I looked at Fang, and he shrugged. It wasn’t as nice as the park, but it was warm, dry, and seemed somewhat safe. We scrambled up the ledge, with me boosting Angel. Keeping our backs to everyone, we stacked our fists and tapped twice. Almost instantly, Nudge lay down, pillowing her head on her hands.
Fang and I sat with our backs against the wall. I dropped my head into my hands and started rubbing my temples.
“You okay?” Fang asked.
“Yeah,” I muttered. “I’ll be better tomorrow.”
“Go to sleep,” said Fang. “I’ll take the first watch.”
I gave him a grateful smile, and soon I was out, out, out—with no idea how we would ever know it was morning.
84
The brain explosion came again while I was sleeping.
One moment I was lost in a dream in which I was strolling lazily through a field of yellow flowers, like a dopey shampoo commercial, and the next I had jackknifed into a sitting position, holding my head and feeling like this was it: Death had finally come for me, and it wasn’t taking no for an answer.
My breaths were tight hisses. Jagged shards of pain ripped through my skull, and I heard myself whimper. Please let it be fast, I begged God. Please just end it, end it, end it now. Please, please, please.
“Max?” Fang’s low voice, right by my ear, seeped through the waves of agony. I couldn’t respond. My face was awash with tears. If I had been standing on a cliff, nothing could have kept me from throwing myself off. With my wings tucked in.
Inside my brain, images flashed incomprehensibly, making me sick, assaulting my senses with pictures, words, sounds. A voice speaking gibberish. Maybe it was mine.
As if from a great distance, I felt Fang’s hand on my shoulder, but it was like watching a movie—it seemed totally unrelated to what I was going through. My teeth were clenched so hard my jaw ached, and then I tasted blood—I had bitten into my lip.
When was I going to see the proverbial tunnel of white light I’d heard about? With people waiting for me at the other end, smiling and holding out their hands? Don’t kids with wings go to heaven?
Then an angry voice filtered through the pain: “Who’s screwing with my Mac?”
85
Just as before, the pain slowly ebbed, and I almost cried with frustration: If it was ending, I wasn’t dead. If I wasn’t dead, I could go through this again.
Images flashed across the backs of my eyes, but they were unfocused and undecipherable. If I had been alone, I would have started bawling. Instead I had to desperately try to keep it together, try not to wake the younger ones (if I hadn’t already), try not to give our position away.
“Who are you?” The angry voice came again. “What are you doing? You’ve crashed my whole system, worthless dipstick!”
Ordinarily, I would have been on my feet by now, pushing Angel and the others in back of me, an angry snarl on my face.
However, tonight I was crumpled in a humiliated, whimpering ball, holding my head, eyes squeezed shut, trying not to sob like a complete weenie.
“What are you talking about?” Fang asked, an edge of steel in his voice.
“My system crashed. I’ve tracked the interference, and it’s comin’ from you. So I’m tellin’ you to knock it off—or else!”
I drew in a deep, shuddering breath, totally mortified that a stranger was seeing me like this.
“And what’s wrong with her? She trippin’?”
“She’s fine,” Fang snapped. “We don’t know anything about your computer. If you’re not brain-dead, you’ll get out of here.” No one sounds colder or meaner than Fang when he wants to.
The other guy said flatly, “I’m not going nowhere till you quit messing with my Mac. Why don’t you get your girlfriend to a hospital?”
Girlfriend? Oh, God, was I going to catch it later about that. It was enough to make me lever up on one arm, then pull myself to a sitting position.
“Who the hell are you?” I snarled, the effect totally ruined by the weak, weepy sound of my voice. Blinking rapidly, finding even the dim tunnel light painful, I struggled to focus on the intruder.
I got a hazy impression of someone about my age; a ragged-looking kid wearing old army fatigues. He had a dingy PowerBook attached to straps around his shoulders like a xylophone or something.
“None of your beeswax!” he shot back. “Just quit screwing up my motherboard.”
