People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
Thích Nhất Hạnh
ePub
A4Part 5 - Back To Saving The World
I
see. You had a plan.” Jeb poured himself a cup of coffee.“Yeah,” Ari said sullenly. He wasn’t sure if Jeb was mad at him or not. Sometimes Jeb didn’t seem mad, but then it would turn out that he was. Ari hated that.
“You were going to steal Max for yourself.”
“Yeah.”
Jeb took a sip of his coffee. “And why were you going to do that?”
Ari shrugged. “I just want to have her to myself. I’m tired of chasing the others. I don’t care about them.”
“But you care about Max. How old are you now?”
“Seven.” Which was another thing. Jeb never remembered his birthday. “But I’m big. Bigger than you.”
“Yes.” Jeb made it sound totally unimportant. “Ari, I’m proud of you.”
“Wh-what?”
Jeb turned and smiled at him. “I’m proud of you, son. I’m impressed that you made a plan for yourself, and that you chose Max.”
Ari felt like the sun was shining warmly on his shoulders. But - was this a trap? He looked at Jeb warily. “Oh, yeah?”
“Yes. You’re only seven, but you’re thinking like a grown-up. It’s incredibly interesting. Tell you what - I want to see where this takes us. We’re going to find out where the flock has gone, and when we do, you can put your plan into action again.”
“My plan?”
“Yes, your plan to steal Max. I’ll help you make it happen. We’ll take out the rest of the flock, but you have to grab Max. Where were you going to take her?”
“A place.”
“We’ll work out the details later. In the meantime, get some rest, eat something. I’ve already got people tracking the flock.”
Slowly Ari turned and left the room. If this was true… An almost painful burst of joy exploded inside him. Dad was going to help. Dad had said he was proud of him. He was going to get Max all to himself. It was like Christmas and his birthday and sort of Halloween, all rolled up into one.
Have you ever - no, I guess you never have. If you’ve never flown with hawks, there’s no way you’d be able to understand what it’s like. Maybe if you’ve swum with sharks or something, not like at SeaWorld but in the ocean. That might be kind of close to this feeling.
I looked over at Nudge. Her face was serene, curly hair streaming behind her. We had just crossed the border from Virginia into North Carolina. The Appalachian Mountains rose beneath us, not as high and not nearly as pointy as the Rockies. These were older ranges, and time had softened them. See? Some of that geography stuff stuck with me after all.
We were high, high up, where oxygen was pretty thin. The sun was hot and bright on our backs and wings, and we had nothing but open sky all around us in every direction. Best of all, we’d spotted a flock of broad-winged hawks and joined them.
At first they’d scattered, wondering who the heck these huge, ugly raptors were dropping down on them, but then they’d cautiously circled back. Now we were wheeling in and among them, flying in a loose formation, the six of us and maybe twelve of them. I’d already hissed at Total to be very quiet and not make a sound. He huddled in Iggy’s arms, nose quivering, small black paws twitching as he chased them in his mind.
“This is incredible,” the Gasman said, tilting one wing down to soar in a huge circle around us. I grinned at him. Just two hours ago we’d been screeching out of Anne’s yard as Erasers swarmed out of vans, aiming their sights at us. Now we were free, breathing thin, pure air, surrounded by creatures who showed us what to aim for: their fierce, proud beauty, awesome grace and flying skill, and unjudging acceptance of beings so incredibly different from them.
It was a huge change from, say, Erasers, who mainly showed us how to not be clumsy, predatory idiots. And I for one was thankful.
“Maybe we could just live with them,” Nudge said wistfully.
“Yeah,” said Gazzy. ” ‘Cause you love eating raw squirrels and snakes and stuff.”
“Eew. I forgot about that,” said Nudge.
“Anyway, guys, we can’t live with them,” I said, stepping up to my role as full-time rainer-on-parader. “We need to get farther away.”
“I want to go to Florida. You said,” Total chimed in, and though the hawks had warily accepted our speech, Total’s voice made them realize that he was alive. Several of them sheared off, effortlessly tipping a few feathers downward to shift their whole position in the airstream. It was so completely streamlined, the way they did it, and I practiced it myself.
We flew out of the hawks’ territory, and they left us with hoarse cries. One by one we sheared off, soaring in huge, symmetrical arcs and then joining up again.
“It’s like synchronized swimming,” Gazzy said, pleased.
“No, it’s like exhibition jets,” said Iggy. “Like the Air Force Thunderbirds. We need stuff so we can leave huge trails of colored smoke behind us.”
“Oh, yeah!” said Gazzy, totally psyched. “Like, we could get sulfur and -“
“And this would help our whole ‘lie low, disappear’ act how?” I said, bringing them back to reality.
“Oh, yeah,” said Iggy.
“Maybe someday,” I said, hating to see him and the Gasman so disappointed. “In the meantime, let’s do a vertical stack!” I said, angling upward into position. Fang put himself directly below me, carefully out of range of my feet, because he’s just paranoid that way. Iggy was below him, then Gazzy, Nudge, and finally Angel on the bottom, as white as the clouds we were flying over. We were six stacked bird kids, flying in unison, making only one shadow on the clouds. Totally cool.
Of course it was too freaking peaceful to last, right? I mean, there was no way I was going to wallow in serenity for more than two seconds, right?
No, of course not.
What happened was, Gazzy suddenly pushed upward into Iggy, wanting to knock him off balance, the way all of us have done to each other a million times. It would have been fine, and even funny, if Iggy hadn’t been holding, say, a mutant talking dog. For example.
But he was. And when Gazzy bumped up into him, he knocked Total out of Iggy’s arms. Total gave a startled yip and then he dropped like a piece of coal, right through the clouds and out of sight.
Angel reached for Total as he plummeted past her, but her fingers only grazed his fur.
“Total!” she cried, and Total started barking and howling, dropping farther away, his voice trailing off.
“Oh, crap,” I muttered, then veered down past Fang. “If I’m not back in two minutes, do not let Angel have another pet.” Then I tucked my wings behind me and started to drop.
“Max! Get Total!” Angel shouted after me, her voice panicky.
“No, I’m dropping straight down through clouds just for fun,” I said to myself. I know people always fantasize about dropping through clouds or walking on clouds, landing on clouds. The thing is, clouds are wet. Wet and usually chilly. And you can’t see anything. So, not as high on the fun scale as you might think.
I followed the sound of Total’s howling, letting myself fall toward the earth. Suddenly the mist cleared and I saw the ground, green and brown, below me. Plus a bunch of white -
“Aaahh!” I cried, as I dropped out of the cloud and practically onto the back of a glider plane. My feet actually brushed its thin skin before I pulled my knees up and angled my wings sharply. I slightly scraped the plane’s right wing before I could pull enough to the side, then I moved my wings powerfully and rose up several yards, out of the way.
Gliders are virtually soundless. That was the lesson for today. This close I could hear the wind whistling against the smooth, streamlined plane, but there had been no sound to tip me off. That had been close. If I’d dropped in front of it…
I could no longer hear Total. Dang it! My eyes raked the air below me. I tucked my wings back and aimed downward again, shooting like a rocket instead of just letting myself fall. I poured on my new supernatural speed and roared toward the ground, and suddenly Total was in view and getting larger fast.
He was still howling pathetically. There was no time for me to slow down, so I just shot toward him, scooped him into my arms, then pulled out of the steep, steep dive about two hundred feet from the mountainside. Raising my face to the sun, I rushed upward, my wings feeling like steel, like fusion rockets. I looked ahead to make sure there was nothing above me, then I finally glanced down to check on Total.
He was crying. Large tears made wet streaks through his black fur. “You saved me,” he choked out. “I couldn’t fly. I was falling. But you got me.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t let you fall,” I told him, and rubbed behind his ears. Still weeping, he licked my cheek gratefully. I clenched my teeth.
The rest of the flock was circling overhead - Fang had made Angel stay with him. She was peering down anxiously, and as soon as she saw me coming she hurried to meet me. “You got him!” she shouted happily. “You saved him!”
Total wiggled excitedly in my arms, and I let him go over to Angel’s embrace. He weighed almost half as much as she did, so she couldn’t hold him long, but right now they were crying in each other’s arms. Fine. Let him lick her. I rubbed my cheek against my sweatshirt shoulder.
Angel was actually crying herself, I realized. She almost never cried - none of us cried easily, and Angel was unnaturally stoic for a six-year-old. The fact that she was crying because she’d almost lost Total told me that she was majorly attached to him. Which wasn’t great. I mean, I liked Total fine, but we still didn’t know much about him. I wasn’t 100 percent sure we could trust him.
Or me, actually. My chip.
“Oh, Total,” Angel cried, her tears soaking his head. “I was so scared!”
“You were scared!” Total said, burrowing deeper into her arms. “I thought I was gonna plotz!”
“Okay, I better take him,” said Fang, holding out his hands. Total crept cautiously into his arms and tucked himself neatly into the crook of Fang’s elbow.
“I need wings,” said Total, still sniffling. “I need my own wings. Then things like that wouldn’t happen”
Yeah, that was all I needed. A flying talking mutant dog.
At last, at last. Ari strode through the doors of a Best-Mart, feeling huge and powerful. Dad was going to let him have Max. She would be all his. Dad could have the others. Ari would have a chance to make Max like him. He remembered when they had fought in the sewer tunnel, in New York. That had been really bad. Max had acted as if she hated him. But now they would be friends. Soon. Very soon.
The Best-Mart was crowded - Atlanta was a big city. Ari and a couple of Eraser troops had hunkered down at a cheap hotel on the highway, waiting for dark. In the meantime, Ari had decided to celebrate.
Now he looked around the store. It was huge. Too bright, too noisy. Hot and full of people, all around. He wished he could drop a bomb on this whole place, watch it light up like a bonfire. He could do it - but he would probably just get in trouble. Again. And get the “don’t call attention to yourself lecture. Again. Ari felt like, Hellooo, I have wings! I turn into a wolf! Blending is out of the question!
But anyway, this place was full of cool stuff. Ari deserved to have something really cool. This was the clothes department. Bor-ing.
Housewares. Bor-ing.
The automotive section, which seemed as if it should be interesting but was actually bor-ing because all it had was, like, oil and windshield cleaner.
Oh, so gross, the underwear department. There was a lady right there, holding a bra! Out in the open! Oh, my God - was she crazy? Ari turned away and kept walking, fast.
Finally - here, at the back of the store. Electronics. Ari’s heart sped up as his eyes darted past the rows of TVs, all tuned to the same station. Maybe thirty of them. It was so awesome. Ari could sit here all day, watching them. But that wasn’t all. There were boom boxes, cool phones, Walkmans, MP3 players. It would be great to be able to listen to cool music all the time.
Then he saw it. The huge Game Boy display. There were eight Game Boys, all different colors, cabled to a shelf. Next to them was a TV, and it was playing videos of all the different Game Boys, like, having adventures. The blue one was surfing, and the red one tried to break out through the TV, and the silver one got a tattoo. It was the coolest thing Ari had ever seen. He stood there, mesmerized, for a long time.
“Uh, sir?”
Ari turned and saw a salesman wearing a red vest.
“Can I help you, sir? These babies are really hot. Can’t keep ‘em on the shelves. Would you care to see one?”
“Yeah.”
The salesman blinked at the sound of Ari’s gravelly, morph-roughed voice. But he regained his composure and managed a smile. “Certainly.” He pulled a set of jingling keys from his pocket. “Now, what color would you like, sir? They all have their merits.”
“The red one.” The one that had tried to break out of the TV.
“I like this one too.” The salesman unclipped the red Game Boy from its cable and handed it to Ari. “You’ll see it has all the advanced features, including - hey, wait a minute, sir.”
Ari was already walking down the aisle toward the exit.
“Sir - wait! You can’t take that out of this department! If you want one, I have to ring it up for you!”
His voice sounded like a gnat buzzing around Ari’s head. Ari opened the Game Boy and pressed the on button. The screen flickered to bright, colorful life. He smiled.
The salesman caught up with him and grabbed his arm. Ari shrugged him off easily. He thumbed through the menu and chose a game. Another man, larger, stood in front of him, arms crossed.
“You’re not going no-,” he began, but Ari snapped out his fist and punched him without even looking. The man’s breath left him in a whoosh and he doubled over.
Ari walked right through the exit doors. Alarms sounded. A tinny voice said, “You have triggered our security system. …” That was all Ari heard because he was out in the parking lot. His thumbs started working the controls. This was a good day. A favorite song popped into his head, and he started rapping under his breath about “a kid who refused to respect adults.”
Ari had his Game Boy. It was incredibly awesome. And he’d gotten it for himself. He didn’t need anyone to give him stuff.
He became vaguely aware of a ruckus behind him. Turning, he saw an unarmed rent-a-cop holding a billy club, and four store employees, vests almost as red as their faces. Ari sighed. They always had to make things difficult. Well, he could simple things up real fast.
Whirling, he went for a full-out morph. As always, it was kind of uncomfortable, like getting pulled in all directions till his joints popped. His jaw elongated, his eyes yellowed, long, sharp canines pushed down through his gums. He raised his hairy, claw-tipped paws high, one of them incongruously holding a red Game Boy.
“Arrgh!” He’d practiced this in the mirror, the raised claws, snarling muzzle, angry expression, the roar. It all came together in a terrifying, grotesque picture, and now it had the intended effect: Everyone stopped dead. They gasped in fright.
Ari grinned, knowing how horrible he looked when he gave a morphy grin. He looked like a nightmare, like anyone’s worst nightmare.
“Arrgh!” he roared again, raising his claws higher.
That did it. The employees scattered, and the rent-a-cop put a hand over his chest and turned pale.
Ari laughed and loped out of the parking lot, waiting until he was out of sight to unfurl his heavy, awkward wings and take off.
He loved his Game Boy.
That night we crashed in General Coffee State Park, not far from Douglas, Georgia. Fang and I scouted around for a few minutes and found a scooped-out indentation in the face of some limestone rock.
“Not as good as a cave, but decent,” Fang said.
I looked at it and nodded. “This will keep us out of the wind, and it probably won’t rain. Looks pretty clear.” I turned to get the others, but Fang put his hand on my arm.
