would probably rather think Diego messed with my head than admit she started a war over nothing."

Tally couldn't argue with that; she could hardly believe herself that their little break-in had caused all this destruction. Dr. Cable wouldn't take anyone's say-so without a full brain-scan.

She looked out at the burning Town Hall again, and sighed. It was too late to run, too late for anything but the truth.

"Okay, Shay, I'll go with you. But not until I find Zane. I need to explain something to him."

And maybe try again, she thought. I'm different already. Tally stared out the frame of shattered glass, imagining Zane's face.

"After all, what's the worst they can do, Shay-la? Make us both bubbleheads again?" she said. "Maybe that wasn't so bad…"

There was still no response, but Tally heard a small, insistent beeping from Shay's end of the skintenna link.

"Shay? What's that sound?"

The answer came in a tense voice. "Tally, you better come down here. Room 340."

Tally turned away from the window, stepping quickly across the broken vases and dead flowers, heading for the door. The beeping sound grew louder as Shay moved closer to something, and a sense of dread began to fill Tally. "What's going on, Shay?"

Shay popped the channel open to the other Cutters, panic in her voice. "Someone get a doctor up here." She repeated the room number.

"What is it, Shay?" Tally cried.

"Tally, I'm so sorry …"

"What?"

"It's Zane."

Patient

Tally ran, heart racing in her chest, the beeping sound filling her head.

She jumped the handrail of the fire stairs, descending in a controlled fall down the center of the stairwell. When she burst out into the third-floor hallway, she saw Shay and Tachs and Ho outside a room marked recovery, staring through the door like a crowd gawking at an accident.

Tally pushed between them, skidding to a halt on shards of shattered window glass.

Zane lay in a hospital bed, his face pale, his arms and head hooked up to a collection of machines. Each was making its own beeping noise, bright red lights keeping time with the sounds. A middle pretty in white doctor's scrubs stood over Zane, pulling back his lids to peer into his eyes.

"What happened?" she cried. The doctor didn't look up.

Shay stepped up behind her, taking her shoulders in a firm grip. "Stay icy Tally."

"Icy?" Tally pulled herself from Shay's grasp. Adrenaline and anger surged through her blood, chasing away the numbness that had come over her after the attack. "What's wrong with him? What's he doing in here?"

"Could you bubbleheads be quiet!" the doctor snapped.

Tally spun back to face him, teeth bared. "Bubbleheads?"

Shay wrapped her arms around Tally and pulled her off her feet. In one swift movement, she carried her backward out of the room, set her down, and shoved her hard away from the door.

Tally regained her footing, crouching low with fingers curled. The Cutters stared her down, while Tachs gently closed the door.

"I thought you were rewiring yourself, Tally," Shay said in a hard, even voice.

"I'll rewire you, Shay!" Tally said. "What's going on?"

"We don't know, Tally. The doctor just got here." Shay placed her palms together. "Control yourself."

Tally's mind spun, seeing only angles of attack, strategies for fighting her way through the three of them and back into the recovery room. But she was outnumbered, and as the standoff continued, her flash of anger was transforming into panic.

"They operated on him," she whispered, her breath quickening. The hall began to spin as she remembered the Crims all headed into the hospital, straight from the helicopter.

"That's what it looks like, Tally," Shay said, her voice even.

"But he arrived in Diego two days ago," Tally said. "The other Crims were at a party the night they got here—I saw them."

"The other Crims didn't have brain damage, Tally. Just the bubblehead lesions. You know Zane was different."

"But this is a city hospital. What could go wrong?'

"Shhh, Tally-wa." Shay took a step forward and put her hand gingerly on Tally's shoulder. "Be patient, and they'll tell us."

In a flash of anger, Tally's focus narrowed to the door of the recovery room. Shay was close enough to punch in the face; Ho and Tachs were momentarily distracted by the arrival of a second doctor—Tally could get past them all if she struck now…

But anger and panic seemed to cancel each other out, paralyzing her muscles and twisting her stomach into a knot of despair.

"This is because of the attack, isn't it?" Tally said. "That's why it's going wrong."

"We don't know that."

"It's our fault."

Shay shook her head, her voice soothing, as if Tally were some littlie who'd woken from a nightmare. "We don't know what's happening, Tally-wa."

"But you found him in there all alone? Why didn't they evacuate him?"

"Maybe he couldn't be moved. Maybe he was safer here, hooked up to those machines."

Tally's hands tightened into fists. Since becoming special, she'd never felt so helpless and average, so powerless. Everything was suddenly going random. "But…"

"Shush, Tally-wa," Shay said in her maddeningly calm voice. "We just have to wait. That's all we can do for now."

An hour later, the door opened.

There were five doctors now, leftover from a steady stream of hospital staff that had moved in and out of Zane's room. A few had given Tally nervous looks, realizing who she was: the dangerous weapon who had escaped earlier that night.

Tally had passed the time fretfully, half-expecting someone to jump her, put her to sleep, and schedule her for despecialization again. But Shay and Tachs had stayed close by, staring down the wardens who'd arrived to keep an eye on them. One thing about Maddy's cure, it had made the other Cutters a lot better at waiting than Tally. They remained eerily calm, but she hadn't been able to stop moving for the whole hour, and half-moons of blood covered her palms where fingernails had driven into flesh.

The doctor cleared his throat. "I'm afraid I have bad news."

Tally's mind didn't process the words at first, but she felt Shay's grip upon her arm, iron hard, as if she thought Tally was about to leap at the man and tear him apart.

"At some point during the evacuation, Zane's body rejected his new brain tissue. His life support tried to alert the staff, but of course there was no one nearby. It tried to ping us, but the city interface was too overloaded by the evacuation to get a message through."

"Overloaded?" Tachs said. "You mean the hospital doesn't have its own network?"

"There is an emergency channel," the doctor said. He looked in the direction of Town Hall, shaking his head like he still didn't believe it was gone. "But it goes through the city interface. Of which nothing remains. Diego's never had a disaster like this before."

It was the attack…the war, Tally thought. It is my fault.

"His immune system thought the new brain tissue was an infection, and responded accordingly. We did all we could, but by the time you found him, the damage had already been done."

"How much…damage?" Tally said. Shay's hands squeezed tighter.

The doctor looked at the wardens, and in Tally's peripheral vision, she saw them readying nervously for a fight. They were all terrified of her.

He cleared his throat. "You realize that he arrived here with brain damage, don't you?"

"We know," Shay said, her voice still soothing.

"Zane said he wanted to be fixed: no more shakes or lapses in cognition. And he requested a physical control upgrade—as far as we could push it. It was risky, but he gave informed consent."

Tally's gaze fell to the floor. Zane had wanted his old reflexes back, and better, so that she wouldn't see him as weak and average.

"That's where the rejection hit him hardest," the doctor continued. "The functions we were trying to repair. They're all gone now."

"Gone?" Tally's mind reeled. "His motor skills?"

"And higher functions, more importantly: speech and cognition." The doctor's wariness faded, his expression now set to classic middle-pretty concern, calm, and understanding. "He can't even breathe on his own. We don't think he'll regain consciousness. Not ever."

The wardens had glowing shock-sticks in their hands now. Tally could breathe in the electricity.

The doctor took a slow breath. "And the thing is … we need the bed."

Tally sagged toward the floor, but Shay's grip didn't let her fall.

"We have dozens of casualties," the doctor continued. "A few night workers who escaped Town Hall have terrible burns. We need those machines, the sooner the better."

"What about Zane?" Shay said.

The doctor shook his head. "He'll stop breathing once we take him off. Normally, we wouldn't move this quickly, but tonight …"

"Is a special circumstance," Tally said softly.

Shay pulled her close, whispered in her ear. "Tally, we have to go now. We have to leave this place. You're too dangerous."

"I want to see him."

"Tally-wa, it's not a good idea. What if you lose it? You could kill someone."

"Shay-la," Tally hissed. "Let me see him."

"No."

"Let me see him or I'll kill them all. You won't be able to stop me."

Shay's arms were wrapped around her now, but Tally knew she could break the grip. Enough of her sneak suit still worked that she could turn it slippery, slide out, and start swinging, go straight for their throats…

Shay's grip shifted, and something pressed lightly against Tally's neck. "Tally, I can inject you with the cure right now."

"No, you can't. We have a war to stop. You need my brain the messed-up way it is."

"But they need those machines. All you're doing is—"

"Let me be the center of the universe for five more minutes, Shay. Then I'll go away and let him die. I promise."

Shay let out a long sigh between her teeth. "Everyone, get out of our way."

His head and arms were still connected, the wild chorus of beeping replaced by a steady beat.

But Tally could see that he was dead.

She'd seen a dead body once before. When Special Circumstances had come to destroy the Old Smoke, the ancient keeper of the rebels' library had been killed trying to escape. (That death had been her fault too, Tally remembered now; how had that little fact slipped her mind?) The old man's body had looked misshapen in death, so twisted that the entire world had distorted around it. Even the sunlight had looked wrong that day.

But this time, staring at Zane, everything was much worse—her eyes were special now. Every detail was a hundred times clearer: the wrong color of his face, the too-steady pulse in his throat, the way his fingernails were slowly fading from pink to white.

"Tally…" Tachs's voice choked off.

"I'm so sorry," Shay said.

Tally glanced back at her fellow Cutters, and realized that they couldn't understand. They might still be strong and fast, but Maddy's cure had made their minds average again. They couldn't see how maddening death really was, how colossally pointless in every way.

The fires still burned outside, mockingly beautiful against the dark and perfect sky. That was what no one else could see, that the world was too bubbly and gorgeous for Zane to be missing from it.