I was still clammy and nauseated, still had a shocking headache and felt trembly, but I thought I could string a complete sentence together. “What are you talking about?”
“This!” The kid turned his Mac toward us, and when I saw the screen I actually gasped.
It was a mishmash of flashing images, drawings, maps, streams of code, silent film clips of people talking. It was exactly the stuff that had flooded my brain during my attack.
PART 5
THE VOICE—MAKE THAT MY VOICE
86
My eyes flicked to the kid’s grimy face. “Who are you?” I demanded again, still sounding shaky.
“I’m the guy who’s gonna kick your butt if you don’t quit messing with my system,” the kid said angrily.
In the next moment, his computer screen cleared totally, turning the same dull green as his fatigues. Then large red words scrolled down: Hello, Max.
Fang’s head whipped around to stare at me, and I focused helplessly on his wide, dark eyes. Then, as if connected, our heads turned to stare again at the computer. Onscreen, it said, Welcome to New York.
Inside my head, a voice said, I knew you’d come. I’ve got big plans for you.
“Can you hear that?” I whispered. “Did you hear it?”
“Hear what?” Fang asked.
“That voice?” I said. My head ached, but the pain was better, and it looked as if I might avoid barfing. I rubbed my temples again, my gaze fixed on the kid’s Mac.
“What’s the deal?” the kid asked, sounding a lot less belligerent and much more weirded out. “Who’s Max? How are you doing this?”
“We’re not doing anything,” Fang said.
A new pain crashed into my brain, and once again the computer screen started flashing disconnected images, gibberish, plans, drawings, all chaotic and garbled.
Peering at the screen, wincing and still rubbing my temples, I spotted four words: Institute for Higher Living.
I looked at Fang, and he gave the slightest nod: He’d seen them too.
Then the screen went blank once more.
87
The kid quickly started typing in commands, muttering, “I’m gonna track this down. . . .”
Fang and I watched, but a couple minutes later the geek stopped, flicking his computer in frustration. He looked at us with narrowed eyes, taking in everything: the drying blood on my chin, the other kids sleeping near us.
“I don’t know how you’re doing it,” he said, sounding resigned and irritated. “Where’s your gear?”
“We don’t have any gear,” Fang said. “Spooky, isn’t it?”
“You guys on the run? You in trouble?”
Jeb had drilled it into us that we shouldn’t ever trust anyone. (We now knew that included him.) The geek was starting to make me extremely nervous.
“Why would you think that?” Fang asked calmly.
The kid rolled his eyes. “Let me see. Maybe because you’re a bunch of kids sleepin’ in a subway tunnel. Kind of clues me in, you know?”
Okay, he had a point.
“What about you?” I asked. “You’re a kid sleeping in a subway tunnel. Don’t you have school?”
The kid coughed out a laugh. “MIT kicked me out.”
MIT was a university for brainiacs—I’d heard of it. This kid wasn’t old enough.
“Uh-huh.” I made myself sound incredibly bored.
“No, really,” he said, sounding almost sheepish. “I got early admission. Was gonna major in computer technology. But I spun out, and they told me to take a hike.”
“
What do you mean, spun out?” asked Fang.
He shrugged. “Wouldn’t take my Thorazine. They said, no Thorazine, no school.”
Okay, I’d been around wack-job scientists enough to pick up on some stuff. Like the fact that Thorazine is what they give schizophrenics.
“So you didn’t like Thorazine,” I said.
“No.” His face turned hard. “Or Haldol, or Melleril, or Zyprexa. They all suck. People just want me to be quiet, do what I’m told, don’t make trouble.”
It was weird—he reminded me a little bit of us: He’d chosen to live a hard, dirty life, being free, instead of a taken-care-of life where he was like a prisoner.
Course, we weren’t schizo. On second thought, I had a voice talking inside my head. Better not make any snap judgments.
“So what’s up with your computer, man?” Fang asked.
