Scenes flashed in Fang’s mind: Maya laughing easily. Maya asking if he was okay, her eyes soft, concerned. Maya after her haircut—happy, confident, ready for a fresh start. He hadn’t wanted to admit it, but he had thought they could be each other’s fresh start. He ground his teeth into his lips to keep from screaming.
“Fang… I love you,” Maya said, starting to cry. Tears trickled over her lovely cheeks, down her jaw, into the mutilated mess of her neck.
The sound of wings filtered into his brain, but only vaguely, as if he were hearing it through a long tunnel.
“I know,” Fang whispered.
Then he felt the wind shift behind him, felt the hairs on his neck rising. Before he could move, before he could react, Ari appeared, and with a final, murderous lunge, smashed his elbow into Maya’s chest with crushing force.
“No!” Fang screamed as Ari soared away from them. Still struggling to hold Maya up, Fang couldn’t defend her, couldn’t fight back. He could only clutch at her and watch it happen.
Helpless.
Fang landed as gently as he could. He fell to his knees, arranging Maya’s head on his lap.
“Crap,” Ratchet said, awake again and limping over. “I saw Ari take a swipe at her, but I didn’t think it was that bad.”
“Get me something to stop the bleeding,” Fang said tersely. Ratchet looked around, then grabbed Holden and yanked the boy’s shirt off. He tossed it to Fang, who pressed the cloth to Maya’s neck.
He was aware of Star and Kate, unsure what to do, huddling together off to the side. They clearly hadn’t been prepared for this. Fang would deal with them later.
Ratchet and Holden leaned silently over him. They knew, just as Fang knew, that it was too late.
“I’m sorry,” Maya cried helplessly. She coughed and sputtered, her breath growing shallow.
“Shh,” Fang said. “Don’t talk. Just focus on breathing. You’re going to get through this. We’re going to get through this,” he repeated.
Maya’s brown eyes struggled to focus on his. “Sorry I’m… not st-strong af… ter all.”
“Maya,” he said quietly. “You are strong. Stronger than anyone.”
“After Max,” she said, trying to smile. Blood began to seep from beneath Holden’s shirt and drip on the ground.
Fang shook his head. “Not after Max. Right next to her. Equal.”
“Thank you,” Maya whispered. Then her eyes seemed to focus on a spot just to one side of Fang’s face, and her head lolled.
Fang didn’t move.
He just sat there, staring at the dead girl. The dead Maya, the dead Max, the dead almost everything he cared about. He felt like a freight train was slamming into his chest, over and over again.
Ratchet and Holden tensed beside Fang as footsteps approached. Ratchet said, “Fang? Wolfboy’s back.”
Still Fang didn’t move from his place on the ground, didn’t stop cradling Maya’s body.
Ari’s voice, gruff and taunting, cut through the fog. “Fang—sorry, man. Had to happen. Don’t worry, though—she’s a clone, right? Dime a dozen.”
Finally Fang looked up, his eyes swimming. “We’ll finish this later,” he said through clenched teeth.
Ari grinned. “I’m counting on it,” he said, turning. “C’mon, you weaklings, get up,” he shouted at the injured Erasers. Many large bodies heaved themselves noisily toward the trucks.
“Coward!” Ratchet hurled the dented, bloodied tire iron through the air.
Ari stepped swiftly to the left, and the metal clanged against a truck. His laughter, grating and harsh, filled the empty desert battlefield. Then the engines roared and the entire convoy spun around and faded away in a cloud of dust.
When they were gone, Fang passed his fingers over Maya’s face, closing her eyes and brushing away some blood. He forced himself to lay Maya’s already cooling body on the ground. As Fang looked down at her, he wanted to tear his own heart out.
Ari would die for this.
19
AS SOON AS I walked into biology class, the nauseating smell of formaldehyde hit me smack in the face. Hello, buttload of horrible memories! Clearly today was going to be even more nightmare-y than school usually was.
“Hello, Max. Glad you could join us,” Dr. Williams said.