Tally reached out and touched his hand. Her exquisitely sensitive fingertips told her that his flesh was cooler than it should be.

This was all her fault. She'd coaxed him here to become what she wanted; she had wandered around the city instead of watching over him; she had started the war that had torn him apart.

This was the final price of her massive ego.

"I'm sorry, Zane." Tally turned away. Five minutes was suddenly too long to stand here, eyes burning, unable to cry

"Okay, let's go," she whispered.

"Tally, are you sure? It's only been—"

"Let's go! On our boards. This war has to stop."

Shay put a hand on her shoulder. "Okay. First light. We can fly without stopping—no bubbleheads to slow us down, no Smokey position-finder taking us on the scenic route. We'll be home in three days."

Tally opened her mouth, about to demand that they head for home right now, but the exhaustion on Shay's face silenced her. Tally had been unconscious most of the last twenty-four hours, but Shay had traveled to meet the Cutters and cure them, had rescued Tally from being despecialized, had led them through this long and terrible night. Her eyes were barely open.

Besides, this wasn't Shay's battle anymore. She hadn't paid the price that Tally had.

"You're right," Tally said, realizing what she had to do. "Go get some sleep."

"What about you? Are you okay?"

"No, Shay-la. I'm not okay."

"Sorry, I mean … are you going to hurt anyone?"

Tally shook her head and held out her hand, which didn't tremble at all. "See? I'm under control, maybe for the first time since I became a Special. But I can't sleep. I'll wait for you."

Shay paused, unsure, perhaps sensing what Tally had in mind. But then fatigue fell across her worried expression, and she hugged Tally one more time. "I only need a couple of hours. I'm still special enough."

"Of course." Tally smiled. "First light."

She walked with the other Cutters out of the room, past the doctors and nervous wardens, away from Zane forever, from all their imagined futures. And with every step, Tally knew she had to leave not just Zane, but everyone, behind.

Shay would only slow her down.

Going Home

Tally left the moment Shay was asleep.

It was pointless, both of them giving themselves up. Shay had to stay here in Diego; at this point the Cutters were the closest thing this city had to a military. Dr. Cable wouldn't believe Shay, anyway. Her brain would show the marks of Maddy's cure—she was no longer special.

But Tally was. She ducked and weaved among branches in the forest, knees bent and arms stretched out like wings, flying faster than she ever had before. Everything was icy clear: the warm wind across her bare face, the shifting gravities of flight beneath her feet. She'd taken two boards, riding one while the other followed, jumping back and forth every ten minutes. With her weight shared between them, top speed wouldn't burn out the lifting fans for days.

She reached the edge of Diego long before the sun began to rise, when the orange sky was just becoming radiant overhead, like an immense vessel emptying its light down upon the wild. The world's beauty hurt like razors, and Tally knew she'd never have to cut herself again.

She carried a knife inside herself now, one that was always cutting her. She could feel it every time she swallowed, every time her thoughts strayed from the splendor of the wild.

The forest thinned as Tally reached the great deserts left by the white weed. As the wind against her face became rough with airborne sand, she angled toward the sea, where her magnetics could grip the railroad line, lending her more speed.

She only had seven days to end this war.

According to Tachs, Special Circumstances planned to wait a week for the situation in Diego to grow worse. The destruction of Town Hall would impair the city's workings for months, and Dr. Cable seemed to think that non-bubbleheads would rise up against any government if their needs weren't met.

And if the rebellion didn't happen on schedule, Special Circumstances could simply attack again, destroying more of the city to make conditions still worse.

Tally's software pinged—another ten minutes gone by. She called the empty board closer and leaped across the void, for a moment nothing but sand and scrub below, then landing in a perfect riding stance.

She found herself smiling grimly. If she fell, there was no grid below to catch her, only hardpacked sand racing by at a hundred kilometers per hour. But the doubts and uncertainties she had always suffered, the ones Shay had complained about even after Tally had become a Cutter, had finally been burned away.

Danger didn't matter anymore. Nothing did.

She was truly special now.

As dusk began to fall, Tally reached the coastal railroad line.

Clouds had glowered at her from the sea all afternoon, and as the sun went down, a black veil rolled in, covering the stars and moon. An hour after nightfall, the day's heat stored in the railroad tracks began to fade, leaving the path invisible even in infrared. Tally navigated by ear, using only the roar of the surf to stay on course. Here over the metal rails, her bracelets would save her if she fell.

Just as dawn broke, she shot over a camp full of sleepy-looking runaways. She heard shouting in her wake, and glanced back to see that the wind of her passage had scattered embers from their campfire across the dry grass. The runaways were scampering around trying to keep the fire from spreading, beating the flames with their sleeping bags and jackets, screeching like a bunch of bubbleheads.

Tally kept flying. She didn't have time to turn back and help.

She wondered what would become of all the runaways still making their way across the wild. Could Diego still spare its meager fleet of helicopters to bring them in? How many more citizens could the New System handle, now that it was fighting for its own existence?

Of course, Andrew Simpson Smith wouldn't realize there was a war on. He would still hand out his position-finders, guides to nowhere. The runaways would reach their collection points, but no rides would come. They would slowly lose faith, until they ran out of food and patience, then head back home.

Some might make it, but they were all city kids, clueless about the dangers out here. Without a New Smoke to welcome them, most would be consumed by the wild.

On her second night of flying without rest, Tally fell.

She had just noticed that one board was acting up, some microscopic flaw in its forward lifting fan causing it to run hot. She'd been watching it carefully for the last few minutes, a detailed infrared overlay blotting her normal vision, and she never even noticed the tree.

It was a lone pine, its upper leaves sheered by salt spray like a bad haircut. The board she was riding struck a branch dead center, snapping it clean, sending Tally flying head over heels.

Her crash bracelets found the metal in the rail line just in time. They didn't snap her up short, like they would have in a straight-down fall, but bounced her along the tracks at speed. For a few wild moments, Tally felt like she'd been strapped to the front of some ancient train, the world rushing by on either side, the dark rails stretching before her into blackness, cross-ties a blur beneath her feet.

She wondered what would happen if the railroad line curved suddenly, whether the bracelets would carry her through a turn, or dump her unceremoniously on the ground. Or off the cliff…

The track ran doggedly straight, though, and after a hundred meters her momentum petered out. The bracelets set Tally down; her heart was pounding, but she was unhurt. Both boards found her signal a minute later, nosing out of the darkness like sheepish friends who'd run off without telling her.

Tally realized that she should probably get some sleep. When her next lapse of concentration came, she might not be so lucky. But the sun would be rising soon, and the city was less than a day's travel away She stepped onto the overheated board and rode it hard, keeping herself alert by listening carefully to every shift in the sound of the damaged fan.

Just after dawn, a high-pitched squeal erupted, and Tally leaped from the stricken hoverboard as it disintegrated into a white-hot mass of shrieking metal. She landed on the other board, turning to watch the screaming remains of the first spin out sideways and fall into the sea, where its impact threw up a geyser of spray and steam.

Tally faced home again, never even slowing.

When the Rusty Ruins came into sight, she headed inland. The ancient ghost city was full of metal, so for the first time since leaving Diego, Tally let herself slow down, resting the lifting fans of her remaining board. She moved in silence through the empty streets, staring down at the burnt-out cars that marked the Rusties' last day. Crumbling buildings rose up around her, all the familiar spots where she had hidden back in her Smokey days. Tally wondered if tricky uglies still snuck out here at night. Maybe the ruins didn't seem so exciting anymore, now that there was a real-live city to run away to.

They still felt creepy, though, as if the vast emptiness was full of ghosts. The gaping windows seemed to stare at Tally, taking her back to that first night Shay had brought her here, back when they were both uglies. Shay had learned the secret route from Zane, of course—he was the ultimate reason that Tally Youngblood wasn't just another bubblehead, happy and clueless among the spires of New Pretty Town.

Maybe after she confessed to Dr. Cable, Tally would wind up there again, all these unhappy-making memories erased at last…

Ping.

Tally slowed to a halt, not quite believing what she'd heard. The ping was on the Cutters' frequency, but none of them could have made it here before her. The ID was blank, as if the ping had come from no one. It had to be some abandoned beacon left behind on a training mission, nothing but a random signal in the ruins.

"Hello?" she whispered.

Ping…ping…ping.

Tally raised her eyebrows. That hadn't been random; it had sounded like an answer. "Can you hear me?"

Ping.

"But you can't say anything?" Tally frowned.

Ping.

Tally sighed, realizing what was going on. "Fine. Nice trick, ugly. But I've got more important things to do." She started up her lifting fans again, angling toward town.

Ping…ping.

Tally slid to a halt, unsure about ignoring this. Any bunch of uglies smart enough to trick the Cutters' frequency might have useful information. It wouldn't hurt to find out how things were going in the city before confronting Dr. Cable.

She checked the signal strength. It was strong and clear. Whoever had rigged it up wasn't far away.

Tally drifted down the empty street, watching the signal carefully. It grew slightly stronger on the left. She turned in that direction and glided a block farther.

"Okay, kid. One means yes, and two means no. Got that?"

Ping.

"Do I know you?"

Ping.

"Hmm." Tally kept going until the signal weakened, then turned around and made her way slowly back. "Are you a Crim?"

Ping…ping.

The signal's strength peaked, and Tally looked up. Towering above her was the tallest building left standing in the ruins, an old Smokey hangout and the logical place to set up a broadcasting station.

"Are you an ugly?"

There was a long pause. Then a single ping.