“You okay?” he asked. “What happened back there at Anne’s?”
Just like that, it all came rushing back - my day. Being trapped in a school full of - enemies, teachers, Pruitt. Thinking Sam was an Eraser. Leaving Anne’s house, knowing she was responsible for a lot of our situation.
Suddenly I was exhausted. “It was pretty much business as usual.” Which was the sad truth.
“What’s in Florida?” Fang asked. “Why does Angel want to go there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe just Disney World?” I looked at him. “You think it’s something else?”
He frowned, then shook his head. I noticed his hair was getting long again, growing out from his funky New York haircut. That seemed like a lifetime ago. “I don’t know what to think,” he said, “I’m tired of having to think about it, you know?”
“I totally know,” I said, rubbing my temples. “Finding our parents, figuring out the whole whitecoat thing. Me saving the world, and so on. I’m tired of all of it.”
Fang looked away for a moment. “I’m ready to forget all that stuff. Look what happened with Iggy. I don’t even want to know at this point. I just want to quit running. I also miss having somewhere to make entries in the ol’ blog. I really do.”
“Let’s think about it, think about how we can do it. From Florida, we’d be in a good place to head out over the ocean, find some deserted island somewhere. We could do some research.” The more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a great idea. We would be safe. We could rest. We could relax on a beach and eat coconuts, and Angel could talk fish into committing suicide for our dinner. It would be heaven.
And the fact that I was even entertaining this idea as a possibility only showed how pathetically desperate I was. And how out of touch with reality.
“Come on, one more time,” Iggy wheedled.
“No,” said the Gasman.
“One more time.”
“No. It’s no fun. You always win, like, right away.”
Fang and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. Those two had been at it all morning.
“I guess Iggy feels okay again,” I said out of the side of my mouth. Fang nodded. Iggy, of all of us, had faced the most disappointment lately. We’d actually found his parents: They were real. And they had turned out to be traitors, betrayers. All of Iggy’s hopes and dreams about one day finding his parents and having them not care that he was blind and a recombinant life-form - they’d all come true. And then they’d all been torn away.
It was much worse than for the rest of us, who hadn’t even gotten close.
Iggy had been silent and stoic since he’d come back to us, but now he had recovered enough to make Gazzy’s life miserable, so I knew he was getting back to normal. I shifted Total in my arms and rolled my shoulders.
“How long till we get to Florida?” Nudge asked. “Are we really going to Disney World? Do you think we’ll see anyone famous? I want to go to the Swiss Family Tree-house. I want to see Beauty and the Beast and get their autographs. I want to see the Tree of Life -“
I held up a hand. “Okay, hang on. I’m hoping we can go to Disney World, but we have to get down there first, check everything out. We just crossed the Georgia-Florida border, so -“
“The ocean!” said Gazzy, pointing. Way to the east, we could see the dark gray-blue of seemingly endless water. “Can we go to the beach? Please? Just for a minute?”
I thought about it. We’d had some really good times and some really bad times at beaches. “It’s almost winter,” I hedged.
“But the water’s not cold,” Iggy said.
I looked at Fang. He shrugged helpfully: my call.
Max, you need to stay focused.
My Voice. I’m… somewhat focused, I thought defensively. I could practically hear the Voice sigh.
If you ‘re going to Florida, go to Florida, said the Voice. Pick a goal and follow it through. When you ‘re saving the world, you can’t exactly take commercial breaks.
That did it.
“Hey, guys, wanna go to the beach?” I called.
“Yeah!” said Gazzy, punching one fist in the air.
“Yes, yes,” Angel said happily.
“I’m up for it,” said Total, in Fang’s arms.
Nudge and Iggy cheered.
“Beach it is,” I said, swerving in a graceful arc, heading east.
Max, you ‘re acting like a child, the Voice said. You ‘re above rebelling against your fate just to rebel. You’ve got a date with destiny. Don’t be late.
I brushed some hair out of my eyes. Is that a movie quote? Or is it an actual date? I don’t remember destiny asking me. I never even gave destiny my phone number.
The Voice never displayed emotion, so I might have imagined the tense patience I heard. Max, sooner or later you have to take this seriously. If it was just your life, no one would care if you bothered. But we’re talking about saving everyone’s lives.
For some reason that really stung. My jaw set. Shut up! I’m tired of you! Tired of my so-called destiny! I’m acting like a child because I am a child! Just leave me the hell alone!
I felt tears forming in my eyes, which burned from the constant wind. I couldn’t take this anymore. I’d been having a rare decent day, and now the Voice had ruined it, dropping the whole world onto my shoulders again.
“Yo.”
I looked over to see Fang watching me. “You okay? Is this a headache?”
I nodded and wiped my eyes, feeling like I was about to explode. “Yeah,” I said. “A huge, freaking, unbearable headache!” I was practically shouting at the end, and five heads turned toward me. I had to get out of here. And, thanks to my supersonic power, I could, in the blink of an eye.
“See you at the beach,” I muttered to Fang, and then I hunched my shoulders and poured on the speed. In seconds I had shot way past the flock, the wind making my eyes water more. It was funny, but going this fast almost made me want to put my arms out in front of me, like Superman, as if it would split the air out of my way or something.
What the hey - no one could see me. I stretched my arms out in front, feeling like an arrow, a spear, slicing through heaven.
I was at the beach in four minutes. I braked and slowed down, but not enough, and ended up running too fast through the sand and then tripping onto my face. Slowly I got up, spitting out sand, and brushed myself off. I was burning up and pulled off my sweatshirt.
I had maybe twenty minutes till the rest of them came. I walked along the beach, keeping my wings out so they would cool off. I felt desperate and scared and angry. “I don’t even know how to save the world,” I said out loud, hating how pathetic I sounded.
By existing, said the Voice. By being strong. By lasting.
“Shut up!” I yelled, kicking a piece of driftwood so hard it practically flew out of sight.
I’d had it, totally had it. No more. I ran to the water’s edge and looked down at the sand. In moments I had found it - a piece of broken shell, sharp on one side. It was time for the chip to go. The Voice came from the chip, I was sure of it. No chip, no Voice inside my head that I couldn’t get away from. I pressed my lips together hard and started sawing at my forearm, where I had seen the chip on an X-ray, three lifetimes ago, in Dr. Martinez’s office.
The first slice brought blood and a surprising amount of pain. I clenched my teeth harder and kept sawing. Blood ran down my arm. I would have to cut through tendons and muscles and veins to get to the chip. Dr. Martinez had said that if I tried to take it out, I could lose the use of my arm.
Too bad.
I heard skidding, running footsteps behind me, and then Fang was panting over me.
“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, and grabbed my wrist, smacking my hand to make me drop the piece of shell. “Are you crazy?”
I glared at him, then saw the rest of the flock approaching slowly. I realized what they must be seeing: me kneeling on sand stained red with blood. I was beyond being upset.
“Want the chip out,” I said brokenly. I looked down, feeling a thousand years old. Just over a week ago, I’d been a fourteen-year-old girl on her first date, getting her first kiss. Now I was me again, a mutant freak running away from a fate that was closing around me like a net.
“Look where you’re cutting!” Fang snapped. “You’re going to bleed to death, you idiot!” He threw my hand down and took off his backpack. In the next moment he was dumping antiseptic into my wound, making me wince.
Nudge lowered herself to the sand next to me. “Max,” she said, her eyes huge, “what were you doing?” She sounded horrified, shocked.
“I wanted to get the chip out,” I whispered.
“Well, forget it!” Fang said angrily, now starting to bandage my arm. “The chip stays in. You don’t get off that easy! You die when we die!”
I looked up at him, his face pale with anger, his jaw tight. I had scared him. I had scared them all. I was supposed to be the solution, not the problem. I wasn’t supposed to make things worse.
“I’m sorry,” I barely managed, and then - get this - I burst into tears.
I could count on one hand how many times these kids had seen me cry. I’d learned to swallow my feelings because they needed me to be strong. Invincible Max. Saving the world, one bird kid at a time. For the first six years of Angel’s life, I don’t think she saw me cry once. In the last few months? I was about to run out of fingers to count on.
I didn’t even have the strength to run off and hide. I just knelt in the sand, my hands over my face. My cut hurt like hell.
Then strong arms were around me, a gentle hand was pressing me into a wiry, rock-hard shoulder. Fang. I pulled my wings in, leaned against him, and sobbed. Soon I felt other, tentative hands patting my back, stroking my hair. Someone said, “Shh, shh.” Nudge.
“It’s okay, Max,” Iggy said, sounding shaken. “Everything’s okay.”
Nothing in our world was okay. Except that we had one another. I nodded into Fang’s shoulder.
I don’t know how long this touching scene rolled on, but eventually my sobs gave way to shuddering breaths, and finally I was spent. Fang’s shirt was soaked.
I was so embarrassed. I was the leader, and here I was breaking down like a baby. How could I boss them around if I was so weak? I sniffled and sat back, knowing I must look like a train wreck. Fang let me go, not saying anything. Slowly I raised my eyes, turning slightly to see the flock. I was way too embarrassed to look at Fang.
“Sorry, guys.” My voice sounded rusty.
Total came and rested his head on my leg, his black eyes sympathetic.
The Gasman looked frightened. “We didn’t have to go to the beach, Max.”
A sort of choking laugh left me, and I reached out to ruffle his hair. “It wasn’t that, Gazzy. Just other stuff, getting to me.”
“Like what?” Iggy asked.
I sighed heavily and wiped my eyes. “Stuff. The Voice in my head. Everyone chasing us. School. Anne. Ari. Jeb. They keep telling me I’m supposed to save the world, but how, and from what, I don’t even know.”
Angel reached out and patted my knee. “From, you know, after everything gets blown up and most of the people are gone. We’ll be stronger, and able to fly, so we can leave the blown-up parts and find some nice land that isn’t blown up or contan- contama-“
“Contaminated?” Iggy provided, and Angel nodded.
“Yeah, that. Then we can keep on living, even if there are hardly any people left.”
There was silence after this little bombshell. I stared at Angel.
“Uh . .. where did you hear that, sweetie?” I asked.
Angel sat back on her heels and trailed her fingers through the cool sand. “At the School. I wasn’t supposed to hear it, but that’s what they thought.” She sounded nonchalant and started digging out a moat for a sand castle.
“Who’s going to blow up the world?” the Gasman asked indignantly.
Angel shrugged. “Lots of people can - they have big bombs. Countries and stuff. But the people at the School kept thinking it would be just one company, a business company. They think it’s going to blow up the world, mostly. Maybe even by accident.”
Well, this was an interesting turn of events.
“And what company was that?” I asked.
Angel looked off into the distance, frowning. “Don’t remember,” she said. “Like, the name of a deer or something. A gazelle. Can I go swim?”
“Uh, sure,” I said faintly.
Happily pulling her swimsuit out of her backpack, Angel raced Total down to the water. Within seconds he came trotting back, shaking his fur. “That water’s freezing,” he said. He raised his nose, sniffed the air, then headed off to investigate some rocks.
Gazzy, after a nod from me, also ran down to the water, shedding clothes. Nudge and Iggy moved over to sit on a big rock. They fished around in their backpacks and pulled out some protein bars.
“So, h”h?” I said to Fang when the others were gone.
He shook his head, stuffing the remaining bandages back into his pack. “Yeah. Surprise.”
“How long has she been sitting on this? Why hasn’t it come up before?”
“Because she’s six and more concerned with her stuffed bear and her dog? I don’t know. Plus, we don’t even know if she understood what she heard. There’s a chance she got it wrong.”
I thought for a moment. “Even if aspects of it are wrong, I don’t see how she could misunderstand the whole blowing-up-the-world concept. And the fact that we were designed to outlast a catastrophe. It fits in with what Jeb keeps telling me.”
Fang let out a breath. “So what now?”
“I don’t know. I need to think.”
We were silent for a while. My arm was throbbing.
“So what was that about?” Fang said finally.
I couldn’t pretend to not know what he was talking about. “I’m just - really tired. The Voice was ragging on me about my destiny and how I have to get on the stick about saving the world. It just feels like too much sometimes.” I never would have admitted that to the others. Sure, I could tell them that things were getting to me, but let them know I wasn’t sure I could handle it? No way.
“I’ve been running on adrenaline, without a master plan. Every day it’s just, keep the flock safe, keep us together. But now everything else has been dumped on me, all these bits and pieces that aren’t adding up to a whole picture, and it’s too much.”
“Pieces like Ari and Jeb and Anne and the Voice?”
“Yeah. Everything. Everything that’s happened to us since we left home. I don’t know what to do, and it’s so freaking hard even pretending that I do.”
“Walk away from it,” Fang said. “Let’s find an island. Drop off the screen.”
‘That sounds really good,” I said slowly. “But we’d have to get the others on board. I’m pretty sure the younger kids still really want to find their parents. And now I want to find out what this company is that Angel heard about. What if - you do research on an island possibility and I’ll focus on this other stuff?” It was the closest I’d ever come to sharing my role as leader. Actually, it didn’t feel so bad.
“Yeah, cool,” Fang said.
For a few minutes we watched Angel and the Gasman playing in the shallow surf. I was amazed they weren’t cold, but they seemed fine. Iggy and Nudge were walking down the beach. Nudge was putting different-shaped shells in Iggy’s hands so he could feel them. I wanted time to freeze here, right here, right now, forever.
There was something I needed to say. “Sorry. About before.”
Fang shot a sideways glance at me, his eyes dark and inscrutable, as always. He looked back out at the water. I didn’t expect any more acknowledgment than that. Fang never -
“You almost gave me a heart attack,” he said quietly. “When I saw you, and all that blood…” He threw a small rock as hard as he could down the beach.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t do it again,” he said.
I swallowed hard. “I won’t.”
Something changed right then, but I didn’t know what.
“Hey!” said Angel, standing up in knee-high water. “I can talk to fish!”
That wasn’t it.
“You can what?” I called, getting up and walking toward the water.
“I can talk to fish!” Angel said happily, water dripping off her long, skinny body.
“Ask one over for dinner,” Fang said, joining us.
