Thành công có nghĩa là thoát khỏi những nếp nghĩ cũ kỹ và chọn cho mình một hướng đi độc lập.
Keith DeGreen
Liên Kết Nhanh
Biên tập viên
Cập nhật: Maximum Ride 3 - Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports
ePub
A4Part 1 - In Search of Hot Chocolate-chip Cookies
L
ay off the freaking horn!” I said, rubbing my forehead.Nudge pulled away from the steering wheel, which Fang was holding. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just so much fun-it sounds like a party.”
I looked out the van window and shook my head, struggling to keep my irritation in check.
It seemed like only yesterday that we’d done the pretty impossible and busted out of the very creepy and deeply disturbing Itex headquarters in Florida.
In reality, it had been four days. Four days since Gazzy and Iggy had blown a hole in the side of the Itex headquarters, thus springing us from our latest diabolical incarceration.
Because we’re just crazy about consistency, we were on the run again.
However, in an interesting, nonflying change of pace, we were driving. We’d made the savvy decision to borrow an eight-passenger van that had apparently been a love machine back in the ’80s: shag carpeting everywhere, blacked-out windows, a neon rim around the license plate that we’d immediately disabled as too conspicuous.
There was, for once, plenty of room for all six of us: me (Max); Fang, who was driving; Iggy, who was trying to convince me to let him drive, although he’s blind; Nudge, in the front seat next to Fang, seemingly unable to keep her mitts off the horn; the Gasman (Gazzy); and Angel, my baby.
And Total, who was Angel’s talking dog. Long story.
Gazzy was singing a Weird Al Yankovic song, sounding exactly like the original. I admired Gazzy’s uncanny mimicking ability but resented his fascination with bodily functions, a fascination apparently shared by Weird Al.
“Enough with the constipation song,” Nudge groaned, as Gazzy launched into the second verse.
“Are we going to stop soon?” Total asked. “I have a sensitive bladder.” His nose twitched, and his bright eyes looked at me. Because I was the leader and I made the decisions about stopping. And about a million other things.
I glanced down at the map on the laptop screen in my actual lap, then rolled down the window to look at the night sky, gauge our whereabouts.
“You could have gotten a car with GPS,” Total said helpfully.
“Yes,” I said. “Or we could have brought along a dog that doesn’t talk.” I gave Angel a pointed look, and she smiled, well, angelically at me.
Total huffed, offended, and climbed into her lap, his small, black, Scottie-like body fitting neatly against her. She kissed his head.
Just an hour ago we’d finally sped across the state border, into Louisiana, meticulously sticking to our carefully plotted, brilliantly conceived plan of “heading west.” Away from the laugh riot that had been our stint in south Florida. Because we still had a mission: to stop Itex and the School and the Institute and whoever else was involved from destroying us and from destroying the world. We’re nothing if not ambitious.
“Louisiana, the state that road maintenance forgot,” I muttered, grimacing at hitting yet another pothole. I didn’t think I could take this driving thing much longer. From the Everglades to here had taken forever in a car, as compared with flying.
On the other hand, even a big ’80s love van was less noticeable than six flying children and their talking dog.
So there you go.
I wasn’t kidding about the flying-kids part. Or the talking-dog part.
Anyone who’s up to speed on the Adventures of Amazing Max and Her Flying, Fun-Loving Cohorts, you can skip this next page or so. Those of you who picked up this book cold, even though it’s clearly part three of a series, well, get with the program, people! I can’t take two days to get you all caught up on everything! Here’s the abbreviated version (which is pretty good, I might add):
A bunch of mad scientists (mad crazy, not mad angry-though a lot of them do seem to have anger-management issues, especially around me) have been playing around with recombinant life-forms, where they graft different species’ DNA together.
Most of their experiments failed horribly, or lived horribly for only a short while. A couple kinds survived, including us, bird kids, who are mostly human but with some bird DNA thrown in.
The six of us have been together for years. Fang, Iggy, and I are ancient, at fourteen years old. Nudge the motormouth is eleven, Gazzy is eight, Angel is six.
The other ones who function pretty well and last more than a couple days are human-lupine hybrids, or wolf people. We call them Erasers, and they have an average life span of about six years. The scientists (whitecoats) trained them to hunt and kill, like a personal army. They’re strong and bloodthirsty but lousy about impulse control.
The six of us are on the run, trying to thwart the whitecoats’ plan to destroy us and most of humanity, which makes the whitecoats crazy. Or crazier. So they have been going to extreme and sometimes pathetic lengths to capture us.
There you have it: our lives in a nutshell. Emphasis on nut.
But if the above whipped your imagination into a frenzy, here’s something even more interesting: Fang started a blog (http:maximumride.blogspot.com). Not that he’s self-absorbed and trendy or anything. Nope, not him.
We “acquired” a wicked-cool laptop when we escaped from the Itex headquarters, and get this-it has permanent satellite linkup, so we’re always online. And because Itex is a world-class, top-secret, paranoid techfest, the linkup has constantly changing codes and passkeys-its signal is completely untraceable. It’s our key to every imaginable piece of information in the world.
Not to mention movie times and restaurant reviews. I crack up every time I think about it.
But anyway, with our lovely laptop, Fang is upchucking every bit of info we manage to gather about our past, the School, the Institute, Itex, etc. out onto the Web. Who knows? Maybe someone will contact us and help us solve the mystery of our existence.
In the meantime, we can locate the nearest Dunkin’ Donuts in, like, seconds.
Navigating roads and potholes felt like way more work than it was worth, so I convinced the flock to surrender our wheels and travel by wing.
Back to basics.
By midnight, we had crossed from Louisiana into Texas and were approaching the sprawling, fuzzy glow of lights that was Dallas. Focusing on the least-lit area we could see, we dropped altitude, coasting in slow, wide circles, lower and lower.
We landed in a state park, where it took about a minute to find some welcoming trees to sleep in.
And I mean in the trees, not under them. Let’s hear it for government funding, people! Take it from me: State parks are a valuable natural resource! Let’s protect them! If only for the sake of the mutant bird kids in your area.
“So, have you narrowed the plan down any?” Fang asked me, after we’d done our hand-stacking good-night ritual and the other kids were asleep. I was draped across a wide branch of a fir tree, swinging one leg, wishing I could take a hot shower.
“I keep putting two and two together and coming up with thirty-seven,” I said. “We have the School, the Institute, Itex…us, Erasers, Jeb, Anne Walker, the other experiments we saw in New York. But what’s the bigger picture? How does it all fit together? How am I supposed to save the world?”
I never would have admitted not knowing to the younger kids. Kids need leaders, need to know someone’s in charge. I mean, I don’t. But most kids do.
“I can’t help feeling like the School is the place to start,” I went on, ignoring the instinctive tightening of my stomach muscles at the thought of it. “Remember when Angel said she overheard people at the School thinking about the horrible disaster coming up, and afterward there would be hardly any people left?”
Yeah, you heard me right. Angel “overheard people thinking.” Another clue that we’re no ordinary cast of characters. Angel doesn’t just read minds; sometimes she can actually control them too.
Fang nodded. “And we’d survive ’cause we have wings. And I guess fly away from whatever disaster happens.”
I was quiet for a minute, thinking so hard my head hurt.
“Two questions,” Fang said. His eyes looked like part of the night sky. “One, where’s your Voice? And two, where are all the Erasers?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same things,” I said.
Those of you not in the know will be thinking, What Voice?
Why, the little Voice inside my head, of course. You mean you don’t have one? I did.
Well, Ihadn’t lately, butI figured that was just a technical hitch. It wasn’t like my Voice punched a time clock or anything. It was too much to hope that the Voice might be gone forever, but at the same time I was a little freaked out by how alone I felt without it.
“The only thing I can think of is maybe the Voice is transmitted inside my head somehow, and now we’re out of range?”
Fang shrugged.
“Yeah. Who knows? And then the Erasers, I don’t know that either. This is the longest we’ve ever not seen them,” I said, giving the sky around us a quick scan. I still had a microchip in my arm that I was sure was leading them to me, but we hadn’t seen a single Eraser in four days. Usually they popped up out of nowhere, no matter where we were or what we were doing. But it had been ominously quiet on the Eraser front. “It’s creepy, and it makes me feel like something worse is coming. Like there’s a one-ton iron safe hanging over our heads, waiting to drop.”
Nodding, Fang said slowly, “You know what it reminds me of? Like when there’s a storm coming, and all the animals somehow know to disappear. All of a sudden there’s no birds, no noises. And you look up, and there’s a twister headed right for you.”
I frowned. “You think the Erasers aren’t here because they’re fleeing before an impending disaster?”
“Um, yeah,” he said.
I leaned back against my tree, searching the sky again. Even ten miles outside of Dallas, the city lights dimmed the stars. I didn’t know the answers. Suddenly I felt like I didn’t know anything at all. The only certainty in my life was these five kids around me. They were the only things I was sure of, the only things I could trust.
“Go to sleep,” said Fang. “I’ll take the watch. I want to check on my blog anyway.”
My eyes drifted shut as he pulled the laptop out of his bag.
“Fans still hanging on your every word?” Max asked sleepily some time later.
Fang looked up from his blog. He didn’t know how much time had passed. The slightest tint of pink on the horizon made the rest of the world seem blacker somehow. But he could clearly see every freckle on Max’s tired face.
“Yep,” he said. Max shook her head, then relaxed into the crook of a large branch. Her eyes drifted shut again, but he knew she wasn’t yet asleep-her muscles were still tight, her body still stiff.
It was hard for her to relax her guard. Hard for her to relax period. She had a lot to carry on those genetically enhanced shoulders, and all in all, she did a dang good job.
But no one was perfect.
Fang looked down at the screen he’d flipped off when Max had leaned closer. He thumbed the trackball, and the screen glowed to life again.
His blog was attracting more and more attention-word was spreading. In just the past three days, he’d gone from twenty hits to more than a thousand. A thousand people were reading what he wrote, and probably even more would tomorrow.
Thank God for spell-check.
But the message on the screen now was particularly odd. He couldn’t reply to it, couldn’t trace it, couldn’t even delete it without its mysteriously reappearing moments later.
He’d gotten one just like it yesterday. Now he reread the new one, trying to decipher where it came from, what it meant. Looking up, Fang glanced at the flock, now all sleeping in various nearby trees. It was growing lighter with every second, and Fang was pretty whipped himself.