Frowning, I nodded and plopped down beside Dylan as jealous girls nearby prayed for my death. So I got sidetracked by the schmanciness of the bathrooms on the way here. Sue me.
The smelly chemicals were already getting to me (read: making me want to run away screaming), and I could tell they were also bothering Iggy, who was sitting a couple tables over. His face was drawn and even paler than usual.
Dr. Williams passed out packets of paper. “Today we’ll be doing our first hands-on lab assignment,” he said. “For some of you, this will be your first dissection. It’s a very simple one, but if anyone feels sick, the trash can is right here. Please try to make it.”
Dissection.
Oh, God.
I glanced down at my packet and my stomach dropped. Chicken Dissection Lab.
Of course. This was my life, after all—if something could conceivably get worse, then by golly, it would get worse. We couldn’t just dissect a frog, or an earthworm, or whatever. We had to dissect something with wings.
The other students chattered around me, their reactions ranging from excited to grossed out. Iggy, Dylan, and I were the only silent ones.
Dr. Williams began handing out plastic bags containing rubbery chicken carcasses. I fought back a wave of panic and nausea as I skimmed my info packet. Phrases like Count the number of primary feathers and Remove the heart and Examine the air sacs popped out at me.
Please, if there’s any justice at all in this screwed-up world, please don’t make me have a mental breakdown and start hyperventilating in front of my entire biology class.
Dr. Williams placed a plastic bag on our table, two feet from my nose. Dylan and I both stared at it, unwilling to touch it.
“Okay, folks,” Dr. Williams said merrily. “Get your goggles, your gloves, and your trays. The packet explains everything, but come to me if you have questions. Happy dissecting!”
20
I PUT ON my clear, dorktastic goggles automatically while Dylan fetched the dissecting tray. It was equipped with a scalpel, a small pair of scissors, three pokey, suspicious-looking tools, and a pair of tweezers.
“So,” I said, mentally smacking myself upside the head when my voice shook. “Ready to cut this thing open?”
“We can leave, if you want,” Dylan replied softly. “I don’t want to do this any more than you do.”
I clenched my teeth and pulled my shoulders back, shaking my head. “No. Normal people do dissection labs. And we’re normal people, remember?”
He nodded, his aquamarine eyes fixed on me.
I regretted my decision almost as soon as we set the chicken on the tray. It splayed out pathetically, headless and mostly featherless, with puckered pink skin. I felt the chill of goose bumps on my own flesh and shivered.
The chicken’s wings were small and had tiny tufts of down still stuck to them.
White down.
Like Angel’s.
“Step one,” Dylan read aloud. His voice cracked and he cleared his throat. “Place chicken on its back. Grasp both legs and push down and away from the pelvis.”
In another time, I might have snickered immaturely at the word “pelvis.” But at that moment, all I could do was numbly follow the instructions, while trying to block smells and memories.
It was bred for this, I reminded myself, holding the scalpel. Inside a claustrophobic metal cage, it had been fed scraps. It had been genetically manipulated for a satisfactory amount of plumpness and complacency. It had been bred with a smaller brain, too; it was too stupid to see how trapped it was. To see that this is how it would end up, amid the glint of scalpels, the snick of blades sliding into flesh.
I was stuck in an in-between place, not sure
whether I was in biology class or back at the School. Student voices and whitecoat voices bounced around in my mind.
Then Dr. Williams’s face materialized all up in my grill. “Max, Dylan, how’s it going so far?”
I nodded, trying to slow my breathing—I hadn’t realized I’d been hyperventilating. “I’m okay… really.” I looked up at his face, at the four wrinkles on his forehead, his almost calculating hazel eyes.
It was all somewhat… familiar.
Alarm bells went off in my head, wailing, Danger danger danger! My alarm bells were not to be taken lightly.
Was it possible that Dr. Williams was a whitecoat?
“Actually, I feel a bit sick,” I said brusquely. “Come on, Dylan. Iggy!”
Iggy twitched on his stool and turned in the direction of my voice.
“C’mon, Ig,” I repeated, ignoring Dylan’s curious glance. “Time to go.”