The Gasman shook his head like a wet dog. “You can not,” he said.
“I’ll prove it!” Angel dived back under the water.
By this time, Nudge and Iggy were walking up.
“She talks to fish now?” Iggy asked.
Then, with no warning, a six-foot shark surfaced, mouth open, maybe two yards away from Gazzy. None of us made a sound - we were conditioned not to yell in a crisis. I’m sure we were all screaming in our heads. I sprang into the water, grabbed Gazzy’s arm, and hauled him toward shore. He was frozen with fright and seemed like dead weight. I kept expecting to feel the huge tug of the shark taking off my leg.
Angel popped back out of the chest-high water. I motioned her urgently to do an up-and-away. She laughed.
“He’s my friend!” she shouted. “He’s saying hi!” The shark had circled and was now moving right toward her. My heart was in my throat - what if she only thought she could talk to fish? “Go on, maybe you should wave,” Angel said to the shark, as I tensed to fly out over the water to snatch her up.
Before our eyes, the shark literally turned on its side, came a little bit out of the water, and waved a fin slightly.
“Holy cra-,” the Gasman began, but I said, “Gazzy!”
“Would someone please tell me what the heck is going on?” Iggy said.
“Angel just made a shark wave its fin at us,” Nudge told him breathlessly.
“Uh - wha… ?”
Then three more sharks appeared in the shallow water around Angel. Together, the four sharks turned on their sides and waved their fins.
Angel was laughing. “Isn’t that so great?”
Total trotted up next to me, his little feet kicking sand. “That’s awesome! Make them do it again!”
My knees felt weak. I needed to sit down. “That was neat, sweetie,” I said, trying to sound calm. “Now please ask the sharks to leave, okay?”
Angel shrugged and talked to the sharks again. Slowly they turned and headed back out to sea.
“That was so awesome,” Total said, as Angel splashed toward shore. He licked Angel’s leg, then spit. “Ugh! Salt.”
“So, Angel talks to fish, is that right?” Iggy said carefully. “And this is useful how?”
We had to keep on the move. It was going to be dark soon, and we needed shelter. Most kids my age would be bummed about their next math test or that their parents cut their phone calls short. I was more concerned with shelter, food, water. The little luxuries of life.
We were over northern Florida now. All along the coast we saw a million twinkling lights of homes and stores and cars moving in threads like blood cells in a vein. If blood cells had, you know, weensy little headlights.
But there was a huge unlit area below us. In general, dark = no people. I looked over at Fang, and he nodded. We started to descend.
A few minutes’ reconnaissance informed us that this was the Ocala National Forest. It looked like a good place, and we dropped down out of the twilight and aimed ourselves carefully through small gaps in the umbrella of treetops. And landed in water.
“Yuck!” I was calf-deep in muddy water, surrounded by cypress knees and towering pines. Looking around, I saw land a couple yards away and slogged over to it. “To the left!” I called, as Nudge and Iggy swooped in.
“This is good,” I said, looking around in what was rapidly becoming the pitch-darkness. “Easy to get out of, straight up through the trees, but almost impossible for anyone to track us overland.”
“Home, sweet swamp,” said the Gasman, and I smiled.
An hour later we had a small fire going and were roasting things on sticks. I was so used to eating this way that even if I were, like, a grown-up making breakfast for my 2.4 children, I would probably be impaling Pop-Tarts on the ends of sticks and holding them over a fire.
Now Fang pulled a smoking, meaty chunk off a stick and dropped it onto an empty Baggie, which was Nudge’s plate.
“Want some more raccoon?” he asked.
Nudge paused in midbite. “It is not! You went to the store. Didn’t you? There’s no way this is raccoon.” She examined the meat critically.
Fang shrugged. I rolled my eyes at him.
“Oh, maybe you’re right,” he said seriously. “Maybe this is the raccoon, and I gave you the possum.”
Nudge choked and started coughing.
“Stop it,” I told Fang, reaching over to pat Nudge’s back. He looked at me innocently.
“He’s just kidding, Nudge,” said the Gasman. “Last time I checked, Oscar Mayer wasn’t making squirrel dogs.” He held up an empty package, and Nudge wheezed a bit and swallowed.
I was trying not to laugh, and then I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. I glanced around - we were all here. But I felt like someone was watching us. I see incredibly well in the dark, but the fire was too bright to see much beyond it. Maybe I was imagining it.
Next to me, Angel straightened up. “Someone’s here,” she whispered.
Or maybe not.
Well, it had been a whole day without an Eraser crashing - literally - our party.
I snapped my fingers softly twice, and five heads turned toward me, alert and tense.
“Someone’s here,” Angel repeated softly.
Fang kept turning things in the fire, but his back was taut and straight, and I knew he was reviewing escape plans.
“What are you getting?” I asked Angel out of the side of my mouth.
She frowned, her blond curls glinting in the firelight. “Not Erasers.” She cocked her head to one side, concentrating. “Kids?” She looked puzzled.
I got slowly to my feet, scanning the darkness around the fire. Moving to the edge of our little circle, I peered intently into the woods. Then I saw them. Two small, skinny forms, inching toward our fire. Much too small to be Erasers. And human, not animal.
“Who’s there?” I said strongly. I stood tall and put my shoulders back, making myself look bigger. Fang got up and came to stand next to me.
The two little forms slunk nearer, more quickly.
“Who are you?” I asked, sounding mean. “Come closer, where I can see you.”
They crawled into our small area, two dirty, skinny, big-eyed children. I mean, all of us bird kids looked really long and slender compared to other kids our ages, but our bones didn’t really stick out. Theirs did.
They gave us all wary glances but seemed riveted by the fire and the smell of food cooking. One of them actually licked her lips - they were a boy and a girl.
Hmm. They didn’t seem like the biggest threat I’d ever seen. I leaned over, put some hot dogs onto a paper bag, and placed it in front of them.
Yo. I thought Gazzy and Iggy were repulsive eaters. I made a mental note to not ever let them get this close to starving. Those two kids fell on the hot dogs and virtually shoved them whole into their mouths. It made me think of a TV special I’d seen that showed hyenas ripping apart their prey.
I put two slices of bread in front of them, then two more, then two more, then two more hot dogs. They all disappeared in instants. After that I gave them candy bars, and their eyes widened as if I’d just handed them - uh … candy bars when they were starving. Finally their chewing slowed. Now they seemed to savor every bite. Fang passed them a canteen of water. They drained it.
They crawled closer to the fire and sat in front of it, looking sleepy and unafraid, as if it would be fine if we killed them now, because they weren’t hungry anymore.
“So - what’s your story?” I asked, wanting some answers before they nodded off.
“We got kidnapped,” said the girl, her dark eyes reflecting the flames.
Well, okay, I hadn’t seen that coming. “Kidnapped?”
The boy nodded tiredly. “In south Jersey. From two different places - we’re not related.”
“We just ended up in the same place,” said the girl, yawning.
“And where was that?” I asked.
“Here,” said the boy. “We escaped a couple times. Even made it to the police station.”
“But both times our kidnappers were already there, like, filing missing-kid notices. They just found us again, real easy.” The girl sighed heavily and lay down on the ground, curling into a bony clump. We weren’t going to get any good answers out of them tonight.
“So, who were your kidnappers?” Fang tried.
“They were, like, doctors,” the boy said sleepily, lying down too. “In white coats.”
He closed his eyes, and within seconds both he and the girl were asleep.
Which left the rest of us wide-awake, frozen in terror, staring at them as if they carried the plague.
Fang took the first watch, so I hunkered down close to the fire and tried to relax. Which was about as likely as Florida freezing over. Angel snuggled up to me on one side, and Total curled up next to her.
“So, what are you picking up from them?” I whispered to her, rubbing her back.
“Weird images,” she whispered back. “Not like regular kids, like the ones at school. Like, flashes of grownups and darkness and water.”
“Which I guess makes sense if they were kidnapped and experimented on by whitecoats,” I said softly. I raised myself up on one elbow and caught Fang’s eye. Using sign language, I reminded him to keep an eye on the strange kids. He used sign language to say “No freaking duh.” I shot him the bird. He grinned.
“Do you think they’re mutants?” I asked Angel, lying down again. “They look pretty human.”
She shrugged, frowning. “They’re not Erasers. But they’re not like regular kids either. I don’t know, Max.”
“Okay.” Maybe we would figure it out tomorrow. “Try to get some sleep. Total’s already snoring.”
Angel smiled happily and pulled him closer to her. She just loved that dog so much.
I had third watch, from 4:00 to 7:00 a.m. or whenever everyone else woke up. I never minded night watches. All of our sleep patterns were permanently screwed, so it wasn’t like I needed my forty minutes of REM all together. I woke instantly as soon as Iggy touched my arm. And why was the blind guy on watch, you might ask? Because a cockroach couldn’t come within fifty feet of us without his knowing it. Iggy on watch meant I could relax, or at least relax as much as I ever did. Which, okay, is not that much.
At five I put more wood on our small fire. The slight smoke seemed to be keeping mosquitoes at bay - I had expected them in Florida, even in November. I left the firelight and walked the perimeter in the darkness of the woods. Everything was cool.
At daybreak I was sitting against a pine tree, which seemed even more popular here than in the mountains of Colorado. I was watching and being. The thing about watch is, it isn’t the time to work through problems or write sappy poetry. As soon as you do, you’re not paying attention to your surroundings. You basically have to sit and just be, be totally alert to everything around you. It’s really kind of Zen. man.
Anyway. I was leaning back, being all Zen, when I saw one of the strange kids stir and sit up. Instantly I closed my eyes to the barest slits and let my breathing become deeper and more even, as if I were sleeping. Tricky Max, that’s me.
The girl sat up and looked around at all of us: the Gasman sprawled out, one arm thrown across his backpack, Fang lying neatly on his side, Nudge and Angel curled up around Total, so that they made a heart shape around him.
Ever so quietly, the girl shook the boy’s shoulder, and he woke up, startling out of sleep, already tense and on guard, the way kids are when waking up often = bad news. He glanced around also. I looked so asleep I almost was asleep. But I saw the two of them slip off into the woods so silently that not even Iggy twitched.
I waited several moments, as they made sure they weren’t being followed, and then, just as soundlessly as they, I got up and began tracking them.
I moved stealthily from tree to tree, and though they glanced back a couple times, they didn’t see me. About three hundred yards from camp, they crouched down. The girl took something from the dirty pocket of her ragged jeans. It looked like a pen - except she started speaking into it. A transmitter.
It took only a second for me to reach them with huge, bounding leaps. They stared up at me, stunned and afraid. I crashed down and knocked the pen from the girl’s hand. Then I grabbed her shirt and hauled her to her feet.
“Ordering a pizza?” I snarled.
It’s funny how different people are. If I’d been this kid and someone was snarling “Ordering a pizza?” at me, without even thinking, I would have snarled back, “Yeah. You want pepperoni?”
But not her. She stared up at me in horror and then immediately burst into great heaving sobs, her hands over her face. Next to her, the boy dropped to his knees and also started crying, without even trying to hide it.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” the girl gasped out, and I lowered her to the ground by her shirt-Crossing my arms over my chest, I scowled down at her. “Sorry for what? Be specific.”
The girl pointed to the transmitter blinking on the ground. “I didn’t want to!” she sobbed. “They made us! They made us do it!”
I picked up the transmitter and threw it out into the swampy area. It landed with a small splash and sank out of sight. “Who made you?” I demanded, knowing that the clock was now ticking.
For several moments the kids only sobbed. I nudged the girl with the toe of one sneaker. “Out with it!” I said. Yeah, I know: bully Max. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel sorry for these kids. I did. It was just that I valued our lives more than theirs. I know some people would be all, Oh, every life is precious, everyone is equally valuable. And maybe that’s true, in Pixieland. But this was the real world, my flock and I were prey, and these kids had ratted us out. That was the bottom line, and in my life, you’d be surprised how often the bottom line is the only one that matters.
‘They did,” the girl said, still crying. By this time the noise had woken the others, and they were making their way through the trees to us.
I knelt down to the girl’s level and took hold of one wrist. “Tell. Me. Who.” I squeezed her wrist slightly, and her eyes widened.
“They did,” she repeated, starting to hiccup. “The guys who - the people who kidnapped us. They’ve had us for months. They took me in August.”
“Me too,” said the boy, raising his face. Tears had made streaks through the dirt on his cheeks, and he looked stripy, like a zebra. “Those guys - sent us to find you. They didn’t feed us for two days, so we’d try hard. And we did. And you gave us food.” He started crying again.
“They said if we didn’t find you, they would never come get us. We’d be lost in the swamp until something killed us.” The girl was shuddering now, calmer, though tears still dripped off her chin. “I’m sorry. I had to.” Her face crumpled again.
I understood. They were trying to survive, just like us. They’d chosen themselves over us, which was exactly what I would have done.
I turned to Fang. “Get our stuff. We’re gone.”
The flock hurried off to dismantle our rough camp. I put my fingers under the girl’s chin and raised it so she’d have to look at me. “I understand,” I said levelly. “The transmitter will bring them here to find you. But we’ll be gone, and you won’t be able to tell them much. Now I’m going to ask you one more time: I need a name, a place, a logo, something. It’s the difference between them picking you up alive and them finding your bodies. Get it?”
Her eyes widened again. After a moment, she barely nodded. She shot a glance at the boy, and he gave her a nod. “Itex,” she whispered, then sank down on the damp ground. “The company was a really big one called Itex. I don’t know anything else.”
I stood quickly. No doubt people were on their way to the transmitter’s coordinates. We had to get the heck out of here. The two kids, filthy and exhausted, lay on the ground like bodies at Pompeii. I reached into my pocket and dropped some protein bars and hard candy on the ground by their heads. They stared up at me, but I was already gone, flashing through the woods. I met up with the flock and then we were airborne, on the run.
Again.
An hour later we were almost a hundred miles away. I had no idea what would happen to those kids.
“So, Itex,” I said to Fang.
“I told you it was like a deer,” Angel said.
“That’s ibex,” said Nudge. “And they’re more goatlike than deerlike.”
“Whatever,” said Angel.
