Tally fell, gracefully, like a cat. Directly below her, some mag-lev tracks. Not a problem. It's not the softest spot to land, but she can handle it. The ground collides with her body, like in slow motion. Her special muscles barely feel the pain. She hasn't stopped moving, but she is already calculating her next move. She'll get even with Fasto for pushing her. We'll see who's laughing soon, Fasto.

She tenses, preparing to spring to her feet and rejoin the group. Something is not right though. The mag-lev tracks she lays on are vibrating with an increased tempo. The world slows down. Tally's arms act faster than her brain, pushing her head and body out of the way. Not fast enough though. The train steams towards her, growing exponentially in her field of vision. Tally's eyes meet Shay's. There's nothing she can do.

"Tally-wa!"

The next thing Tally was aware of was Shay half-carrying half-dragging her away from the tracks. The rest of the Cutters were on the ground too, Fasto wearing a horrified look of apology.

"Tally, look, I'm so sorry! I didn't think that would happen! I--"

Tally stopped listening, fighting to control the rush of special-headedness she was experience. If she lost it now, Fasto and his pretty-like comments would find themselves pinned to the ground in a fit of rage. The automated mag-lev was sliding away into the distant horizon, its computerguidance system completely un aware that it had just run over someone.

Shay led a her to a nearby rock. Tally stumbled and sat heavily on it. Was she choking? She couldn't fill her lungs all the way, and the air she was getting in each wheezy breath felt like there was no oxygen in it. The monochrome palate of the dessert was beginning to blur, her friends' faces mixing together with the dust and the rocks. She was aware of a flurry of activity around her, voices, panicked, too loud.

"Tally are you alright?" Shay was shaking her, bring her dazed mind back to reality. Tally suddenly realized that an awful lot of time had elapsed since she had sat down, that she couldn't account for. "Can you hear me, Tally-wa?" Shay's voice was uncharacteristically anxious.

It took Tally a while to work out what the words were.

"Mmm yes, I'm fine. I mean, I can hear you fine." Tally slurred her words together, stumbling through the sentence.

Fasto's face suddenly filled her vision. This was all his fault, Tally realized, if he hadn't pushed her off her hoverboard… her special instinct roared up as she prepared to hurt him. Strangely, her limbs weren't responding to her commands. She slumped weakly on the rock.

Fasto was talking now. He had to repeat the question several times before Tally understood him

"Where does it hurt?"

She tiredly took a mental survey, trying to locate the injured spot. It was not an easy thing to do, because after being thrown off her hoverboard and falling 30 feet to the ground, her whole body hurt. She finally located the epicenter of the pain; her lower right arm.

"Arm," Tally just managed to choke out this one word with her minimal oxygen supply.

Shay and Fasto looked down at the injury. "Oh," breathed Shay. That couldn't be good. Even with her non-special brain, Shay was not easily phased.

Tally took a surreptitious glance down at the spot. The sneak suit had shorted out, and the scales had turned a back to their natural black. It took a lot of force to do that to a sneak suit.

Her arm was no longer round, it had taken on a sickeningly flattened shape.

There was a silence, then Fasto said "Tally, I don't think we can fix this with the medi-pac,"

That was obvious. "But… That's what nanos are for," Tally said. Seeing the severity of her wound had suddenly cleared the dizzy daze of pain and made her icy. There were still dancing lights in the corners of her eyes, and she was having difficulty keeping her voice straight.

"Um, Tally. You know there are things that the nanos can't fix, right? That mag-lev crushed you bone. All the nanos in the world can't fix that." asked Shay. Unnoticed to Tally, Fasto injected a syringe into her shattered right arm.

Tally pretended not to hear Shay. Her mind was abruptly foggy again, but not a painful foggy. She felt like she was falling asleep…. she felt bubbly-headed. She fought the sensation with all her remaining strength.

"I'm fine, really guys," She had meant to sound confident, but her voice came out soft and distant.

"err, Tally-wa, I think you should…--" But Tally had stopped listening.

