“Max, there’s something I have to tell you.” Angel started to cry.
“Shh,” I said soothingly. “It can wait. Just rest. Try to feel better.”
“No, Max, it’s really important—”
A door opened, and loud footsteps sounded on the linoleum tile. Angel’s eyes were panicked in her bruised little face. Fury ignited in me that anything, anyone, could make a little girl so afraid.
I coiled my muscles, narrowing my eyes and putting on my fiercest look. They were going to be sorry they ever picked Angel to mess with. They were going to be sorry they’d ever been born.
My hands clenched into fists. I crouched in my crate, ready to spring at whoever opened it so I could rip their lungs out. I’d start with Ari, the creep of creeps.
Angel was hunched over now, crying silently, and inside I started freaking, wondering what on earth they had done to her. I felt totally wired on adrenaline, just nuts.
A pair of legs stopped right in front of my crate. I could see the edges of a white lab coat brushing the knees.
He bent down and looked into my crate with a gentle, rueful expression.
My heart almost stopped, and I fell backward off my heels.
“Maximum Ride,” said Jeb Batchelder. “Oh, I’ve missed you so much.”
60
I’m hallucinating, I thought dazedly. I’m having an out-of-body experience.
Everything else in my vision faded away. I could see only Jeb, smiling at me through the bars of my dog crate.
Jeb had been the only parentlike person I’d ever had. He had kidnapped the six of us four years ago, stolen us away from this freak show and hidden us in the mountains in our house. He’d helped us learn how to fly—none of us had ever been allowed enough space to try before. He’d fed us, clothed us, and taught us survival skills, how to fight, how to read. He’d told jokes and read stories and let us play video games. He’d made us dinner and tucked us in at night. Whenever I’d felt afraid, I’d remind myself that Jeb was there and that he would protect us, and then I’d always feel better.
Two years ago, he’d disappeared.
We’d always known he’d been killed. We’d known that he would have died rather than disclose our location. That he died trying to protect us. That kind of thing.
For the last two years, we’d all missed Jeb so much, with a horrible, aching, wailing pain that just wouldn’t stop. You know—like if your dad or mom died. It had been so awful in the beginning, when he hadn’t come home, and then when we’d had to accept that he never would.
Dead or alive, he’d been my hero. Every day. For the last four years.
Now my eyes were telling me that he was one of them. That maybe he’d been one of them all along. That everything I’d ever known or felt about him had been a rotten, stinking lie.
Now Angel’s words, her fear, her tears, made horrible sense. She’d known.
I was dying to look at her, at Fang or Nudge, to see their reactions.
I just wouldn’t give him that satisfaction.
Like a door slamming shut, everything in me that had loved and trusted Jeb closed down. In its place rose new feelings that were so powerful and full of hate that they scared me.
Which is saying something.
“I know you’re surprised,” he said with a smile. “Come on. I need to talk to you.”
He unlatched my dog door and held it open. In a nanosecond, I had a plan of action: not to act. Just to listen and watch. To absorb everything and give out nothing.
Okay, as a plan, it wasn’t the blueprint of Westminster Abbey, but it was a start.
Slowly, I climbed out of my crate. My muscles groaned when I stood up. I didn’t look at any of the flock when I passed, but I put my right hand behind my back, two fingers together.
It was our sign that said “Wait.”
Jeb had taught it to us.
61
Jeb and I walked past a bank of computers, out of sight of the others. A door in the far wall led into a smaller, less lablike room furnished with couches, a table and chairs, a sink, microwave.
“Sit down, Max, please,” he said, gesturing to a chair. “I’ll get us some hot chocolate.” He said it casually, knowing it was my favorite, as if we were in the kitchen back home.
“Max, I have to tell you—I’m so proud of you,” he said, putting mugs in the microwave. “I just can’t believe how well you’ve done. No, I can believe it—I knew you could do it. But seeing you so healthy, so powerful, such a good leader, well, it just makes me so proud.”