“It’s not ringing a bell,” said Fang.
“They have long horns and live mostly in mountains,” Nudge explained.
“No, I mean Itex,” Fang said. “They said it was a big company, but I’ve never heard of it. Which doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yeah, I guess your education has a few gaps in it,” I said. Except for the past two months, none of us had been to regular school, ever. Thank God for television.
“Can we look it up somewhere?” Iggy asked. “Like at a library? Are we close to a town?”
I looked down at the incredibly flat land below us. I saw the tiny buildings of a small town, about fifteen minutes away. “Yeah. Good plan. Twelve points west, everybody.”
So it turned out that Itex was actually short for Itexicon, and it owned, like, half the world. It wasn’t just a company. It was a huge multinational, multifaceted conglomerate that had its fingers in virtually every type of business there was, including food, medicine, real estate, computer technology, manufacturing, and even book publishing - so heads up, whoever’s reading this.
The more info we found on the Web, the more I started remembering the Itex logo. Now that I recognized it, I realized I’d seen it on a million things in my life, going all the way back to the School where we were created. It had been on test tubes, pill vials, lab equipment - you name it.
I logged off the computer and stood up. “Let’s get out of here.”
I’d seen enough.
“No.”
“Please, Max,” Nudge begged.
We were airborne, heading south. On the Web we’d found an address for Itex headquarters. It was roughly between Miami and Everglades National Park.
“No way. It’s too risky. The whole place is fenced in. There’s a million people there. We’ll be in crowds.”
“Fang?” Nudge wheedled.
Fang shrugged, as much as he could shrug while flying. He held up his hands as if to say, Talk to the boss. I’m just the hired help.
That wiener.
“Pleeease, Max?” The Gasman added his voice.
I stared ahead stoically, refusing to look down at the tall water tower wearing mouse ears. Of course, we had to pass right over Orlando.
“Max?” Nudge said.
I didn’t respond. I knew what she was trying to do.
“Oh, come on!” said Total, from Iggy’s arms. “We’re not going to the Magic Kingdom? How lame is that?”
I glared at him. It didn’t faze him.
“A couple rides?” Angel asked wistfully. “Splash Mountain?”
“Maaax?” Nudge said again.
I made the supreme mistake of looking at Nudge. Shoot! I winced and looked away but not quickly enough. She got me. She had given me Bambi eyes. Now I had no choice.
I gritted my teeth. “Fine. A couple rides, some cotton candy, and we’re out of there.”
Everyone cheered. Fang gave me a look that said, You sap.
“Who let whom have a freaking dog?” I responded.
He chuckled.
And we were on our way to the land of the Mouse.
“Disney World?” Ari felt like his head was about to explode. “Disney World?” His gravelly voice rose into a harsh shriek. “They’re not on vacation! They’re on the run! They’re running for their lives! Death is following them like a bullet, and they’re on the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad?”
He snapped his teeth shut so hard the impact jarred his skull.
This was the end.
He would show them what a freaking Small World it was. There was about to be a rain of destruction on Main Street, U.S.A.
Disney World. You’ve probably been. I’m assuming that most of America has been there, because you all seemed to be there the day that we went. All of you at the same time.
When the gates opened, we poured in with the rest of the crowd and found ourselves on Main Street, U.S.A. It was, well, adorable. I admit it freely. Old-fashioned storefronts, an ice-cream parlor, a trolley line in the middle of the street - all painted bright, cheerful colors. Everything was pristine, everything in perfect shape.
“I want to go in every shop,” Nudge said, awed. “I want to see every single thing.”
“Don’t these people have jobs?” Fang muttered. “Why aren’t these kids in school?”
I ignored him. If he had backed me up, we wouldn’t be here.
“We need to pick the most important things,” I said, as we headed toward Cinderella’s Castle. “In case we can’t stay too long.”
“I vote for Pirates of the Caribbean,” said Total. He was wearing a small leather halter and a special vest that said “Guide Dog at Work. Do Not Pet. Thank You.” We’d bought sunglasses for Iggy, so the two of them had quite the team costume.
“Ooh, Swiss Family Treehouse!” said the Gasman.
“Yeah!” Angel agreed.
Nudge stopped and stared up at the castle. “It’s so … beautiful.”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling at her. Inside, of course, I was wound tighter than a yo-yo. All these people - we were horribly exposed and yet contained within a crowded space, so I was twitching like a water drop on a hot skillet.
Avoiding the worst of the crowds, we headed for Adventureland.
“Yes! Pirates of the Caribbean!” Total said. If he could have made a fist, he would have punched it.
Being in a dark, enclosed, watery place with a bunch of strangers sounded like a nightmare to me, but as usual I was in the sensible minority. We got in line, and actually, it didn’t take too long to get onto a boat. I was trying hard to keep it together for the younger kids, but my heart was pounding and sweat broke out on my forehead. I glanced at Fang and saw that he was just as twitchy as I was. Because we were the only two who had any freaking sense.
Please, I begged silently, please do not let my last moments on earth be me crammed into a tiny boat in the dark, surrounded by mechanical singing pirates.
Yes, that would be cruel, my Voice said snidely.
I ignored it.
“I want my own treehouse like that,” Gazzy said around a mouthful of cotton candy. “I mean, for all of us. Wouldn’t that be so cool?”
“So, so cool,” Angel agreed, ice cream dripping down her wrist. “Can we do the Swiss Family Treehouse again?”
I handed her a napkin. “Maybe after lunch.” Biting off a piece of my ice-cream sandwich, I did another 360 sweep. No Erasers. I couldn’t say for sure we were the only mutants here because, you know, Disney World. But so far no one had morphed right in front of us.
“We could make one,” Iggy said. “Find a humongous tree and build our own treehouse.”
“Yeah!” said Gazzy, pushing another wad of cotton candy into his mouth. “We could do it! I know we could.”
I rubbed his shoulder. “Okay. I’ll put that on our list of things to do. Try not to eat too much junk, huh, Gazzy? I don’t want you hurling on Splash Mountain.” He grinned at me, a lighthearted child’s grin that tugged at my heart. Yeah, yeah, if only.
“This way to Frontierland,” Fang said, pointing to a sign.
I scanned the crowd again, then looked down at my map. “First Frontierland, and then - looks like the only good thing in Liberty Square is the Haunted Mansion.”
“I want to see Mickey’s Country House,” Angel said.
“That’s in the Toontown Fair place,” I told her. “We need to go through some other stuff first. But we’ll go.”
She shot me a beautiful, innocent smile, and I tried to put all thoughts of our country’s government out of my head.
“You know what’s creepy?” Nudge said, eating caramel popcorn. “A chipmunk that big.” She pointed at an adult-sized costumed chipmunk who was waving and strolling around.
“Who is that?” Total asked. “Chip? Or Dale?”
“Don’t know,” I said. “As long as he doesn’t turn into a huge, chipmunky Eraser, I’m good. Yo - look. There’s Splash Mountain. Line doesn’t seem too bad.”
“Is your dog talking?”
I turned around. A sunburned child was looking at Total suspiciously.
I laughed. “Our dog? No. Why? Does your dog talk?” I gave her a patronizing smile.
“I thought he was talking,” she muttered, still staring at Total.
I said to Gazzy, “Jason, have you been practicing your ventriloquism again?”
Gazzy shrugged with the perfect amount of bashfulness and nodded.
“Oh,” said the girl, and looked away. I narrowed my eyes at Total, who pulled his lips back over his teeth in an embarrassed, ingratiating grin. Not amused, I glanced over at Fang. He smiled, lighting up our immediate area, and offered me some Cracker Jack.
He had them. Ari took a bite of his ice cream bar, feeling the thin chocolate crunch between his teeth.
He’d seen them go into Splash Mountain. Now he was sitting on a bench at the exit, waiting for them to come out. It had taken a long time to find them in this place. He couldn’t fly here, and he couldn’t unleash a huge crowd of Erasers to sweep the joint. Too much commotion.
But now he had them. They would be out any minute. He had radioed six backup teams, which were less than five minutes away. Ari smiled. The sun was shining, the weather was great, he was eating ice cream, and all his dreams were about to come true.
A small crowd of people momentarily passed between him and the ride’s exit, and Ari moved so he could see around them. He knew that people were staring at him. He looked different. Even different from other Erasers. He wasn’t as - seamless. He didn’t look as human as the rest of them did when they weren’t morphed. He kind of looked morphy all the time. He hadn’t seen his plain real face in - a long time.
“I know who you are.”
Ari almost jumped - he hadn’t noticed the boy slide onto the bench next to him.
He frowned down at the small, open face. “What?” he growled. This was when the little boy would get scared and probably turn and run. It always happened.
The boy smiled. “I know who you are,” he said, pointing at Ari happily.
Ari just snarled at him.
The boy wiggled with excitement. “You’re Wolverine!”
Ari stared at him.
“You look awesome, dude,” said the boy. “You’re totally my favorite. You’re the strongest one of all of them and the coolest too. I wish I was like you.”
Ari almost gagged. No one had ever, ever said anything like that to him. His whole life, he’d been the dregs in everyone’s coffee pot. When he was really little, he’d idolized the bird kids and they’d ignored him. He’d loved Max, and she’d barely known he was alive. It would have been great when they disappeared, except his father had disappeared too. Ari still tasted ashes when he remembered realizing that his own father had chosen them over him. Ari had been left behind, with strangers.
Then they’d started augmenting him. At first Ari had been glad - he would be an Eraser, be one of them. But he wasn’t. He was too different, too patchworky. The others had all been made Erasers as infants, as embryos. When they were human they looked really human. When they were wolves they looked really wolfy. Not Ari. He was stuck in a partially morphed state, never all human and still less than wolf. He looked weird. Ugly. He didn’t fit in anywhere.
“You’re, like, a total celebrity,” the boy chattered on. “I mean, who cares about SpongeBob SquarePants? I’m sitting here with Wolverine!”
Ari gave him a tentative smile. It didn’t matter that the kid had mistaken him for somebody else. This kid thought he was cool. He wanted to be like Ari. He was impressed.
It felt so good. It felt amazing.
“Gosh, could I have your autograph?” the kid went on, starting to look for a piece of paper. “My mom wanted me to get Goofy’s autograph. Like, I’m so sure. Goofy! But you - here, can you sign my shirt?”
He held out a black marker and pulled on his T-shirt to make it taut.
Ari hesitated.
The boy looked uncertain. “I mean - I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bug you. I know you’re famous, and I’m just a little kid.” His face fell.
“No, that’s okay, kid. Hope your mom doesn’t mind,” Ari growled. He took the marker in one pawlike hand and signed “Wolverine” with a flourish.
The kid looked awed and thrilled. “Gosh, thanks, mister. I’ll never wash this shirt again. You’re the best. I can’t wait till I get back to school and tell everyone I met Wolverine and he signed my shirt! This is the best day of my life!”
Ari’s throat ached and his nose twitched. He swiped one hand across his eyes. “No prob. You better get on back to your folks.”
“Okay. Thanks again! You rock!” The boy pumped a fist into the air and ran off.
Ari sat for a moment, dazed with emotion. Suddenly he straightened. The flock! Max! Where were they? His eyes raked the trickle of people passing through the exit. The bird kids were nowhere to be seen. Six minutes had gone by - they must have come out. He’d missed them!
For God’s sake! That dumb little kid!
You need to stay focused, Ari, said his Voice. Keep your eyes on the prize.
Ari strode off to meet his backup teams, which were now in sight. Yeah, he knew he needed to stay focused. He was all business.
But inside, part of him still smiled and held on tight to that warm, wanted feeling.
“God, I’m soaked,” I moaned, pulling my wet sweatshirt away from my skin. I shook my hair out of my eyes, sending drops flying.
“That was so great,” the Gasman said happily.
“Splash Mountain really lives up to its name,” Nudge said, bouncing a little.
“I hated that ride.” Total sounded grumpy. And he’d hardly gotten wet at all.
“Let’s go again!” Gazzy said.
We were almost all the way through the exit when I saw him: Ari, sitting on a bench. A little kid was talking to him excitedly. I froze, and the others bumped into me.
“Turn around,” I said under my breath. “Bandada - nayshapay.”
“No - oh, no,” Gazzy whispered. “I can’t believe it. Not now.”
But I was already pushing them back through the exiting crowd.
“Sorry, kids,” the attendant said. “You have to exit out that way only.”
“No, no,” I said urgently. “We left our digital camera in the log! Mom will kill us! We just need to run back and check . . .”
The attendant paused for a moment, and in that moment I forced us all past him. “Excuse us, excuse us, coming through!”
Then we were back inside the ride. A walkway, almost concealed by false boulders, ran along one wall. We zipped down it, hearing the attendant calling after us.
“Here!” Fang said, stopping suddenly. I’d almost passed the door completely - it was practically invisible. Quickly we shot through it and found ourselves in a long, dimly lit corridor. Child’s play. In seconds we had raced to the end of it and out its exit. We found ourselves behind some large shrubs.
“Come on,” I said grimly. “Over to that fake mountain and then an up-and-away.”
Three minutes later we were airborne, fading into the setting sun, leaving Disney World far behind. Nudge had tears running down her cheeks, and Gazzy and Angel both looked bitterly disappointed.
“I -,” the Gasman began.
“What?” I angled one wing slightly and pulled closer to him.
“I wish we could have gone into the Haunted Mansion,” he said. “It’s supposed to be awesome.”
I sighed. “I know, guys.” Everyone was flying steadily, but each face was a mask of disappointment and frustration. “There were a bunch of things I’d been hoping to do too.” All involving seeing mouse ears in my rearview mirror. If I had one. “But you know we had to go.” Flock, one. Ari, zip.
“I hate stupid Ari!” Gazzy said. He punched and kicked the air in front of him. “He always ruins everything! Why does he hate us? It’s not our fault they turned him into an Eraser!”
“It’s not that simple, sweetie,” I said.
“His dad left him,” said Iggy bitterly. “Just like all of ours. Then they Eraserfied him. He’s a walking time bomb.”
