Скотт Вестерфельд - Specials

And yet she and Shay always seemed to wind up on opposite sides. Was that a coincidence? Or was there something about the two of them that always turned them from friends into enemies? Maybe they were like two different species—hawks and rabbits, say—and could never be allies. So who was the hawk? Tally wondered. Out here alone, she felt herself changing again. Somehow the wild made her feel less special. She still saw the world's icy beauty, but something was missing: the sounds of the other Cutters around her, the intimacy of their breathing in the skintenna network. She began to realize that being a Special wasn't just about strength and speed; it was about being part of a group, a clique. Back at camp Tally had felt connected to the others—always reminded of the powers and privileges they shared, and of the sights and smells only their superhuman senses could detect.

Among the Cutters, Tally had always felt special. But now that she was alone in the wild, her perfect vision only made her feel minuscule. In all its glorious detail, the natural world seemed big enough to swallow her.

The distant group of runaways weren't impressed or terrorized by her wolflike face and razor fingernails. How could they be when they never even glimpsed her? She was invisible, an outcast fading away.

She was almost relieved when the Crims made their second mistake.

They'd stopped to make camp on one side of a tall rocky outcrop, protected from the wind coming off the ocean. The weeds were close here, glowing softly as the sun rose, turning the inland hills as white as sand dunes.

The Crims unfurled their boards and weighted them down, made a halfway competent fire and ate their meals. Tally watched them drop off to sleep with their usual speed, exhausted from a long day of travel.

This far from the city, she no longer had to worry about the boards being spotted. Her skintenna hadn't picked up traffic from the wardens for days. But as she settled in for a long day of watching, Tally noticed that one of the boards— Zane's—had been left out in the ocean breeze whipping around the outcrop.

The board fluttered, and one of the stones weighting its corners rolled off.

Tally sighed—after a week on the trail, the runaways still hadn't learned to do this right—but inside she felt a ping of eagerness. Fixing this would give her something to do, at least, and maybe make her feel less insignificant. For those few moments she wouldn't be completely alone. She would hear the breathing of the sleeping Crims and take a closer look at Zane. Seeing him still and asleep, untroubled by his shaking, always reminded Tally of why she had made the choices she had.

She crawled toward the camp, her sneak suit turning the color of the dirt. The sun was rising behind her, but this would be much easier than the riverbank, where all eight boards had gone astray. Zane's hoverboard was still fluttering, another corner having freed itself, but it hadn't leaped into the air just yet. Perhaps its magnetics had found purchase with some underground vein of iron, and were dutifully holding it down.

When Tally reached the board, it was flapping like a wounded bird, the breeze swirling around it smelling of seaweed and salt. Strangely, someone had left an old leather-bound book open next to the hoverboard. Its pages snapped noisily in the wind.

Tally squinted. It looked like the one that Zane had been reading, that first night she'd seen him back from the hospital.

Another corner of the board slipped free, and Tally raised a hand to snatch it before the wind pulled it away.

But the hoverboard didn't budge.

Something was wrong here…

Then Tally saw why it wasn't moving. The fourth corner was tied to a stake, secured against the wind, as if whoever had placed it out here in the breeze had known the stone weights would fail.

Then she heard something over the fluttering pages of the book—the stupid, noisy book that had obviously been left here to cover other sounds. One of the Crims was breathing less evenly than the others…someone was awake.

She turned and saw Zane watching her.

Tally jumped to her feet, whipping off her glove and flicking out her stinger in one motion. But Zane raised one hand: It held a collection of metal stakes and firestarters. Even if Tally somehow made it those five meters and stung him, all that metal would fall clattering to the ground, waking the rest of them.

But why hadn't he just cried out? She tensed, waiting for him to raise an alarm, but instead he lifted a finger slowly to his lips.

His sly expression said, I won't tell if you don't.

Tally swallowed, scanning the other Crims in the darkness. None of them watched through slitted eyes; they were all fast asleep. He wanted to talk to her alone. She nodded, her heart beating fast.

The two crept out of the camp and around the outcrop, to where the breeze and crash of waves would cloak their words in a steady roar. Now that Zane was moving, his trembling had started again. As he settled himself next to her in the scrubby grass, Tally didn't look at his face. She already felt revulsion threatening to rise up inside her.

"Do the others know about me?" she asked.

"No. I wasn't sure myself. Thought I was imagining things." He touched her shoulder. "I'm glad I wasn't."

"Can't believe I fell for that stupid trick."

He chuckled. "Sorry to take advantage of your better nature."

"My what?"

In the corner of her eye, Tally saw him smile. "You were protecting us that first day, weren't you? Moving the hoverboards out of sight?"

"Yeah. A warden was about to spot you. Bubbleheads."

"Thought so. That's why I figured you'd help out again. Our own personal protector."

Tally swallowed. "Yeah, great. It's nice to be appreciated."

"So is it just you?"

"Yeah, I'm all alone." It was true now, after all.

"You're not supposed to be out here, are you?"

"You mean am I disobeying orders? Afraid so."

Zane nodded. "I knew you and Shay had some trick up your sleeves, letting me go. I mean, you didn't really expect me to use that tracker." He reached out and took her arm, his fingers pale against the dull gray of the sneak suit. "But how are you following us, Tally? It's not something inside me, is it?"

"No, Zane. You're clean. I'm just staying close, watching you every minute. Eight city kids in the wild aren't very hard to spot, after all." She shrugged, still staring out into the crashing waves. "I can smell you too."

"Oh." He laughed. "Not too bad yet, I hope."

She shook her head. "I've been in the wild before, Zane. I've smelled worse. But why didn't you … ?" She turned toward him but lowered her gaze, focusing on the zipper of his jacket. "You set a trap for me, but didn't mention it to the other Crims?"

"I didn't want to panic everybody." Zane shrugged. "If a whole bunch of Specials were following us, there wasn't much they could do about it. And if it was just you, I didn't want the others to know. They wouldn't understand."

"Understand what?" Tally said softly.

"That this whole trip wasn't a trap," he continued. "That it was just you. Protecting us."

She swallowed—of course, it had been a trap. But what was it now? Just a joke? A pointless waste of time? Shay, Dr. Cable, and the rest of Special Circumstances were probably already waiting for them at the Smoke.

He squeezed her arm. "It's changing you again, isn't it?"

"What is?"

"The wild. That's what you always said—traveling to the Smoke that first time, it's what made you what you are."

Tally turned away to stare out at the ocean, tasting its salt in her mouth. Zane was right—the wild was changing her again. Every time she crossed the wilderness alone, the beliefs the city had instilled in her were shaken up. But this time around, Tally's realizations weren't making her particularly happy. "I'm not sure what I am anymore, Zane. Sometimes I think I'm nothing but what other people have done to me—a big collection of brainwashing, surgeries, and cures." She looked down at her scarred hand, the tattoos flickering brokenly across her palm. "That, and all the mistakes I've made. All the people I've disappointed."