ITTING TIGHT? Holing up? Waiting for answers?

Those are all thingsI’m not good at .

Planning a massive attack against mechanical geeky-like things when I was already furious and itching to kill something?

Piece o’ cake.

I took a break from my plotting, clenching and unclenching my hands, to find five pairs of eyes locked on to mine. Iggy’s gaze was locked to a point about two inches above my eyebrows. He’s good, but he’s not perfect.

“What?” I said.

“Dr. Abate said to sit tight,” Nudge said.

“Dr. Abate didn’t know about the combat robots sent to kill us,” I pointed out.

“They haven’t attacked yet,” Iggy said.

“Oh, gosh, I guess theywon’t, then,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I just rolled my eyes, Ig. Anyway, how many of them are there?”

“Looks like, about… eighty.” Fang calculated the odds in his head. He nodded once: we could do it.

I began to come up with an attack plan.

“Maximum Ride.”

My eyebrows raised. The voice from outside had been loud, mechanical, and had mispronounced my name. Max-HIH-mum Ride. What a doofus.

Gazzy had been kneeling at a window, curtain raised just enough for him to see. “These guys have… it looks like Uzis attached to their arms. Uzis. The automatic ones.”

He glanced at me, willing me to understand that it wouldn’t be hand-to-wing combat. Eighty-plus submachine guns spewing countless rounds of bird-kid-piercing bullets would be significantly less fun than the rip-roarin’, head-breakin’, ankle-bustin’ jamboree I’d pictured.

“Hm,” I said.

“Max-HIH-mum Ride,” the voice intoned again.

I let out a deep breath. “Everyone, get upstairs to the hall, where there aren’t any windows. Stay down, but be ready to do an up-and-away if you hear a bunch of breaking glass.” I looked at Fang. Our hot-and-heavy make-out session in the desert seemed like a lifetime ago. Two lifetimes. “Should I answer him?” I asked, only half joking.

“I think you should look at him,” Fang said, and something in his voice made me frown.

As the flock scuttled upstairs, I sank to my knees and crawled to a window. Despite Gazzy’s repeated pleas that we get a pair of night-vision goggles, we do see excellently in the dark. So it wasn’t hard for me to focus on the leader in front, the one calling my name.

What I saw was like ice water being poured down my back.

I looked at Fang, who was crouched in the living room’s darkness, waiting.

“But he’s… dead,” I said, my voice hollow. “I mean, deadagain .”

Fang’s face was grim. “They just made it look like that to freak you out.”

I nodded slowly. “They succeeded.”

The head robot-soldier had been enhanced, its outer covering made to look more human. Made to look exactly like Ari, my half brother, who I’d killed once, saw killed once, and had buried not that long ago.