Iggy was slung across two branches, wings half unfolded, mouth open, one leg twitching slightly.
Nudge and Angel had curled up close to each other in the crooks of wide live oak limbs.
Total was nestled on Angel’s lap, one of her hands holding him protectively in place. Fang bet it was incredibly warm with that furry heat source snoozing on her.
The Gasman was tucked almost invisibly into a large hole made by long-ago lightning. He looked younger than eight, dirty, pale with exhaustion.
And then Max. She was sleeping lightly, characteristically frowning as she dreamed. As he watched, one of her hands coiled into a fist, and she shifted on her branch.
Again Fang looked down at the screen, at the message just like the one he’d received yesterday.
One of you is a traitor, it read. One of the flock has gone bad.
We’d never been to Dallas before, and the next day, we decided to visit the John F. Kennedy memorial, as part of our “Highlights of Texas” tour. Or at least the other kids had decided, and they had outvoted me and my wacky “lie low” suggestion.
Now we wandered around the outdoor site, and I have to tell you, I could have used a couple of explanatory plaques.
“This thing is going to fall on our heads any second,” Total said, examining the four walls towering over us and looking around suspiciously.
“It doesn’t say anything about President Kennedy,” the Gasman complained.
“I guess you’re supposed to know already when you come here,” Iggy said.
“He was a president,” Nudge said, trailing one tan hand along the smooth cement. “And he got killed. I think he was supposed to be a good president.”
“I still think there was a second shooter.” Total sniffed and flopped on the grass.
“Can we go now?” I asked. “Before a busload of schoolkids comes on a field trip?”
“Yeah,” said Iggy. “But what now? Let’s do something fun.”
I guess being on the run from bloodthirsty Erasers and insane scientists wasn’t enough fun for him. Kids today are so spoiled.
“There’s a cowgirl museum,” said Nudge. How did she know this? No clue.
Fang opened his laptop to a Dallas tourist site.
“There’s a big art museum,” he said, with no convincing enthusiasm. “And an aquarium.”
Angel sat patiently on the ground, smoothing her teddy bear Celeste’s increasingly bedraggled fur. “Let’s go to the cowgirl museum,” she said.
I bit my lip. Why couldn’t we just get out of here, go hide someplace, take the time to figure everything out? Why was I the only one who seemed to feel a pressing need to know what the heck was going on?
“Football game,” said Fang.
“What?” Iggy asked, his face brightening.
“Football game tonight, Texas Stadium.” Fang snapped the laptop shut and stood. “I think we should go.”
I stared at him. “Are you nuts? We can’t go to a football game!” I said with my usual delicacy and tact. “Being surrounded, crowded, by tens of thousands of people, trapped inside, cameras everywhere-God, it’s a freaking nightmare just thinking about it!”
“Texas Stadium is open to the sky,” Fang said firmly. “The Cowboys are playing the Chicago Bears.”
“And we’ll be there!” Iggy cheered, punching the air.
“Fang, can I talk to you privately for a second?” I asked tersely, motioning him out of the memorial.
We stepped through an opening in the cement wall and moved a couple yards away. I put my hands on my hips. “Since when are you calling the shots?” I demanded. “We can’t go to a football game! There’s going to be cameras everywhere. What are you thinking?”
Fang looked at me seriously, his eyes unreadable. “One, it’s going to be an awesome game. Two, we’re seizing life by the tail. Three, yeah, there’s going to be cameras everywhere. We’ll be spotted. The School and the Institute and Jeb and the rest of the whitecoats probably have feeds tapping every public camera. So they’ll know where we are.”
I was furious and didn’t know what to think. “Funny, you didn’t look insane when you got up this morning.”
“They’ll know where we are and they’ll come after us,” Fang said grimly. “Then we’ll know where the tornado is.”
Comprehension finally dawned. “You want to draw them out.”
“I can’t take not knowing,” he said quietly.
I weighed Fang’s sanity against my determination to remain the leader. Finally I sighed and nodded. “Okay, I get it. One major firefight, coming right up. But you so owe me. I mean, my God, football!”
This may surprise you, but people in Texas are very into their contact sports. I saw more than one infant wearing a Cowboys onesie.
I was wound tighter than a choke chain on a rottweiler, hating everything about being here. The Texas Stadium was, shock, Texas size, and we were surrounded by more than sixty thousand popcorn-munching opportunities to go postal.
Nudge was eating blue cotton candy, her eyes like Frisbees, looking at everything. “I want big hair!” she said excitedly, tugging on my shirt.
“I blame you,” I told Fang, and he almost smiled.
We sat down low, by the middle of the field, about as far from any exit as we could be. I would have been much happier, or at least slightly less miserable, in the nosebleed section, close to the open sky. Down here, despite the lack of roof on the stadium, I felt hemmed in and trapped.
“Tell me again what we’re doing here,” I said, running a continuous scan of our surroundings.
Fang popped some Cracker Jack into his mouth. “We’re here to watch manly men do manly things.”
I followed Fang’s line of sight: He was watching the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, who were not doing manly things, by any stretch of the imagination.
“What’s going on?” Iggy asked. Unlike the others, he was as tense as I was. In a strange place, surrounded by loud, echoing noise, unable to get his bearings-I wondered how long it would take him to crack.
“If anything happens,” I told him, “stand on your chair and do an up-and-away, ten yards out and straight up. Got it?”
“Yeah,” he said, turning his head nervously, wiping his hands on his grubby jeans.
“I want to be a cheerleader,” Nudge said wistfully.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” I snapped, but a look from Fang shut me up. It meant, don’t rain on her parade. No matter how ill-conceived and sexist that parade might be. Inside, I was burning up. I never should have agreed to this. I was hugely miffed that Fang had insisted on it. Now, watching him practically salivate over the horrifically perky cheerleaders, I got even madder.
“They’re wearing tiny little shorts. One of them has long red hair,” he was murmuring to Iggy, who nodded, rapt.
And we all know how much you like long red hair, I thought, remembering how it had felt, seeing Fang kiss the Red-Haired Wonder back in Virginia. Acid started to burn a hole in my stomach.
“Max?” Angel looked up at me. I really had to get these kids into a bath soon, I realized, looking at her limp blond curls.
“Yes, honey? You hungry?” I started to wave down a hot-dog vendor.
“No. I mean, yeah, I’ll take two hot dogs, and Total wants two too-but I meant, it’s okay.”
“What’s okay?”
“Everything.” She looked up at me earnestly. “Everything will be okay, Max. We’ve come this far-we’re supposed to survive. We’ll survive, and you’ll save the world, like you’re supposed to.”
Well, reality just shows up sometimes, doesn’t it?
“I’m not comfortable in this stadium,” I explained, trying to look calm.
“I know. And you hate Fang looking at those girls. But we’re still having fun, and Fang still loves you, and you’ll still save the world. Okay?”
My mouth was agape, and my brain was frantically trying to process which statement to respond to first-Fang loves me?-when I heard someone whisper, “Is that one of those bird kids?”
Angel and I looked at each other, and I saw a world of comprehension in her gaze that made her seem much older than six.
It took only seconds for the rest of the flock to hear the whispers and to realize that the whispers were growing and spreading.
“Mom! I think that’s those bird kids we saw in the newspaper!”
“Jason, look over there. Are they the kids in the pictures?”
“Oh, my goodness!”
“Rebecca, come here!”
And so on and so forth. I guess some photographer must have gotten picures of us flying away from Disney World and splashed them all over the newspapers. God forbid we should be able to watch a lousy football game with nothing extreme happening.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two blue-uniformed security men starting down the aisle toward us. A fast 360 revealed no one morphing into Erasers, but there were many eyes on us, many mouths wide open in surprise.
“Should we run?” Gazzy asked nervously, watching the crowd, mapping exit routes like he’d been taught.
“Running’s too slow,” I said.
“The game hasn’t even started,” Total said bitterly from under Iggy’s seat. “I have money on the Bears!”
“You’re welcome to stay here and see how the score ends up.” I stood, began grabbing backpacks, counting flock members. The usual.
Total crawled out and jumped nimbly into Iggy’s arms.
I tapped Iggy’s hand twice. In an instant, we climbed onto our chairs. The muttering of voices was swelling, rising all around us, and the next thing I knew, our faces were twenty feet high, being projected onto the enormous stadium screens. Just like Fang had wanted. I hoped he was happy.
“Up and away on three,” I said. Two more security guards were approaching fast from the right.
People were moving away from us, and I was glad the stadium had a namby-pamby no-weapons policy. Now even the cheerleaders’ eyes were on us, though they didn’t pause in their routine.
“One,” I began, and we all leaped into the air, right over everyone’s head.
Whoosh! I unfurled my wings hard and fast. My wingspan is almost thirteen feet, tip to tip, and Fang’s and Iggy’s are even wider.
I bet we looked like avenging angels, hovering over the astonished crowd. Kind of grungy avenging angels. Angels in need of a good scrub.
“Move it!” I ordered, still scanning the audience, checking for Erasers. The last batch of Erasers had been able to fly, but no one seemed to be taking to the air except us.
A couple of hard downstrokes and we were level with the open edge of the roof, looking down at the brightly lit field, the tiny faces all staring at us. Some people were smiling and punching the air. Most seemed shocked and scared. I saw some faces that looked angry.
But none were elongating, becoming furry, growing oversize canine fangs. They were all staying human.
As we shot off into the night, flying in perfect formation like navy jets, I wondered: Where have all the Erasers gone?
“It sucked, but it was way cool at the same time,” Gazzy said. “I felt like the Blue Angels!”
“Yeah, except the Blue Angels are an extremely well funded, well equipped, well trained, well fed, and no doubt squeaky-clean group of crack navy pilots,” I said. “And we’re a bunch of unfunded, unequipped, semitrained, not nearly well fed enough, and filthy mongrel avian-human hybrids. But other than that, it’s exactly the same.”
I knew what he meant, though. As mad as I was about our being in that situation in the first place, and as much as I hated being on the run yet again, and as vulnerable as that last little stunt had made us, still-the feeling of flying in tight formation, all of us with wide, beautiful, awesome wings…it was just incredibly cool.
Gazzy gave a hesitant smile, picking up on my tension, not knowing if I was trying to be funny. I sat down, stuck a straw in a juice pouch, and sucked it dry, then tossed it aside and drained another one.