Tally began her silent ascent, the hoverboard's magnetics taking hold of the tower's ancient metal skeleton. Her senses expanded, listening for every sound.

The wind shifted, and she smelled something familiar, her stomach clenching.

"SpagBol?" She shook her head. "So you come from this city?"

Ping…ping.

Then she heard a sound, movement in the rubble of some ruined floor above. Tally stepped from her board through an empty window frame, setting her damaged sneak suit to a rough approximation of broken stone. She took both sides of the frame and leaned in, peering upward.

There he was above, looking down at her. "Tally?" he called.

She blinked. It was David.

David

"What are you doing here?" she called.

"Waiting for you. I knew you'd come this way…through the ruins one more time."

Tally climbed toward him, swinging from one iron beam to the next, covering the distance in a few seconds. He was huddled in the corner of a floor that hadn't completely collapsed, barely enough room for the sleeping bag splayed out beside him. His sneak suit was set to match the shadows inside the ruin.

A self-heating meal in his hand chimed that it was ready, and the revolting smell of SpagBol hit Tally again.

She shook her head. "But how did you … ?"

David held up a crude device in one hand, a directional antenna in the other. "After we cured him, Fausto helped us rig this up. Every time you guys got close, we detected your skintennas. We could even listen in."

Tally squatted on a rusty iron beam, her head suddenly spinning from three days of constant travel. "I wasn't asking how you pinged me. How did you get here so quickly?"

"Oh, that was easy. When you left without her, Shay realized that you were right: Diego needs her more than you do. But they don't need me." He cleared his throat. "So I took the next helicopter to a pickup spot about halfway here."

Tally sighed, closing her eyes. "Special-head" Shay had called her. She could have gotten a ride most of the way. That was one problem with dramatic exits: Sometimes they wound up making you look like a bubblehead. But she was relieved to hear that her fears about the runaways had been unfounded. Diego hadn't abandoned them yet.

"So why exactly did you come?"

David wore a determined look. "I'm here to help you, Tally"

"Listen, David, just because we're sort of on the same side now doesn't mean I want you around. Shouldn't you be back in Diego? There's a war on, you know."

He shrugged. "I don't like cities much, and I don't know anything about wars."

"Well, I don't either, but I'm doing what I can." She signaled for her board, which still hovered below. "And if Special Circumstances catches me with a Smokey, it's not going to make it any easier convincing them I'm telling the truth."

"But Tally, are you okay?"

"That's the second time someone's asked me that stupid question," she said softly. "No, I'm not okay."

"Yeah, I guess it was stupid. But we're worried about you."

"We who? You and Shay?"

He shook his head. "No, my mother and me."

Tally let out a short, sharp laugh. "Since when was Maddy worried about me?"

"She's been thinking about you a lot lately," he said, setting his untouched SpagBol on the floor. "She had to study the special operation to cure it. She knows quite a bit about what it's like, being what you are."

Tally leaped up, hands curling, and jumped across the void between them in a single bound, sending a shower of rust down into the chasm of the building's core. Her teeth bared, she said straight to his face, "No one knows what it's like to be me right now, David. I promise you: no one."

He held her gaze without flinching, but Tally could smell his fear, all the weakness leaking out of him.

"I'm sorry," he said evenly "I didn't mean it that way…This isn't about Zane."

At the sound of his name, something fractured inside Tally, and her fury faded. She sank onto her haunches, breathing raggedly. For a moment, it felt as though the burst of rage had shifted something heavy and leaden inside her. It was the first time since Zane's death that anything, even anger, had broken through her despair.

But the feeling had lasted only a few seconds, then the fatigue from her uninterrupted days of travel came tumbling down.

She lowered her head into her hands. "Whatever."

"I brought you something. You might need it."

Tally looked up. In David's hand was an injector.

She shook her head tiredly. "You don't want to cure me, David. Special Circumstances won't listen to me unless I'm one of them."

"I know, Tally. Fausto explained your plan to us." He placed a cap over the needle, snapping it down. "But keep this. Maybe after you tell them what happened, you'll want to change yourself."

Tally frowned. "There doesn't seem like much point thinking about what happens after I confess, David. The city might be a little upset with me, so I might not have much say in the matter."

"I doubt it, Tally. That's what's so amazing about you. No matter what your city does to you, you always seem to have a choice."

"Always?" She snorted. "I didn't seem to have a choice when Zane died."

"No …" David shook his head. "I'm sorry, again. I keep saying stupid things. But remember when you were a pretty? You changed yourself, and you led the Crims out of the city."

"Zane led us."

"He'd taken a pill. You hadn't."

She groaned. "Don't remind me. That's how he wound up in that hospital!"

"Wait, wait." David put up his hands. "I'm trying to say something. You were the one who thought your way out of being pretty."

"Yeah, I know, I know. A lot of good that did me. Or Zane."

"Actually, it did more than a lot of good, Tally. After seeing what you'd done, my mother realized something important about how the operation could be reversed. About the bubblehead cure."

Tally looked up, remembering Zane's theories back in pretty days. "You mean about making yourself bubbly?"

"Exactly. My mother realized that we didn't have to get rid of the lesions, all we had to do was stimulate the brain to work around them. That's why the new cure is much safer, and why it works so fast." He was talking quickly, his eyes bright in the shadows. "That's how we got Diego to change in only two months. Because of what you showed us."

"So I'm to blame for those people turning their little fingers into snakes? Great."

"You're to blame for the freedom they've found, Tally. For the end of the operation."

She laughed bitterly. "The end of Diego, you mean. Once Cable gets her hands on them, they'll wish they'd never seen your mother's little pills."

"Listen, Tally. Dr. Cable is weaker than you think." He leaned closer. "This is what I came to tell you: After the New System came into being, some of Diego's industrial managers helped us out. Mass production. We've smuggled two hundred thousand pills into your city over the last month. If you can knock Special Circumstances off-balance, even for a few days, your city will start to change. Fear is the only thing keeping a New System from happening here, too."

"Fear of whoever attacked the Armory, you mean." She sighed. "So it's all my fault again."

"Maybe. But if you can dispel that fear here, every city in the world will start paying attention." He took her hand. "You aren't just stopping the war, Tally You're about to fix everything."

"Or screw everything up. Has anyone thought what'll happen to the wild if everyone becomes cured all at once?" She shook her head. "All I know is I have to stop this war."

He smiled. "The world is changing, Tally. You made it happen."

She pulled away, staying silent for a while. Anything she said might set off another speech about how wonderful she was. She didn't feel wonderful, just exhausted. David seemed content to sit there, probably thinking that his words were sinking in, but Tally's silence meant nothing except that she was too tired to speak.

For Tally Youngblood, the war had already come and gone, leaving a smoking ruin in its wake. She couldn't fix everything, for the simple reason that the only person she cared about was past fixing.

Maddy could cure every bubblehead in the world, and Zane would still be dead.

But one question was niggling at her. "So, are you saying your mother actually likes me now?"

David smiled. "She finally realizes how important you are. To the future. And to me."

Tally shook her head. "Don't say things like that. About you and me."

"I'm sorry, Tally. But its true."

"Your father died because of me, David. Because I betrayed the Smoke."

He shook his head slowly. "You didn't betray us—you were manipulated by Special Circumstances, like a lot of other people were. And it was Dr. Cable's experiments that killed my father, not you."

Tally sighed. She was too exhausted to argue. "Well, I'm glad Maddy doesn't hate me anymore. And speaking of Dr. Cable, I need to go see her and stop this war. Are we done here?"

"Yes." He picked up his meal and chopsticks, dropping his eyes to the food, his voice soft. "That's everything I wanted to say. Except…"

She groaned.

"Listen, Tally, you're not the only person who ever lost someone." His eyes narrowed. "After my father died, I wanted to disappear too."

"I'm not disappearing, David, I'm not running away. I'm doing what I have to, all right?"

"Tally, I'm just saying: I'll be here when you're done."

"You?" She shook her head.

"You're not alone, Tally. Don't pretend you are."

Tally tried to stand up, to get away from this nonsense, but suddenly the ruined tower seemed to sway around her. She sank back to her haunches.

Another lame dramatic exit.

"Okay, David, turns out I'm not going anywhere until I get some sleep. Guess I should have taken that helicopter."

"Use my sleeping bag." He scooted aside and held up the antenna. "I'll wake you up if anyone comes sniffing around. You're safe here."

"Safe." Tally squeezed past David, for a moment feeling the heat of his body and faintly remembering his smell from when they'd been together, what seemed like years ago.

It was strange. His ugly face had revolted her the last time she'd seen it, but after seeing so many insane surgeries in Diego, his scarred eyebrow and crooked smile just seemed like one more fashion statement. And not an awful one at that.

But he wasn't Zane.

Tally crawled into the sleeping bag, then peered down through the rotted floors of the building to the rubble-filled foundation a hundred meters below.

"Um, just don't let me roll over in my sleep, okay?"

He smiled. "All right."

"And give me that." She took the injector from his hand, zipping it into a pouch of her sneak suit. "I might need it one day."

"Maybe you won't, Tally."

"Don't confuse me," she murmured.

Tally laid down her head, and slept.

Emergency Meeting

She took the river home.

Crashing through white water, the familiar skyline of New Pretty Town before her, Tally wondered if this would be the last time she'd ever see her home from the outside. How long did they lock you up for attacking your own city, accidentally destroying its armed forces, and getting it into a bogus war?