“How does he track us so easily?” Angel asked. When she’d seen Cinderella’s Castle, her face had looked as though it were made of sunlight. She was still young enough to really get caught up in the magic of an enormous, all-powerful marketing juggernaut.
“I don’t know, Ange,” I said. That was the ten-thousand-dollar question, in fact.
Below, the landscape was a spongy green, with nothing but a carpet of treetops to look down on. The trees ended abruptly, and beyond them we could see huge refineries or some kind of water-treatment plants or something.
I heard a faint buzz only a split second before a buglike helicopter popped up from behind the trees. It was pointed a bit away from us but almost immediately turned and headed in our direction, like a curious insect.
“Okay, guys, scatter and zoom,” I instructed quickly. “Meet up in fifteen minutes, same heading.” I angled my wings sharply and peeled off to one side. From a corner of my eye I saw the rest of the flock split up, zipping off in all directions.
The chopper hesitated. It had News 14 Florida painted on the side. So maybe not an Eraser chopper, maybe just a news cam tracking traffic.
But they’d seen us. I arched my back, pointing downward, then dropped into a screamingly fast descent. I rocketed toward the ground at two hundred miles an hour, which meant in less than a minute I had to angle out of it and swoop up again so I didn’t squish like a mosquito on the windshield of the world.
Who said poetry was dead?
When I finally looked back, the chopper was nowhere in sight. A few minutes later, I saw various-sized dark specks coming at me. My flock.
Fang arrived first.
“We need to get out of the air,” I told him.
“Black Ranger to Feather One,” Total said softly. “Coast is clear. Come in, Feather One.”
“Total, I’m right here,” I whispered. “We don’t even have walkie-talkies.”
“No, but we should,” Total whispered back. “I should have one, and it could -“
I put my hand over his mouth, looking at the mountains of rusted metal, ancient appliances, and empty car husks that stretched for acres around us. I signaled over my shoulder, and Fang, Gazzy, and Nudge scampered past me and crouched next to a bunch of doorless refrigerators.
There had been only one guard, who looked as if he couldn’t guard his way out of a paper bag. We’d left him in front of his oil-drum fire clear on the other side of this enormous junkyard-chop shop. Or at least I assumed it was a chop shop, given the suspicious number of relatively late-model cars that were tucked away in an airport hangar-sized building.
Which was where we were heading.
“Okay, now, the last time we were in a car…,” Fang whispered in my ear.
“That was different,” I said impatiently. “Anyway, we’re not going to steal a van.”
“What are we going to steal this time?” Iggy whispered. “Can I have a turn driving?”
“Oh, ha ha,” I said drily, and he smothered a snicker.
“That one,” I whispered, pointing to a low, sleek, sporty number.
Which turned out to have no engine.
In fact, every one of these stupid cars had some huge problem with it: no steering wheel, or no wheels, or no dashboard, or no seats. An hour later I was ready to smack something in frustration.
“What now?” Fang asked in a low voice, crouching next to me. “Public transportation?”
I gave him a sour look.
“Max?” Nudge’s voice was uncharacteristically quiet. She brushed some long curls out of her face. “I’ve been thinking.”
Oh, here we go, I thought tiredly.
“If we take the seats out of the Camry, and the wheels off the Bug, and the battery out of the Caddy, and then we get the steering wheel from the Accord, and we drop that engine back into the Echo and hook up a new air filter, we could just take the Echo and be good to go.” Her big brown eyes looked at me anxiously. “Don’tcha think?”
“Whoa,” said Total, sitting down.
“Uh,” I said.
“There’s its air filter right on that table,” she added helpfully.
“Since when do you know all this?” I asked, flabbergasted.
“I like cars. I always used to read Jeb’s annual car issue from Consumer Reports. Remember?”
“Huh. Well, I guess that sounds like a plan, then,” I said. “Everyone clear on what to do?”
Even the loser guard would have heard an engine starting, so we had to push the Frankenstein car out through the junkyard gate and a couple blocks away before we could even see if any of this worked.
When we were far enough away, Fang slid behind the steering wheel, and I applied my talent to hot-wiring the car.
The engine actually fired! True, it sounded rough, and the car backfeed several times like rifle shots, but we were running, baby.
“Everybody in!” I said.
Which was when we discovered the final problem.
Little Echos aren’t designed to hold six, count them six, larger-than-average-sized children.
And their wings.
And a dog.
“This is like a clown car,” Total grumbled front my lap in the front seat.
“Why does the dog get to sit in your lap?” Gazzy asked plaintively, as we rattled and banged down the dark streets. “How about a kid?”
“Oh. ‘The dog.’ Very nice,” said Total.
“Because you’re not allowed to have people on your lap in the front seats,” I explained. “It’s not safe. If a cop saw us, we’d be stopped for sure. You want Total back there?”
Everyone in the back screamed no at the same time.
“Let’s just deal, people,” I said. “Only for a little while. We’re going to stop as soon as we find a place to sleep.”
” ‘The dog,’” Total muttered, still mad.
“Shh,” I told him.
“Are you saying you’re not a dog?” the Gasman asked. He was tired. We were all tired and hungry and cranky.
“Okay, you two,” I said sternly. “Enough! Everyone quiet, okay? We’re looking for a place to sleep. Just chill.”
Fang glanced back in the rearview mirror. “Does anyone want to sing ‘Ninety-nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall’?”
We all screamed no at the same time.
That night we hid the car in some overgrown brush on an abandoned farm and slept in the trees, swaying gently in the pleasant breeze. We weren’t attacked or ratted on, so it was an up night for us.
In the morning we got back into our little car - emphasis on the little.
“There aren’t enough seat belts,” Gazzy complained from the backseat. The four of them looked like sardines back there.
“And God knows we live our lives totally paranoid about safety measures,” I said, looking at a map.
“I’m just saying,” said Gazzy. “Yow! Fang!”
Even Fang had winced at that last gear-grinding. I bit my lip so I wouldn’t smirk and gave Fang a wide-eyed innocent look. Yes, I swallowed down all the snide comments I could make about his driving, unlike Fang, who had gone ahead and made snide comments when I drove. That’s because I’m a better person, frankly. I am a freaking princess when it comes to other people’s feelings.
“Yo, dogbreath,” I said to Total. “Get your paws off the Everglades.”
Total moved slightly so I could see the map, Fang ground the gears again, and we lurched on toward our destination: Itex headquarters.
Assuming Angel’s intel was good, it was time for us to learn just what the heck I was supposed to do to stop this company from destroying the world. I was tired of dodging it. I was tired of asking about it. I was ready to know.
Here’s something that might not occur to you: If a state trooper sees a weird, patchwork Toyota Echo hurtling down 1-95, and it looks like half of a small country is immigrating to the States in this one little car, you might get stopped.
Just FYI.
In general, the six of us preferred to avoid law enforcement agents of any kind. Especially since we never knew whether they were the real thing or if they would suddenly turn into Erasers, as just another challenge in this twisted lab test of a life we led.
“Should we bail?” Fang asked, looking at the flashing lights in the rearview mirror.
“Probably.” I robbed my forehead, trying to muster energy for whatever might be coming. I turned back to the others. “We’ll stop, and as soon as it looks freaky, up and away, okay?”
I got solemn nods from everyone.
“I’m with Iggy,” Total said, leaping into the backseat.
Fang clumsily pulled onto the shoulder, kicking up dust and gravel. We shared a glance as a woman in a state trooper uniform got out of her cruiser and walked toward us. We unlocked the car doors and poised for takeoff.
The trooper leaned down into Fang’s window, her broad-brimmed hat shadowing her face.
“Good morning, sir,” she said, sounding unfriendly. “Do you know how fast you were traveling?”
Fang looked at the speedometer, which hadn’t moved since we’d pushed the car out into the darkness last night. “No,” he said truthfully.
“I tagged you at seventy miles an hour,” she said, pulling out a clipboard.
I let out an impressed whistle. “Excellent! I never thought it’d be that fast!”
Fang shot me a look and I put my hand over my mouth.
“Can I see your license, your registration, and your proof of insurance?” the trooper asked, all business.
We were toast. We’d have to split, which meant we would lose our little jigsaw car, she would see our wings, and she’d probably notify the web of authorities who would make our lives miserable. Miserabler.
“Hi,” said Angel from the backseat.
The trooper peered at her through the window. It was then that she seemed to notice how many of us there were, how we were all kids. She looked back at Fang, and this time she realized that he probably wasn’t old enough to have a license at all.
“Are you from here? Florida is really flat, huh?” Angel said, getting the trooper’s attention for a moment.
“Can you step out of the car, please, sir?” the trooper asked Fang.
“It sure is warm here, for fall,” Angel went on. “You could practically go swimming.”
Once again the trooper glanced at Angel, but this time something blunted her impulse to turn away. I didn’t dare look back at Angel. Once again I was confronted with the whole Angel-doing-something-bad-for-good-reasons thing, and I didn’t know what to do.
I decided to let her do it, then lecture her later. A win-win situation.
“We’re kind of in a hurry,” Angel said pleasantly.
“You’re in a hurry,” the trooper said. Her eyes were slightly vacant.
“Maybe you could just let us go,” Angel went on. “And sort of forget you ever saw us.”
“I could just let you go,” the trooper repeated. It was incredibly creepy.
“You never saw us or our car,” Angel said. “There’s a problem somewhere else, and you need to get there now.”
The trooper looked back at her cruiser. “I have to go,” she said. “There’s a problem.”
“All right,” said Angel. “Thanks.”
And we were on our way. Riding in a stolen car with a six-year-old who could control people’s minds. Not really the definition of comfortable.
We’d gone a couple miles when Angel spoke again. “I don’t know, guys,” she said. “I really think maybe I should be the leader.”
“I’ll be second-in-command,” Total offered.
“Oh yeah, you’d be so focused on the job.” Gazzy sneered. “Until a rabbit ran across your path.”
“Hey!” said Total, glaring at him.
“Guys,” I said tiredly. “Listen, Ange, it’s sweet of you to offer, but I’ve got the whole leader thing down, okay? You don’t have to worry about it.”
“Well, I guess,” Angel said, frowning. She didn’t sound 100 percent convinced.
What was going on with her?
I believe I’ve mentioned how freaking slow driving is, compared with flying. In the air there are no stoplights, and there’s surprisingly little traffic of other flying mutants. On the other hand, we were relatively hidden in a car.
“Well,” said Fang, looking at the huge gates in front of us.
“Yep,” I said.
After more than three hours of cautiously slow but still kidney-jarring travel and a pit stop for lunch, we had arrived at Itex headquarters. Through our sheer instinct and heightened powers of deduction, we had zeroed in on the place that might hold some answers for us.
Heightened powers of deduction meaning being able to read all the signs on the highway saying “Itex - Exit 398.”
Now we examined the tall iron gates, the professional landscaping.
“No barbed wire,” Fang muttered.
“No armed guards,” said Nudge. “That little guardhouse is cute, though.”
It seemed unusual, which set off blinking red lights in my brain. Was this where the world would get saved? Where my destiny would finally be played out?
Just then a smiling uniformed guard stepped out of the guardhouse. He had no gun or other weapon that we could see.
“Are you all here for the tour?” he asked pleasantly.
“Um, yes,” said Fang, his hands tight on the steering wheel.
“I’m sorry - the last one was at four,” the guard said. “But come back tomorrow - the tours are every hour on the hour, and they leave from the main lobby.” He pointed through the gates to one of the larger buildings.
“Um, okay,” said Fang, putting Jigsaw into reverse. “Thanks.”
We pulled away but kept the guard in our sight as long as we could. We didn’t see him speak to anyone or use his walkie-talkie or anything. It was weird. Once again I felt a heavy sense of unnamed dread settling on my shoulders. I wasn’t stupid. Those kids had been sent to us, to give us a message. To get us to Itex. Sooner or later we would find out what was planned for us here, and odds were that it would be nothing good.
My Voice had been quiet for a while, and I almost - almost - wanted it to speak up again, just to drop some clues about what we were doing here.
But there was no way I’d ask it.
“Okay, Iggy, your turn,” I said, pressing a small bottle of shampoo into his hand. “And just because you can’t see is no excuse to not get all the grime off.”
Iggy took the shampoo, and Gazzy directed him toward the bathroom door.
My hair was still wet, dampening my T-shirt at the shoulders. We were ensconced in the lack of luxury of the Twilight Inn, which was the kind of place that had shady deals going on in all the rooms. We hadn’t had baths since we’d left Anne’s, and the Twilight Inn had the bonus of its own pay laundry room. I’d just gotten back with the last load of warm, dry, clean clothes, which I dumped on one of the double beds.
I felt almost human.
That was a joke - get it?
Nudge, Gazzy, Angel, and Total were on the other bed, watching TV. The kids all had their wings out, letting them dry. I sat down and shoved some laundry at Fang.
“So, Itex,” he said, starting to fold and pack.
“Yep. Guess who made the laundry detergent? Guess what gas station we stopped at? Guess who made the soda you’re drinking?” Now that I was looking for it, I saw the Itex logo everywhere. It was unbelievable - the company seemed to touch every aspect of our lives. But we’d never thought about it before, never noticed it.
Wordlessly Fang held up a pair of Gazzy’s jeans. The back label said Itex.
‘This is bad,” I said, keeping my voice down.
“You idiot!” Total shouted at the TV. “It’s the red one! The red one!”
“They’re everywhere, all right,” I said. “What’s worse is, the more I think about it, the more I remember them being everywhere our whole lives. I remember Angel drinking Itex formula from an Itex bottle, and wearing Itex diapers. It’s like they’ve been taking over the world without anyone noticing it.”
“Someone noticed it,” Fang said slowly, folding a shirt of Iggy’s. “Someone at the School noticed it at least fourteen years ago. And built you to try to stop them.”
There was my destiny again, slapping me in the face. “Built us.”
“Mostly you. I’m pretty sure the rest of us are redundant.” Fang sounded matter-of-fact, but the idea bothered me.
“You’re not redundant to me,” I said, stuffing a pair of shorts into a backpack.
Fang gave me one of his rare, quick smiles.
We turned the lights out early. I lay awake for a long time on the floor, thinking about hex, the company that might blow up the world. My mission was to save the world. So I had to deal with Itex somehow, do something, find out something, stop them from doing something.