We were hiding in the Texas mountains, close to the border of Me-hi-co. We’d found a deep, very narrow canyon that protected us from the wind, and now we were settled on the bottom, in front of a small fire.
I hadn’t been this mad at Fang for this long a period of time since-never. Sure, I’d agreed to his lame-butt idea, but actually, now that I thought about it, it was about six times stupider than I’d realized.
“Hmm,” said Fang, looking at the laptop. “We’re everywhere-TV news, papers, radio. Seems a lot of people got photos.”
“There’s a surprise,” I said. “I bet that explains those helicopters we were hearing.”
“Are you okay, Max?” Nudge asked timidly.
I gave Nudge an almost convincing smile. “Sure, sweetie. I’m just…tired.”
I couldn’t help shooting a glance at Fang.
He looked up. “I got a hundred and twenty-one thousand hits today.”
“Whaaat? Really?” He had that kind of audience? He could barely spell!
“Yeah. People are organizing, actually trying to find out info for us.”
Iggy frowned. “What if they get caught by whitecoats?”
“What are you writing about?” I admit I hadn’t been reading his blog. Too busy trying to stay alive, etc.
“Us. Trying to get all the puzzle pieces out there, see if anyone can help us put the big picture together.”
“That’s a good idea, Fang,” said Angel, turning her hot dog over to burn the other side. “We need to make connections.”
What did she mean by that?
Connections are important, Max.
The Voice was back.
I was so startled by the Voice’s sudden reappearance that I jumped and practically fell against the rock wall.
Instinctively I put a hand to my temple, as if I could feel the Voice running under my skin like a river.
“You okay?” Iggy reached out and touched my jeans. He’d felt me jump.
“Yeah,” I muttered, walking away from the group. I felt them all looking at me, but I didn’t want to explain.
Voice. Long time no annoy, I thought.
You were doing pretty well on your own, it replied. As before, it was impossible to tell whether it was young or old, male or female, human or machine. I was instantly aware of a schizoid reaction: Part of me felt irritated, invaded, suspicious, resentful-and part of me was flooded with relief, like I wasn’t so alone.
Which was dumb. I lived with my five best friends and a dog. They were my family, my life. How could I possibly feel alone?
Everyone is always alone, Max, said the Voice, chipper as always. That’s why connections are important.
Have you been reading Hallmark cards again? I thought. I walked out to the end of the canyon and found myself a mere ten feet from a ledge that dropped sharply into a much deeper, bigger canyon.
Connections, Max. Remember your dream?
I frowned, not knowing what the Voice was talking about.
You mean my dream of becoming the first avian-American Miss America? I thought snidely.
No. Your dream that the Erasers are chasing you, and you run through the woods until you come to a ledge. Then you fall off the ledge but start flying. And escape.
My breath left my chest with an audible oof. I hadn’t had that dream since…well, since my dream had been replaced by a reality that was much worse. How had the Voice known about it?
“Yeah, so?” I said out loud.
This canyon is very much like your dream. It’s as if you’ve come full circle.
I had no clue. No idea what the Voice meant.
Connections. Putting it all together. Your dream, Fang’s laptop, people you’ve met, places you’ve been. Itex, the School, the Institute. Isn’t it all connected?
Okay, but how? I practically shouted.
I almost thought I heard the Voice sigh, but probably just imagined it.
You’ll see. You’ll figure it out. Before it’s too late.
That’s comforting, I thought angrily. Thanks.
Then I had another thought. Voice? Where are all the Erasers?
Granted, the Voice had never answered a direct question-no, that would have been too easy. You don’t just give the rat a piece of cheese-you make her work for it, right?
Shrugging, I turned and headed back to the others.
They’re dead, Max, said the Voice. They’ve all been…retired.
I stopped in my tracks, frozen by shock. The Voice was always coy with information, but as far as I knew, it had never lied to me. (Which meant nothing, I realize.) But-dead?
Dead, the Voice repeated. They’ve been retired. All around the world, every branch of the organization has been terminating their recombinant-DNA experiments. You’re among the only ones left. And they’re coming for you.
Ooh, ominous music, right? “They’re coming for you.” Big whoop. They’d been coming for us for four years now. They hadn’t done too well so far.
I strode back to the flock.
“You okay?” Fang asked.
I nodded, then remembered I was mad at him.
I looked away and deliberately sat next to Nudge, against the other canyon wall.
“I just heard from the Voice,” I said.
“What did it say?” Nudge asked, eating a rolled-up piece of bologna.
Angel and Total watched me intently, and Fang stopped typing.
“It said we haven’t been seeing Erasers because they’re all dead,” I said bluntly.
Everyone’s eyes widened to, um, about the size of dinner plates.
“What did it mean, they’re all dead?” Nudge asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t know. If it’s not pulling my leg, then I would guess it meant…that all the Erasers are taking dirt naps.” I thought about Ari, Jeb’s son, who had been Eraserfied, and felt a tugging pain in my chest. Poor Ari. What a sucky life he’d been born into. And such a short one too.
“Who killed them?” Fang asked, getting to the point, as usual.
“The Voice said…all over the world, every branch of Itex and the Institute and the School-they were all terminating their recombinant-DNA experiments. And that we were almost the only ones left.” It started to sink in, what that meant, and a cold shiver made me put my arms around my knees.
We were all silent for a minute, digesting this.
Then Total said, “Okay, if anyone asks, I can’t talk, right?”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh yeah, that’ll fool ’em.”
“What are we gonna do now?” the Gasman asked. He looked very worried and came to sit closer to me. I reached out and fluffed up his mohawk, which had grown out.
“We have a mission,” I began, ready to psych us all up for solving this puzzle. And possibly taking out a few whitecoats while we were at it.
“We need a home,” said Fang, at almost the exact same time.
“What?” I asked, startled.
“We need to find a permanent home,” Fang said seriously. “We can’t last on the run much longer. I say screw the mission. Let them blow up the world. We can find a place to hide out where no one can find us, and we can just…live.”
We all stared at Fang. That was the longest statement any of us had ever heard him utter.
“We can’t forget the mission,” I began, just as Angel said, “Yeah! We need a home!”
“A home!” said the Gasman, looking thrilled.
“A real home, better than our last one,” Nudge agreed happily. “With no grown-ups, and no school or school uniforms.”
“A home with a yard and lots of grass,” said Total. “No more of this pebbles-and-dirt crap.”
Why was I the only one who needed to know what was going on, who needed to understand what had happened to us and why? After everything we’d been through in the last few months, now they were ready to just throw it all away? I mean, Angel’s kidnapping, going to New York, the subway tunnels, the beach, staying with Anne Walker, going to that school…
Oh. Well, okay. So they might be a little tired of the fear, pain, and mayhem, but still…
“Iggy?” I said, trying to keep the pleading out of my voice.
“Let’s see,” he said, holding out his hands as if they were a scale. “Hmm. On the one hand, we have constant, desperate, heart-pounding escapes, day after day, never knowing what’s going to happen to us or whether we’ll even be alive the next day…”
I frowned, seeing where he was going with this.
“On the other hand, a home: hidden, safe, sleeping in the same bed every night, relaxing, not having to fight for our lives at a moment’s notice…”
“Okay, okay,” I said. “You don’t have to rub it in.”
They watched me, waiting.
What was with Fang? Why was he undermining me like this? I used to feel so connected to him, like he was my absolute best friend in the world, someone who always had my back. Now I looked at him and felt as if I hardly knew him.
Reluctantly I shrugged one shoulder. “Whatever. A home, whatever.”
The ecstatic cheering only made me feel worse.
“I’m not giving up the mission,” I said, loud enough for Fang, several yards away, to hear me. We were only about eight thousand feet in the air, but it was really cold, probably below freezing. The wind in my eyes made them water constantly.
“I know.”
“This is stupid,” I said. Looking down, I saw the Pecos River winding like a thin, shiny snake through west Texas.
“Their hopes and dreams aren’t stupid,” Fang said, and I felt a flush warm my cheeks.
“That’s not what I meant,” I grumbled. “It’s just-we were on a path. Now we’re just leaving that path. One day I’m supposed to be saving the world, and the next I’m out looking for real estate. I don’t get it. Plus, thanks to your little plan, we can’t spit without being spotted and recognized. Where was my brain when I agreed to that one?”
Fang opened his mouth, but I interrupted. “Plus, now, thanks to you, we left the younger kids to be watched over by a blind guy and a talking dog. I must be insane! I mean, even more insane than usual. I’m going back.”
I dipped one wing, ready to make a big wheeling turn, but Fang edged into my way, his face set.
“You promised,” he said, making me scowl. “You said you’d give a quick recon, see if we could find a place.”
I kept up the scowl, thankful that not once in my whole life had anyone felt compelled to tell me not to ruin my pretty face like that.
“Let them blow up the world, and global-warm it, and pollute it,” Fang said. “You and me and the others will be holed up somewhere, safe. We’ll come back out when they’re all gone, done playing their games of world domination.”
He had positively become a chatterbox lately.
“That’s a great plan. Of course, by then we won’t be able to go outside because we’ll get fried by the lack of ozone layer,” I said, getting worked up. “We’ll be living in damp caves, eating at the bottom of the food chain because everything with any flavor will be full of mercury or radiation or something!”
I recognized Fang’s face of exaggerated patience, which of course got on my last nerve.
“And there won’t be any TV or cable because all the people will be dead!” I was on a roll now. “So our only entertainment will be Gazzy singing the constipation song! And there won’t be amusement parks and museums and zoos and libraries and cute shoes! We’ll be like cavemen, trying to weave clothes out of plant fibers. We’ll have nothing! Nothing! All because you and the kids want to kick back in a La-Z-Boy during the most important time in history!”
I was practically frothing at the mouth.
Fang looked at me. “So maybe we should sign you up for a weaving class. Get a jump on all those plant fibers.”
I stared at him, saw how he was trying to suppress his laughter at my vision of the apocalypse.
Something inside me snapped. My whole world had gotten turned on its head in the last twenty-four hours. Like, my old world had sucked so bad, and this world, amazingly, sucked worse.
“I hate you!” I screamed at Fang. Tucking my wings in, I aimed downward, diving toward the ground at more than two hundred miles an hour.
“No you dooonnn’t!” Fang’s voice spiraled away into nothingness, far above me.