The kid shrugged again. “It’s my bread and butter. I can hack into anything. Sometimes people pay me. I do jobs when I need money.” All of a sudden his mouth snapped shut. “Why? Who wants to know?”
“Chill out, dude,” Fang said, frowning. “We’re just having a chat.”
But the kid had started to back away, looking angry. “Who sent you?” he asked, his voice rising. “Who are you? You just leave me alone! You just stay away!”
Fang raised his hands in a “calm down” gesture, but the kid had turned and run. In about fifteen seconds we could no longer hear his sneakers on the ground.
“It’s always refreshing to meet someone crazier than us,” I said. “We seem so normal afterward.”
“We?” Fang said.
“Wha’s up?” Iggy asked sleepily, pulling himself upright.
I sighed but forced myself to tell Iggy about the kid’s computer, the Voice in my head, the images that flashed through me during one of my attacks. I tried to sound nonchalant, so he wouldn’t know I was quaking in my boots.
“Maybe I’m going crazy,” I said lightly. “But it will lead me to greatness. Like Joan of Arc.”
“But controlling other people’s computers?” Iggy said skeptically.
“I don’t see how,” I said. “But since I have no clue about who or what could possibly be causing it, I guess I can’t rule anything out.”
“Hmm. Do we think it’s connected to the School or the Institute?” Fang asked.
“Well, either that or I was born this way,” I said sarcastically. “On the off chance I wasn’t, let’s really, really try to find the Institute tomorrow. At least now we know what name to look for.”
The Institute for Higher Living.
Catchy, huh?
88
Have you ever woken up about a hundred times more exhausted than you were when you went to sleep?
The next morning—at least, I assumed it was morning, since we were all waking up—I felt like one of the twelve dancing princesses, who danced all night, wore holes in their shoes, and had to sleep it off the next day. Except, oh, yeah: a) I’m not a princess; b) sleeping in a subway tunnel and having another brain attack aren’t that much like dancing all night; and c) my combat boots were still in good shape. Other than that, it was exactly the same.
“Is it morning?” Angel asked, yawning.
“I’m hungry” were, predictably, Nudge’s first words.
“Okay, we’ll get you some chow,” I said tiredly. “Then it’s off to find the Institute.”
Fang, Iggy, and I had agreed to not tell the younger kids about the hacker or about my latest brain attack. Why make ’em worry?
It took a couple minutes for us to wend our way through the subway tunnels, back up into light and air. You know you’ve been breathing something less than primo when the New York street smells really fresh and clean.
“It’s so bright,” the Gasman said, shielding his eyes. Then, “Is that honey-roasted peanuts?”
Their incredible scent was impossible to resist. You could have an Eraser selling those peanuts, and we’d probably still go. I focused my eyes on the vendor. No. Not an Eraser.
We got some peanuts, and then we walked down Fourteenth Street, chomping, as I tried to figure out a sensible way to comb the city. First, a phone book. We saw a phone kiosk up ahead, but it had only a chain where the phone book had been. Would a store let us use theirs? Hey! Information! I dug some change out of my pocket and picked up the phone. I dialed 411.
“In New York City, the Institute for Higher Living,” I said when the automated operator came on.
“We’re sorry. There is no listing under that name. Please check and try again.”
Frustration was my constant companion. I wanted to scream. “What the he-eck are we supposed to do now?” I asked Fang.
He looked at me, and I could tell he was mulling over the problem. He held out a small waxed-paper bag. “Peanut?”
We kept walking and eating, gazing in constant amazement at the store windows. Everything you could buy in the world was for sale on Fourteenth Street in New York. Of course, we couldn’t afford any of it. Still, it was awesome.
“Smile, you’re on Candid Camera,” said Fang, pointing at a window.
In an electronics store, a short-circuit camera was displaying passersby on a handful of TV screens. Automatically, we ducked our heads and turned away, instinctively paranoid about anyone having our images.
