The stick Fang was holding snapped in two, his knuckles white in the darkness. I saw pain in his dark eyes. Pain and sadness, and the reflection of our fire.
I cleared my throat. “What about me?” I’d always dreamed of having a mom. Even—and this is so awesomely embarrassing that I’ll never admit I said it—hoping that someday she would show up and be so wonderful and marry Jeb. And take care of all of us. I know. Pathetic, isn’t it?
Angel blinked up at me. “I didn’t hear anything about you, Max. Nothing. I’m real sorry.”
72
“I can’t believe it,” the Gasman said for the thirtieth time. “They gave us away. They must be sick. Sick jerks. I’m glad I don’t know them.”
“I’m sorry, Gazzy,” I said for the thirtieth time, digging down deep for my last shred of patience. I totally, totally felt for him, but I had reached my limit about thirteen times ago.
Anyway, I ruffled his fine, light hair and hugged his shoulders. His face was dirty and streaked with tears. I wished we could just go back to our mountain house. The Erasers knew where it was, had swarmed all over it. We could never go back. But right now, I so wished I could just stick Gazzy under a hot shower, then tuck him into bed.
Those days were gone, baby.
“Angel? It’s late, sweetie. Why don’t you try to get some sleep? Actually, we could all use an early night.”
“I’m going to sleep too,” said Nudge, her voice still thick from crying. “I just want this day to end.”
I blinked. That was the shortest sentence I’d ever heard her utter.
The six of us gathered around. I held out my left fist, and Fang put his on top of it, and everyone else did too. When we had a stack, we tapped the backs of one another’s fists with our right hands.
We always do it, wherever we are. Habit.
Angel curled up in her spot, and I covered her with my sweatshirt. The Gasman lay down next to her, and then Nudge settled down too. I knelt next to her and tucked her collar around her neck.
I almost always go to sleep last—like I have to make sure everyone else is down. I started to bank the fire, and Fang came and helped me.
“So maybe you were hatched after all,” Fang said. The six of us had always teased one another, saying we’d hatched out of eggs.
I laughed drily. “Yeah. Maybe so. Maybe they found me in a cabbage patch.”
“In a way, you’re lucky,” he said quietly. “Not knowing is better.”
I hate the way he can read my mind, since he doesn’t even have mind-reading abilities.
“It leaves all the possibilities open,” he went on. “Your story could be worse, but it could also be a hell of a lot better.”
He sat back on his heels, watching the fire, and then extended his wings a bit to warm them. “A teenager, jeez,” he said in disgust. “She was probably a crack addict or something.”
He never would have said that if the others were awake. Some things we trusted only each other to understand.
“Maybe not,” I said, covering the fire with ashes. “Maybe she was a nice kid who just made a mistake. At least she wanted to actually wait the nine months and have you. Maybe she would have kept you or let a really nice family adopt you.”
Fang snorted in disbelief. “On the one hand, we have a mythical nice family that wants to adopt me. On the other, we have a gang of insane scientists desperate to do genetic experiments on innocent children. Guess which hand I get dealt?”
Tiredly, he lay down next to Gazzy and closed his eyes, one arm over his forehead.
“I’m sorry, Fang,” I mouthed silently.
I lay down myself, reaching out my foot to touch Nudge, putting an arm around Angel. I was too tired to worry about my brain attack earlier. Too tired to wonder how we would find the Institute in New York. Too tired to care about saving the world.
73
“Yo!” I said loudly. “Up and at ’em!”
You’ll be relieved to hear that my brief descent into weary lack of caring was totally gone by the time the sun fried my eyelids the next morning.
I got up, started the fire going again—because that’s the kind of selfless, wonderful leader I am—then started affectionately kicking the flock awake.
There was much grumbling and groaning, which I ignored, instead carefully balancing a pan of Jiffy Pop popcorn over a branch on the fire. Popcorn for breakfast! Why not? It’s a grain. It’s like, like, grits, but with high self-esteem.