Inside my head, almost drowned out by the roar of wind rushing by my ears, I heard the Voice make a tsking sound. You guys are crazy about each other, it said.
“Oh, yeah. No bedtime. It’s a good thing,” Gazzy sang, doing a little dance.
“Look, just because Max isn’t here doesn’t mean all the rules have gone out the window,” Iggy said, facing him. “She left me in charge, and I’m gonna make sure to do everything she would-” He couldn’t keep a straight face any longer and cracked up, bending over and clutching his stomach.
Nudge rolled her eyes, and she and Angel shared a smile. She picked up a small handful of pebbles and carefully started distributing them among other little piles.
“Mancala, huh?” Total said, lying down next to them. “Next time we’re in a store, let’s lift some cards. We could play Texas hold ’em. I would kick your butts.” His small, shiny nose twitched as he watched them play.
“That’s a good idea,” said Nudge, as Angel distributed her pile, though she had no idea how Total would hold the cards. Unless he had opposable thumbs hidden under his paw fur. Which, come to think of it, he very well might. Checking behind her, she saw she had enough room to let her wings stretch out a bit, so she extended them, enjoying the feeling. “Ahh.”
“I want wings,” Total said, not for the first time. “If I could fly, no one would have to carry me. If they could graft wings onto those big lunking Erasers, they could definitely patch a pair onto me.”
“It would hurt, Total,” said Angel, studying the mancala game.
“Do you think the Erasers are really gone?” Nudge asked them. In the background, she heard Iggy saying, “No, see, you need the spark to ignite it. You need the flint to make the spark, see?”
Gazzy murmured, “Yeah, but what about the bleach?” and then their voices faded again.
Nudge sighed. This was the kind of thing she wished Max or Fang were here to handle.
“Hey, guys?” Iggy called. Nudge looked up.
“How about a little test flight?” he said. “A little wheeling-around like the hawks showed us. Okay?”
“Yeah, okay,” said Angel. She smiled at Nudge. “You were about to win anyway.”
Nudge grinned back. “I know.” Standing up, she dusted off her jeans and pulled her wings in to walk to the end of the tiny canyon.
One by one, the bird kids leaped off the ledge, falling downward for a few moments before hauling out their wings, strong, light, and catching the wind in their feathers. Nudge loved this feeling, the sensation of power and freedom, the knowledge that she could rise up from the ground like an angel. Any time she wanted to.
She smiled over at Angel, who turned to smile back at her. Then Angel’s eyes went wide, and her face took on a look of horror. Nudge whirled as a large shadow blotted the light from the flock.
A wide, thick swarm of Erasers was flying right toward them. They were back!
“Seriously, we have to talk,” said Fang.
I sighed, looking up at the sky. “It’s just like dolphins chirping,” I said regretfully, talking out loud to myself. “I hear sounds, but none of them make sense.”
I put my hands on my hips and surveyed the scene below us. “No water source. Let’s go.”
Without waiting for him, I launched myself off the low cliff, moving my wings powerfully, heading toward the sun. We’d stopped twice already, and neither place had all the stuff we needed: close-by food source, water, safety.
This was completely pointless, as opposed to my original plan, which was completely pointed.
Without turning my head, I glanced out of the corners of my eyes to see Fang’s sleek wings behind me. He was acting weird. I didn’t think Fang had been replaced by a clone the way I had at one point. Yes, folks, in my life, that’s actually a legitimate concern. Take a moment and count your blessings.
Maybe he really does just want to talk, said the Voice.
Oh, yeah, ’cause Fang is all about the wordy sharing of feelings, I thought back. Something’s up, something he’s not telling me.
And I would get it out of him at the next place we stopped. This was one mystery I could solve, even if I had to beat it out of him.
“I knew it was too good to be true,” Gazzy yelled. “The Erasers’ all being dead!”
“I didn’t feel them coming,” Angel said, confused.
Nudge’s heart was pounding, the blood rushing in her ears. These Erasers moved more in sync with one another than the others they had encountered, but still awkwardly, choppily. Nudge shot a last look at Angel, then soared upward just as the Erasers hit them.
Focus. That’s what Max always said. Focus.
Concentrating, Nudge dropped down on an Eraser, smashing her sneakered feet against its head. Then, whirling, she cracked the hard edge of her hand against its windpipe. The Eraser made a weird noise and started to lose altitude.
“Nudge! Watch it!” Gazzy screamed.
Wham! An iron-hard punch to the ribs knocked Nudge’s breath away, and she sucked in air soundlessly, trying not to panic. Instinctively she remembered to keep moving her wings, staying aloft long enough to regain her breath.
But there was no time-the Eraser came at her again, fist cocked back to punch. At the last second, Nudge dropped suddenly, so that its big, hairy arm swished through empty air.
“Take that, sucker!” she wheezed.
Surging upward, Nudge kicked it, aiming for its stomach but actually hitting somewhat lower. The Eraser doubled over without a sound, and Nudge clasped her hands together and brought them down on the back of its neck as hard as she could.
“Ow!” Angel’s cry of pain made Nudge whirl, and she saw the smallest member of the flock being held by one arm as she ineffectually tried to kick her captor.
Nudge rushed over but was beaten there by Iggy, following the sound of Angel’s voice. Together they pummeled the Eraser, and Iggy chopped down on the arm holding Angel. With a strange roar, the Eraser turned and pulled back its arm, and then made an odd strangled sound.
Looking down, Nudge saw Total chomping on the Eraser’s ankle, shaking his head even as he dangled there, high above the ground-with no wings.
“Get him,” she whispered to Angel, who nodded and quickly dropped ten feet. The Eraser shook its leg, but Total closed his eyes and clamped down harder, growling fiercely. Judging from the other muffled sounds, he was also swearing a blue streak.
“Yo!” yelled the Gasman, catching everyone’s attention. “Fire in the hole!”
Nudge’s side was killing her, and she still felt low on oxygen. But experience had taught that when Gazzy or Iggy said something like that, you ducked and covered as fast as you could. So she folded in her wings, immediately dropping like a stone.
A good thirty feet down, she unfurled her wings and shot to one side, just as Gazzy pushed an Eraser away from him with a muttered “Oof!” Angel had grabbed Total, Iggy had grabbed Angel, and they were hauling upward like pocket rockets.
There were five Erasers left-Nudge guessed they’d disposed of about half of them. Her ribs felt broken, she wished Max and Fang were here, and she didn’t know wh-
BOOM!
“Gross!” Nudge shrieked, as bits of Eraser hit her. “Gross, gross, gross! Oh, God, Gazzy! Gross!”
Nudge worked her wings, moving up toward Iggy. She passed one main chunk of an Eraser dropping past her, and saw two others that had been wounded-one’s wing was broken almost off, and the other appeared to be missing a leg.
But it was weird, the way-
“You have terminated me,” one of them said in a strange, flat voice. “But I am one of many.”
“Robots!” Iggy breathed, taking Total from Angel.
“One of many, one of many, one of many,” the robot Eraser was saying. Now Nudge saw the red light in its eyes, saw how they were fading and winking out.
“Good!” spat the Gasman, kicking it hard. “Because we like to blow stuff up, blow stuff up, blow stuff up!”
Then all the remaining Erasers seemed to fold in on themselves, as if programmed, and dropped out of sight. A long, long time later, the flock saw the small poofs of dust and dirt showing that they’d finally hit the canyon floor.
“Well, that was different,” Iggy said.
“And so gross!” Nudge said, still brushing Eraser shards off herself.
“What are you thinking about?” Fang’s quiet voice barely carried to me over the crackling of the fire.
I’m thinking about how much easier it was when everyone just did what I told them, I thought sourly. “Wondering if the kids are okay,” I said.
“That place was way secluded and easy to defend. And if the Erasers are all dead…” Fang pulled a stick out of the fire and blew on a crisp piece of roasted rabbit.
Yes, rabbit. We’d caught it, and now we were going to eat it. I won’t go into all the steps in between. The thing is, when you have to survive, you have to survive. I hope you never need to find that out for yourself.
He handed the stick to me, and I started gnawing, grinning at how surprisingly few etiquette rules seemed to apply here. Then I started laughing.
Fang looked at me.
“Thanksgiving at Anne’s,” I said. “Sit up straight, napkin in lap, wait for everyone to be served, say grace, take small amounts, use the salad fork, no burping.”
I waved a hand around the dusty cave, where we squatted by a fire, tearing off strips of Thumper with our teeth.
Fang gave a half smile and nodded. “At least it isn’t desert rat.”
Okay, you sissies in the back, the ones going “Eew!” Let’s see you go without anything to eat for three days, especially if you’re a biological anomaly who needs three thousand calories a day minimum, and then someone presents you with a hot, smoky, charred piece of rat au jus. You’d scarf it down so fast you’d burn your tongue. There would be no quibbling about ketchup either.
“You know what they say about rat,” I began.
“Everyone gets a drumstick,” Fang and I finished together.
I looked at Fang, his sharp, angular face cast with shadows from the fire. I’d grown up with him, I trusted no one more than him, I depended on him. And now we felt a little like strangers.
I moved away from the fire and sat down with my back against the cave wall. Fang wiped his hands on his jeans and came to sit next to me. Outside, it was nighttime, the stars blotted out by thick, rolling clouds. This place probably got only a few inches of rain a year, and it looked like it was about to get some. I hoped the rest of the flock was curled up safe and warm where we had left them.
“What are we doing here, Fang?”
“The kids want us to find a place to settle down.”
“What about the School and saving the world?” I asked with scalpel-like delicacy.
“We have to quit playing their game,” Fang said softly, watching the fire. “We have to remove ourselves from the equation.”
“I can’t,” I admitted in frustration. “I-just have to do this.”
“Max, you can change your mind.” His voice was like autumn leaves dropping lightly onto the ground.
“I don’t know how.”
Then my throat felt tight, and I rubbed my fists against my eyes. I dropped my face onto my arms, crossed over my knees. This sucked! I wanted to be back with the oth-
Fang’s hand gently smoothed my hair off my neck. My breath froze in my chest, and every sense seemed hyperalert. His hand stroked my hair again, so softly, and then trailed across my neck and shoulder and down my back, making me shiver.
I looked up. “What the heck are you doing?”
“Helping you change your mind,” he whispered, and then he leaned over, tilted my chin up, and kissed me.
