The uncomfortable silence dragged on, and Max and Oz weren’t helping one bit. Their faces glowed, but they also looked strangely calm.
“Listen,” Max said reasonably. “Please don’t worry so much about us, Frannie. We know exactly what we’re doing. This is natural. It’s good. It’s the right thing.”
“Oh, Max, Max, listen to yourself. What are you saying? How can you be so sure?”
“Because it’s second nature for us,” Oz said, as if reading my thoughts. “It just is. Besides, we don’t exactly need your permission, Frannie.”
“Max, you are very young!” I said. “And you, too, Oz.”
“In human years, Frannie. But we’re more than human,” Max said. “We’re special, remember? And we’re also in love. Deeply, passionately, wonderfully in love.”
She combed her hair with her fingers and tied it up into a loose knot. “Our bird genes make us mature for our age. In fact, I think we’re probably about your age,” she added, her eyes twinkling irresistibly. “You’re old enough to mate, aren’t you?”
She had me there.
82
MAX SAT COOING in a big, comfy blue armchair by the cabin’s front window. She held Matthew in her lap and gently smoothed his silky blond hair. They had made up. Mostly, anyway. As much as they were going to right now.
“I’m sorry, Matty, but don’t hate me forever,” she cooed affectionately. “Okay? Coo. Coo. Please? Matty-poo? Coo, coo, coo.”
“Stop manipulating” was all he said to her. “Stop that stupid cooing.”
Kit and Frannie had gone to gas up the car and pick up food for dinner. Hopefully, they’d be going back to D.C. soon. Max couldn’t wait to leave this ratty motel and be as far from there as possible. Apparently, the awful experiments weren’t being conducted at Liberty General Hospital. But they were happening somewhere near there. She was sure of that.
The hunters were near, too. She sensed them in the air. She just knew.
“I will too hate you forever, ” Matty said. “You probably scarred me for life. Do you know that?”
That’s when Pip started barking his little fool butt off.
Max parted the curtain and saw an SUV, a Dodge Durango, approaching the cabin. Her heart sank about a million and a half miles. Deep, deep, deeper into the abyss.
The Dodge stopped and three men climbed out and positioned themselves in front. The men were wearing ordinary clothes: jeans, khakis, dark shirts. They had guns, though. Big death-dealing weapons.
“Oh, holy shii-iit,” Max groaned. “Matthew, go in the bedroom. Right now.”
Matthew’s eyes popped. “Are we going to do it?”
“Just go! Right now! Everybody! In the bedroom.”
One of the men wore a black windbreaker over his shirt and a long-billed cap pulled down over his eyes. He was clean-cut and good-looking. He looked right at Max and spoke in a pleasant, singsong voice.
“Hey there, Maximum. I see you. My name is Ethan, and I need you to come outside with your friends. No one will be hurt if you do as I say. I know how valuable you are. Believe me, I know. I’m in awe of you children. I’m a fan.”
Max’s senses prickled at the sound of his voice. She didn’t know why, but she had the thought: He’s a doctor. And he’s a really bad person. The worst she’d ever met. Then she felt the little feathers on the back of her neck lift, and a chill coursed through her body.
They were in terrible danger and there was only one exit—the goddamn front door. Right where they were standing with their guns.
The bathroom window was so small that even Wendy wouldn’t be able to squeeze through. Max shot to her feet and bolted the lock on the door.
“Our parents will be back any minute,” she called out.
“I don’t think so,” Ethan said. “Actually, they were spotted going to the market in Kit’s car. That’s how we found you this time. They’re still at the market, Max. But a little earlier today, they came to visit me at the Hospital. Wonder how that happened, hmmm? Do you know, Max?”
He leveled his gun at the window.
Then the son of a bitch fired!
A warning shot!
The plate-glass window tinkled, splintered, and scattered all over the floor. By instinct, the children dropped down low.
Oz screamed ferociously and puffed out his chest.
Pip let out a furious round of barking.
But it was all just fear.
They were trapped.
Like lab rats.
And the rat fuckers were right outside the front door.