The moment she reached the city's repeater network, the newsfeeds rolled over Tally's skintenna like a tidal wave. More than fifty channels were covering the war, describing breathlessly how the hovercraft armada had broken through Diego's defenses and sent its Town Hall tumbling to the ground. Everyone was so happy about it, as if the bombardment of a helpless foe had been fireworks at the end of some long-awaited celebration.

It was weird hearing Special Circumstances mentioned every five seconds—how they'd stepped in after the Armory had been destroyed, how they would keep everyone safe. Until a week ago, most people hadn't even believed in Specials, and suddenly they were the saviors of the city.

The new wartime regulations actually had their own channel, a cheerless scrolling list of rules to be memorized. Curfew restrictions on uglies were stricter than ever, and for the first time in Tally's memory, new pretties had limits on where they could go and what they could do. Ballooning was completely forbidden, hoverboards restricted to parks and sports fields. And ever since the disintegrating Armory had lit the sky, New Pretty Town's nightly fireworks displays had been canceled.

No one seemed to be complaining, though, not even cliques like the Hot-airs, who practically lived in their balloons during the summer. Of course, even if two hundred thousand people had been cured, that still left about a million bubbleheads. Maybe those who wanted to protest were still too outnumbered to make themselves heard.

Or perhaps they were too afraid of Special Circumstances to raise their voices at all.

As she passed through the outer ring of Crumblyville, Tally's skintenna connected with a drone patrolling the city limits. The machine gave her a quick electronic frisk before realizing that she was an agent of Special Circumstances.

She wondered if anyone had figured out how to get past the new patrols yet, or whether all the tricky uglies were gone by now, either run away to Diego or drafted into Special Circumstances. Everything had changed so much in the few weeks she'd been gone. The closer she got to the city, the less it felt like she was home at all, especially now that Zane would never see this skyline again…

Tally took a deep breath. Time to get this over with. "Message to Dr. Cable."

The ping bounced back to announce that the city interface had put her in a holding queue. Apparently, the head of Special Circumstances was busy these days.

But a moment later, another voice answered, "Agent Youngblood?"

Tally frowned. It was Maxamilla Feaster, one of Cables subcommanders. The Cutters had always reported directly to Dr. Cable.

"Let me talk to the doctor," Tally said.

"She's not available, Youngblood. She's meeting with the City Council."

"She's downtown?"

"No. At headquarters."

Tally slowed her board to a halt. "Special Circumstances headquarters? Since when does the City Council meet out there?"

"Since we went to war, Youngblood. A lot's happened while you and your miscreants have been wandering around in the wild. Where on earth have you Cutters been?"

"That's a long story, one I have to tell the doctor face-to-face. Tell her I'm coming, and that what I have to say is extremely important."

There was a brief pause, then the woman's voice came back, annoyed. "Listen, Youngblood. We are at war, and Dr. Cable is currently acting chair of the Council. She's got a whole city to run, and doesn't have time to give you Cutters your usual special treatment. So tell me what this is all about, or you won't be seeing 'the doctor' anytime soon. Understand?"

Tally swallowed. Dr. Cable was running the whole city? Maybe confessing to her wasn't going to be enough. What if she was enjoying being in charge too much to believe the truth?

"Okay, Feaster. Just tell her that the Cutters have been in Diego the last week—fighting the war, okay?—and that I have some very important intelligence for the Council. It concerns the safety of the city. Is that good enough for you?"

"You've been in Diego? How did you—" the subcommander started, but Tally gestured to cut the feed. She'd said enough to get the woman's attention.

She leaned forward and engaged the board's lifting fans, heading for the factory belt at top speed, hoping to get there before the City Council meeting had ended.

They were the perfect audience for her confession.

Special Circumstances headquarters stretched across the plain of the factory belt, low and flat and unimpressive. But it was bigger than it looked, descending twelve stories down into the earth. If the City Council was afraid of another attack, it was the logical place to hide. Tally was certain that Dr. Cable had welcomed the Council with open arms, happy to have the city government cowering in her basement.

Tally stared down from the summit of the long, tilted hill that overlooked the headquarters. Back in ugly days, she and David had jumped on hoverboards from here down to the roof. Since then, motion sensors had been installed to keep another break-in like theirs from happening again. But no fortress was designed to keep one of its own out, especially when she had important news to deliver.

Tally opened her skintenna feed again. "Message to Dr. Cable."

This time, Subcommander Feaster's response was instantaneous. "Quit playing around, Youngblood."

"Let me talk to Cable."

"She's still with the Council. You have to speak with me first."

"I don't have time to explain everything twice, Maxamilla. My report concerns the entire Council." She paused to take a long, slow breath. "There's another attack coming."

"Another what?"

"An attack, and very soon. Tell the doctor I'll be there in two minutes. I'll come straight to the Council meeting."

Tally cut her skintenna feed again, choking off more sputtering replies. She spun her hoverboard around and shot down the long, sloping side of the hill, then turned to face the summit once more, flexing her fingers.

The trick was to make her entrance as dramatic as possible, blustering past everyone and straight into the City Council meeting. Dr. Cable would probably enjoy one of her pet Cutters dashing in to deliver vital intelligence, proof that Special Circumstances was on the job.

Of course, the announcement wasn't going to be what Dr. Cable expected.

Tally urged her hoverboard forward, fans and magnetics fully engaged. She climbed the hill, building speed all the way.

At the top, the horizon suddenly slipped away the ground disappearing beneath her, and Tally soared into the sky.

She cut the fans and bent her knees, grasping the board with her fingers.

The silence stretched out, the roof of the headquarters growing as Tally fell. She felt a grin spreading on her face. This might be the last time she would do something this icy, with all her special senses sucking up the world; she might as well enjoy it.

A hundred meters from impact, her lifting fans spun to life. They pressed the board up against her, struggling to bring Tally to a halt. Her crash bracelets pushed against her wrists, straining against the force of the fall.

The hoverboard smacked hard and flat against the roof, and Tally rolled from its riding surface and straight into a run. Alarms were sounding all around her, but with a single gesture, her skintenna placated the security system. She shouted for emergency access through the hovercar doors ahead.

There was a short pause, then Feaster's anxious voice replied, "Youngblood?"

"I need in, double-quick!"

"I told Dr. Cable what you said. She wants you to head straight for the Council meeting. They're in the Level J operating theater."

Tally let herself smile. Her plan was working. "Got you. Open this door up."

"Right." With a lurching metal scrape, the landing pad beneath Tally began to part, as if the roof were splitting in two. She dropped through the widening seam, falling from bright sunlight into semidarkness and landing on top of a Special Circumstances hovercar. Ignoring the startled hangar workers around her, Tally rolled to the floor and kept running.

The voice popped into her ear again. "I've got an elevator waiting. Right in front of you."

"Too slow," Tally panted, coming to a halt before the elevator bank. "Just open an empty shaft."

"Are you kidding, Youngblood?"

"No! Seconds count here. Do it!"

A moment later, another door slid open, revealing darkness.

Tally stepped into the shaft.

Her grippy-soled shoes shrieked as she bounced from one side of the shaft to the other, her fall barely controlled, descending ten times faster than any elevator. On the headquarters' skintenna channel, she heard Feaster's voice warning everyone out of her way. Light spilled up into the shaft—the door to Sublevel J already open for her.

Tally caught the ledge of the floor above and swung herself through the opening, landing at a dead run. She dashed down the hallway at top speed, Specials pressing themselves against the wall to make way for her, as if Tally were some pre-Rusty messenger bringing news to the king.

At the entrance to the floor's main operating theater, Maxamilla Feaster waited with two Specials in full battle gear. "This had better be important, Youngblood."

"Believe me, it is."

Feaster nodded, and the door slid open. Tally ran through.

She skidded to a halt. The theater was silent, a great ring of empty seats staring down at her from all directions—no Dr. Cable, no City Council.

No one but Tally Youngblood, winded and alone.

She spun around. "Feaster? What is this—?"

The door slid closed, trapping her in the room.

Through her skintenna, she could hear the amusement in Feaster's voice. "Just wait in there, Youngblood. Dr. Cable will be with you once she's done with the Council."

Tally shook her head. Her confession would be useless if Cable didn't want to believe it. She needed witnesses. "But this is happening now! Why do you think I ran all this way?"

"Why? Perhaps to tell the Council that Diego had nothing to do with the Armory attack? That it was really you?"

Tally's mouth dropped open, her next plea silenced on her lips. She replayed Feaster's words in her mind slowly, unable to believe she'd really heard them.

How could they have known?

"What are you talking about?" she finally managed.

The cruel sound of delight grew in Maxamilla Feaster's voice. "Be patient, Tally. Dr. Cable will explain."

Then the lights flicked off, leaving her in total darkness. Tally started to speak again, then realized that her skintenna had gone dead.

Confession

The absolute darkness lasted what seemed like hours. A white-hot rage built inside Tally, a forest fire gaining strength with every passing second. She fought an urge to run blindly through the blackness, destroying everything she could lay her hands on, tearing her way through the ceiling and then the next floor, upward until she reached the open sky.

But Tally forced herself to sit down on the floor, breathing deep and trying to stay calm. The thought kept spinning in her mind that she was going to lose to Dr. Cable once again. Just like she had lost when the Smoke had been invaded, when she had given herself up to be made pretty, and when she and Zane had escaped together, only to be recaptured.

Again and again, Tally pushed the rage down, clenching her fists so hard it felt like her fingers would break. She felt powerless, just like when Zane had lain before her, dying…

But she couldn't afford to lose again. Not this time, when the future was at stake.

So she waited in the darkness, struggling.

Finally, the door opened, framing Dr. Cable's familiar silhouette. From the ceiling, four spotlights popped on, shining directly into Tally's eyes. Blinded for a moment, she heard more Specials slip through before the door slid closed behind them.