At that moment, I had no mind to change, or not change, or throw against the nearest wall. My mind had shorted out as soon as Fang’s lips touched mine. His mouth was warm and firm, his hand gentle on my neck.
I’d kissed him once before, when I thought he was dying on a beach. But that had lasted a second. This was…going on and on.
I realized I was getting dizzy, and then realized it was because I hadn’t taken a breath yet. It seemed like an hour before we broke apart. We were both breathing raggedly, and I stared into his eyes as if I would find answers there.
Which of course I didn’t. All I saw was the dancing flames of our small fire.
Fang cleared his throat, looking as surprised as I felt. “Forget the mission,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Let’s just all be safe somewhere together.”
And boy, did that seem like a swell idea just then. We could be like Tarzan and Jane, swinging through a jungle, snagging bananas right off a tree, living at one with nature, la-di-da-
Tarzan and Jane and their band of merry mutants!
Fang’s hand was making slow, warm circles between my wings, and that plus the hypnotic fire and the stress of the day all combined to make me tired and unable to think straight.
What does he want from me? I thought. I half expected the Voice to chime in here, sure it had been eavesdropping on this whole embarrassing scene.
Now Fang was rubbing my neck. I was both exhausted and hyperaware, and just as he leaned in-to kiss me again?-I jumped to my feet.
He looked up at me.
“I-I’m not sure about this,” I muttered. How’s that for silver-tongued rapier wit, eh? Overreacting impressively, I raced to the front of the cave and launched myself out into the night, unfurling my wings, feeling the wind against my burning face, hearing the rush of air all around me.
Fang didn’t follow, though when I glanced back I saw his tall, lean form standing in the cave entrance, highlighted by the fire.
Not too far away, I found a narrow rock ledge, well hidden in the night, and I collapsed there in tears, feeling confused and upset, and excited and hopeful, and appalled.
Ah, the joys of being an adolescent hybrid runaway.
What was Fang going to do, blog about Max throwing herself out into space just so she wouldn’t have to kiss him again? No! Instead he smashed his fist against the cave wall, then grimaced with the pain and stupidity, seeing his bloodied knuckles, the almost instant swelling.
He banked the fire, keeping a small pile of embers glowing in case she came back and needed help finding the entrance. Neither was likely.
He kicked most of the rocks off a Fang-sized place and lay down, rubbing his wings against the fine silt because it felt good. He didn’t want to check his blog-he’d had almost eight hundred thousand hits earlier-didn’t want to do anything except lie still and think.
Max.
God, but she was stubborn. And tough. And closed in. Closed off. Except when she was holding Angel, or ruffling the Gasman’s hair, or pushing something closer to Iggy’s hand so he could find it easily without knowing anyone had helped him. Or when she was trying to untangle Nudge’s mane of hair. Or-sometimes-when she was looking at Fang.
He shifted on the hard ground, a half-dozen flashes of memory cycling through his brain. Max looking at him and laughing. Max leaping off a cliff, snapping out her wings, flying off, so incredibly powerful and graceful that it took his breath away.
Max punching someone’s lights out, her face like stone.
Max kissing that weiner Sam on Anne’s front porch.
Gritting his teeth, Fang rolled onto his side.
Max kissing him on the beach, after Ari had kicked Fang’s butt.
Just now, her mouth soft under his.
He wished she were here, if not next to him, then somewhere in the cave, so he could hear her breathing.
It was going to be hard to sleep without that tonight.
Before Fang took the computer with him, and before they’d almost gotten nailed by robot Erasers, Nudge had been reading camping recipes online. She was tired of Ding-Dongs and hot dogs on a stick.
She’d found out that you could do amazing stuff, like cooking whole meals wrapped in foil in the embers of a fire. She decided to get a frying pan next time she had a chance. It wouldn’t be too hard to carry around one little frying pan, would it? And if they had a frying pan, Iggy could make almost anything. Just thinking about it was making her stomach rumble.
“That smells good,” said Angel, coming over to kneel by the fire. “Is that what that foil was for?”
“Uh-huh,” Nudge said, poking at the foil package with a stick.
The next second, the waning sun blinked out.
They both looked up in surprise, and Gazzy and Iggy stopped playing tic-tac-toe.
Angel drew in her breath so fast it sounded like a whistle. Nudge felt like her own breath had turned to a chunk of concrete in her throat, because she couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t move.
Hundreds of those robot things, the things that Iggy called Flyboys, were covering the sky above their canyon and coming in both ends. Nudge guessed the few that had survived the earlier fight had gone to get reinforcements. There must have been ten times as many this time.
The flock was trapped.
“Dinner’s ready,” said Angel. “And it’s us.”
“Up and away?” Iggy asked, and Gazzy answered, “No! They’re above us too! Everywhere!”
Nudge’s ears were filled with a horrible droning sound, like a thousand bees, and as the Flyboys dropped closer, it started to sound like chanting, like, “We are many! You cannot win!”
“We can sure as heck try!” Gazzy yelled. Leaning down, he grabbed a bunch of sticks from the fire and threw them into the air. Several of the Flyboys caught fire. Excellent. They were flammable!
Nudge raced over and grabbed some burning sticks too, but she held one too close and singed her hand. Still, she threw them into the air as hard as she could, watching in amazement as Flyboys burst into flame.
“Cool!” Gazzy grinned, forgetting to panic for a moment. “It’s like they were dipped in gasoline!”
“They don’t have minds,” Angel said.
Nudge looked at her.
“They don’t have minds,” Angel explained again, upset. “I can’t do anything.”
“Well, I can bite ’em!” Total cried, racing in circles around their feet. “Let me at ’em! Let me get my fangs on ’em!” He made little leaps into the air, snapping his jaws.
“Total!” Angel said. “Be careful! Come back!”
“Let me teach ’em a lesson!” Total yelled.
The flock fought hard-of course. Max had taught them to fight, to never, ever give up. Unless running away made more sense, she’d always added.
Running away would have been so great, Nudge thought, but in this case there was nowhere to run. The canyon was clogged with Flyboys. They seemed to be mostly metal with a thin Eraser covering on the outside. The ones that had burned were all metal now, their skin and fur charred and shriveled against them, smelling god-awful.
Iggy threw every bomb he had (Nudge had no idea where he’d been hiding them, and she bet Max didn’t know about them either), but all the bombs destroyed only fifteen or twenty Flyboys. Not enough, nowhere close to enough.
The flock was caught. Maybe if Max and Fang had been there, it would have taken the robots another minute or two. That’s how bad it was, how hopeless.
Within twenty minutes, the flock had been duct-taped into unmoving bundles, even Total. Then Flyboys grabbed them and took to the air, flying like big toasters or something.
Nudge saw Iggy, Gazzy, Angel, and Total, their mouths taped shut like hers.
Don’t worry. Angel sent the thought out to each of them. Don’t worry. Max and Fang will come back. They’ll find us. They’ll be really mad too.
Nudge tried not to think, so Angel wouldn’t be more scared, but she wasn’t able to shut her brain down completely. So Angel might have felt her think: Not even Max and Fang can get us out of this. No one can. This is the end.
I went back to Fang the next morning and pretended that nothing had happened, that my little DNA-enhanced heart hadn’t gone all aflutter and that I hadn’t imagined myself in a hoopskirt, coming down the stairs at Tara like Scarlett O’Hara.
Nope. Not my style. Instead I showed up, skidding on my landing, sending grit and pebbles everywhere, and said, “Let’s roll!”
Topping the list of thorns in my side for today were:
1) Weirdness between me and Fang
2) Worry about leaving the flock
3) Gnawing sense of pressure about getting back to the mission
4) The usual: food, shelter, safety, life expectancy, etc.
5) And then, of course, that whole actual saving-the-world thing
Gosh, it was hard to figure out what to worry about first. Everything wanting to contribute to my ulcer, Get in line and take a number!
“You’re quiet.” Fang broke into my thoughts. Below us, barren miles of mountains, plains, Indian reservations, and desert looked like wrinkles on a dirt-colored tablecloth.
I glanced at him. “Enjoy it while you can.”
“Max.” He waited till I looked at him again. “The one thing we have is each other. The one thing we can depend on, no matter what. We have to…talk about stuff.”
I would pretty much rather have been torn apart by wild animals. “I liked it better when you didn’t talk,” I said. “I mean, there’s a reason people don’t look under rocks, you know?”
“Meaning what?” He sounded irritated. “We’re going to pretend nothing’s going on? That’s stupid. The only way to deal with any of this is to get it out in the open.”
Ugh. “Have you been watching Oprah again?”
Now I had made him mad, and he fell silent. I was relieved, but I knew this subject wasn’t closed. Then my eyes registered the particular area we were flying over at high speed. It was a little hard to tell where Arizona left off and California began-you’d think they would just go ahead and paint those blue map lines everywhere, divvying up the states-but I recognized this place.
“Going down!” I announced, angling my body and tucking my wings behind me.
Fang followed me without comment. I could practically feel the strong “wring her neck” vibes coming from him, but it wasn’t the first time he’d been really angry at me, and God knew it wouldn’t be the last.
I landed at the edge of a woods near a dinky little Arizona town and started walking west. After two minutes I stopped, looking straight ahead at a small, tidy house surrounded by a somewhat scraggly yard.
Max, you’re making a serious mistake, said the Voice. Get up and get out of here right now. Get back to your mission. I’m very serious about this.
I ignored it, emotions starting to swirl inside me.
“Where are we?” Fang whispered.
“At Ella’s house,” I said, hardly able to believe it myself. “And Dr. Martinez.”
“If we can all fly, why are we in the back of a semi?” Iggy whispered.
He was rewarded by having one of the Flyboys kick him hard in the ribs. “Oof!”
Nudge winced, practically feeling his pain with him. Since he was blind, he couldn’t see her face or the sympathy she was trying to send his way.
Everything hurt. Nudge didn’t know how long they’d been lying on the floor in the back of this big truck, feeling every bump in the road. They’d been tied up for hours, and she couldn’t feel her hands anymore. Every time the truck bounced, her shoulder or her hip banged against the hard floor, and she was sure she’d have humongous bruises. They all would.
After the Flyboys had grabbed them, they’d put cloth hoods over their heads. Nudge had smelled something sickly sweet. She’d grown dizzy and then passed out. She’d woken up in the truck, heading God knew where. Well, probably the School. Or the Institute.
Either way, it was going to be a long drive. Which meant she could lie here and dread what was coming minute after minute, hour after hour.