The sun was starting to set on their dessert campsite, and while they had been talking Ho and Tachs had built a fire. Tally was feeling oddly fatigued, like she was fighting to keep her head above water. Numbness was consuming her muscles, like the time she had jumped off the cliff wearing only crash bracelets. She cut Shay off, who had probably been giving her a middle-pretty lecture on safety or something.

"Uh huh, sure, what ever you say. Well, I think I'll have some Padthi and hit the sack."

Tally jumped up with her usual confidence, but it was only a false front. She immediately started blacking out. She grabbed wildly for Fasto's shoulder to support herself, but for some reason she couldn't make her arm work. Shay caught her and forced her back onto the rock. They exchanged a look.

Shay got Tally's attention by looking seriously into her eyes. "Tally, are listening? You've shattered your bone! you have to take it easy." Her mouth was drawn into a tight line and her eyes were cold and intense.

"Of course I haven't!" Shay was acting awfully pretty-headed. Had she forgotten how unbreakable specials were? Couldn't she see that Tally was absolutely fine? "You can't break Special bones!"

"Yes you can. And we can't fix them," said Fasto gravely.

"Why not? Nanos fix everything else, why not bones to?" This conversation was getting tiring. All Tally wanted to do now was sleep.

"Tally, nanos can only fix organic materials. Our bones are made of ceramic." Shay said gently.

"Yeah, but you cant break ceramic bone, so how could I have broke mine?"

She was slurring her words. Tally could feel he brain getting foggier by the second. Shay and Fasto looked at each other again and nodded. They each placed one of Tally's arms around their shoulders and supported as they took her over to her sleeping bag. Shay answered her question

" Mag-lev trains don't actually make contact with the rails, they used massive magnetic forces to keep themselves floating along. Tons and tons of weight is being forced down, while the track have to force it back up again. The pressure from the repelling magnetic forces is definitely enough to break ceramic bones"

"oh, right. whatever," Tally said sleepily "good night."

When Tally awoke, it was still dark. The other Cutters were spread around the remains of the campfire., which was giving off a faint orange light. Fasto and Tachs were sprawled out in their sleeping bags, but Shay and Ho had retained the Special habit of sleeping upright.

Whatever pain-killer Fasto had given her had worn off completely. Her arm was beginning to sting, and protested loudly every time she so much as thought about moving it. Tally could feel the nanos working, but how long would it be before they wore off? Before she had to endure the full feeling of a smashed bone?

Tally surveyed the surrounding area. In her opinion, the desert looked much better a night. The sky was an inky black and every star was visible. It wasn't like that back in the city. In the city, the spires of New-Pretty Town had shone all night, obscuring the eternal stars with an ephemeral and superficial glow. Tally remembered the many long nights she had spent as an ugly, dreaming about her new life in Pretty-Town. Now, she felt, she would rather be no where else in the world then out under the open sky.

The moon was almost full, and cast mysterious shadows off the mesas and plateaus. Tally suddenly had the sensation of being completely and utterly alone in the world. Four of the five people she would trust her life to were asleep at her feet, and the fifth was working with her mother on an urgent project. There was not so much as a cricket chirp in the darkness, not a breath of wind. It was very icy-making, being so isolated.

In the forest around her city, there was always some noise. A squirrel, the tall trees creaking in the gently breeze, the river roaring, David snoring… but out here it seemed that she was the only living thing in the whole world.

Tally was rudely brought down to earth by a sharp twinge from her pulverized arm. If pain was anything to judge by, it was clear that the nanos couldn't fix what ever was wrong with her. Shay had been right, her bones were definitely broken, probably ground to dust by the mag-lev, or else the nanos would have been able fixed what ever was wrong with her by now.

Tally sighed, filling her lungs with the crisp night air. There was no way for special bone to fix themselves. They were made of a ceramic-carbon fiber compound. The repair nanos could only fix organic substances, like muscle or skin. There was no pill to take, no splint to wear, that could fix what had happened to her arm.

And until it was fixed, her arm would be utterly useless.