Plus, no one can sleep through the machine-gun sound of popcorn popping. Soon the rest of the flock was gathering glumly around the fire, rubbing sleep out of their eyes.
“We’re headed for the Big Apple, guys. The city that never sleeps. I think we’re maybe six, seven hours away.”
Twenty minutes later, we were taking off, one by one. I was last, after Angel, and I ran about twenty feet, then leaped into the air, beating my wings hard. I was maybe ten feet off the ground when it happened again: Some unseen force shoved an unseen railroad spike through my skull.
I cried out, falling, then smacked into the ground hard enough to knock my breath away.
I curled up in a fragile ball of pain, holding my head, feeling tears dripping down my cheeks, trying not to scream.
“Max?” Fang’s gentle fingers touched my shoulder. “Is it like before?”
I couldn’t even nod. It was all I could do to hold my head together so my brains wouldn’t splatter all over my friends. A high, keening sound reached my ears. It was me.
Behind my eyes, bursts of red and orange flooded my brain, as if fireworks were exploding inside me. Then it was as though someone had jacked a movie screen directly into my retinas: Lightning-fast images shot through me so fast it made me feel sick. I could hardly make any of them out: blurred buildings, fuzzy landscapes, unrecognizable people’s faces, food, headlines from papers, old stuff in black-and-white, psychedelic stuff, swirly patterns . . .
I don’t know how long it went on—years? Gradually, gradually, I realized I could move, and as soon as I could, I crawled over to some bushes and barfed my guts up.
Then I lay gasping, feeling like death. It was a while before I could open my eyes and see blue sky, puffy white clouds—and five worried faces.
“Max, what is the matter with you?” Angel said, sounding as scared as she looked.
“Think you should see a doctor?” Fang asked mildly, but his eyes were piercing.
“Oh, yes, that’s a good idea,” I said weakly. “We need to let more people in authority know about us.”
“Look,” Fang began, but I cut him off.
“I’m okay now,” I said, lying through my teeth. “Maybe it’s a stomach bug or something.” Yeah, the kind of stomach bug that causes brain cancer. The kind of bug you get when your whole genetic makeup is about to unravel. The bug you get before you die.
“Let’s just go to New York,” I said.
74
After giving me a long, level look, Fang shrugged and motioned to the Gasman to take off. Reluctantly, he did, and the others followed. “After you,” Fang said, jerking his thumb toward the sky.
Gritting my teeth, I got to my feet and ran shakily, opening my wings and leaping into the air again, half braced for another explosion of pain. But it was okay. I still felt like I might hurl, and I thought about how awful that would be in midair.
“Are you okay?” Nudge asked once we were airborne. I nodded.
“I’ve been thinking about my mom and dad,” she said. Her tawny wings beat in unison with mine, so we just barely missed each other on the downstrokes. “I bet—if they’ve been thinking I died eleven years ago, then I bet they would be pretty happy to see me again, right? I mean, if all this time they wished I had gone home with them and grown up—then they would be pretty happy to see me, wouldn’t they?”
I didn’t say anything.
“Unless . . .” She frowned. “I mean—I guess I’m not what they would be expecting, huh? It’s not my fault or anything, but
I mean, I’ve got wings.”
Yep, I thought.
“They might not want me if I have wings and am so weird and all,” Nudge said, her voice dropping. “Maybe they just want a normal daughter, and if I’m weird, they wouldn’t want me back anyway. What do you think, Max?”
“I don’t know, Nudge,” I said. “It seems like if they’re your parents, then they should love you no matter what, even if you’re different.”
I thought about how Ella had accepted me just the way I was, wings, weirdness, and all. And Dr. Martinez was always going to be my perfect image of a mom. She’d accepted me too.
Now I was gulping, trying not to cry. Because I hadn’t experienced enough emotion already this morning. I muttered a swear word to myself. After I’d heard Angel cussing like a sailor when she stubbed her toe, my new resolution was to watch my language. All I needed was a six-year-old mutant with a potty mouth.