What was coming: a cage. Awful, scary, really painful experiments, usually involving needles. Nudge tried not to whimper, thinking about it. Chemical smells. Whitecoats. Flashing lights, scary sounds. Knowing it was happening to the rest of the flock. And no Max, no Fang.
And all of this, being bound, seeing the rest of her flock also bound and in pain, not knowing where Max and Fang were or even if they’d be able to find the flock again-all of that stuff wasn’t even the worst part.
The worst part was that when she’d woken up, when she’d counted heads in the truck, there had been only three.
Angel was missing.
It wasn’t as though they had saved my life or anything-Ella and Dr. Martinez. It was worse: They had shown me what life could be like in Normal Land. It had haunted me ever since I’d left them.
What day was this? No clue. Would Dr. Martinez be at work?
I let my mind focus on this question in order to avoid the bigger, scarier question: Would they even want to see me again?
Or, nightmare: Had something bad happened to them because they’d sheltered me before?
Just like the first time, I stood frozen on the edge of their yard, unable to will myself forward, to knock on the door.
Max, began the Voice, and I answered it inside my head. You’re the one who said connections were important, I reminded it. Well, I’m here to make some connections. Deal with it.
“What the heck are we doing here?” Fang’s tone of mild curiosity meant that he was so stunned he was about to fall over.
I had no answer for him. I didn’t even have an answer for myself.
Then, just like the first time again, fate stepped in; or rather, Dr. Martinez stepped out of her front door. She blinked in the bright sun, then turned to lock the door behind her. Then she paused, as if listening, or sensing something: moi.
Behind me, Fang instinctively faded into the woods, where he would be invisible among the shadows.
Slowly Dr. Martinez turned, while I stood tense and almost quaking at the edge of her yard. Her deep brown eyes swept the area and flashed on me almost immediately. Then her mouth opened soundlessly. I made out the word “Max.”
Then Dr. Martinez and I were running toward each other, and it felt like it was all happening in slow motion. I had planned on a cool, casual “Yo? Wha’s happ’nin’?” But that dream was gone, gone, gone, baby. Instead I clung tightly to her, trying not to cry, taking a weird, deep, terrifying satisfaction from the sensation of her holding me.
Her hand stroked my hair as she whispered, “Max, Max, Max, you’ve come back.” Her voice sounded broken, and I didn’t trust myself to speak.
Then I remembered I was indulging in this revolting display of saccharine emotion right in front of Fang. Who would probably never let me hear the end of it. I turned and looked toward the woods. With my raptor vision, I could barely make out his dim outline.
I raised my hand to him, and Dr. Martinez’s gaze shot toward the woods.
“Max? Are you okay?” she asked, her eyes on the trees and shadows.
“Yes. I-I didn’t mean to come back,” I said hesitantly. “But-I…We were in the neighborhood….”
Dr. Martinez’s eyes widened when a stiff-faced Fang slowly emerged from the woods, as if a shadow had taken form and come to life. How’s that for a little bird-kid imagery, eh? The soul of a poet, that’s me!
“This is my…brother, Fang,” I muttered, stumbling over the word brother. Because he’d kissed me. And no southern jokes, please. Ick.
“Fang?” Dr. Martinez said, giving him a slow smile, warming up my day. She held out her hand, and he came toward us as if dragged by an invisible rope, as tense and unyielding as I’d ever seen him. Which is saying something.
He stopped about two yards from us and didn’t take her hand.
“Fang? Are you-like Max?” asked Dr. Martinez.
“Nope,” he said, sounding bored. “I’m the smart one.”
I resisted the urge to kick his shin.
“Well, come in, both of you,” said Dr. Martinez, sounding excited and bemused and awestruck. “I was going to run to the grocery store before Ella got home from school. But that can wait.”
Inside, the house seemed more familiar to me than Anne Walker’s, though I’d only been here maybe forty-eight hours, months ago. Maybe because it had felt like home, the first real home I’d ever been in.
Behind me, Fang stood close to the door, taking in every detail, cataloguing exits, planning courses of action in case violence broke out. As it tended to do around us.
“Are you guys hungry?” asked Dr. Martinez, taking off her jacket and putting down her purse. “I could make you sandwiches.”
“That would be great,” I said, my stomach growling at the thought.
Fang sniffed the air. “What’s that…scent, that…”
Dr. Martinez and I smiled at each other.
“Chocolate-chip cookies,” we said at the same time.
“So, you have your price,” I said to Fang, speaking around a mouthful of crumbs. “Your soul for a cookie.”
Making sure Dr. Martinez wasn’t looking, Fang shot me the bird and took another bite, clearly savoring the warm chewiness, the notes of vanilla, the semimelted chocolate chunks. I grinned at him, then stuck out my tongue.
Dr. Martinez sat down at the table with us and dipped a cookie into her mug of coffee. She patted my arm. “I’m really glad to see you again, Max,” she said, with so much sincerity that I blushed. “You know, there have been reports about mutant flying children in the news lately.”
I nodded. “Yeah. We keep forgetting the ‘lie low and hide’ part of our plan.”
“Do you have a plan?” she asked, concern on her face. “What are you doing now? Are there more of you?”
Just like that, my natural instincts for secrecy and self-protection kicked in, and I felt my face shut down. Next to me, Fang stiffened in midchew.
Dr. Martinez had no problem reading my expression.
“Never mind,” she said quickly. “Forget I asked. I just…wish I could help in some way.”
Dr. Martinez was a veterinarian, and she’d treated me for a gunshot wound at her clinic. She was the one who’d discovered, when she did an X-ray, the microchip in my arm.
“Maybe you can,” I said. “Remember my chip?”
“The one in your arm?” Dr. Martinez frowned. “Do you still have it?”
“Yeah. And I still want it out.”
She finished her cookie and drank some coffee, thinking it through. “Since you left, I’ve examined your X-ray a hundred times.” She smiled. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, but it drove me crazy-I had to figure it out. I’ve looked and looked at it, trying to see if there’s any way to take out the chip without damaging your nerves so badly that you’d lose the use of your hand.”
“Did you come up with something?” I was practically quivering with anticipation.
Her shoulders sagged slightly. “I’m not positive. It seems like I could possibly do it with microsurgery, but…”
“Do it,” I said quickly. “Do it now.”
I felt Fang looking at me, but I stayed focused on Dr. Martinez.
“I want this chip out,” I said, hating the pleading sound in my voice. “I don’t care what it does.”
You can’t risk losing the use of your hand, said the Voice.
For some reason I was finding it particularly annoying today. Why? I thought, sarcasm dripping. You think I can’t save the world with one hand tied behind my back?
Dr. Martinez looked hesitant, too cautious to take risks.
Suddenly Fang grabbed my left hand and turned it over, baring my forearm on the table. The angry red scars from when I had sawed at my arm with a broken seashell flamed up at us, puckered and ugly. Heat flushed my face, and I tried to pull my arm away.
“Oh, that,” I muttered, aware of Dr. Martinez’s wide, horrified eyes.
“She tried to cut it out herself,” Fang said tersely. “Almost bled out, on a beach. Take it out, so she won’t be such a moron again. Or at least not in that same way. Maybe in a different way,” he acknowledged realistically.
I frowned fiercely at him, hating the look of consternation on Dr. Martinez’s face. Then I glared at her, daring her to express pity. I swear, I would knock their two heads together if-
“I can try,” she said.
“Where’s Angel?” Gazzy’s whisper was barely a breath in Nudge’s ear.
“Don’t know,” she breathed back.
The truck stopped, and the back doors opened. It was daylight. The Flyboys riding in the back with them climbed out, then slammed the heavy metal doors, making Nudge’s ears ring.
Ages later, the doors opened again, and a Flyboy threw in some pieces of bread and some fruit that was half rotten. The doors slammed shut again. There was creepy laughter outside.
Despite the blackness inside the truck, Nudge could see pretty well, and so could Gazzy. They wriggled over to the pieces of bread. Nudge was so hungry she felt sick. Even with their hands tied behind their backs, they managed to wolf down every bit of the stale bread and all but the grossest parts of the fruit.
“When we get out of this, every one of those robots is gonna have fang marks on ’em,” muttered Total. His paws were trussed with duct tape.
“We’ll never get out of this one,” said Iggy. “I have a really bad feeling.”
Nudge couldn’t remember hearing Iggy sound so defeated. He was one of the older kids, like Fang and Max. Most the time she forgot he was blind. He was strong, powerful, and a mean fighter. Hearing him say that made Nudge feel as though a cold fist gripped her fast-beating heart.
“We’ll get out.” Nudge wished for the thousandth time that the doors would burst open and Max and Fang would be standing there.
Iggy was silent.
“We have to find Angel,” Gazzy whispered. “We can’t let them do…all the stuff they did to her last time.”
Angel had been a mess when they’d rescued her last time. It had taken her weeks to recover. And since then, she’d been different somehow. Sadder. Quieter.
The thought of what they might already be doing to Angel made Nudge shiver.
“We need a plan,” she said under her breath. “Max and Fang would make a plan. Let’s think.”
“Why don’t we ask Santa Claus?” Iggy sounded bitter. “Or the Easter Bunny?”
“I say we just bite ’em,” Total said. “They open the doors, we’re on ’em, snarling and fangs and everything. Or I could rush their legs, trip ’em, and then you guys attack them.”
“We don’t have fangs,” Gazzy explained patiently, sounding tired and without hope.
“No, but we have teeth,” said Nudge. “We should have been chewing off the tape all this time! Come on! Total will chew on mine, I’ll try to get Gazzy’s off, and Gazzy, you work on Iggy’s. Then we’ll kick some Flyboy butt!”
With a new bloom of hope, Nudge scooted across the dirty metal floor so that Total could reach her hands, in back of her.
She’d just felt his first whiskery approach when the metal doors slammed open again, and five Flyboys climbed in. They walked to the front of the truck, not caring if they kicked the bird kids on the way.
Nudge lay very still, her head resting on the floor. So much for her plan.
“Is he your boyfriend?” Ella had been incredibly happy to see me. We’d hugged for a long time, until I heard Fang sigh impatiently. Now we were in her room, where she was changing out of her soccer uniform into regular clothes, while Fang made lame, stilted conversation with Dr. Martinez in the living room.
Regular people’s backs look so naked and…flat without wings. Just an observation.