Tally jumped to her feet. "Where's the City Council? It's urgent that I speak to them."

"I'm afraid that what you have to say might upset them, and we can't have that. Very jumpy these days, the Council." A chuckle came from Dr. Cable's silhouette. "They're up on Level H, still droning to each other."

Two floors above…She'd gotten so close, only to fail again.

"Welcome home, Tally," Dr. Cable said softly.

Tally looked around the empty auditorium. "Thanks for the surprise party."

"You were the one planning to surprise us, I believe."

"What, by telling the truth?"

"The truth? From you?" Dr. Cable laughed. "What could be more surprising?"

A flash of anger went through Tally, but she took a long, slow breath. "How did you know?"

Dr. Cable stepped into the light, drawing a small knife from her pocket. "I believe this is yours." She threw the knife into the air. It spun, glittering in the spotlights, and sunk deep into the floor between Tally's feet. "The skin cells we found on it certainly were."

Tally stared down at the knife.

It was the one Shay had thrown to set off the Armory's alarm, the same one Tally had used to cut herself that night. Tally opened her clenched fist and stared at her palm; the flash tattoos still spun in their halting rhythm, broken by the scar. She had seen Shay wipe it for fingerprints, but some tiny trace of her flesh must have lingered…

They must have found it and run her DNA soon after the attack, and known all along that Tally Youngblood had been there at the Armory.

"I knew that nasty habit would eventually get you Cutters into trouble," Dr. Cable murmured. "Does it really feel so wonderful, cutting yourself? I must look into that, next time I make Specials so young."

Tally knelt and pulled the knife out of the floor, weighing it in her hand, wondering if a well-aimed throw could find its way into Dr. Cable's throat. But the woman was just as fast as Tally, just as special.

She couldn't afford to be a Special-head any longer. Tally had to think her way out of this.

She threw the knife aside.

"Just answer me one question," Dr. Cable said. "Why did you do it?"

Tally shook her head. Telling the whole truth would mean bringing Zane into it, which would only make it harder to keep control.

"It was an accident."

"An accident?" Dr. Cable laughed. "That's quite some accident, destroying half the city's military."

"We weren't planning to let loose those nanos."

"We? The Cutters?"

Tally shook her head—no point in mentioning Shay either. "One thing just sort of led to another…"

"Indeed. That's how it always works with you, isn't it, Tally?"

"But why did you lie to everyone?"

Dr. Cable sighed. "That should be obvious, Tally. I couldn't very well tell them that you had almost dismantled the city's defenses. The Cutters were my pride and joy, my special Specials." Her razor smile spread across her face. "Besides, you'd given me a splendid opportunity to get rid of an old opponent."

"What did Diego ever do to you?"

"They supported the Old Smoke. They've taken in our runaways for years. Then Shay reported that someone was supplying the Smokies with sneak suits and huge quantities of those appalling pills. Who else could it have been?" Her voice grew stronger. "The other cities were just waiting for someone to take Diego down, with their New System and their flouting of morphological standards. You simply provided me with the ammunition. You've always been so useful, Tally."

Tally squeezed her eyes shut, willing Dr. Cable's words to somehow be heard up in the Council meeting. If only they knew how they'd been lied to. …

But this whole city was too scared to think clearly, too thrilled by their own counterattack, too ready to accept the rule of this twisted woman.

Tally shook her head. She'd spent the last few days focused on rewiring herself, but she needed to rewire everyone.

Or maybe just the right someone…

"When does it all end?" she asked quietly. "How long does this war go on?"

"It never ends, Tally. I'm getting too much done that I could never do before, and believe me, the bubbleheads are having such fun watching it on the newsfeeds. And all it took was a war, Tally. I should have thought of this years ago!" The woman stepped closer, her cruelly beautiful face aglow at the edge of the spotlights. "Don't you see, we've entered a new era. From now on, every day is a Special Circumstance!"

Tally nodded slowly, then let a smile creep onto her face. "Nice of you to explain that to me. And to everyone else."

Dr. Cable raised an eyebrow. "Pardon me?"

"Cable, I didn't come here to tell the City Council what happened. They're a bunch of wimps, if they put you in charge. I came to make sure that everyone knows about your lies."

The woman let out a low, rumbling laugh. "Don't tell me you made some sort of video of yourself, Tally, explaining that you started the war? Who'll believe it? You may have been famous once among the bubbleheads and uglies, but no one over the age of twenty even knows you exist."

"No, but they know you, now that you've put yourself in charge." Tally reached into her sneak suit's carrying pouch and pulled out the injector. "And now that they've watched you explain that this entire war was bogus, they'll remember you forever."

Dr. Cable frowned. "What is that thing?"

"A satellite transmitter, one that can't be jammed." Tally pulled the cap from the injector's top, exposing the needle. "See that little antenna? Amazing, isn't it?"

"You couldn't…not from down here." Dr. Cable's eyes closed, her lids fluttering as she checked the feeds.

Tally kept talking, her own bare-toothed smile growing. "They do the craziest surgery in Diego. They replaced my eyes with stereo cameras, and my fingernails with microphones. The whole city has been watching you explain what you've done."

Cable's eyes opened. She snorted. "There's nothing on the feeds, Tally. Your little toy doesn't work."

Tally raised her eyebrows, glancing at the bottom of the injector in puzzlement. "Oops. Forgot to press send." She shifted her fingers…

Dr. Cable leaped forward, one hand darting for the injector, and in the same split second Tally turned the needle to exactly the right angle…

The blow smacked the injector from her hand, and Tally heard it clatter in the corner, broken into pieces.

"Really, Tally," Dr. Cable said, smiling. "For someone so clever, you're such a little fool sometimes."

Tally lowered her head and closed her eyes. But she was breathing in slowly through her nose, searching the air…

Then she smelled it—the barest scent of blood.

She opened her eyes, and saw Dr. Cable glance down at her hand, mildly annoyed by the needles prick. Shay had said she'd hardly noticed the cure at first, that it took days to manifest.

In the meantime, Tally didn't want Cable wondering how she'd stabbed herself on the "antenna," or taking a closer look at the shattered injector. Perhaps a distraction was in order.

Tally set a look of rage on her face. "You're calling me a fool?"

She lashed out a foot, catching Dr. Cable in the stomach and knocking the breath from her.

The other Specials reacted instantly, but Tally was already in motion, darting toward where she'd heard the injector fall. She landed one foot squarely on its remains, smashing it as hard as she could, then turned the motion into a roundhouse kick that landed on the jaw of the closest pursuer. She leaped up to the first row of seats, running along their backs without touching the floor.

"Agent Youngblood," another guard called. "We don't want to hurt you!"

"I'm afraid you'll have to!" She doubled back toward where the first guard lay. The door to the operating theater exploded open then, a swarm of gray silk uniforms storming into the room.

Tally jumped down near the fallen guard, landing once more on the shards of the injector. The other guard in battle gear landed a punch on her shoulder, rolling her back into the first row of seats. She leaped up and threw herself at him, ignoring the mass of Specials descending on her.

A few seconds later, Tally found herself thrown facedown on the floor, her arms pinned under her. She squirmed, crushing the last pieces of the injector beneath her into powder. Then someone kicked her in the ribs, driving her breath out in a grunt.

More of them piled on, like an elephant sitting on her back. The room grew dim; Tally felt herself being squashed against the edge of consciousness.

"It's okay, Doctor," one of the Specials said. "We have her under control."

Cable didn't respond. Tally craned her neck to see. The doctor was doubled over, still gasping for breath.

"Doctor?" the Special asked. "Are you all right?"

Just give her time, Tally thought. And she'll be much, much better…

Crumbling

Tally watched it all happen from her cell.

The changes came slowly at first. For a few days, Dr. Cable seemed her usual psychotic self when she visited, arrogantly demanding information about what was happening in Diego. Tally was happy to oblige, spinning tales about how the New System was crumbling, while watching for any sign of the cure.

But decades of vanity and cruelty faded slowly, and time itself seemed to come to a halt inside the four walls of Tally's cell. Cutters weren't designed to live indoors, especially not in tiny spaces, and Tally had to focus most of her strength on not going crazy. She stared at the cell door, filled with despair, fighting the rage that came in waves inside her, always resisting the urge to cut herself with her own fingernails and teeth.

That was how she'd managed to rewire herself for Zane— not cutting anymore—and she couldn't give in to weakness now.

Hardest was when Tally thought about how far below the earth she was, twelve stories down, as though the cell were a coffin buried deep in the ground. As if she had died, but some evil machinery of Dr. Cable's was keeping her conscious even in the grave.

The cell reminded her of the way the Rusties had lived—the rooms in the lifeless ruins small and cramped, their overcrowded cities like prisons reaching toward the sky. Every time the door opened, Tally expected to be put under the knife, to wake up as a bubblehead or as some still more psychotic form of a Special. She was almost glad when it was Dr. Cable ready to interrogate her again— anything was better than being alone in this empty cell.

And finally she began to see that the cure was working…slowly. Gradually Dr. Cable seemed to become less sure of herself, less able to make decisions.

"They're telling everyone my secrets!" she started mumbling one day, running her fingers through her hair.

"Who is?"

"Diego." Dr. Cable spat the word. "Last night they put Shay and Tachs on the world feeds. Showing their cutting scars and calling me a monster."

"How bogus of them," Tally said.

Dr. Cable glared at her. "And they're broadcasting detailed scans of your body, calling you a 'morphological violation'!"

"You mean I'm famous again?"

