"Say, Tally, do you know how to use a parachute or do I have to land if we have irreconcilable differences?" Cam inquires.

She opens her mouth to say something -

But Zane gets her in a hug before she can.

This successfully freezes her.

"I really want you to be able to stay here," he murmurs.

"Let go of me."

"Are you going to -"

She shoves out of his grasp and moves almost fairy-fast to the least-occupied corner of the shuttle.  But once there she just leans against the wall and breathes heavily.

"I'm indestructible," Cam mentions, judging it now safe to get to his feet again.

Tally swallows several times.

"I need to think."

"Feel free." Surroundings of Andrew?

Looks like he's just a couple miles south of the city.

- Tally gasps.  Apparently her version of thinking involves clutching the sharp end of a knife?

Wow, okay, that's probably not where the mad anthropologists put their preserve? Surroundings of Andrew last year. "- whoa there, my carpet. Do you want me to patch that up or is that not how we are feeling about demonic medical care today."

That is indeed a totally different patch of wilderness!  Cam can make out a few clearings with little clusters of huts in them.

Tally doesn't respond, just breathes heavily, hunched over in pain, until -

She's not.

Zane looks really concerned but does not, actually, do anything about it.

"Do you know what's going on," Cam asks Zane.

"After Tally and I first got the cure, or, our halves of it - our friend Shay noticed we were different.  We couldn't tell her about it, because we were always being listened to, and we weren't sure if she would spill to the Specials.  So she broke off from our clique and started her own.  With - knives.  To break through the prettyheadedness.  And it worked enough that it caught the attention of the head of Special Circumstances, and I guess based on what Tally-wa's been saying the group of them is still called the Cutters.  Which uh, seems to not be a merely historical name.  Obviously.  Sorry, that's obvious."

"Please feel free to say more obvious things, it's better than skipping nonobvious ones." The ship is drifting over the mad anthropologists' stomping ground now. "Does this practice imply the presence of the brain damage she won't let me check for and asserts she doesn't have?"

"Yes," she says, her voice steady in between her gasps for air.  "Or changes, at least."

"Indeed. Well, I'd appreciate it if you didn't knock me over again. If you need to stab me for some reason a downward strike into the top of my foot should probably leave me pretty stable?"

"I won't try that again."  She sheaths the knife and unzips a pouch in her bodysuit.  Takes something out and sprays it on her cut.