Скотт Вестерфельд - Specials

"Of course I remember. Do I look like a bubblehead?"

"Hardly." He smiled. "Well, something happened after that tracker in Zane's tooth went off, and you insisted on staying behind with him. While we were all running away, us Crims came to an agreement with the Smokies." He paused as they passed a clique of young pretties all comparing their new surge—skin that flashed from paper white to pitch black, following the music's beat.

Letting their skintennas carry the words, Tally hissed, "What do you mean, an agreement?"

"The Smokies knew that Special Circumstances had been recruiting. There were more Specials every day, most of them the same uglies who'd run away to the Old Smoke."

Tally nodded. "You know the rules. Only the tricky ones become special."

"Sure. But the Smokies were just starting to figure that out." They had almost reached the shadows at the other edge of the party, where a stand of trees cast deep shadows. "And Maddy still had Dr. Cable's data, so she thought she could make a cure for being special."

Tally froze in her tracks. "A what?"

"A cure, Tally. But they needed someone to test it on. Someone who could give them informed consent. Like you gave consent to be cured, before you let yourself be turned pretty."

She looked into his eyes, trying to peer into their black depths. Something was different in them…they were flatter, like champagne with no bubbles.

Just like Zane, Fausto had lost something.

"Fausto," she said softly. "You're not special anymore."

"I gave my consent as we were running away," he said. "We all agreed. If we got caught and turned into Specials, Maddy could try to cure us."

Tally swallowed. So that was why they'd kept Fausto and let Shay escape. Informed consent—Maddy's excuse for playing with people's brains. "You let her experiment on you? Don't you remember what happened to Zane?"

"Someone had to, Tally." He held up an injector. "It works, and it's perfectly safe."

Her lips slid back from her teeth, her skin crawling at the thought of nanos eating away at her brain. "Don't touch me, Fausto. I'll hurt you if I have to."

"No, you won't," he said softly, then his hand darted toward her neck.

Tally's fingers shot up, catching the injector a few centimeters from her throat. She twisted hard, trying to make him drop it, and a cracking sound came from his fingers. Then his other hand moved, and she realized it held another injector. Tally dropped to the ground, his swing passing inches from her face.

Fausto kept coming, both hands trying to land a needle in her. She scrambled backward on the grass, barely staying clear. He flailed at her desperately, but she fended him off with a kick to his chest, then another that connected with his chin, sending him stumbling back. He wasn't the same—still faster than a random, maybe, but no longer as fast as Tally Something ruthless and sure had been sucked out of him.

Time slowed down, until she saw an opening in his predictable attack. She lashed out with a well-aimed kick that knocked one of the injectors from his hands.

By now the sneak suit had detected Tally's rush of adrenalin; its scales rippled across her, hardening to armored mode. She rolled to her feet, throwing herself straight at Fausto. His next swing made contact with her elbow, the suit's armor crushing the injector, and Tally landed a blow on his cheek with an open palm. He stumbled backward, his tattoos spinning wildly.

A flicker of sound from the darkness caught Tally's ear—something headed her way through the air. Her infrared overlay fell into place, senses expanding as she dropped again to the ground. A dozen glowing figures appeared in the trees, half of them in archers' stances.

The flutter of feathers passed overhead—arrows with needle tips glittering—but Tally was already scrambling back toward the mass of the party. She scrambled through the crowd, knocking down runaways around her, creating a barrier of fallen bystanders. Beer spilled across her, and startled cries filled the air over the music.

Tally sprang to her feet and weaved her way deeper into the crowd. There were Smokies in all directions, figures that moved confidently among the baffled runaways, enough to overwhelm her with sheer numbers. Of course, dozens of the Smokies must be here at the Overlook; they had made Diego their home base. All they needed was one hit with an injector, and the chase would be over.

She'd been a fool to let her guard down, to walk around gawking at this city like a tourist. And now she was caught…trapped between her enemies and the cliff that gave the Overlook its name.

Tally ran toward the darkness at its edge.

She passed through an open space and more arrows flew at her, but she ducked and blocked and rolled, all of her senses and reflexes engaged. With every seamless movement Tally became more certain she didn't want to become like Fausto—only half a Special, flat and empty, cured.

She was almost there.

"Tally, wait!" Fausto's voice came over the network. He sounded breathless. "You haven't got a bungee jacket!"

She smiled. "Don't need one."

"Tally!"

A last volley of arrows flew, but Tally dropped beneath them, another roll taking her almost to the edge. She leaped up and threw herself between two runaways staring down onto their new home, into the empty air…

"Are you crazy?" Fausto shouted.

She fell, staring out at the lights of Diego. The pale cliff-face rushed past, gridded with metal to keep climbers' harnesses aloft. Directly below Tally was the darkness of more parkland, lit only with a few lampposts, probably studded with trees and other things to be impaled on.

Angling her hands in the wind, Tally spun herself around in midair to peer back up at her pursuers, a row of silhouettes arriving one by one on the cliff's edge. None of them had jumped after her—too confident in their ambush to have brought bungee jackets. They'd have hoverboards somewhere close by, of course. But by the time they could get to them, it would be too late.

Tally turned herself around again, facing the ground for the last few seconds of the fall, waiting…

At the last moment she hissed, "Hey, Fausto, how's this for crazy? Crash bracelets."

It hurt like hell.

Over a city grid, bracelets could stop a fall, but they were designed for tumbles from cruising height, not cliff-jumping. They didn't distribute the force across your entire body like a well-strapped bungee jacket, just grabbed you by both wrists, swinging you in tight circles until your momentum was expended.

Tally had taken some bad spills back in ugly days— shoulder-wrenching, wrist-spraining doozies that made her wish she'd never set foot on a hoverboard, crashes that felt like an unfriendly giant were ripping her arms out of her sockets.

But nothing had ever hurt like this.

The crash bracelets kicked in five meters before she struck the ground. No warning, no smooth buildup from the magnetics. It felt like Tally had tied two cables to her wrists, just long enough to snap her to a halt at the last possible moment.

Her wrists and shoulders screamed with pain, the sensation so sudden and extreme that blackness washed over her mind for a moment. But then her special brain chemistry shoved her back to consciousness, forcing Tally to face the clamoring of her injured body.

She was twirling by her wrists, the landscape whirling around and around, her wild momentum sending the whole city spinning. With every rotation her agony grew, until finally Tally slowed to a halt, the force of her fall expended, the bracelets lowering her slowly and painfully to the ground.

Her feet were unsteady underneath her, the grass mockingly soft. A few trees stood close by, and she heard the sounds of a stream. Her arms dropped to her sides, hanging useless and burning with pain.