Cable nodded. "You're infamous, Tally. Everyone's terrified of you. The New System may have made the other cities nervous, but they seem to think my little gang of psychotic sixteen-year-olds is worse."

Tally smiled. "We were pretty icy."

"Then how did you let Diego capture you!"

"Yeah, that sucked." Tally shrugged. "And it was just a bunch of wardens, too. They had these stupid uniforms that looked like bumblebees."

Dr. Cable stared at her, beginning to shiver like poor

Zane had. "But you were so strong, Tally. So fast!" Tally shrugged again. "Still am." Dr. Cable shook her head. "For now, Tally. For now."

After two weeks of solitary silence, someone took unexpected mercy on Tally's boredom and the wallscreen in her cell booted up. She was amazed to see how quickly Dr. Cable's grip on the city had slipped. The newsfeeds had stopped rerunning the military's triumphant battle— bubblehead dramas and soccer games filled the wallscreen instead of military exploits. One by one, the City Council was letting the new regulations lapse.

Apparently, Maddy's cure had taken hold of Cables mind just in time: The second attack on Diego had never materialized.

Of course, the other cities may have had something to do with that. They'd never liked the New System, but were even less thrilled about the outbreak of an actual shooting war. People had died, after all.

As Dr. Cable's surgical experiments became infamous, Diego's repeated denials that it had attacked the Armory slowly gained credence. The feeds began to question what had really happened that night, especially after a crumbly museum curator who'd witnessed the attack went public with his story He claimed that some sort of Rusty nano had been released, not by an invading army, but by two faceless attackers who'd seemed more young and harebrained than deadly serious.

Then stories sympathetic to Diego began to appear on the local feeds, including interviews with wounded survivors of the Town Hall strike. Tally always hurried to flick past those segments, which usually ended by listing the seventeen people who'd died in the attack—especially the one victim who was, ironically a runaway from this very city.

They always showed his picture, too.

Arguments about the war—and about everything else— began to erupt. The disagreements grew more intense as Tally watched, less polite and measured every day, until the whole debate about the city's future became downright ugly. There was talk of new morphological standards, of letting uglies and pretties mix, even of expansion into the wild.

The cure was taking hold here, just as it had in Diego, and Tally wondered exactly what sort of future she had helped let loose. Were the city pretties going to start acting like Rustles now? Spreading across the wild, overpopulating the earth, leveling everything in their path? Who was left to stop them?

Dr. Cable herself seemed to fade from the newsfeeds, her influence waning, her personality shrinking before Tally's eyes. She stopped coming to the cell, and not long after that, the City Council finally removed her from power, saying that the crisis and her tenure as acting chair were over.

Then the talk of despecialization started.

Specials were dangerous, they were potentially psychotic, and the whole idea of a special operation was unfair. Most cities had never created any such creatures, except for a few reflex-boosted firefighters and rangers. Perhaps in the wake of this ill-considered war, it was time to get rid of them all.

After a long debate, Tally's own city began the process—a gesture of peace to the rest of the world. One by one, the agents of Special Circumstances were remade into normal, healthy citizens, and Dr. Cable never even raised her voice in protest.

Tally felt the walls of her cell pressing closer every day, as if the thought of being changed once more was crushing her. She looked at herself in the wallscreen, imagining her wolfen eyes made watery, her features ground down to averageness. Even the cutting scars on her arm would disappear, and Tally realized she didn't want to lose them. They were a reminder of everything she'd been through, of what she'd managed to overcome.

Shay and the others were still in Diego, still free, and maybe they could slip away before this happened to them. They could live anywhere: Cutters had been designed for the wild, after all.

But Tally had nowhere to run, no way to save herself.

Finally one night, the doctors came for her.

Operation

She heard them outside, two nervous voices. Tally slipped from her bed and went to the door, placing her palm against the Special-proof ceramic wall. The chips in her hands turned the murmurs into words…

"You sure this will work on her?"

"It's worked so far."

"But isn't she, you know, some kind of superfreak?"

Tally swallowed. Of course she was. Tally Youngblood was the most famous psychotic sixteen-year-old in the world; her body's lethal details had been broadcast far and wide.

"Relax, they whipped up this batch special, just for her."

Batch of what? she wondered.

Then she heard the hissing sound … gas leaking into the cell.

Tally jumped back from the door, sucking in a few quick gulps of air before the gas spread throughout the cell. She turned frantically in place, glaring at the four crushingly familiar walls, trying for the millionth time to find some weakness. Searching again for some way to escape…

Panic rose in Tally. They couldn't do this to her, not again. It wasn't her fault how dangerous she was. They had made her this way!

But there was no way out.

As she held her breath, the adrenaline pumping through her, Tally's vision began to swarm with red dots. She hadn't breathed in almost a minute now, and the iciness of her panic was fading. But she couldn't give up.

If only she could think straight…

She looked down at her arm, at the row of scars. It had been more than a month since her last cut, and it felt as though all the heartbreaks since were ready to burst from her veins. Maybe if she cut herself one more time, she could think of a way out of here.

At least her last moments as a Special would be icy…

She put her fingernails against the flesh, gritted her razor teeth. "I'm sorry, Zane," she whispered.

"Tally!" came a hissing voice in her head.

She blinked. For the first time since they'd thrown her in the cell, her skintenna wasn't jammed.

"Don't just stand there, you little moron! Act like you're passing out!"

Tally's aching lungs sucked in a breath. The smell of the gas filled her head. She sat down on the floor, red spots swarming across her eyes.

"Yes, much better. Keep pretending."

Tally breathed deeply—she could hardly stop herself anymore. But something strange was happening: The dark clouds were fading from her vision, the much-needed oxygen making her more alert.

The gas was doing nothing.

She leaned back against the wall, eyes closed, heart still pounding hard. What was going on here? Who was in her head? Shay and the other Cutters? Or was it…

She remembered David's words: "You're not alone."

Tally closed her eyes and slumped to one side, letting her head crack against the floor. She waited there, unmoving.

A long moment later, the door slid open.

"That took long enough." The voice was nervous, lingering hesitantly in the hallway.

A few footsteps. "Well, like you said, she's some kind of superfreak. But she's headed for normalville now."

"And you're sure she's not going to wake up?"

A foot prodded her in the side. "See? Out cold."

The kick sent a flash of rage through Tally, but in her month of solitude she'd learned to control herself. When the foot nudged at her again, Tally allowed herself to be rolled over onto her back.

"Don't move, Tally. Don't do anything. Wait for me…"

Tally wanted to whisper, Who are you? but she didn't dare. The two who'd gassed her were kneeling over her now, shifting her weight onto a hovercarrier.

She let them take her away.

Tally listened to the echoes carefully.

The halls of Special Circumstances were much emptier now; most of the cruel pretties had already been changed. She caught a few words of passing conversations, but none carried the razor sharpness of a Special's voice.

She wondered if they had saved her for the very last.

The elevator trip was short, probably only one floor up, where the main operating rooms were. She heard a double door slide open, and felt her body turning at a sharp angle. The carrier glided into a smaller room filled with metal surfaces and antiseptic smells.

Tally's entire being ached to leap from the hovercarrier, to fight her way to the surface. She'd escaped from this very building as an ugly. If the other Specials really were all gone, no one could stop her now…

But she kept control, waiting for the voice to tell her what to do.

Repeating to herself: I'm not alone.

They stripped her clothes off and lifted her into an operating tank, the room's sounds muted by its plastic walls. She felt the cold smoothness of the table against her back, the metal claw of a servo-arm poking into her shoulder. She imagined it sprouting a scalpel, cutting the Cutter one last time, tearing her specialness out of her.

A dermal braid was pressed against her arm, its needles spraying a flash of local painkiller before sliding into her veins. She wondered when they'd start pumping serious anesthetic into her, and if her metabolism could keep her awake.

As the tank was sealed, Tally's breathing grew panicked. She hoped the two orderlies didn't notice the flash tattoos spinning all over her face.

They sounded very busy, though. Machines were booting up all around the room, beeping and humming, servo-arms stirring around her, their little saws buzzing through test patterns.

Two hands reached in and shoved a breathing tube into her mouth. The plastic tasted like disinfectant, and the air that flowed from it was sterile and unnatural. As the tube booted up, reaching tendrils around her nose and head, it almost made her gag.

She wanted to rip the thing out and fight.

But the voice had told her to wait. Whoever had made her knockout gas harmless must have a plan. She had to remain calm.

Then the tank began to fill.

Liquid poured in from all sides, pooling around her naked body, thick and viscous, full of nutrients and nanos to keep her tissues alive while the surgeons were shredding her to pieces. Its temperature matched her body's, but when the solution ran into her ears, a shiver traveled through Tally The sounds of the room were muffled almost into silence.

The fluid rose above her eyes, over the tip of her nose, covering her completely…

She sucked the recycled air from the tube, fighting to keep her eyes closed. Now that she was practically deaf, keeping herself blind was torture.

"On my way, Tally," the voice in her head hissed.

Or had she just imagined it?

She was trapped now, immobilized, and the city could take its final revenge on her: grinding down her bones to reduce her to average pretty height; cutting the harsh angles from her cheeks; stripping out the beautiful muscles and bones, the chips in her jaw and hands, her lethal fingernails; replacing her black and perfect eyes. Making her a bubblehead again.

Only this time she was awake, and would feel it all…

Then Tally heard a sound, something smacking hard against the plastic side of the tank—she opened her eyes.

The operating solution made everything blurry, but through the transparent tank walls she saw furious movement, heard another muffled crash. One of the blinking machines toppled over.