As a destiny, it was pretty fuzzy. It was like being told to climb Everest without a map and with no supplies. Plus be responsible for five other people. I felt overwhelmed and weirdly alone, though I was surrounded by my flock. I fell asleep hoping that maybe tomorrow I would be able to come up with something.
As it turned out, my “tomorrow” started in the pitch-darkness, with my hands and feet bound, and a strip of duct tape over my mouth.
Break free! My brain went from sleep to extreme, annihilating panic in an instant. I arched my back with all my strength, bucking myself off the floor. At the same time I tried yanking my hands and feet apart as hard as I could, only to find they wouldn’t budge. Think, Max, think! You can get out of this! They can’t get you this easily!
My scream was muffled by the duct tape. I heaved myself around, trying to knock into someone or break something to make some noise. I couldn’t believe the others were sleeping through this - usually the slightest sound woke any of us. Maybe there’s something wrong with them.
Two big, dark figures leaned over me, trying to gather me up, but I struggled against them with all my might. I managed to knee one in the stomach, but it didn’t do much. Then the other one simply sat on me, knocking every bit of breath out of my body. Wild-eyed, I sucked in air through my nose, already feeling like I was suffocating.
It had been a long time since I’d been so completely helpless, and it made me crazy. All thought fled my brain - I went into frenzied animal instinct, struggling for my life, willing to kill my captors, to do anything to stay alive.
I was hyperventilating, screaming silently, gouging ridges in my ankles and wrists where they were bound with plastic ties. And still I was helpless.
Still unable to stop the black hood from coming over my head, unable to not breathe the sickly sweet smell, unable to stop myself from letting go, releasing into a deep, cold blackness where there was no pain, no fear, only nothingness.
Oh yeah, and one other bad thing. Really bad, I think. I saw that other Max in the room when they kidnapped me.
And I think she stayed there with the flock.
After the Erasers had taken the inferior Max away from the motel, I quickly lay down in her spot and pulled the blanket over me. I closed my eyes, positive I wouldn’t sleep a wink.
I was so hyped up - it was all finally happening. No way would I sleep…. Out with the old Max, in with the new and improved Max. All according to plan.
“Wagh!” I woke up flailing, dreaming that I was being sponged by aliens.
My hand hit something furry and warm, and I felt the furriness jump away. Then I remembered: They had a dog. It must have been licking me. So gross.
I blinked slowly and looked around. The skeezy motel room looked even worse in the daylight than it had in the middle of the night.
“Max?” I looked up to see the little blond boy - Gasman, what a name - leaning over me.
“Uh, what?” I said.
“I’m hungry.”
Showtime. Now I would see how well I could play Maximum Ride. “Right,” I said, getting up. I was sore and stiff from sleeping on the floor. Now that I could see everyone close up, it was hard for me not to stare. They really were different from Erasers, from Ari. I didn’t know how they could stand themselves.
“So, breakfast,” I said, trying to remember the drill. “Does the, uh, dog need to go out?”
“We already went out,” said the littlest kid. Angel. She cocked her head to one side, looking at me, and I gave her a big smile. Little weirdo. I had no idea why Max stayed with these losers. She would do so much better on her own. Every one of them was a ball and chain, holding her down. She should have dumped them a long time ago. But that was one of her weaknesses: She needed an audience, a pep squad. Someone to hold her hand and tell her how fabulous she was.
Anyway. There was a tiny kitchenette in one corner of the room. I went over and put a frying pan on one of the hot plates. “Okay, how about some eggs?” I said, looking inside the minifridge.
“You’re going to cook?”
I turned around to see Fang, the older, dark-haired boy, looking at me.
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“Not that hungry,” Gasman muttered.
I didn’t get it. The other older boy, the fair one, stood up.
“I’ll do it. Gaz, you pour juice. Nudge, get out the paper plates.”
“But you’re blind,” I said. He couldn’t cook. Or was this some kind of joke?
“You’re kidding! I am?” the guy - Iggy - said sarcastically. He brushed past me and turned on the hot plate. “Who wants scrambled?”
“Me,” said Nudge, raising her hand. She dug out some paper plates and put them on the dinky Formica table.
Huh. Maybe because I was the leader, I didn’t do stuff like cook. Well, I had to look busy, in charge.
“Nudge? Come over here and I’ll fix your hair.” I rummaged in a backpack for a brush. “We could do, like, ponytails or something, get it out of your eyes.”
Nudge - another dumb name - looked at me. “You want to fix my hair?”
“Yeah.” God, what did Max do all day? She didn’t cook, she didn’t fix people’s hair. Did she just sit on her butt barking orders all the time? “Oh, and hey - you - off the bed.” I snapped my fingers at the dog, who just looked at me.
“Why can’t he sit on the bed?” Angel asked.
“Because I said so,” I said, starting to brush Nudge’s hair.
There was silence, and I looked up to see the other four mutant kids looking at me. Well, not the blind one, though his face was turned toward me, which was creepy.
“What?” I asked.
The last thing I remembered was being kidnapped from the motel room. No, the very last thing I remembered was seeing that other Max in the room. What happened? Had she replaced me? Why?
At the moment, I didn’t know if I was awake or asleep, alive or dead. I blinked again and again, but there was complete and utter blackness: no shadows, no blurry forms, no pinprick of light. All of us except Iggy can see extremely well in the dark, so not being able to see anything at all made my blood run cold.
Was I blind now, like Iggy? Had they experimented on my eyes?
Where was I? I remembered being bound and gagged. I remembered passing out. Now I was here, but where “here” was I had no clue.
Where was the flock? None of them had woken up when I’d been taken. Had they been drugged? Something worse? Were they okay? I tried to sit up, but it was as if I was suspended somehow - I couldn’t put my feet down, couldn’t push off anything. But I felt wetness. I could touch my face. My hair was wet. I reached out with my hands and felt nothing. There was water or something all around me, but it wasn’t like ordinary water - I couldn’t sink.
I swallowed and blinked again, feeling myself start to panic. Where was my flock? Where was I? What was going on? Was J dead? If I was dead, I was going to be incredibly pissed because there was no way I could deal with this limitless nothingness for an hour, much less eternity. No one had said death would be so intensely boring.
My heart was beating fast, my breaths were quick and shallow, my skin was tingling because blood was rushing to my muscles and main organs: fight or flight. Which reminded me. I stretched out my wings and couldn’t feel a thing. Wildly I reached back with one hand. My heavy wing muscles, the thick ridges where they joined my shoulders, were there. I still had wings. I just couldn’t feel them.
Was I anesthetized? Was I having an operation? I tried as hard as I could to move, thrashing around in the blackness, but again felt nothing.
Very bad news.
Where the heck was I?
Try to calm down. Calm down. Get it together. If you’re dead, you’re dead, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If you ‘re not dead, you need to get it together so you can escape, rescue the others, open a can of whup-ass on whoever put you here….
I was completely alone. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been completely alone. If I were in a hammock on a beach, sipping a drink with a little umbrella in it, and I knew the flock was safe and okay and everything was fine, I would be ecstatic. Being alone, off-duty, able to relax - it would be a dream come true.
Instead I was alone with darkness, with fear, with uncertainty. So where was I?
You might not want to know.
The Voice. I wasn’t completely alone after all. The Voice was still with me.
“Do you know where I am?” I spoke out loud, my voice dropping away into dull nothingness.
Yes.
“So tell me!”
Are you sure you want to know?
“Oh no, I enjoy being in a state of complete ignorance!” I snapped. “This is why I don’t want you around anymore! Now tell me, you jerk!”
You’re in an isolation tank. A sensory-deprivation chamber. I don’t know where, exactly.
“Oh, my God. You were right - I didn’t want to know.”
An isolation tank. Nothing but me, my totally screwed-up consciousness, and the Voice. Well, I could probably stand this for say, oh, ten minutes before I went stark-raving nuts.
Knowing the whitecoats, they probably planned to keep me in here a year or two, so they could take notes, see what happened to me.
I needed to die, right now.
But I’m Maximum Ride. So it wouldn’t be that easy, would it?
Of course not. My life would never contain a convenient, pain-saving plan when it could stretch a problem out into an endless agony of uncertainty and torture.
I don’t know how long I was in the tank. It could have been ten minutes. It felt like ten years. A lifetime. Maybe I slept. I know I hallucinated. Again and again I “woke up” to find myself back with the flock, back in our house in Colorado or in the subway tunnels of NYC or in the Twilight Inn. I saw Ella Martinez and her mom again, smiling and waving at me.
I think I cried for a while.
Basically every thought I’d ever had in my entire life, I had all over again, one after another in rapid-fire succession. Every memory, every color, every taste, every sensation of any kind replayed itself in my fevered brain, endless loops of thought and memory and dream and hope, over and over, until I couldn’t tell what had been real and what had been wishful thinking and what had been a movie I’d seen or a book I’d read. I didn’t know if I was really Max, or if I really had wings, or if I really had a family of bird kids like me. Nothing was real except being in this tank. And maybe not even that.
I sang for a while, I think. I talked. Finally my voice went. Weirdly, I was never hungry or thirsty. Nothing hurt; nothing felt good.
So when the tank was finally cracked open and light streamed in, it seemed like the worst, most painful thing that had ever happened to me.
I screamed, but the sound of my own voice was intensely loud, piercing my eardrums, so I shut up immediately. I squeezed my eyes shut against the blinding light and curled into a ball as much as I could. Big hands grabbed me and pulled me up, and just their touch, after so much nothingness, freaked out my senses.
They put me on a bed and covered me with a blanket. The feeling of anything touching me was torture. I huddled there trying not to move for a long, long time.
Finally I realized that I wasn’t in so much pain anymore. I tried opening one eye a slit. It was too bright, but I didn’t feel like my retina was searing.
“Max?” The hushed whisper woke every nerve all over again, sending unbearably painful chills down my spine. I tensed, my eyes closed. I no longer knew how to run, how to flee, how to fight.
I wanted to be back in the tank, the blessed darkness and silence and nothingness.
“Max, how are you doing?”
Jim Dandy, I thought hysterically. Peachy. Never better.
“Max, do you need anything?”
That was such a ludicrous question that I felt myself smile.
“I need to ask you some questions,” the voice whispered. “I need to know where the flock is heading. I need to know what happened in Virginia.”
That got me. A couple of synapses actually connected in my brain. I pulled the blanket down just a little and opened my eyes a slit. “You know what happened in Virginia,” I said. My voice was thin and rusty, made of nails. “You were there, Jeb.”
“Only at the end, sweetheart,” Jeb said, his voice very quiet. He was kneeling on the floor next to the cot I was on. “I don’t know what happened before then, how everything fell apart. I don’t know where the flock is headed now or what your plan is.”
Now I felt maybe 10 percent like myself. “Jeb, I’m afraid you’re going to have to learn to live with not knowing.” I chuckled a tiny bit. It sounded like a cat choking.
“That’s my Max,” Jeb said affectionately. “Tough till the end. Even after everything, you’re still in better shape than anyone else would be. But I have to tell you, you need to get on board with this saving-the-world project.”
“I’ll try to pencil it in,” I croaked. Now I felt enough like myself to be irritated.
Jeb leaned closer to me. I opened my eyes and looked him straight in the face, that familiar face that had represented everything good in my life, at one time. And now represented everything bad.
“Max, please,” he whispered. “Please just play along. They want to terminate you. They think you’re a lost cause.”
This was news.
“Who?”
“Itex. They’re keeping you here while they try out their latest, greatest invention. They wanted you to lead with your head, not your heart, Max. I tried to teach you that, but maybe i failed. They’re trying to take all of the heart out of you by keeping you here. But you care about things, and about people, Max. Like me. Please, don’t make everything that’s happened up till now meaningless. Don’t give them cause to take you out, start over with someone else. Show them they’re wrong about you. Show them you’ve got what it takes.”
“I’ll show them I’ve got what it takes to rip your spleen out through your nose,” I said weakly.
“Batchelder!” I suddenly heard a deep voice from behind me. “You’re not authorized to be in here.”
Then my light was blocked again, the blanket was pulled off, and big hands picked me up and dropped me back into the horrible tank.
I led the five mutant freaks through the shadows toward Itex.
“In here.” I held aside some bushes and motioned them through. It was dark, finally. I’d thought spending days watching a bunch of Erasers play Texas hold ‘em was boring, but that didn’t compare to today.
I didn’t know how the original Max stood it. I’d lost count of how many times today I’d wanted to scream at them to shut up and get away from me. That Nudge never quit yapping, and Angel and Gasman had gotten into disputes like whether the sky was blue and what day this was. I hadn’t found any chinks in Fang’s armor, but it was just a matter of time. Angel frankly creeped me out - she was a loose cannon. Maybe she was kind of unstable. I would have to tell them that when I got back. Gasman seemed like a gullible idiot, and Iggy was dead weight, as far as I could tell. Except that he could cook, for some reason. Plus, they all talked to the dog like it was a person, asking it if it wanted this or that. I mean, it was a freaking dog.
But finally it was time. We’d gone on the tour of Itex today, and I’d made a big deal about noticing its weak points. Now we were “breaking in.” I was trying to be careful, look like I was on guard.
I have to say, I was doing great. They didn’t suspect a tiling. All my training, the lessons, the practice - it was paying off. It was gratifying, how obvious it was that I was the new and improved version. In fact, it was weird how willing these freaks were to follow me around, do what I said. I’d told ‘em we were going to break into Itex, and they were all on board. Even the dumb dog. When we were leaving the hotel, I’d tried to shut it inside the room, but Nudge had held the door open for it to trot out.
“The dog’s coming on a raid?” I’d asked, my eyebrows raised.
“Of course he’s coming,” Nudge had said, looking surprised. “He always comes.”
O-kaaay, I’d thought. I’m starting to put my finger on why you guys are slated for termination.
But whatever. They followed orders, anyway. I led them up a grassy hill, looking around - like someone was going to catch us, right? There was a huge HVAC box next to the main building, and we quickly unscrewed the cover. I jammed a stick in the enormous fan, and then we all hurried through. I yanked the stick out, the fan started spinning again, and we were in.
