She remembered what the Specials had said to her more than once: We don't want to hurt you, but we will if we have to.
They'd been serious. They always were.
She stumbled back out of the forest, stunned, the bag still hanging from her shoulder.
"You found something?" David asked.
She didn't answer.
He saw the expression on her face and jumped down from the board. "What happened?"
"They caught him. They killed him."
David looked at her, his mouth open. He took a slow breath. "Come on, Tally. We have to go."
She blinked. The sunlight seemed wrong, twisted out of shape, like the Boss's neck. As if the world had become horribly distorted while she was among the trees. "Where?" she murmured.
"We have to go to my parents' house."
David took the board over the ridge so fast that Tally thought she would tumble off. She sank her fingertips into David's jacket to steady herself, thankful for the new shoes' grippy soles.
"Listen, David. The Boss fought them, that's why they killed him."
"My parents would fight too."
She bit her lip and focused her whole mind on staying on board. When they reached the closest approach of the hoverpath to his parents' house, David jumped off and dashed down the slope.
Tally realized that the board still wasn't fully charged, and took a moment to unfold it before following, in no hurry to discover what the Specials had done to Maddy and Az.
But when she thought of David finding his parents on his own, Tally ran after him.
It took her long minutes to find the path in the dense brush. Two nights ago they had come in the dark, and from a different direction. She listened for David, but couldn't hear anything. But then the wind shifted, and the smell of smoke came through the trees.
Burning the house hadn't been easy.
Set into the mountain, the stone walls and roof had provided no fuel for the fire. But the attackers had evidently thrown something inside that had contained its own fuel. The windows were blown outward, glass littering the grass in front of the house, nothing left of the door but a few charred scraps swinging on their hinges in the breeze.
David stood in front, unable to cross the threshold.
"Stay here," Tally said.
She stepped through the doorway, but the air overpowered her for the first moments.
Morning light slanted in, picking out floating particles of ash. They swirled around Tally, little spiral galaxies set in motion by her passage.
The blackened floorboards crumbled under her feet, burned away to bare stone in some places. But some things had survived the fire. She remembered the marble statuette from her visit, and one of the rugs hanging on the wall remained mysteriously untouched. In the parlor, a few teacups stood out white against the charred furniture. Tally picked one up, realizing that if these cups had survived, a human body would leave more than traces.
She swallowed. If David's parents had been here, whatever was left of them would be easy to find.
Deeper into the house, in a small kitchen, city-made pots and pans hung from the ceiling, their warped, blackened metal still shining through in a few spots. Tally noted a bag of flour, and a few pieces of dried fruit somehow made her empty stomach growl.
The bedroom was last.
The stone ceiling was low and angled, the paint cracked and blackened from the heat of a raging fire.
Tally felt the heat still rising from the bed, the straw mattress and thick quilts fuel for the conflagration.
But Az and Maddy had not been there. There was nothing in the room that could have been human remains. Tally sighed with relief and made her way back outside, rechecking every room.
She shook her head as she stepped through the door. "Either the Specials took them, or they got away."
David nodded and pushed past her. Tally collapsed on the ground and coughed, her lungs finally protesting against the smoke and dust particles she had inhaled. Her hands and arms were black with soot, she realized.
When David came out, he held a long knife. "Hold out your hands."
"What?"
"The handcuffs. I can't stand them."
She nodded and held out her hands. He carefully threaded the blade between flesh and plastic, working it back and forth to saw the cuffs.
A solid minute later, he pulled the knife away in frustration. "It's not working."
Tally looked closer. The plastic had hardly been marked. She hadn't seen how the Special had snipped her handcuffs in two behind her, but it had only taken a moment. Perhaps they'd used a chemical trigger.
"Maybe it's some kind of aircraft plastic," she said. "Some of that stuff is stronger than steel."
David frowned. "So how did you get them apart?"
Tally opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She could hardly tell him that the Specials had released her themselves.
"And why do you have two cuffs on each wrist, anyway?"
She looked down dumbly, remembering that they'd handcuffed her first when she was captured, then again in front of Dr. Cable, before taking her to look for the pendant.
"I don't know," Tally managed. "I guess they double-cuffed us. But breaking out was easy. I cut them on a sharp rock."
"That doesn't make sense." David looked at the knife. "Dad always said this was the most useful thing he'd ever brought from the city. It's all high-tech alloys and mono-filaments."
She shrugged. "Maybe the part that joined the cuffs was made out of different stuff."
He shook his head, not quite accepting her story. Finally, he shrugged. "Oh well, we'll just have to live with them. But one thing's for sure: My parents didn't get away."
"How do you know?"
He held up the knife. "If he'd had any warning, my dad never would have left without this.