Her rescuer was here.

Tally leaped into motion, tearing the dermal braid from her arm, then reaching up to yank the breathing tube out of her mouth. The device squirmed, its tendrils tightening across the back of her head, trying to stay on. She bit down on it, her ceramic teeth rending the plastic, and it died in her hand, spitting out a final spray of air bubbles into Tally's face.

She scrambled for a grip on the tanks edges, trying to pull herself up and out. But a transparent barrier barred her way.

Crap! she thought, fingers scrabbling for any gap in the plastic walls. She'd never seen an operating tank in use; when they were empty, the top was always open! Tally scratched the sides with her nails, scoring them as her panic built.

But the walls didn't break…

Her shoulder brushed against a servo-arm's scalpel, already deployed, and a pink cloud of blood blossomed across her vision. The nanos in the operating fluid took only seconds to staunch the bleeding.

Well, that's convenient, she thought. Of course, breathing would be nice too!

She peered out through the blurry solution. The fight was still going on, one figure against many. Hurry up! she thought, scrambling to find the breathing tube again. She shoved it into her mouth, but it was dead, clogged by the operating fluid.

At the top of the tank was a bare centimeter of airspace, and Tally pushed herself up to suck in the tiny bit of oxygen. But it wouldn't last long. She had to get out of this thing!

She tried to pound her way through the tank wall, but the solution was too thick and viscous. Tally's fist moved in slow motion, like punching through molasses.

Red dots sparkled at the edge of her vision…her lungs were empty.

Then she saw a blurry figure stumbling straight toward her, thrown back from the fight. It crashed against the side of the tank, making the whole thing wobble unsteadily on its stand.

Maybe that was the way.

Tally began to rock herself from side to side, setting the solution sloshing around her, the tank swaying a little farther each time. Scalpels tore at her shoulders as she threw herself one way and then the next, the buzz of repair nanos matching the swarming dots before her eyes, a pink tinge of blood filling the liquid.

But finally the tank was tipping over.

The world seemed to tilt around her, liquids swirling as she tumbled, the whole tank turning as it fell. Tally heard the muffled smack of plastic as she hit the floor, saw the tank's walls webbing with cracks. Solution drained from around her, sound rushing back into her ears as she drew her first breath of air.

She dug her fingernails into the fractured plastic and tore, pulling her way free from the operating tank.

Bleeding and naked, Tally stumbled forward, gasping for more air, the solution clinging to her as if she'd stepped from a bathtub full of honey. Unconscious doctors and orderlies lay in a pile, the solution rolling across them.

Her rescuer stood before her. "Shay?" Tally wiped the liquid from her eyes. "David?"

"Didn't I tell you to lie still? Or must you always destroy everything?"

Tally blinked, unable to believe her eyes. It was Dr. Cable.

Tears

She looked a thousand years old. Her eyes had lost the blackness in their depths, their evil sparkle. Like Fausto, she had become champagne without bubbles. Cured at last.

But she still managed to sneer.

Gasping for air, Tally said, "What are you … ?"

"Rescuing you," Dr. Cable said.

Tally looked at the door, listening for alarms, for footsteps.

The old woman shook her head. "I built this place, Tally. I know its tricks. No one's coming. Let me rest a moment." She sat heavily on the soaking floor. "I'm too old for this."

Tally stared down at her old enemy, hands still curled into deadly claws. But Dr. Cable was panting, a cut on her lip beginning to bleed. She looked like a very old crumbly, one whose life extension treatments were running out.

Except for the three unconscious doctors who lay at her feet.

"You still have special reflexes?"

"I'm not special at all, Tally. I'm pathetic." The old woman shrugged. "But I'm still dangerous."

"Oh." Tally wiped more operating solution from her eyes. "Took you long enough, though."

"Yes, that was clever Tally, taking out your breathing tube first."

"Sure, great plan, leaving me in there until they almost …" Tally blinked. "Um, why are you doing this again?"

Dr. Cable smiled. "I'll tell you, Tally if you answer me a question first." Her eyes grew sharp for a moment. "What did you do to me?"

It was Tally's turn to smile. "I cured you."

"I know that, you little fool. But howl"

"Remember when you snatched my transmitter? It wasn't a transmitter at all—it was an injector. Maddy's made a cure for Specials."

"That miserable woman again." Dr. Cable's gaze sank back to the soaking floor. "The Council's reopened the city's borders. Her pills are everywhere."

Tally nodded. "I can tell."

"Everything's going to pieces," Dr. Cable hissed, glaring up at Tally. "It won't be long before they start chewing up the wild, you know."

"Yeah, I know. Just like in Diego." Tally sighed, remembering Andrew Simpson Smith's forest fire. "Freedom has a way of destroying things, I guess."

"And you call this a cure, Tally? It's letting loose a cancer on the world."

Tally shook her head slowly. "So that's why you're here, Dr. Cable? To blame me for everything?"

"No. I'm here to let you go."

Tally looked up—this had to be a trick, some way for Dr. Cable to get her final revenge. But the thought of being out under the open sky again sent a painful ping of hope through her.

She swallowed. "But didn't I, you know, destroy your world?"

Dr. Cable stared at her for a long time with her unfocused, watery eyes. "Yes. But you're the last one, Tally. I've watched Shay and the others on the Diego propaganda feeds—they aren't right anymore. Maddy's cure, I suppose." She sighed slowly. "They're no more right than I am. The Council has despecialized almost all of us."

Tally nodded. "But why me?"

"You're the only real Cutter left," Dr. Cable said. "The last of my Specials designed to live in the wild, to exist outside the cities. You can escape this, can disappear forever. I don't want my work to become extinct, Tally. Please …"

Tally blinked. She'd never thought of herself as some sort of endangered animal. But she wasn't about to argue. The thought of freedom made her head spin.

"Just get out, Tally. Take any elevator to the roof. The building's almost empty, and I've shut down most of the cameras. And frankly, no one can stop you. Leave, and for my sake, keep yourself special. The world may need you, one day."

Tally swallowed. Just walking out seemed too simple. "What about a hoverboard?"

"It's waiting for you on the roof, of course." Dr. Cable snorted. "What is it about you miscreants and those things?"

Tally looked down at the three unconscious forms on the floor.

"They'll be fine," Cable snorted. "I am a doctor, you know."

"Sure you are," Tally muttered, kneeling to gently peel the scrubs from one of the orderlies. When she pulled them on, the operating solution soaked through in dark blotches, but at least she wasn't naked anymore.

She took a step toward the door, but turned back to face Dr. Cable.

"Aren't you worried I'll get myself cured? Then there won't be any of us left."

The woman looked up, and her defeated expression changed, a glint of the old evil returning to her eyes. "My faith in you has always been rewarded, Tally Youngblood. Why should I start worrying now?"

When she reached the open air, Tally stood for a long minute looking up at the darkened sky. She didn't worry about pursuers. Cable had been right: Who was left to stop her?

The stars and the crescent moon glowed softly, the wind carrying scents from the wild. After a month of recycled air, the cool summer breeze tasted alive on her tongue. Tally breathed in the icy world.

She was finally free of her cell, of the operating tank, of Dr. Cable. No one would change her against her will, not ever again. There would be no more Special Circumstances.

But even as relief spread through her, Tally felt herself bleeding inside. Freedom was cutting her.

Zane was still dead, after all.

The taste of salt found its way to Tally's lips, a reminder of that last bitter kiss by the sea. The scene that she'd reimagined every hour in her underground cell: the last time she'd spoken to him, the test she'd failed, pushing him away. But somehow the memory played differently this time, long and slow and sweet in her mind—as if she hadn't felt Zane trembling, as if she'd let that kiss go on and on. …

She tasted salt again, and finally felt the heat streaming down her cheeks. Tally reached her hands up, not quite believing until she saw her own fingertips glistening in the starlight.

Specials didn't cry, but her tears had finally come.

Ruins

Before she left the city Tally booted her skintenna, and found three messages waiting for her.

The first was from Shay. It told her that the Cutters were staying in Diego. After their help in the Town Hall attack, they had become the city's defense force, not to mention its firefighters, rescue workers, and heroes of last resort. The City Council had even changed the laws to let them keep their morphological violations, for the moment, anyway.

Except the fingernails and teeth. Those had to go.

With Town Hall still a pile of rubble, Diego needed all the help it could get. Though the cure was already invading other cities, slowly changing the entire continent, new runaways still arrived in Diego every day, ready to embrace the New System.

The old static bubblehead culture had been replaced by a world where change was paramount. So one day some other city would catch up—from now on fashions were guaranteed to shift—but for the moment, Diego was still the place that changed faster than everywhere else. It was the place to be, and it grew larger every day.

Shay's original message had been appended hourly, a diary of the challenges the Cutters faced as they helped to rebuild a city even as it transformed before their eyes. It seemed that Shay wanted Tally to know everything, so that she could jump right in and help when she was freed at last.

Shay was sorry about one thing, though. They'd all heard about the despecializations. They were public knowledge, a gesture of peace. The Cutters desperately wanted to come and rescue Tally, but they couldn't just rush in and attack the city now that they had become Diego's official defense force. They couldn't reignite this war when it was so close to fizzling out. Tally could see that, right?

But Tally Youngblood would always be a Cutter, whether she was special or not…

The second message was from David's mother.

She said that David had left Diego, had struck out into the wild. The Smokies were spreading across the continent, still working to smuggle the cure into those cities that clung to the bubblehead operation. In not too long, they would be sending an expedition into the deep south, and another across the seas to the eastern continents. Everywhere, it seemed, runaways were already streaming from their cities, setting up their own New Smokes, inspired by ugly rumors from afar.