“Fang? No! No, no,” I said quickly. “No. I mean, we grew up together, so we’re more like…uh, siblings.”
“He’s adorable,” she said matter-of-factly, pulling on some jeans and a hoodie.
I was still processing this and my reaction to it when she looked over at me and smiled. “But not as cute as Shaw Akers, in my class.”
I grinned back. Ella flopped next to me on the bed, and it was so normal, so like sisters or best friends or something, that my throat got tight.
“Shaw is seriously, amazingly adorable,” Ella went on, her face softening. “He asked me to the Christmas dance, but someone else had already asked me, so I have to go with the first one. But there’s always Spring Fling….” She wiggled her eyebrows, and I laughed.
“Good luck with that.” I had no Spring Fling in my date book. Mostly I had “kick Eraser butt,” “destroy evil School,” “save world,” stuff like that.
A gentle tap on the door made us look up.
“Ready?” Ella’s mom asked, opening the door.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said.
Dr. Martinez drove us to her clinic. It was after hours, so she said we wouldn’t be disturbed. She parked in the back, sort of behind the Dumpster, so her car wouldn’t be noticed right away.
Inside the building, she didn’t turn on the lights, and she locked the door behind us.
“We don’t board animals, so there’s no one on night duty here,” she explained, leading us to the OR.
The operating table was meant for animals up to the size of, say, a large Saint Bernard, and my legs dangled off it. The metal was cold under my back, and the lights were way too bright. I closed my eyes.
Max, I forbid you to take out the chip. The Voice sounded uncharacteristically stern.
Yeah, forbid me, I thought tiredly. That’s always worked so well for everyone else.
“First, I’m going to give you some Valium, just to help you relax,” said Dr. Martinez, starting an IV in my nonchip arm. “I’m also going to take a chest X-ray and do some blood work, just to make sure you’re not sick or anything.”
Because of my less-than-socially-accepted bizarro childhood at the hands of evil scientists, I have an overwhelming reaction to science lab-type smells, like alcohol, plastic tubing, floor cleaner, etc. When Dr. Martinez put the IV in, I had to grip the sides of the table to keep myself from leaping up and racing out of there, preferably punching a couple people first.
My heart was pounding, my breath coming shallower, and I could feel the white lightning of adrenaline starting to seep into my veins.
You know what? Turns out Valium just shuts that stuff right down!
“This is great,” I said with cheerful grogginess. “I feel so…calm.”
“You’re okay, Max,” said Ella, patting my shoulder.
“You still want to do this?” Fang asked. “Bark once for yes.”
I stuck my tongue out at him. With any luck at all, whatever grotesque thing would probably replace the Erasers wouldn’t be able to track us once the chip was out. And maybe the Voice would be gone forever too. I wasn’t positive the chip was connected to the Voice, but it seemed likely. Even though the Voice had been kind of helpful sometimes, I still wanted everyone out of my head except me.
Which is such a pathetic sentence, one that probably not a lot of people need to say.
Then Dr. Martinez stretched out my chipped arm and fastened it to the table.
Instinctively I started to panic when Dr. Martinez strapped my arm down, and then the panic just melted away, la la la.
Someone took my other hand. Fang. I felt his calluses, his bones, his strength.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I slurred, smiling dopily up at him. I took in his startled, worried expression but dismissed it. “I know everything’s fine if you’re here.”
I thought I saw his cheeks flush, but I wasn’t too sure of anything anymore. I felt a couple of needle pricks in my arm, and said mildly, “Hey.”
“That’s just a local anesthetic,” explained Dr. Martinez. “I’ll give it a minute to take effect.”
“Oh, look, the lights are so pretty,” I said dreamily, having just noticed them.
I smiled at the way the lights were dancing overhead, pink and yellow and blue. I felt some pressure on my arm and thought, I should look over and see what’s going on, but then the thought was gone, sliding away like Jell-O off a hot car hood.
“Fang?”
“Yeah. I’m here.”
I struggled to focus on him. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“I don’t know what I’d do without you.” I peered up at him, trying to see past the too-bright lights.
“You’d be fine,” he muttered.
“No,” I said, suddenly struck by how unfine I would be. “I would be totally unfine. Totally.” It seemed very urgent that he understand this.
Again I felt some tugging on my arm, and I really wondered what that was about. Was Ella’s mom going to start this procedure any time soon?
“It’s okay. Just relax.” He sounded stiff and nervous. “Just…relax. Don’t try to talk.”
“I don’t want my chip anymore,” I explained groggily, then frowned. “Actually, I never wanted that chip.”
“Okay,” said Fang. “We’re taking it out.”
“I just want you to hold my hand.”
“I am holding your hand.”
“Oh. I knew that.” I drifted off for a few minutes, barely aware of anything, but feeling Fang’s hand still in mine.
“Do you have a La-Z-Boy somewhere?” I roused myself to ask, every word an effort.
“Um, no,” said Ella’s voice, somewhere behind my head.
“I think I would like a La-Z-Boy,” I mused, letting my eyes drift shut again. “Fang, don’t go anywhere.”
“I won’t. I’m here.”
“Okay. I need you here. Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t.”
“Fang, Fang, Fang,” I murmured, overwhelmed with emotion. “I love you. I love you sooo much.” I tried to hold out my arms to show how much, but I couldn’t move them.
“Oh, jeez,” Fang said, sounding strangled.
“Okay, we’re done,” said Dr. Martinez finally. “The chip is out. I’m going to unfasten your arm, Max, and then I want you to wiggle your fingers.”
“Okay.” I wiggled the fingers that Fang was still holding.
“The other ones,” he said.
“Okay.” I wiggled those fingers.
“Go ahead and move them, Max,” said Dr. Martinez.
“I am moving them,” I said, moving them more.
“Oh,” said Dr. Martinez. “Oh, no.”
So there you have it, folks. The most humiliating admission I could possibly even conceive of, plus the loss of my left hand, all in one day. I mean, the hand was still there, but it was dangling limply. More decorative than anything else at this point.
Just like my pride.
Every time the hazy memory of my saying goofily, “I love you sooo much” popped into my head, I shuddered all over again. That one experience guaranteed that I will never, ever get hooked on Valium or anything like it.
Dr. Martinez was incredibly upset about my hand. She was in tears afterward and kept apologizing.
“Hey, I made you do it,” I told her.
“You didn’t make me. I shouldn’t have tried it.” She looked crushed.
“No matter what, I’m glad it’s gone,” I said. “I’m really glad it’s gone.”
The next day I was Voice-free and starting to learn to do everything with only my right hand. It was a total pain in the butt, but I was getting better. Again and again I tried to move the fingers on my left hand, and again and again I got not a twitch or a tingle. My arm ached, though.
Again and again I felt Fang’s night sky eyes on me, to the point where I was about to climb the wall. When Dr. Martinez and Ella were outside for a moment, I cornered him.
“What I said yesterday didn’t mean anything!” I hissed. “I love everyone in the flock! Plus, it was the Valium talking!”
An unbearable smug look came over his usually impassive face. “Uh-huh. You just keep telling yourself that. You looove me.”
I took a swing at him, but he jumped back nimbly, and all I did was jar my left arm, making it hurt.
He laughed at me, then pointed at the woods outside the window. “Pick a tree. I’ll go carve our initials in it.”
Barely suppressing a shriek of rage, I flung myself down the hall and into the bathroom, slamming and locking the door behind me.
My superacute raptor hearing couldn’t help registering his chuckles outside. Holding my head in my right hand, I muttered, “God help me.”
Too late for that, Max, said the Voice. Only you can help yourself now.
Oh, no.
The Voice was not connected to the chip. It was still inside my head.
Which made today’s total:
1) Useless left hand
2) Fang believing some mushy emotion I didn’t even mean
3) Voice still with us
Given these revolting developments, there was only one thing to do. Leaving my bandaged left arm outside the shower curtain, I sat in the tub with the water pouring down on my head and cried.
“I don’t think you should leave until your arm heals,” said Dr. Martinez, looking worried. “I’m saying that as a doctor, Max.”
“We’ve been gone too long as it is,” I said. “Besides, with our zippy recombinant healing powers, I should be fine, in, oh, about twenty minutes.”
She knew I was exaggerating, but she also knew me well enough to know that little things like healing up and common sense don’t usually affect my decisions.
“I don’t want you to go,” said Ella miserably. “Either of you.”
“I know,” I said. “But we have to. We’ve got to get back to our, uh, situation.”
“Max, is there anything we can do to help?” Ella’s mom’s eyes were filled with a deep emotion that unnerved me.
Saving the world didn’t feel like something I could delegate.
“No, I don’t think so,” I said politely.
Behind me, Fang stood waiting, hating being in the open in their yard. He’d been weird all morning, and I wasn’t sure if it was about my wonky hand, what I’d said by accident, or what. Anyway, I knew he was itching to be off, and part of me was too.
Part of me wasn’t.
There were hugs, of course. These people couldn’t spit without having to hug someone. It felt unbalanced, being able to hug back with only my right arm-that is, my left arm could move up, but it was pretty dead below the elbow. Awkward.
I saw Dr. Martinez step toward Fang, her arms out, but a glance at his face made her stop, then smile warmly and hold her hand out for shaking. He took it, to my relief.
“I’m so glad I met you,” she said to him, looking as if she were visibly restraining herself from hugging him. He stood stiffly, not saying anything.
“Take care of Max.”
He nodded, and his mouth quirked on one side. He knew the idea that anyone needed to take care of me would get my knickers in a twist. I scowled. We would discuss this, for sure.
“Later,” he said to Ella and Dr. Martinez in that gushy, hyperemotional, overdramatic way he had.
Then he ran across the yard, leaping into the air and unfurling his wings right before he hit the woods. I heard them gasp at the sight of his fourteen-foot wings lofting him effortlessly into the sky, so dark they looked almost purple in the sunlight.
I smiled one last time at Ella and her mother, feeling really sad, but not as sad as I had last time, despite my ruined arm. Now I felt like, I found them again; I can always come back.
And I really thought I might, when all of this was over. If it was ever over.
Flying again felt as wonderful and life-giving as flying again always did. Fang and I didn’t speak for maybe forty minutes, streaking back toward where we’d left the flock. I was filled with apprehension and started to think through the almost-certainly-impossible idea of us all getting cell phones so we could keep in touch during times like this.