83
“COME OUT RIGHT NOW, children. Max! The rest of you! This is your last chance. I’m a busy man. You have no idea what trouble you’re causing me. Come out right now, or you all die!”
Oz, Max, Peter and Wendy, Icarus, Matthew, the six of them slowly filed out to the creaky wooden plank porch of the cabin.
Six kids.
Very, very special ones.
Priceless.
“We’re not going to hurt you, Max,” said Ethan. “Perish the thought. Not going to happen. Unless you run.”
She nodded. “No. We’re way too valuable to you, right? We’re big money to you. A lot of people want a piece of us. What else do you want, you jerk?”
“Don’t believe a word he says,” Oz whispered at her side. “Look at his eyes. He’s a total piece of shit. He’s lying.”
“I know he’s lying. Just be cool. We have to make the best of a terrible situation, Oz.”
“Don’t whisper, and don’t do anything foolish,” Ethan spoke in the calmest yet most authoritative voice.
Doctor? Scientist? A very bad dude. George Clooney’s evil twin, Max thought. And he wants us for some kind of collection, doesn’t he? He’s a collector, right? He’s the one who runs the outlaw lab in Maryland. Has to be. He has the eyes of a stone-cold killer.
“Oh, we won’t do anything foolish,” said Oz. “We aren’t stupid.”
“No, you’re anything but that,” said Ethan. “You’re all geniuses. I know that. I’ve seen your test scores.”
“Whatever I do, you do the opposite,” Oz whispered again. “I love you, Max.”
Suddenly Max couldn’t breathe. “Oz, no.”
“I said no whispering, and I mean it. Come down off the porch, children. Right now. That’s an order. Do you hear me?”
“All right, all right,” Max spoke. “We’re doing exactly what you say.” Dr. Creep-Me-Out.
“We won’t do anything foolish,” Oz repeated. “You know, like trust you for a second. Go, Max!” he screamed.
Oz took off like a bolt of lightning to the left. Max and the others veered right.
The woods on the right were closer. Oz was the one who would be exposed for the longest time, but he was the fastest, the strongest, the alpha male.
Dr. Ethan Kane shook his head, cursed under his breath, then yelled, “Pull!”
Suddenly, gunfire erupted from at least two guns, maybe more. Max and the others hadn’t made it into the trees yet. Max and the young ones were exposed.
So Oz made a decision and shot right over the gunmen’s heads. He thought he saw goddamn Ethan smile. Then the doctor pointed to the south. What? Oz looked that way. Oh shit.
A rifleman in camouflage was perched on a hillside. He was perfectly still. His rifle had a long black scope. The barrel was aimed directly at his eyes.
Pull!
84
HE COULDN’T MISS. He just had to decide which of the children to take out. The little freaks were valuable. The head doctor wanted them alive, if possible, although no one had told Marco Vincenti why. He knew the drill. If they couldn’t be caught, one of them would be killed. Then another. And if necessary, all of them.
Like shooting skeet.
Marco Vincenti played a little mind game with himself to make the slaughter easier. He thought of them as disgusting, godless freaks of nature.
Yeah, that helped a lot. And it was true, wasn’t it?
>
Though in truth, they were stunningly beautiful, as striking as a Michelangelo sculpture. And the littlest ones were drop-dead cute. No —
Freaks!
Mutants!
Mistakes!
Monstrosities!
Just take ’em out. Do the world a favor.
He sighted on the girl—Max . . . Maximum. He’d heard she was worth tens of millions and wondered who the hell would buy her. Europeans? The Japanese? Ragheads? What the hell would they do with her? Take her apart and put her back together again? Why did Kane really want her? It was more than just the money, wasn’t it?
He moved his scope to the little ones, the smallest targets—Wendy and Peter.
Named after what? . . . Characters in Peter Pan?
He thought he could easily do a one-two . . . Max and her brother, Matthew?
Or Max and Oz? . . . Obviously, they were the leaders of the flock.
That would probably produce the most disharmony and chaos, and get the others to give up.