The microwave beeped, and he set a steaming mug on the table in front of me. We were in a top-secret facility in the middle of Death Valley, officially called “freaking nowhere” on any map, and yet he managed to produce marshmallows, plopping two into my cup.
I looked at him steadily, ignoring the hot chocolate, which was making my stomach growl.
He paused as if to give me time to reply, then sat down across from me at the table. It was Jeb—my brain finally accepted the inescapable truth. I recognized the fine pink scar on his jawline, the slight bend to his nose, the tiny freckle on his right ear. This was not his evil twin. It was him. He was evil.
“You must have so many questions,” he said. “I don’t even know where to start. I just—I’m just so sorry about this. I wish I could explain—wish I could have explained two years ago, to you, if no one else. I wish I could explain what I’d give just to see you smile again.”
How about your head on a stick?
“But in time, Max, it will all come out, and you’ll understand what’s happening. That’s what I told Angel. I told her that everything is a test, even when you don’t know it. That sometimes you just have to do what you have to do and know it will all be clearer later. All of this has been a test.” He waved his hand vaguely, as if to encompass my entire experience.
I sat there, conscious that my sweatshirt was crusted with blood, that my face hurt, that I was hungry again—quelle surprise—and that I had never, ever wanted to kill anyone more, not even last summer when Iggy had shredded my only, favorite pair of non-Goodwill pants to make a fuse long enough to detonate something from fifty feet away.
I said nothing, had no expression on my face.
He glanced at me, then at the closed door. “Max,” he said, with a new tone of urgency in his voice. “Max, soon some people will come in to talk to you. But I need to tell you something first.”
That you are the devil incarnate?
“Something I couldn’t tell you before, something I thought I’d have time to prepare you for later.”
He looked around, as if to make sure no one else could hear. Guess he was forgetting all our surveillance lessons, about hidden mikes and heat sensors that can see through walls, and long-distance listening devices that could pick up a rat sneeze from a half mile away.
“The thing is, Max,” he said, tons of heart-wringing emotion in his eyes, “you’re even more special than I always told you. You see, you were created for a reason. Kept alive for a purpose, a special purpose.”
You mean besides seeing how well insane scientists could graft avian DNA into a human egg?
He took a breath, looking deep into my eyes. I coldly shut down every good memory I had of him, every laugh we’d shared, every happy moment, every thought that he was like a dad to me.
“Max, that reason, that purpose is: You are supposed to save the world.”
62
Okay, I couldn’t help it. My jaw dropped open. I shut it again quickly. Well. This would certainly give weight to my ongoing struggle to have the bathroom first in the morning.
“I can’t tell you much more than that right now,” Jeb said, looking over his shoulder again. “But I had to let you know the size of what we’re dealing with, the enormity, the importance. You are more than special, Max. You’re preordained. You have a destiny that you can’t imagine.”
Maybe I can’t imagine it because I’m not a complete nutcase.
“Max, everything you’ve done, everything you are, everything you can be, is tied into your destiny. Your life is worth the lives of thousands. The fact that you are alive is the most important thing anyone has ever accomplished.”
If he was expecting a gushing response, he was gonna wait a long time.
He sighed heavily, not taking his eyes off me, disappointed at my lack of excitement over hearing that I was the messiah.
“It’s okay,” he said with sad understanding. “I can barely imagine what you must be feeling or thinking. It’s okay. I just wanted to tell you myself. Later, others will come to talk to you. After you’ve had a chance to think about this, to realize what it could mean for you and the others. But for now, don’t say anything to the rest of the flock. It’s our secret, Maximum. Soon the whole world will know. But not just yet.”
I was getting very good at saying nothing.
He stood up and helped me from my chair, a solicitous hand under my elbow that made my flesh crawl.
We walked in silence back to the row of crates, and he unlatched mine and waited patiently for me to crawl inside. Such a gentleman.
