Specials

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 skinte

"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 spi

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 u

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.