He watched them talk to Dr. Kane on the porch . . . and then the six of them exploded into the air. A little trickery. Okay. If that’s the way they wanted to play it.
They split up. Beautiful timing. Perfect. He admired that. Then —
Bingo! The target was so obvious to Marco that it was a done deal.
The powerful-looking male was coming right at him. Had he spotted Marco and his rifle? Probably had. The kids’ eyesight was supposed to be extraordinary, something else.
Freaks of nature, right! Come and get it, bird-boy.
Though, Jesus God, this kid was flying right at him, looming incredibly large in his rifle sight. Coming on like a guided missile.
So dead on, it wasn’t even funny.
Dead on the wing!
Marco’s body was frozen still. So still, he could feel his own heartbeat, the pulse throbbing in his throat.
The aiming port of the rifle was floating on the bridge of the male’s nose.
No, make that the right eye . . . make it the center of the eyeball.
His finger gently squeezed.
The shot cracked loudly, and the noise almost seemed to follow the bullet’s flight. Smoke rose gently above the rifle barrel.
Then something went terribly wrong, so wrong.
Something in Marco’s peripheral vision was coming fast. From his left! How could that be?
Oh Jesus, no. Oh fuck! He’d made a mistake. Bad one.
One of the little freaks, the boy Peter was coming at him.
He was barreling in from the side . . . a little bullet himself, a second guided missile.
No time to get out of the way.
Or even blink.
The boy hit Marco Vincenti at full speed with an outstretched arm. He clotheslined the sniper.
Something—a rock—was in his small hand.
Snap! broke Marco’s neck, just like that.
He was dead before he even hit the ground.
Zero ability to fly.
85
MAX SCREAMED, “Nooooooooooooooooooo! Noooooooo! Nooooooooo!”
She watched horror-struck as Oz crashed through the trees, dropping toward the ground like a heavy rock in free fall.
There was only one thing for her to do. She had no other choice in the universe.
She had to go to him. Now! No matter what the risk to herself. Go! Now!
Her world narrowed to exclude everything but Ozymandias. She saw his dark form sprawled on the ground below her, his strong limbs splayed at crooked, impossible angles, his wings obscenely twisted under him from the steep fall.
And yet his face seemed untouched, unhurt. Was it possible that he had survived? It had to be.
Oh, Ozymandias, I love you.
Her heart hammered almost to bursting as she dropped to the woodland floor. She ran and threw herself beside Oz. She waved her fingers in front of his unblinking eyes. She muttered his name over and over.
Max pushed a branch away from his chest and placed her face against his rib cage.
She heard no heartbeat, felt no rise and fall of his chest. Oh, Oz. Why?
“It’s me, it’s Max. Talk to me, Oz. Talk to me, damn you!”
She pinched his nose and cleared his air passage. She breathed into his mouth, her hair spilling softly around his face. She put pressure on his chest. She kept breathing air into him, mouth to mouth, again and again. She listened to his chest again.
Still no sound. So weird, so awful. Impossible. This couldn’t have happened.
“Oz, please breathe,” she whispered, holding back tears with all of her strength. “Remember what you said? Remember Oz? We’re together forever.”
Max ripped open Oz’s shirt, the buttons spinning into the dirt and pine needles. That’s when she saw the awful, ragged, absolutely obscene wound. It was an oozing hole, two fingers wide.
“Nooooooooo!”
The wound went through the heart of the eagle tattooed on Oz’s chest right where Max had been inscribed.
Oz can’t be gone! This can’t be happening.
He had been so alive just seconds ago. So strong, so beautiful. She could almost see him flying, his wings beating like an engine. She could still hear him calling out to her.
“No! No! No! I won’t accept this!” she screamed, covering him with her body and wings. Peter and Matthew had gathered around Max, their pitiful cries blending into ululating howls. The entire universe was a single howl now.
“Talk to me, Oz. Talk to me, talk to me. Please. I know you can hear me . . . Oz,” she whispered, “at least say good-bye. At least that. Oh, Ozymandias, why?”