“That was a good idea,” said Fang. Which was about five more words than he’d said all day.
I shrugged. I knew Max was totally full of herself, but that didn’t mean I had to be. We started moving through the air vent system.
I was trying to remember to seem nervous, to look around, to act like I was considering which way to go. Sometimes I stopped everyone and put my finger to my lips, as if someone were coming. It was hysterical.
We got to the main branch of the HVAC system, and I pretended to hesitate before I led them all into the vent that went to the basement. Just a few more minutes, another couple hundred yards, and my job would be over.
And so would they. Being back in the isolation tank after seeing Jeb was a huge relief - for about two milliseconds. Then I started thinking about what he had said. I remembered that I had a flock depending on me. I remembered that I was Invincible Max and that the whitecoats making me run through their maze were a bunch of losers.
Which left the question: how to get out of here?
I still couldn’t sit up, couldn’t feel anything. I was spacing out and hallucinating again - it was way hard to concentrate, to remember what I was doing instead of floating off into la-la land.
Think, Max.
Then I remembered I had a Voice in my head. Voice, you got any ideas?
What is it they want from you? the Voice said, shocking me. It had never, ever responded to a direct question before. At least that I could remember, right then.
Uh… what did they want from me? Just for me to be here. To be able to do things to me, make me jump through their hoops, be their lab rat.
What would happen if you took that away from them?
I thought. They would be very upset?
I smiled. But how could I take that away from them? I’d pretty much established that I couldn’t break out of this sardine can.
Think about it.
Now that I really thought about it, realizing how limited my options truly were kind of freaked me out. Here was a situation where all my speed, my physical strength, my cunning - none of it would do me any good.
It was mind-blowing.
If I hadn’t been so totally spaced, I would have panicked.
As it was, I felt oddly removed from the problem. Freaked, but removed at the same time. I was losing myself. Losing my mind.
Losing myself… losing me. They would be upset if they lost me. Because I wouldn’t be around to jump through their hoops. But since I couldn’t physically move, getting lost seemed pretty unworkable.
Except.
There was another way for them to lose me: if I died.
Which would sort of defeat my own purpose, as well as theirs. But - could I just make them think I was dead?
I bet there were monitors of some sort in here. When you put a rat in a maze, you hung around to observe the results. They’d probably been recording my crazed ranting and sobbing all along.
Now. How to be dead?
I lay back in the buoyant liquid. It supported me totally - I didn’t have to try to keep my head up or anything. My breathing slowed, in and out, one, two, three, four. I relaxed every single muscle. Then I just.. . went inside myself. It was like I was a machine and I was slowly flicking switches off. I just willed all my systems to slow down more and more.
In the yawning silence, my heart beat slower, then slower. My eyes closed. Everything was still and silent. Maybe I would lie in this watery tomb forever.
There was no time, no thought, no motion.
I hoped I wasn’t actually dead.
That would make finding our parents and saving the world really hard.
I see no need to go into a lot of boring detail, but we found our way to the Itex computer room. So far, the plan was working beautifully.
I shooed everyone away to the darkest corner of the room, and they actually listened to me. Then I turned one computer on, and it booted up silently. I had been told Nudge was good with computers, so I motioned her over.
“See what you can find out about Itex,” I whispered. “Be quick - I don’t know how much time we have.”
We had exactly six minutes, forty-seven seconds, according to my watch.
“Okay,” Nudge whispered back. She slid onto the stool and instantly went to the “List Programs” menu. From there she got to a C prompt, and then she typed in a bunch of gibberish.
I sighed to myself, waiting for her to get stuck, and then I’d have to take over. They’d taught me everything I needed to make sure I could get us where we had to go.
“Oh, here,” Nudge whispered, and I watched in surprise as page after page of information, all labeled “Restricted Access Only” filled the screen. Hmm. Maybe this mutant was smarter than she looked. Maybe somehow, something had come out right, with her.
“Okay, start reading,” I said, looking over her shoulder.
Time was running out for the freaks.
I, Maximum Ride, was dead, and nobody seemed to have noticed.
Maybe I really was dead. I was starting to not really care one way or another.
Finally, finally my captors figured out that instead of an interesting, captive lab rat, they now had a much less interactive dead body on their hands.
Deep in my trance, I had only a split second to brace myself as they ripped open the top of the tank, letting in retina-searing, blinding light. Staying limp was the hardest thing I had ever done.
Voices said, “What happened? Who was monitoring her? They’re gonna have our butts!”
Once again hands grabbed me and hauled me out of there. Once again it was the most horrible, painful thing I could imagine. But this time I forced my eyes open, put my feet down, and roared.
My knees buckled under me, but I flung my wings out, shaking as much moisture as possible off them. I had a brief glimpse of astonished, then angry faces, and, with another raspy, croaky roar, not nearly as intimidating as I’d hoped, I leaped up shakily.
I saw a blurred image of a window and ran at it, hardly able to keep on my rubbery legs. When I was close, I threw myself at the glass as hands grabbed at my wet clothes and wings.
Please don’t let this glass have chicken wire embedded in it, I remembered to pray at the last second. I guess it didn’t, because I crashed right through it, which made every cell in my body feel as if it had been crushed by a truck. Screaming in pain, I felt damp air hit my cheeks and then I started to fall.
I tried to move my wings, tried to remember that familiar feeling of catching wind beneath them: light, beautiful sails of muscle and feather and bone. But I felt only numbness, a deadened sensation, as if I’d been dipped in novocaine.
Work, dang it, work! I thought, and had an image of myself crumpling into a broken heap on the ground, maybe five stories below.
It was dark out: less painful for my eyes. I opened them to see the ground rushing up at me way too fast. Once again I flung my wings out, desperate for them to catch me, to snatch me back up into the air.
And they did-just as my bare feet banged against the grass. Then I was lurching unsteadily upward, trying to remember how to fly, how to move my muscles, how to unhinge my shoulder blades to give me more freedom. I lifted up past the broken window, which had several angry faces crowded in it.
One face wasn’t angry. Jeb’s. He held his hand out the window, giving me a thumbs-up.
“See you soon, sweetheart!” he called.
I soared upward, the wind blowing my wet hair back.
What was with him? “Geez, there’s so much stuff here,” Gasman whispered, reading over Nudge’s shoulder.
Yeah-huh, no kidding, I thought. I hadn’t expected nearly this amount of info on Itex. I wondered if they’d had any idea that this kid would be so successful at hacking in.
Nudge was scrolling through pages fast. I kept an eye on my watch, ready to hurry everyone on to part two of tonight’s little charade.
“I wonder,” Nudge said, suddenly stopping her typing and sitting very still. “I wonder if Jeb has been here. I feel something.” Cripes, I thought. This is getting creepy.
“Why would Jeb have been here?” I snapped. “He has nothing to do with Itex.”
“Max, I can feel his vibe. He was here. Maybe there is something on him, on us, in the Itex files.” Her fingers started flying.
“What are you doing?” I whispered. “No ad-libbing - stick to the program.”
Irritated, I quickly checked out the others. Gasman and Iggy were beneath a counter, and Gasman was looking up at something. Fang was standing guard by the door.
Angel and her unwanted flea-magnet were sitting very still, close to Fang. Angel’s eyes were closed, I noticed with irritation. Nice time to take a nap. Just then her eyes popped open and she looked straight at me. I gave her a reassuring smile and turned back to Nudge.
“Oh, gosh,” Nudge whispered as the screen suddenly filled again. “Look, look!”
Frowning, I watched as pages of documents tiled before us. On the top was a photograph of a baby. It was wearing a white hospital bracelet that said, “I’m a Girl! My name is Monique.” The Monique part was handwritten.
“That’s me, me as a baby,” Nudge said excitedly.
I had no idea why she thought this, but whatever. She started scrolling through the pages and hit a huge patch of, like, blueprints or mechanical drawings, schematics, design plans. I looked closer and frowned. These were plans of how to recombine the baby’s DNA, graft avian DNA into her stem cells.
“Max, Max, look at this,” Nudge whispered, pointing. There, at the bottom of a long medical form, was the signature of Jeb Batchelder. “Oh, my gosh. Max - can you believe this? Fang?”
Fang came over silently and read over her shoulder. His eyes narrowed. I didn’t understand - how could Jeb Batchelder be here in Itex’s files? We were supposed to be finding out stuff about how evil Itex was - not about the scientists at the School.
Nudge clicked on a link, and a small media-player window popped up. It was labeled “Parents, two days post.”
A fuzzy video clip of a black couple started playing. The woman was crying, and the man had a pained, frozen expression on his face, as if he’d just seen a horrible accident. The woman was saying, “My baby! Who would take my baby? Her name was Monique! If anyone knows where my baby is, please, please bring her back. She’s my world!” The woman broke down sobbing and couldn’t go on.
This wasn’t the stuff we were supposed to be seeing. We were supposed to be looking at file after file about how Itex was polluting the planet, destroying natural resources, using child labor, and so on. Despite myself, I was intrigued by what Nudge was finding.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I said, after the video played. “We saw the medical consent form a few screens back.”
Nudge sniffled and clicked back to the form. At the bottom were signatures of Monique’s parents, authorizing someone named Roland ter Borcht to “treat” their baby.
But, now that we looked at them, the parent signatures looked exactly like Jeb Batchelder’s.
I didn’t know what to think. None of this agreed with what they had told me. What was real? Crying silently, Nudge continued to scroll through the file. Another photograph of the woman filled the screen. She looked older and incredibly sad. Stamped across the photo in red ink was the word “Terminated.”
Suddenly Iggy pulled his head out from under the counter. He was holding some wires in one hand. “Someone’s coming,” he said.
Freedom is still freedom, even if you’re soaked, practically nuts, and having trouble getting your muscles to cooperate.
First stop: the Twilight Inn. I checked it out carefully, but it seemed clear. The Echo was still in the parking lot. No one was in the room, however, though all of our stuff was still there. Was the flock out looking for me?
I wolfed down some food, then packed all of our stuff as fast as I could. I grabbed everything and took off, running twenty feet in the parking lot and leaping into the air, wings wide and gathering wind.
I kept up a constant surveillance, watching for flying Erasers, but saw nothing. The backpacks weighed me down too much - I needed to ditch them and have my hands free.
I hid our stuff at the top of a pine tree. Next stop: back to where I’d just busted out from. The more I felt like myself, the more myself felt like a murderous, enraged maniac. I tore through the night sky, rage rolling off me like steam. My whole life, the whitecoats had done countless heinous, inhuman, unforgivable things to me, to all of us. They had kidnapped Angel. But now they’d really crossed the line.
They had put me in a freaking tank!
I was amazed I was still coherent at all, could fly at all. I stayed out of sight, under the tree canopy, zipping through and among and between the pine trees.
When I shot out of the woods, I did a fast, fast circle around the whole compound, seven huge buildings. I backtracked my path, looking for a telltale broken window. And I found it. I’d just needed the confirmation that I’d really been held here, that this company was behind it. That Jeb was associated with Itex.
Now to find the flock.
Racing back to the woods, I screamed to a halt at the dark edge of the trees. I dropped lightly to the ground, shaking out my wings. I felt okay. Like I’d had the flu but was better now. My hands clenched and unclenched at my sides. I was eager for Erasers to show up. I was ready to rip something apart.
I pulled in my wings and sneaked through the shadows toward the main building.
I kept low to the ground, my eyes on the lighted windows of the building. Something hanging brushed my head, and I swiped at it absently. My hand touched something smooth and cool - and alive.
Stifling a gasp, i yanked my hand back, only to feel the something drop down on me with a thud. A snake!
I almost shrieked, but let out a horrified squeak instead.
Then there were snakes everywhere. Six- and seven-foot black snakes were dropping down on me, climbing my legs, winding around me, flicking me with their tongues. I was flinging them off me, doing a freaked-out dance, whirling, trying to shake them off. But they just kept coming.
I was about to completely lose it. If there was one thing I hated worse than small dark spaces, it was lousy snakes! “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” I panted, ripping snakes off me. I felt hysteria rising and knew I was gonna blow.
Hunching down, I gathered my muscles and sprang straight up into the air. I whooshed my wings out as hard as I could, shaking and shuddering as I felt snakes slithering all over them. Oh God, help, help, help! In the air I shifted gears and went into hypersonic mode. The snakes began to peel away from me, dropping off and falling into the darkness below. I was trembling so hard I could barely fly, and I finally kicked off the last of them.
Snakes! Horrible snakes! Where had they come from? I hated, hated, hated snakes.
You ‘re afraid of them, said my Voice, as cool and unruffled as always.
No freaking duh! I screamed inside my head.
Fear is your weakness. You must conquer all your weaknesses.
I was so horrified and furious that I thought I was gonna barf. Had that been another test? Had it all been in my imagination? My stomach was roiling, and adrenaline sang in my blood. My head was going to explode.
The flock. Have to get the flock.
Good, Max. Keep your eyes on the prize.
“Screw you, Voice.” I put my shoulders back, set my jaw, and did a 180, back to Itex.
Excellent, Max. Sometimes you amaze me.
How did this blind guy Iggy know someone was coming? He was like a bat! Maybe he had some bat DNA -
Crash!
Ari burst through the computer room doors.
“Scatter!” Fang yelled, launching himself at canine boy. What’s this bonehead doing here? I thought. I’d been expecting Itex’s expert termination team, not any of those half-assed wolves. Where were they? I looked at the clock, then decided to watch the two male mutants tear each other up on the floor.
That is, until I heard Gasman shriek, “Spiders!” An enormous swarm of spiders poured under the doors, a black carpet of crawly legs moving toward him like lava.
Ari suddenly broke free from Fang to explore other mealtime options. “Here!” I said. I grabbed Angel’s skinny arms and held her. She tried to push me toward the exit, but I braced my feet.
Grinning, Ari sprang forward and ripped a bite out of Angel’s forearm. She gave an earsplitting scream, and I winced.
“Nooo!” Fang bellowed across the room, but a cage dropped down out of nowhere and covered him.