Latching it behind me, he leaned down to give me one last meaningful look. “Remember,” he whispered. “Trust me. That’s all I ask. Just trust me. Listen to your gut.”
Well, how many times had I heard him say that? I wondered contemptuously as he walked away. Right now my gut was telling me I wanted to take his lungs out with a pair of pliers.
“You okay?” Angel asked anxiously, pressing her little face to the side of her cage.
I nodded, and met Fang’s and Nudge’s eyes across the way.
“I’m okay. Everyone hang tough, all right?”
Nudge and Angel nodded, concerned, and Fang kept staring at me. I had no idea what he was thinking. Was he wondering if I was a traitor? Was he wondering if Jeb had managed to turn me—or if I had been in league with Jeb from the beginning?
He would find out soon enough.
63
Hours went by. In the dictionary, next to the word stress, there is a picture of a midsize mutant stuck inside a dog crate, wondering if her destiny is to be killed or to save the world.
Okay, not really. But there should be.
If you can think of anything more nerve-racking, more guaranteed to whip every fiber in your body up in a knot, you let me know.
I couldn’t tell the others anything—not even in a whisper. If it amused Jeb to pretend that closed doors and lowered voices protected one against surveillance, that was fine. But I knew better. There could be cameras and mikes hidden anywhere, built into our crates. So I couldn’t go over a plan, offer reassurance, or even freak out and say, “Oh, my God! Jeb is alive!”
When Angel whispered, “Where are Gazzy and Iggy?” I just shrugged. Her face fell, and I looked hard at her. They got away. They’re okay.
She read my thoughts, gave a tiny nod, then gradually slumped against the side of her crate, worn out.
After that, all I could do was send meaningful glances.
For hours.
My headache was back, and when I shut my eyes all these images danced on the backs of my eyelids.
At one point a whitecoat came in and dumped another “experiment” into the crate next to mine. I glanced over, curious, then quickly turned away, my heart aching. It looked enough like a kid to make me feel sick, but more like a horrible fungus. Huge pebbly growths covered most of its body. It had few fingers and only one toe, stuck onto the end of a foot like a pod. Senseless blue eyes looked out at me, blinked.
Sometime in the next half hour, I realized the “experiment” was no longer breathing. It had died, right next to me.
Horror-struck, I looked across at Angel. She was crying. She knew.
Finally, much later, the door to the lab opened. A crowd came in, and I heard human voices and Eraserlike croons and laughs. They wheeled a big flatbed cart to our aisle.
“I count only four,” a man said in a prissy, concerned voice.
“Two bought it,” Ari said, sounding triumphant. “Back in Colorado. This is what’s left.” He kicked my cage, making the bars rattle. “Hi, Max. Miss me?”
“Is the Director quite sure about this?” a woman asked. “It seems a shame—there’s so much more we can learn from them.”
“Yes,” said a third whitecoat. “It’s just too risky. Given how uncooperative the little one has been.”
I caught Angel’s eye and gave her a thumbs-up, proud of her resistance. She sent a weak grin back at me.
Then her cage was grabbed roughly and swung onto the cart like luggage. She winced as her bruised cheek hit the side, and fury flamed in me again.
In the next second, Ari grabbed my crate and swung me up next to her on the cart, letting me drop with a crash that made me bite my lip hard. Like I needed another head wound. He grinned through the bars, letting me see his long yellow fangs. “Strong, like bull,” he bragged.
“Your dad must be so proud,” I said snidely, and he angered instantly, punching my cage so hard I almost toppled over.
“Easy,” murmured a whitecoat, earning herself a murderous snarl from Ari.
Then two more Erasers loaded Nudge and Fang on next to us. With Ari trailing behind, looking angry, they pushed us through wide double doors. The hall outside was painfully bright and overlaid with the smells of floor cleaner and office machines.