Finally it couldn’t be avoided any longer.
“So what’s with you?” I asked brusquely.
As if he’d been waiting, Fang rose and held his speed so he was almost right on top of me. While flying, it was the easiest way to hand something to someone else.
I held up my right hand, and he reached down, pressing a small white square of paper into my hand.
I looked at it as he shifted slightly so we were side-by-side again.
It was a photo, and I recognized it.
It was the picture of the baby Gasman that Fang and I had found in a deserted crack house, like, a million years ago. I’d left it in my pack, hidden back with the others in the canyon. “Why’d you bring this?” I asked Fang.
“I didn’t.” His voice was calm as always, but I saw rigid tension in his frame. “I found it.”
“What?” That didn’t make sense. “Found it where?”
“Between two books in Dr. Martinez’s home office,” he said, looking at me, registering my shock. “Between a book about recombinant-DNA theory…and one on birds.”
Well. If sudden knowledge had a physical force, my head would have exploded right there, and chunks of my brain would have splattered some unsuspecting schmuck in a grocery store parking lot down below.
Let’s just say I was stunned, and it takes a fair amount to stun me, I promise you.
My jaw dropped open as I stared at Fang’s grim face, and only the certainty that I would start eating bugs any second made me shut it again.
I’m not the leader for nothing. I mean, I’m the oldest, but I’m the leader because I’m smart, strong, fast, and determined. I’m willing to be the leader. I’m the decision maker. And now, with typical leaderly incisiveness, I put two and six together and came up with one single question that would get right to the crucial heart of the matter.
“Whaaat?”
“I found the picture in Dr. Martinez’s home office,” Fang began again, but I waved at him to be quiet.
“You searched her office?” I had never thought to do that. Not the first time, not this time.
His face was impassive. “I needed a paper clip.”
“She had books on combining DNA?”
“And birds.”
“She’s a vet.”
“Fine, she’s a vet. But avian anatomy, plus recombinant-DNA theory, plus the picture of the Gasman…”
“Oh, God, I can’t think,” I muttered, putting my hand to my head.
Everything’s part of the big picture, Max, the Voice helpfully supplied. All you have to do is put the pieces together.
Fortune cookie crap like that didn’t do a thing for me. I mean, I could have gotten that anywhere, without having a freaking Voice in my head.
“Oh, really?” I snarled. “I just have to put the pieces together? Excellent! Thanks for the great tip! Wish you’d told me earlier, you-”
I realized I was talking out loud and shut up.
I didn’t know what to think. And Fang was the only one I could admit that to. Any of the other kids, and I would’ve made something up to cover the truth.
I shook my head. “I don’t know what the deal is. I know she’s helped me, not once but twice.”
Fang didn’t say anything, in that annoying way of his.
We were practically to the canyon where we’d left the flock. I searched the area but didn’t see any telltale sign of smoke from their fire. Which meant they were being smart for once, lying low, they were…
Fang and I dropped down into the canyon, but we already knew. We knew from two hundred feet up. I didn’t need to touch the burned-out ashes or look around for clues, though I did, of course.
It was all horribly, sickeningly clear: The flock hadn’t been here in a couple of days. The scraped canyon floor showed they’d been taken by force.
While I’d been happily stuffing my face with homemade chocolate-chip cookies, my friends had been getting captured, with all that that implied.
I dropped my head into my hand, holding up my left arm uselessly.
“Crap.”
Massive understatement.
When Nudge finally opened her eyes, the truck was moving. She couldn’t remember the last several hours, so she figured she’d been asleep.
Squirming around, she saw Gazzy and Iggy lying with their eyes closed, maybe sleeping. Even Total seemed worn out, lying on his side, not even panting.
Angel was gone. Max and Fang had no idea where they were or what had happened. Iggy seemed to have given up.
The Gasman hadn’t said it, but Nudge knew he was more scared than he’d admit. Dried tear tracks streaked his dirty cheeks, making him look younger and more helpless than she’d ever seen him.
By moving slightly, Nudge could see five Flyboys sitting near the front of the truck, their backs against the truck walls. From here they looked almost like regular Erasers, but there was something slightly different about them. Basically, they were metallic robots with a thin Eraser skin over their frames. Their fur wasn’t as thick. And they never morphed into looking semihuman-they stayed in wolf form all the time.
Nudge closed her eyes again, weary and aching all over, too tired to think. They needed a plan. Everything just seemed so overwhelming and scary.
The truck shuddered to a halt, the screech of the brakes hurting Nudge’s ears. Then the ride grew very choppy, as if they had veered off the road and were rolling on dirt now. Ow, ow, ow, Nudge thought, biting her lip to keep from crying out. Gazzy and Iggy groggily opened their eyes, and Total stirred.
“I hope this is a potty break,” he muttered.
There was shouting outside. The three bird kids struggled to sit up, their hands still duct-taped behind them.
The two back doors of the truck were thrown open with heavy, brain-rattling bangs. Sunlight flooding in made them blink and turn their heads away. The Flyboys in the truck with them strode to the opening.
There was more shouting, raised voices from the front of the truck. Nudge saw nothing outside except a long, empty dirt road with low brush lining it. No buildings, no electricity wires. No one around to help them. Nowhere to run to. Their wings had been bound flat against their backs.
“What’s happening?” Iggy’s whisper was barely audible, but a Flyboy kicked him.
“Shut up!” it growled, sounding like a recorded phone message.
Nudge heard many feet walking quickly toward the back of the truck. She braced for whatever was going to happen next.
Which no one ever could have predicted in a million years.
An overwhelming clump of Flyboys surrounded the back of the truck, furry faces frozen into identical sneers. Nudge swallowed, pretending to be braver than she was.
The crowd shifted restlessly, and Nudge saw that it was parting to let someone through. Max? Her heart jumped at the possibility. Even Max trussed up, in bad shape, thrown into the truck with them, would be fabulous, such a welcome-
It was Jeb!
Nudge felt a twinge around her heart as she looked at the face that had formed so much of her childhood. Jeb had rescued them. Then he’d died-or they’d thought he was dead. Then he had shown up again, clearly one of Them. Nudge knew that Max hated him now. So Nudge hated him too.
Her eyes narrowed.
From behind Jeb an Eraser, a real Eraser, stepped out to stand next to him. It was Ari! Ari, who had also been dead and then not really. Ari was the only real Eraser they’d seen in days and days.
Nudge put a bored expression on her face like she’d seen Max and Fang do a thousand times. Yeah, yeah, Jeb and Ari, she thought. Show me something new.
Someone else stepped out from behind Ari.
Nudge’s eyes widened, and her breath seized in her throat. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.
Instead her lips silently formed one word: Angel.
Nudge searched Angel’s blue eyes, but they seemed like a total stranger’s. Nudge had never seen her like this.
“Angel!” Gazzy’s face looked happy but at the same time concerned.
“Angel?” Nudge finally spoke, fear trickling like ice water down her neck.
“Time to die,” Angel said in her sweet little-girl voice.
“This is too easy,” Fang muttered, frowning at the ground two thousand feet below us.
“I was thinking the same thing. They did everything except leave gigundo yellow arrows saying This way, folks!”
We’d flown in a mammoth circle and had picked up tire tracks within an hour. It looked like a big truck, lots of wheels, and it had left desert sand on the highway for almost half a mile. We couldn’t think of any other reason a truck would have been hidden off-road and then driven out. Unless it belonged to, like, cactus poachers. Sand collectors. A movie crew.
This being the middle of Freaking Nowhere, USA, there was only the one road for miles and miles. So, one road with clear tire marks headed in one direction. Gee, obvious much?
“And we’re falling for this because of our sudden, unexpected regression into unbelievable stupidity?” I said.
Fang nodded grimly. “We’re falling for it because we’ve got no other choice.”
“Oh, yeah. That.”
Three hours of fast flight later, we saw them: an eighteen-wheeled semi parked off the road in perhaps the most desolate, unpopulated spot in all of Arizona. You could not call 911 from here. You could not run for help. You could send off a flare every half hour for days and not be seen by anyone.
“Looks like the place,” I said, sighing. “And look at that crowd down there. I thought all the Erasers were exterminated.”
“So the Voice lied to you?”
“No,” I said slowly, as we coasted on a current. “It’s never actually lied to me. So if those things aren’t Erasers, then they’re the Erasers’ replacements. Oh, joy.”
“Yep.” Fang shook his head, so not into this. “Five bucks says they’re worse than the originals. And they probably have guns.”
“No doubt.”
“And of course they’re expecting us.”
“We did everything but RSVP.”
“I hate this.” Fang deliberately looked everywhere but at my useless left hand.
“That would be because you’ve still got a tenuous grasp of sanity.”
I circled wide, trying to gear myself up for an impossible fight: We would be outnumbered a couple hundred to two, by something worse than Erasers. I had no idea if the rest of the flock would be able to help.
It was pretty much a suicide mission.
Again.
“There is one bright side to this,” said Fang.
“Yeah? What’s that?” The new and improved Erasers would mutilate us before they killed us?
He grinned at me so unexpectedly I forgot to flap for a second and dropped several feet. “You looove me,” he crooned smugly. Holding his arms out wide, he added, “You love me this much.”
My shriek of appalled rage could probably be heard in California, or maybe Hawaii. Certainly by the unknown army down below. I didn’t care. I folded my wings against my sides and aimed downward to get away from Fang as fast as possible. Now that he had filled me with a blind, teeming bloodlust, I was ready to take out a couple thousand Eraser replacements, no matter what they were.
Which, I admitted to myself, may have been his point.
Amazingly, we were able to thump to quick-running landings on the roof of the semi without getting punched full of little unaerodynamic bullet holes.
Heads swiveled to look at us, Erasery heads, but there was something different about them. I couldn’t quite put my finger on what.
“Iggy?” I yelled.
“Max!” I heard his strangled cry from the rear of the truck and trotted over.
“You guys ok-,” I began, then I saw Jeb, Ari, and Angel standing on the ground. “Angel!” I cried. “Are you okay? I’m gonna take these guys apa-”
The look in Angel’s polar-ice eyes stopped me.
“I told you I should be the leader, Max,” she said with a chilling flatness. “Now it’s your time to die. The last life-forms from the labs are being exterminated, and you will be too.” She turned to Jeb. “Right?”
Jeb nodded solemnly, and then my world went blank in the wink of an eye.