Tally vaguely wondered how long she could carry on with the Cutters if she only had use of one arm. How ridiculous that would be, Tally Youngblood, Hero of the Mind rain-- a cripple. She wouldn't be able to fulfill her promise of keeping the new world in check. Tally saw herself lagging behind everyone else, her arm in a sling over her sneak suit, using a crutch to get around.

Besides, there weren't enough pain killers in the world to keep her butchered nerves in check. Not only would her arm be worthless, it would constantly be causing her massive amounts of agony. She couldn't live like that!

No, she had to get it fixed, and soon too, before there was permanent damage.

Since natural healing was out, she would have to go to a city. Most cities were dead-set against "morphological violations" like hers and the Cutters'. They either lived in fear of them, or bent on eradicating them from the earth. There was no way she would ever walk freely into any of their hospitals. They would probably agree to help, then turn her into a bubble-head while she was unconscious.

Deigo would probably be willing to help her, the Cutters were pretty popular for their heroic actions there, but would they be able to fix her bones? Deigo didn't have any specials, so they had no experience with ceramic bones. The point of surgeons in Deigo was to cater to the pretties' insane tastes in surgery, from turning themselves into walking cacti to owning an extra set of legs.

Tally shuddered at the idea of how un-special it would be if the surgeon botched the job, leaving her handicapped for the rest of her life. The mere thought was enough to give her icy shivers.

Tally didn't have the time or energy to go trapeasing around the continents, or even the world, in search of a city that had the expertise to fix her arm. If she were to find a city, high chances she wouldn't trust them enough to let them perform surgery on her. She couldn't go around interviewing prospective candidates on their opinions of specials.

The more Tally thought about it, she could only think of one person who she could go to.

Dr. Cable.

At first, the idea sent pangs of horror down her spine. Everything she had learned and experienced in the last few years was screaming at her never to trust Dr. Cable again. And how could she? Dr. Cable, who had used her, lied to her and cheated her so many times? When she pictured the evils of the pre-mind rain, it was Dr. Cable's cruel-pretty face she saw.

But as she thought about it more, under the canopy of the inky night, Tally recalled the memory of their last meeting.

Laying on the floor, gasping after nearly suffocating in an operating tank, she had wiped the goo from her eyes and been shocked to see that it was Dr. Cable who had rescued her from despecialization.

Of course, Dr. Cable was no longer the indomitably cold, cruel figure that she had been as head of the specials. Maddy's cure had worked wonders, and had turned Dr. Cable into a much less severe, tempered person, and had taken away her icy indifference to others' problems.

Nonetheless, Dr. Cable was bitter about the mind rain. Pretty brains were being cured, and the world was changing quickly. Too quickly, in her oppinion. Cities were expanding into the wild, with nothing to stop the dangerous shifts toward a new Rusty society.

These changes were alarming to Dr. Cable. She had devoted her entire life to maintaining strict order in their city, even by subduing free thought if necessary. She had created a perfectly structured, peaceful and prospering, if brainless utopia; and now she was witnessing her life's work crumble around her. This is why she had risked herself to save Tally from despecialization.

Laying helpless on the cold hospital floor, Tally had met a new side of Dr. Cable, a tired, reflective, worried side of Dr. Cable.

"Is that why you're here, 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.

Tally 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… Shay and the others are no more right than I am. The council has desecialized 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, you can disappear forever. I don't want my work to become extinct. Please Tally…

Tally blinked. She'd never thought of her self 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… leave, and for my sake, keep yourself special. The world might need you one day."

To Dr. Cable, Tally represented the last piece of her handiwork left in the world. To her inflated ego, Tally was a living monument to her genius and devotion. She had poured all her knowledge, innovation and perseverance into the specials program. And now Tally was the last pure example of her brilliance. Dr. Cable would rather die then see her life's work destroyed. In a warped way, Dr. Cable cared about Tally, at least about the special parts of her.

As bogus as going back was, It was Tally's only option. Dr. Cable had medical experience with specials, and she could her trust her not to change her back into a bubble head. Dr. Cable would cut off her own hand before she'd do that.

If she was going to have her arm fixed, and fixed right, she was going to have to return to the source.

Now all Tally had to do was convince Shay.