Clutching the bars of my crate, I peered out, trying to recognize a doorway, an office—anything that would tell me what section of the School we were in. The Erasers poked their fingers through our bars, trying to scratch us, taunting, literally rattling our cages. I wondered how much strength it would take to grab an Eraser finger and snap it.
We took a sharp left turn and got pushed through more double swinging doors, and then we were outside. I inhaled eagerly, but even outdoors at the School the air was tainted and foul.
Squinting, I shifted from side to side in my cage, looking for landmarks. Behind us was the lab building. Ahead of us, maybe a hundred yards away, was a low redbrick building. We were in the yard in back of the School.
The yard I used to look out at, in the dead of night, from our lab window.
The yard where Erasers were trained to bring down prey and tear it limb from limb.
Which was probably why they were laughing.
64
The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything else into perspective.
Like right now. My choices were to either give in and let them kill all of us or fight back with everything I had.
I chose the second one, ’cause I’m just funny that way.
In the split second I had to ponder what form my “fighting to the death” would take, a shadow blotted out the sun.
“Got your running shoes on, piggy?” Ari asked, pushing his hairy fingers through the bars of my cage and wiggling them. “Feeling like a little exercise? Wanna race? Wanna play food fight? You’re the food!”
I grinned evilly. Then I leaned over and chomped hard on Ari’s fingers. He sucked in a deep breath, then yelled in awful pain. I gathered my strength and bit down harder, until I actually felt my teeth break his skin, tasted his horrible blood. But you know what? I didn’t care. Seeing Ari hurt was worth it.
After the car wreck, biting anything hurt majorly, but I shut out the pain and put every ounce of my fury into my aching jaws. Ari was shaking my cage, slamming it with his other hand, and my head was getting snapped around like a paddleball.
But I hung on, thinking pit bull thoughts.
The whitecoats were yelling at me now. Still screaming, Ari began savagely kicking my cage. Suddenly, I unclenched my teeth and let go. His next kick smashed my crate sideways. It rolled over a couple of times.
I landed upside down, right next to Angel’s crate door. Being smarter than the average bear, it took me only a few seconds to unlatch it.
“Go!” I ordered. “Go! Don’t argue!”
S
he edged her door open and scrambled out just as Ari slammed down on top of my crate in a murderous rage. I braced myself as best I could, but he was tearing into the crate, roaring with pain. The crate tumbled sideways on the grass, and for just a split second, I caught a glimpse of the sky. It was streaked with dark, fast-moving storm clouds. Then I was batted upside down again, making me feel like laundry in a dryer.
Ari was screaming furiously, calling me awful names and shaking his bleeding fingers so that flecks of gore spattered me through the bars.
But I was smiling now. My first really good smile in days.
I knew what the storm clouds were.
They were hawks—led by Iggy and the Gasman, who else? And they were storming the School to save us.
65
Call me crazy, but there’s just something cheering about seeing huge raptors tear into Eraser flesh.
Just as Ari, ignoring the latch in his murderous rage, finally succeeded in ripping it open, he was dive-bombed by a hawk with razor-sharp talons and a huge grudge against wolves. As I popped out, I saw him swatting at it, screaming like a big weenie as the bird sliced into the back of his neck.
“Angel! Get out of here!” I yelled, racing to her.
Two whitecoats were chasing her, but I got there first. I elbowed one out of the way, grabbed Angel’s waist, and threw her up into the sky.
Then I managed to unlatch Fang’s crate. The whitecoats fell on me, but a regular grown-up versus an angry Max doesn’t stand a chance. I backhanded one across the jaw, feeling teeth knock loose. The other I kicked right under his double chin. His head jerked back, and he dropped like a brick.
Fang burst out of his cage, then grabbed a whitecoat and slammed him against the cart. He drew back a fist and punched, looking cold and determined. The whitecoat’s eyes rolled back, and he crumpled.
Getting to Nudge took no time. She tumbled out of her crate just as Iggy and the Gasman led their hawk swarm in for round two.