I thought about how Ella and her mom and I had made chocolate-chip cookies. From scratch. From, like, a bag of flour and real eggs. Not store-bought, not even slice ’n’ bake. The way they’d smelled when they were baking was in-cred-i-ble. It had smelled like—home. Like what a real home should smell like.
They’d been the best dang cookies I’d ever had.
75
“Oh, my God,” I muttered, staring at the lights below us. Most of New York City is at the bottom part of a long, thin island—Manhattan Island, actually. You could tell exactly where it began and ended, because suddenly the dark landscape was ablaze with lights. Streaming pearls of headlights moved slowly through the arteries of the city. It looked like every window in every building had a light burning.
“That’s a lot of people,” Fang said, coming up beside me.
I knew what he was thinking: We all tend to get a little claustrophobic, a little paranoid when we’re around lots of people. Not only had Jeb constantly warned us about interacting with anyone for any reason, but there was always the possibility that one of those strangers could suddenly morph into an Eraser.
“Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh,” Nudge was saying excitedly. “I want to go down there! I want to walk on Fifth Avenue! I want to go to museums!” She turned to me, her face alight with anticipation. “Do we have any money left? Can we get something to eat? Can we, like, go shopping?”
“We have some money,” I told her. “We can get something to eat. But remember, we’re here to find the Institute.”
Nudge nodded, but I could tell half of my words had gone right out her other ear.
“What’s that sound?” Iggy asked, concentrating. “It’s music. Is there music below us? How could we hear it, way up here?”
Central Park was a big, relatively dark rectangle below us. At one end, in a clearing, I could see an enormous crowd of people. Huge floodlights were shining over them.
“I think it must be a concert,” I told Iggy. “In the park. An outdoor concert.”
“Oh, so cool!” Nudge said. “Can we go? Please, Max, please? A real concert!” If it’s possible for someone to bounce up and down with excitement while flying, Nudge was doing it.
The park was pretty dark. There were hundreds of thousands of people down there. Even Erasers would have a hard time finding us in that crowd.
I made an executive decision. “Yes. Try to come down right behind a floodlight’s beam, so we won’t be seen.”
We landed silently among a group of thick-trunked oaks. We took a moment to shake out our legs, and fold in our wings and cover them with windbreakers. After a quick head count, I led the way toward the crowd, trying to look casual, like, Fly? Me? Nah.
The music was unbelievably loud: Speakers taller than Iggy were stacked on top of one another, three high. To me it felt as if the actual ground was vibrating.
“What concert is this?” Iggy asked, yelling in my ear.
I peered over tens of thousands of heads to see the raised stage. Thanks to my raptorlike vision, I had no trouble making out the musicians. And a banner that said Natalie and Trent Taylor. “It’s the Taylor Twins,” I reported, and most of the flock whooped and whistled. They loved the Taylor Twins.
Angel kept close to me, her small hand in mine, as we stood among the crowd. We were enough on the edge that we avoided the sardine effect of the people closer to the stage. I think we all would have freaked out if we’d been that hemmed in, that unable to move. Iggy put the Gasman on his shoulders and gave him his lighter to burn, like thousands of other people. The Gasman swayed in time to the music, holding the lighter high.
Once he looked down at me, and his face was so full of happiness I almost started crying. How often had I seen him look like that? Like, twice? In eight years?
We listened to Natalie and Trent until the concert ended. As soon as the rivers of people began to flow past us, we melted into the shadows of the trees. The branches above us were thick and welcoming. We flew up into them, settling comfortably.
“That was awesome,” Nudge said happily. “I can’t believe how many people there are, all crowded into one place. I mean, listen. . . . There’s no silence, ever. I can hear people and traffic and sirens and dogs barking. I mean, it was always so quiet back at home.”
“Too quiet,” said the Gasman.
“Well, I hate it,” Iggy said flatly. “When it’s quiet, I can tell where the heck things are, people are, where echoes are bouncing off. Here I’m just surrounded with a thick, smothering wall of sound. I want to get out of here.”
