OR THOSE of you studying animal physiology, I’ll confirm that there’s a very good reason flying creatures always have two wings. One wing doesn’t cut it.

By the time I’d processed what had happened, I was about ten seconds from a flat, crunchy death. I sent all available power into my unharmed wing and desperately tried to get some lift, managing to look like a dying loon, rising awkwardly a few feet, then sinking, all the while spiraling down like one of those copter toys.

This was it. After everything I’d ever been through, I was going to die suddenly, with no warning, and alone. I’m a tough kid, but I’ll admit, I closed my eyes when I was about thirty feet from the asphalt of some parking lot.

I felt sorry for whoever would find me. I hoped the flock would know I was dead and not just missing, so they wouldn’t have to look for me. I thought about everything I had left unsaid to virtually everyone in my life, and wondered whether that had been a good—

Boing!

“Aiiiieee!!!!”

Interestingly, though I’m silent as the grave when shot or snuck up on, I discovered that I squeal like a little girl when I’m facing imminent death and then find myself bouncing hard on a trampoline.

The impact jolted my hurt wing, making me wince and suck in a breath, and then I was bouncing again, not so high, and again. I pulled my injured wing in tight, feeling warm, sticky blood clotting my feathers.

A couple more bounces and I managed to stand up, looking around me wildly. There were about a hundred of the New Threat guys, standing around the trampoline, watching me bounce, as if I were a mouse and they were all cats, honing in on me with bright eyes.

“Mr. Chu wants to see you,” one of them intoned in a telephone operator’s static voice.

They tipped me off the trampoline and immediately surrounded me, eight deep, not taking any chances. I couldn’t fly. There were too many of them for me to realistically break free. This is probably how most humans feel all the time.

It sucks.