There was an entire world waiting to be liberated, if Tally wanted to lend a hand.

Maddy ended with the words, "Join us. And if you see my son, tell him I love him."

The third message was from Peris.

He and the other Crims had left Diego. They were working on a special project for the city government, but they didn't much like staying in town. It was really bogus, it turned out, living in a place where everyone was Crim.

So they traveled across the wild, gathering up the villagers that the Smokies had released. They were teaching them about technology, about how the world outside their reservations worked, and about how not to start forest fires. Eventually, the villagers they worked with would go back to their own people and help bring them out into the world.

In return, the Crims were learning everything about the wild, how to hunt and fish and live off the land, gathering the knowledge of the pre-Rusties before it was lost again.

Tally smiled as she read the last lines:

This one guy, Andrew Something, says he knows you? How did that happen? He says to tell you, "Keep challenging the gods." Whatever.

Anyway, see you soon, Tally-wa. Best friends forever, finally!

—Peris

Tally didn't answer any of them, not yet. She hoverboarded up the river, taking one last ride through the rapids that she would never see again.

Moonlight illuminated the white water, each burst of spray glittering around her like an explosion of diamonds. The icicles had all melted in the warm air of early summer, releasing the pine smell of the forest to coat her tongue like syrup. Tally didn't gesture for infrared vision, letting her other senses probe the darkness unassisted.

Amid all this beauty, Tally knew exactly what she had to do.

Her lifting fans sprang to life as she took the old familiar path, down the trail that led to the natural vein of iron discovered by some tricky ugly generations ago. She skimmed across it on magnetics, down into the dark bowl of the Rusty Ruins.

The dead buildings rose up around her, towering monuments to the people who had once let themselves grow too greedy and too many, hungry billions of them spreading across the globe.

Tally stared long and hard as she passed the burnt-out cars and gaping windows, her special eyes returning the blank gaze of a crumbling skull. She never wanted to forget this place.

Not with all these changes coming…

Her hoverboard climbed the iron frame of the tallest building, the place Shay had brought her that first night she'd been Outside, almost exactly a year ago. On silent magnetics, Tally drifted up through its empty shell, the silent city sprawling around her through the empty window frames.

But when she reached the top, David was gone.

His sleeping bag and other equipment had all disappeared, only empty self-heating meals remained scattered around the half-crumbled section of floor. There were a lot of them—he'd waited for her a long time.

He'd also taken the crude antenna he'd pinged her with.

Tally flicked on her skintenna and felt it reach out across the dead and empty city, waiting with her eyes closed for some kind of reply.

But no ping came. A kilometer was nothing in the wild.

She went higher, up to the summit of the tower, slipping through one of the gaping holes in the roof up into the rushing wind. Her board kept climbing until its magnetics lost their grip on the skyscraper's iron frame. Then her lifting fans spun to life, turning red-hot as they strained to push her higher.

"David?" she said softly.

Still no answer.

Then she remembered Shay's old trick, back in ugly days.

Tally knelt on the wavering, windblown board and reached a hand into its storage compartment. Dr. Cable had loaded it with medspray, smart plastic, firestarters, and even a single meal of SpagBol, just for old times' sake.

Then Tally's fingers closed around a safety flare.

She lit it, raising it in one hand, the fierce wind scattering a stream of sparks behind her as long as a kite string. "I'm not alone," she said.

She held it there until the hoverboard grew white-hot beneath her feet, the flare finally sputtering out to a single glowing ember.

Then Tally dropped back into the Rusty skyscraper and curled up on the high section of broken floor, suddenly overwhelmed by her escape, almost too exhausted to care if anyone had seen her signal.

David came at dawn.

The Plan

"Where were you?" she said sleepily.

He stepped from his board, exhausted and unshaven. But David's eyes were wide. "I've been trying to get into the city. Trying to find you." Tally frowned. "The borders are open again, aren't they?"

"Maybe if you know how cities work …" She laughed. David had spent all of his eighteen years out in the wild. He didn't know how to deal with simple things like security drones.

"I made it in finally," he continued. "But then I had some trouble finding Special Circumstances headquarters." He sat down wearily.

"But you saw my flare."

"Yeah, I did." He smiled, but he was watching her closely. "The reason I was trying to …" He swallowed. "I can pick up the city feeds on my antenna. It said they were going to change you all. Turn you into something less dangerous. Are you still … ?" She gazed at him. "What do you think, David?" He peered into her eyes for a long moment, then sighed and shook his head. "You just look like Tally to me."

She looked down, her vision blurring.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing, David." She shook her head. "You just took on five million years of evolution again."

"I what? Did I say something wrong?"

"No." She smiled. "You said something right."

They ate a meal of city food, Tally swapping the SpagBol in her storage compartment for a can of David's PadThai.

She told him how she'd used his injector to change Dr. Cable, and about her month of captivity, and how she'd finally escaped. She explained that the debates David had heard on the newsfeeds meant that the cure was taking hold, the city transforming at last.

The Smokies had won, even here.

"So you're still special?" he finally asked.

"My body is. But the rest of me, I think that's all…" She had to swallow before using Zane's word. "Rewired."

David smiled. "I knew you'd manage."

"That's why you waited here, isn't it?"

"Of course. Someone had to." He cleared his throat. "My mom thinks I'm busy seeing the world, spreading the revolution."

Tally looked out at the ruined city. "The revolution's going pretty well on its own, David. It's unstoppable now."

"Yeah." Then he sighed. "But it's not like I did a very good job of saving you."

"I'm not the one who needs saving, David," Tally said. "Not anymore. Oh, right! I forgot to mention, Maddy sent me a message for you."

His eyebrows went up. "She sent you a message for me?"

"Yeah. 'I love you…'" Tally swallowed again. "She said to say that. So maybe she knows where you are, after all."

"Maybe so."

"You randoms can be awfully predictable," Tally said, smiling. She'd been watching him closely, her eyes cataloging all his imperfections, the asymmetry of his features, the pores of his skin, his too-big nose. His scar.

He wasn't an ugly anymore; to her he was just David. And maybe he had been right. Maybe she didn't have to do this alone.

David hated cities, after all. He didn't know how to use an interface or call a hovercar, and his handmade clothes would always look pretty bogus at a bash. And he certainly wasn't cut out to live in a place where people had snakes for pinkies.

Most important, Tally knew that no matter how her plan turned out, whatever awful things the world forced her to do, David would remember who she really was.

"I have this idea," she said.

"About where you're going next?"

"Yeah." Tally nodded. "It's kind of this plan … to save the world."

David paused, chopsticks halfway to his mouth, the SpagBol slithering off them and back into the container. His face shifted through emotions, as easy to read as any ugly's: confusion, curiosity, then a hint of understanding. "Can I help?" he asked simply.

She nodded. "Please. You're the right man for the job."

And then she explained everything.

That night, she and David hoverboarded to the very edge of the city, slowing to a halt when the repeater network picked up her skintenna. The three messages from Shay, Pens, and Maddy were still there, waiting for her. Tally flexed her fingers nervously.

"Look at that!" David said, pointing.

The skyline of New Pretty Town was aglow, rockets shooting high and bursting into vast, sparkling flowers of red and purple. The fireworks were back.

Maybe they were celebrating the end of Dr. Cable's rule, or the new transformations sweeping through the city or the end of the war. Or perhaps this display marked the final days of Special Circumstances, now that the last Special had run off into the wild.

Or maybe they were just acting like bubbleheads again.

She laughed. "You've seen fireworks before, haven't you?"

He shook his head. "Not very many. They're amazing."

"Yeah. Cities aren't so bad, David." Tally smiled, hoping that the nightly fireworks displays had returned now that the war was ending. With all the convulsions about to unsettle her city, maybe that one tradition should never change. The world needed more fireworks—especially now that there was going to be a shortage of beautiful, useless things.

As she prepared herself to speak, a shiver of nerves played through Tally. Whether she was a Special-head or not, this message needed to come out icy and convincing. The world depended on it.

Then suddenly, she was ready.

As they stood there watching New Pretty Town glow, their eyes tracking the slow ascent of the rockets and their sudden blossoming, Tally spoke clearly over the water's roar, letting the chip in her jaw catch her words.

She sent them all—Shay, Maddy, and Peris—the same reply…

Manifesto

I don't need to be cured. Just like I don't need to cut myself to feel, or think. From now on, no one rewires my mind but me.

Back in Diego, the doctors said that I could learn to control my behavior, and I have. You all helped, in one way or another.

But you know what? It's not my behavior I'm worried about anymore. It's yours.

That's why you won't be seeing me for a while, maybe a long time. David and I are staying out here in the wild.

You all say you need us. Well, maybe you do, but not to help you. You have enough help, with the millions of bubbly new minds about to be unleashed, with all the cities coming awake at last. Together, you're more than enough to change the world without us.

So from now on, David and I are here to stand in your way.

You see, freedom has a way of destroying things.

You have your New Smokes, your new ideas, whole new cities and New Systems. Well…we're the new Special Circumstances.

Whenever you push too far into the wild, we'll be here waiting, ready to push back. Remember us every time you decide to dig a new foundation, dam a river, or cut down a tree. Worry about us. However hungry the human race becomes now that the pretties are waking up, the wild still has teeth. Special teeth, ugly teeth. Us.

We'll be out here somewhere—watching. Ready to remind you of the price the Rusties paid for going too far.

I love you all. But it's time to say good-bye, for now.

Be careful with the world, or the next time we meet, it might get ugly.

—Tally Youngblood