“Oh, Iggy, no!” Nudge cried. “This place is so cool. You’ll get used to it.”
“We’re here to find out what we can about the Institute,” I reminded both of them. “I’m sorry, Iggy, but maybe you’ll get a little more used to it soon. And Nudge, this isn’t a pleasure trip. Our goal is to find the Institute.”
“How are we gonna do that?” Angel asked.
“I have a plan,” I said firmly. God, I was really going to have to get all this lying under control.
76
Basically, if you put a fence around New York City, you’d have the world’s biggest nontraveling circus.
When we woke up at dawn the next morning, there were already joggers, bicyclers, even horseback riders weaving their way along the miles and miles of trails in Central Park. We slipped down out of the trees and casually wandered the paths.
Within an hour, speed skaters were rushing by, street performers were setting up their props, and the paths were almost crowded with dog walkers and moms pushing jogging strollers.
“That lady has six white poodles!” Nudge hissed behind her hand. “Who needs six white poodles?”
“Maybe she sells them,” I suggested, “to kids with big wide eyes.”
“Something smells awesome,” Iggy said, swiveling his head to detect the source. “What is that? It’s over there.” He pointed off to my left.
“There’s a guy selling food,” I said. “It says honey-roasted peanuts.”
“I am so there,” said Iggy. “Can I have some money?”
Iggy, Angel, and I went to buy six small bags of honey-roasted peanuts (they really did smell like heaven), and Fang, Nudge, and the Gasman went to look at a clown selling balloons.
We were walking over to join them when something about the clown caught my eye. She was watching a sleek, dark-haired guy strolling down a path. Their gazes met.
A chill went down my back. Just like that, my enjoyment of the day burst. I was swept into fear, anger, and an intense self-preservation reflex.
“Iggy, heads up,” I whispered. “Get the others.”
Beside me, Angel was wound tight, her hand clenching mine hard. We walked fast toward the others. Fang, doing an automatic sweep of the area, saw my urgent expression. In the next moment he had clamped a hand on Nudge’s and the Gasman’s shoulders and spun them around to walk quickly away.
We met on the path and sped up our pace. One glance behind me showed the dark-haired guy following us. He was joined by a woman who looked just as intent and
powerful as he did.
A flow of heroically suppressed swear words ran through my brain. I scanned the scenery for escape routes, a place where we could take off, a place to duck and cover.
They were gaining on us.
“Run!” I said. The six of us can run faster than most grown men, but the Erasers had also been genetically enhanced. If we couldn’t find an out, we were done for.
Now there were three of them—they’d been joined by another male-model type. They had broken into an easy trot and were closing the space between us.
Paths merged into other paths, sometimes narrowing, sometimes widening. Again and again, we almost crashed into bikers or skaters going too fast to swerve.
“Four of them,” Fang said. “Pour it on, guys!”
We sped up. They were maybe twenty yards behind us. Hungry grins marred their good-looking faces.
“Six of them!” I said.
“They’re too fast,” Fang informed me unnecessarily. “Maybe we should fly.”
I bit my lip, keeping a tight grip on Angel’s hand. What to do, what to do. They were closer, and even closer—
“Eight of them!” said Fang.
77
“Left!” Iggy said, and without question we all hung a sudden left. How he knew it was there, I have no idea.
Our path suddenly opened into a wider plaza surrounded by vendors selling all kinds of stuff. Some brick buildings were on the left, and a big crowd of kids was passing through a metal gate.
I caught a glimpse of a sign: Central Park Zoo.
“Merge!” I whispered, and just like that, we melted smoothly into the horde of schoolkids. Fang, Iggy, Nudge, and I ducked down to be shorter, and we all wormed our way into the middle of the group, so we were surrounded by other kids. None of them seemed to think it was weird we were there—there must have been more than two hundred of them being herded through the gate.
I repressed an urge to moo and peeped over a girl’s shoulder. The Erasers had spread out and were searching for us, looking frustrated.