Suddenly, I winced as a single sharp pain hit my temple. At the same time, words scrolling across the TV screens caught my eye. I stared in disbelief as Good morning, Max, filled every screen.
“Jeez,” Fang breathed, stopping dead in his tracks.
Iggy bumped into him, saying, “What? What is it?”
“Is that you?” the Gasman asked me. “How do they know you?”
Playing is learning, Max, said the Voice inside my head. It was the same one as last night, and I realized I couldn’t tell if it was adult or child, male or female, friend or foe. Great.
Games test your abilities. Fun is crucial to human development. Go have fun, Max.
I halted, oblivious to the gobs of people streaming around us on the street. “I don’t want to have fun! I want some answers!” I blurted without meaning to—the crazy girl talking back to her little Voice.
Get on the Madison Avenue bus, said the Voice. Get off when it looks fun.
89
I don’t know about the rest of you who have little voices, but something about mine made me feel completely compelled to listen to it.
I blinked and discovered the flock gazing at me solemnly, watching me sink further into total insanity right before their eyes.
“Max, are you okay?” Nudge asked.
I nodded. “I think we should get on the Madison Avenue bus,” I said, looking for a street sign.
Fang looked at me thoughtfully. “Why?”
I turned slightly so the others couldn’t see me and mouthed, “The Voice.”
He nodded. “But Max,” he whispered, barely audible, “what if this is all a trap?”
“I don’t know!” I said. “But maybe we should do what it says for a while—to see.”
“Do what what says?” the Gasman demanded.
I had started walking toward the corner. I heard Fang say, “Max has been hearing a voice, inside her. We don’t know what it is.” So much for not worrying the others.
“Like her conscience?” Nudge asked. “Do the TVs have anything to do with it?”
“We don’t know,” said Fang. “Right now it wants us to get on the Madison Avenue bus, apparently.”
The bus stop was fourteen blocks away. We got on, and I pushed our fares into the machine. The driver waved us through, saying, “Pass, pass, pass” in a bored voice.
I hoped the Voice didn’t want me to keep spending money—we were dangerously low.
For people who get nervous in small, confined spaces or surrounded by other people, riding a bus is pretty much a living nightmare. It was so crowded we had to stand in the aisle with people pressed up against us. I figured we could always kick a window
out and jump, but the whole thing frayed my few remaining nerves. My head was swiveling constantly, scanning for Erasers suddenly morphing out of our fellow passengers.
Well, Voice? I thought. What now?
I’m sure this will surprise you, but the Voice did not answer.
Next to me, Angel trustingly held my hand, watching the city go past the bus windows. It was up to me. I had to keep everyone safe. I had to find the Institute. If my brain attacks killed me, Fang would take over. But until then, I was numero uno. I couldn’t let the flock down. Do you hear that, Voice? If you’re going to make me let everyone down, you’re going to be sorry you ever . . . entered my brain.
Oh, my God, I was so freaking nuts.
“Okay, people,” the bus driver said over the PA system. “Fifty-eighth Street! This is where the fun is!”
Startled, I looked at Fang, then started hustling everyone out the back door of the bus. We stepped into the sunlight. The bus pulled noisily away, leaving us choking on its exhaust. We were at the bottom of Central Park.
“What—” I began, then my eyes widened as I saw a large glass-fronted building across the street. Behind its glass were an enormous teddy bear, a huge wooden soldier, and a fifteen-foot-tall ballerina up on one pointed toe.
The sign said AFO Schmidt.
The world’s most amazing toy store.
Well, okay.
90
We poor, underprivileged, pathetic bird kids had never been in a toy store.
And AFO Schmidt is where kids think they’ve died and gone to heaven. Right inside the front door was a huge two-story clock covered with moving figures. The song “It’s a Small World” was playing loudly, but I figured that was to keep out the riffraff.
I had no idea why we were here. It seemed too much to hope for that somehow this little romp was getting us closer to finding the Institute, but I made the executive decision to see where it took us.