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 celclass="underline" 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.