“Rats! Rats!” Nudge wailed, scrambling onto a counter. She jumped from counter to counter, heading toward the door, but wherever she went, a river of squeaking pink-tailed rats scurried after her. Several ran up her jeans, and finally she just stood there shrieking, covering her face with her hands.
By now all of them were screaming at the top of their lungs. It was total craziness. Each person here, except me, was living out his worst nightmare, facing his biggest fear - even the dog. It was under a counter, staring horror-stricken at a bowl of generic dog food.
I was still holding Angel, who was struggling much harder than I thought she would. She kicked at both me and Ari, even though the huge gouge on her arm was running blood over my hands.
I couldn’t help smiling - she was a tough little mutant-Out of the corner of my eye I saw Fang staring at me in disbelief, hurling himself against the bars of his cage. “Guys, guys!” Fang shouted. His deeper voice cut through the high-pitched wailing. “This can’t be real! It isn’t real!”
You wish, freak, I thought.
Get this: I could follow their scent. I didn’t know if this was a newly enhanced skill or if they were just riper than usual, but I could actually follow where the flock had gone.
They’d gotten in through the air vents, and I tracked them, even reversing course a couple times, as they must have done. Finally I knew that they were near, and by concentrating, I picked up on whispered conversation. I found a ceiling vent that looked down into a computer room in the basement, kind of similar to the computer room at the Institute. As if there were an interior decorator who specialized in working with mad scientists.
I saw Fang! He was standing guard at the door. Angel was keeping Total quiet. I changed my angle and looked farther into the room. Nudge was at a computer, reading something. Her cheeks were streaked with tears, which made my heart tighten. Then - I saw her.
The other me.
“Max, Max, look at this,” Nudge said, turning to her, and my blood ran cold.
I mean, she looked exactly like me, and as I watched, she flipped her hair back impatiently, the way I always did.
Fresh rage ignited in my chest, making it hard for me to breathe. They had actually made a backup Max and substituted her for me.
This was, like, a seventeen on a diabolical scale of one to ten.
I was going to kill the other Max. And what about my flock? How could they not know? How could she be that perfect a copy? But I swear, it was like watching a hologram of me, a video of me, interacting with Nudge.
I glanced around again - and saw Angel looking directly at me through the vent.
I pulled back immediately, not wanting her to give me away. Then I had a horrible thought: What if Angel thought I was the impostor? What if the fake Max had them snowed?
Oh God, I had to stop this now.
Grimly I started to undo the clips that held the ceiling vent in place. Then, below me, I spotted my favorite combat partner barreling toward the computer room. Ari. I would have to take care of him for good this time.
At the same time, I would have to take care of my ultimate enemy: me.
In the middle of the chaos and screaming, a crashing sound made our heads whip around. Unbelievably, the old Max, Maximum Ride, dropped through the ceiling vent into the room. Where had she come from? She was supposed to have been taken care of!
But here she was, and she looked sooo mad.
“My invite must have gotten lost in the mail,” she said venomously. “But I don’t mind crashing this party.”
In that instant, the rats, the spiders, and the cage disappeared. While everyone else blinked, looking around - giving new meaning to the word dumb - I cursed under my breath. A fine time for the big guys’ latest super-top-secret holographic virtual-reality system to crash. This - along with the untimely arrival of my charming predecessor - was going to make my job a little more difficult.
“Max? ” Ari asked, staring at the other Max.
“Max!” Nudge shouted.
“Yes,” we both answered.
The other Max looked at me, and her eyes narrowed. “They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” she said snidely. “So I guess you’re really sucking up.”
“Who are you?” I gasped, my eyes wide. “You’re an impostor!”
“No, she isn’t.” The little creepy one, Angel, turned to look at me. Her arm was still bleeding where Ari had bitten it. “You are.”
I swallowed my anger. Who did she think she was, her and her stupid dog? I gave a concerned smile. “But Angel,” I said, sincerity dripping from my voice, “how can you say that? You know who I am.”
“I think I’m Angel,” she said. “And my dog isn’t stupid. You’re the stupid one, to think that you could fool us. I can read minds, you idiot.”
My stomach dropped faster than a falling elevator. No one had told me that.
“Yeah, you idiot,” said the dog.
I gaped at him. Had he just talked? Was this a trick?
Maximum Ride was checking out the mutants, one by one. They hugged her, and I glared at her. I couldn’t believe she had shown up, ruining everything.
“Okay, let’s solve your personality crisis,” the other Max growled, turning to me. Her face was white, and her hands were clenched in fists.
“I was about to say the same thing,” I growled back, getting ready to fight. “Keep your hands off my flock!”
“Oh good, you two have met each other.”
We both whirled to see several scientists in white lab coats standing inside the doorway.
“Max, are you all right?” Jeb Batchelder asked.
I started to say yeah, but then saw he wasn’t looking at me. It was the other Max he was concerned about, the other one he cared about. I was expendable.
Fury rose in me. I was exactly like Max, I was Max, I was better than she was in every way. But to everybody here, I was chopped liver. Nothing. Nobody.
But then I heard one of the other scientists step forward and say in a deep voice, “Take out the old version. She’s no good. She’s got an expiration date.” He was looking at me to do the honors.
Without thinking, I launched myself at the other Max, right over a countertop, headfirst.
The other Max was braced, but I had insane jealousy and rage on my side. I managed to slam into her, knocking her against a wall. Instantly she regained her balance and squared off against me.
“You don’t want to do this,” she said in a low voice. “You don’t want a piece of me.”
“Wrong!” I said snidely.
“Uh, Max?” said Gasman. ‘There’s something you should-“
“Shut up!” I snapped at him, and threw myself at Maximum Ride again. The scientists and Jeb eased out of the way as we got deadlocks on each other and rolled across the counters. She managed to pull a fist back and punch me in the head, making me cry out.
I kneed her in the stomach and heard a satisfying oof!
We were evenly matched - too evenly matched. We attacked in a flurry, with fists flying and roundhouse kicks and bruising connections. But then we retreated, circling each other warily.
“There can be only one Max,” Jeb said softly.
“Yeah, the real one,” I heard Ari say.
The scientist with a deep voice folded his arms across his chest. “Let’s see if what you say about her is true, Batchelder.”
I yelled and lunged for Max again, knocking her down. She held me by my hair and head-butted me so hard I saw stars, but I didn’t let go. I whaled into her side with my fist, once, twice, three times. The third time, I swore I heard a rib crack. It felt sooo good.
“Which one survives is up to you,” Jeb said. “May the strongest Max win.”
“Shut up, jerk!” Maximum Ride barked at him, just as I was about to say the exact same thing. She and I jumped up, looked at each other. It was like looking in a mirror. So weird.
But she had to go. There was one Max too many. With another roar I sprang forward, snapping out a side kick that sent her to the ground again. I dropped down onto her, sitting on her stomach, and punched her right in the nose. She winced, her head whipped to the side, and then blood spurted out her nose.
“You think you’re so great,” I hissed. She struggled underneath me, but I clamped her arms at her sides with my knees and reached for her throat.
This was going to end only one way: with me on top. I was built to survive. This was my destiny - to be able to outdo anything weaker that came before me. That was all I cared about. Max was weak because she cared about everything else - her stupid flock, their stupid parents, the way Jeb had betrayed her, everything other than what she should care about.
I chuckled aloud, thinking how pathetic she was. I was ready to squash her.
But suddenly she arched her back, snarling, throwing me off hard. On her feet again, she kicked my chin, cracking my head back with so much force I almost blacked out. Then she was straddling me, like I had done to her a moment ago. She grabbed my throat with both hands and started squeezing. With blood running from her nose, she looked murderous, unstoppable. One of her eyes was swollen shut, but she still had a choke hold on me. I grabbed her arms, trying to pull them away, but couldn’t budge her.
“Max?” I heard Gasman say again. We both ignored him. “Kind of important…”
Oh, my God, I thought, struggling, vaguely surprised. She’s going to win. It had never, ever occurred to me that she could. In every scenario I’d ever run through, every training exercise, I had always won. But amazingly, I was getting tunnel vision, and my world was going dark. I tried to buck her off with all my strength, but she was stronger than I was.
“There can be only one Max,” I dimly heard Jeb say. It came from a distance, floating over my head.
This . . . is. . . it, I thought hazily. This . . . is. . . the . . . end.
Suddenly the pressure around my neck released.
With a huge, sucking rush, air poured into my lungs. Light filled my eyes, and I was gasping, wheezing, gulping in air.
The old Max got off me. I coughed, my hand to my throat. I was struggling just to sit up.
“I’m stronger,” she yelled to the scientists. “Stronger than you. Because I’m not going to kill this girl for you. I won’t sink to your pathetic level.”
“Max,” said Jeb, sounding surprised. “There can’t be two Maxes.”
I looked down at the fake Max, who was sucking in air like a fish on the ground. I’d seen her pupils go to pinpoints, knew just how close I’d come to finishing her. But this rat was leaping out of the maze right now.
“Then you shouldn’t have made two of us,” I said coldly. “Now it’s your problem.”
“You don’t understand,” one of the scientists said. “Only one of you can fulfill your mission, your destiny.”
He sounded idiotic and pompous. Keeping my eyes on the fake Max, I circled back to where the flock was gathered, getting ready for fight or flight.
“You know,” I told the whitecoat, “it sounds like you guys didn’t really think this all the way through. You plugged us into an equation and predicted outcomes. Well, I got news for you, nimrod.” I looked up at the group of scientists, at Jeb, at Ari. I was still totally hyped up on adrenaline, my nose was still bleeding, and I felt
like kicking more butt. “In this equation of yours, we’re variables. We’re going to vary.” I was practically spitting my words at them. “What you sick jerks don’t seem to get is that I’m an actual person.” I pointed to the other Max, who was on her hands and knees, trying to get up. “She’s real too. She’s a person. All of us are! And I’m done jumping through your hoops. You can tell yourselves that you’re doing all this to save the world, but really you’re just a bunch of psycho puppet-masters who probably didn’t date enough in high school.”
I stalked around, really worked up. Sweat ran down my forehead and stung my cheek where it was split-Out of nowhere, an alarm sounded. Next we heard shouting, and thundering footsteps.
Jeb and the other whitecoats looked at one another. I couldn’t piece everything together right now. Were they part of Itex or not?
“Max?” said the Gasman again.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” I said urgently, looking for a possible escape route. Then I remembered: We were underground. Oh, jeez. Now things were going to get sticky.
Jeb and the other whitecoats edged closer to the Erasers. The fake Max looked lost, uncertain whose side to be on. I almost felt sorry for her.
“Max, really -“
“What?” I snapped, wheeling to look at Gazzy. “We’re up the creek, if you haven’t noticed! What’s so important?”
His big blue eyes, so like Angel’s, looked at me earnestly. “Duck.”
Within a millisecond, I had dropped to the floor. I rolled under a counter and covered my head with my hands. When some eight-year-olds said “duck,” you might be facing a stream from a water pistol. When Gazzy said “duck,” you prepared for all hell to break loose, and really freaking fast, man.
BOOM!!!
My eardrums practically ruptured from the force of the blast. Instantly my mouth was covered with dust, carpet fibers, and something wet I didn’t want to identify. I got knocked about four feet, still curled in a ball, and then something collapsed on me, knocking my breath out. Aftershocks and a much smaller boom made me curl tighter, but as soon as the explosions seemed to be over I straightened my back, grunting with the effort of pushing away debris.
“Report!” I yelled, inhaling dust and coughing hysterically. Big chunks of desk or ceiling fell off me. If I didn’t have some broken bones, it would be a miracle. I felt like I’d been hit by a tractor trailer, maybe a couple of them.
Clumsily, still coughing, I scrambled to my feet. “Report!” I yelled again frantically.
The room was full of billowing dust and fibers wafting everywhere. Red emergency lights were on, casting the whole scene in a horrible, bloody glare.
No one had answered me yet. I yelled even louder: “Report!”
I began to pick my way through the rubble. A sweeping glance told me that several whitecoats had been standing in the wrong place at the wrong time - they were lying crumpled and unconscious on the floor. I couldn’t see Ari anywhere, but I did see a couple pairs of feet sticking out from beneath piles of debris. No feet I recognized.
Across the room Jeb was slowly getting up - gray with dust, blood running down his chin.
“Here!” said Angel, and I felt the first spark of relief.
“Here,” croaked Nudge, and started coughing. I saw her crawl out from beneath a shattered desk.
“Here.” Total’s voice came from behind an overturned chair. I kicked it out of the way and saw that Total had turned completely gray, except for his eyes. “And I’m not happy about it, let me tell you,” he added grumpily.
“Here,” came Fang’s quiet, calm voice, as he picked himself out of a Fang-shaped hole in the opposite wall. Ooh, I bet that hurt.
“That was so awesome!” Gazzy yelled, leaping to his feet. Bits of broken countertop and wall fell off him.
“I give it a solid ten,” said Iggy, rolling out from under what used to be a desk. “Just for sonic blast alone.”
It had been eerily quiet for a minute after the blast, but now voices started up in the hallway outside. Again we began hearing shouted orders, the clanking of weapons, running feet. Though the feet sounded less steady. I heard groaning from beneath rubble.
A quick survey showed me my flock was whole and ready to move. It also showed …
… a huge hole in the basement wall, big enough to drive a truck through, leading right outside into the night.
“Oh, excellent,” Nudge said.
I grinned, feeling close to tears. Once again, the flock had come through. Our lives were one gnarly sitch after another. Again and again they tried to defeat us, and again and again we showed them what we were made of. I was so proud, and so mad, and now that I thought about it, really sore all over.
“You got that right,” I said, already hurrying toward the hole. When I was next to Gazzy, I held up my hand. “Way to be,” I said, slapping him a high five.
“Max?” Angel said. She looked like she’d been dipped in gray flour.
“Yeah, sweetie?”
“Are we leaving now?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “We’re gonna -“
“Blow this joint!” the flock yelled with me.
“Total!” I clapped and held out my arms. The small dog ran and leaped into them. He stuck out his tongue to lick me happily, saw my face, and thought better of it.
Then the six - seven - of us raced for the hole and did an up-and-away that looked like poetry.