She never saw the shadows of the men, but she felt the heavy “big bird” nets fall on top of her. Just as she thought—they wanted her alive, if possible. What a joke! Didn’t they realize, she was dead. Inside. Where it mattered.
Max’s mind separated from her body. As if from a great distance, she felt someone lift her roughly and toss her over his shoulder. She writhed and struggled fiercely, screaming at the top of her voice, “Put me down! I’ll kill you! I swear I’ll kill you!”
“I warned you,” said Ethan Kane, “and now look what’s happened. He was worth millions.”
An old image flickered into her mind. So strange. She’d seen a neighbor’s tabby cat take a sparrow down from a feeder. The cat had trotted across the yard with the bird in its teeth and the bird was still, but alive.
Max felt like that now. Still fighting them with all her might, she began to keen.
She and Ozymandias were supposed to be forever.
We were made for each other.
This couldn’t be the end.
It just couldn’t happen.
Could it?
Could it?
Part Six
A BRAND NEW DAY
86
CLOUDS HUNG HEAVILY over the small private airfield to the south of the Hospital. The tarmac was empty except for a small flock of mourning doves pecking for bugs on the heat-retentive runway.
Dr. Ethan Kane shot the right cuff of his black Burberry windbreaker and looked impatiently at his Breitling watch.
It was seven past three in the afternoon.
The plane was thirty-seven minutes late. Everything was ready. Damn it! Where were they?
He hated inefficiency. His precious time and energy was being wasted. It wasn’t acceptable.
Ethan Kane wasn’t alone at the airfield, either. Six members of his medical team had been pulled from their important jobs, still wearing their scrubs, and they impatiently waited for the flight to arrive. Kane clamped down on his rage at this criminal waste of time. It was inexcusable! Someone would pay.
He had pressing business at the Hospital, but leading this welcoming committee was also critically important. Within hours, the resources of the Hauer Institute would be stretched as never before.
It was going to be a trial just to process the incoming shipment. Dr. Kane was mentally running through a plan to “warehouse th
e overage” when he was distracted by the low drone of an incoming aircraft.
“It’s about goddamn time,” he snapped. “Do you realize who you’ve kept waiting, you imbeciles.”
The sound grew louder, then an Embraer ERJ 135 dropped from the cloud cover. Its gorgeous, streamlined shape seemed to magically materialize above the long, flat runway.
The landing was as slick as a cat’s whisker. There was a discreet squeal of brakes, the rush of air against the flaps, and then the pristine white airplane rolled to a stop less than a hundred feet from the hangar.
Men in blue jumpsuits ran out from the maintenance shed and sprinted toward the plane. A staircase was wheeled up to the cabin door, and Dr. Kane’s mood lifted.
Live from New York—his wonderful new shipment had finally arrived.
He watched intently as the passengers stepped one by one from the aircraft.
Thirty young men between the ages of seventeen and twenty-three. Each optimistic and brave, each disease-free. They filed down the staircase and onto the tarmac, looking like a professional sports team.
Dr. Kane smiled as his eyes caressed the young faces. They looked perfect, and only perfection would do.
He knew the specimens better than they knew themselves. He knew their blood types and hematocrits. He knew their heights and weights and bone lengths. He knew their ethnic and racial origins, their allergies and genetic predispositions. He also knew their names but not their faces, and he tried to guess which was Charles, Tyrell, Bandy, and Sean. Who was the prince in the tight black T-shirt? Was the massive young black in cords and green sweater Tyrell?
But it didn’t really matter who was who, did it?
Only the parts mattered—not the whole. They would all be shucked soon.
Then his real work could begin.
Resurrection.
The time was here. Finally.
One of the most important moments in world history. And it was coming none too soon for the welfare of their pitiful civilization.
These thirty fine specimens were key to the special day that was so close now.
These thirty—and most of all, the thirty beneficiaries.
Dr. Kane walked briskly toward the group with outstretched arms. “Welcome,” he said, calling the group to attention. “Welcome, welcome. What a great pleasure to see you . . . in the flesh. I can’t tell you how happy this makes me.