“Max, the boys seem fine,” Dr. Williams said. Concerned or threatening, concerned or threatening? It was a question I had to ask myself way too often.
“No, I feel sick, too,” Dylan said. Good boy.
Iggy wove through the maze of lab tables. “Gonna barf,” he informed Dr. Williams. “Gotta go.”
I strode toward the door, itching to hightail it out of there.
“Oh, no, you don’t, Maximum,” said Dr. Williams in a steely voice.
And here we go. I sighed.
I leaned forward onto the balls of my feet, ready to spring into action. Dylan moved ever so slightly, placing himself a bit in front of me and in a good fight position. I felt Iggy tense up. Tapping his forearm twice, I breathed, “Little over six feet. Bit of a belly. Dead center.” Nobody but Iggy—and maybe Dylan—would be able to hear me. Ig inclined his chin the tiniest bit. He understood.
Dr. Williams shuffled past the cardboard box of chicken bags to his desk, where he brought out some Post-its and started scribbling. I watched him the entire time. If he charged, I’d drag Iggy and Dylan to the left, roll over the empty lab table, and shoot out the door. If he yanked a gun out of his geeky teacher pants, we’d dive behind the table, chuck some scalpels for good luck, and then shoot out the door.
“So what’s the story, Doctor?” I asked Dr. Williams, crossing my arms. Everyone in the classroom was staring at us now. “Wait, I know—your plan is to make my life miserable? Or possibly destroy us?”
Dr. Williams smiled thinly. “What do you mean, Max? I just don’t want you to get in trouble for walking out of class.” He held out three hall passes.
Well, that was… unexpected. I narrowed my eyes at him, but he didn’t falter.
“Let’s go, boys.” I shrugged and took the passes, and we walked out of the classroom.
My alarm bells never stopped ringing.
21
“MAX’S LIFE IS in danger.”
Dylan’s breath quickened. Okay, now Dr. Williams had his attention.
“But you can keep her safe, Dylan. All you have to do is cooperate with us.”
After they’d fled the disastrous dissection lab, Dylan had realized that he’d left one of his textbooks behind, so he had gone back to get it.
Big mistake.
The other students were already gone, leaving only the biology teacher behind. Now Dylan was alone in the lab with him and the chicken carcasses, and it looked like he was, as Max would say, in deep, deep sneakers.
Dylan leaned against the table and frowned at the teacher. “What do you want?” he said in a hostile voice he hoped sounded as tough as Max’s. He fingered a scalpel that one of the other kids had left behind, but it didn’t make him feel any more secure.
Dr. Williams smiled, making wrinkles appear around his mouth. “I’m not your enemy, Dylan. I have vital information for you, straight from Dr. Gunther-Hagen himself.”
“That’s impossible,” Dylan said, his muscles tensing even more at the mention of the brilliant, diabolical man who had engineered his creation. The man who’d given him his life, and introduced him to Max. “Dr. Gunther-Hagen is dead.”
“Oh, no, he’s very much alive,” promised Dr. Williams. “I’ve seen him myself.”
Dylan stared at Dr. Williams but didn’t respond. He had seen how Max looked at the biology teacher—with suspicion, distrust, and revulsion—and he didn’t trust this man for an instant.
“And Dr. Gunther-Hagen has a special project for you,” Dr. Williams continued. “A… mission, if you will.”
“What sort of mission?” Dylan asked doubtfully.
“A mission it is vital you keep secret from Max if you value her safety.” Dylan opened his mouth to protest, but Dr. Williams quickly cut him off. “It involves Fang.”
Dylan shifted uncomfortably at the sound of the unwelcome name, feeling more and more boxed in among the stacks of laminated papers, bins of educational videos, dissection tools, and models of the various stages of mitosis.
“Fang is a far bigger threat than you realize—a bigger threat than any of us realized.” Dr. Williams moved closer, seeming to delight in Dylan’s discomfort. He watched him gravely. “I’m sharing this information with you because we know you are good, Dylan, that you can be trusted. We can trust you, can’t we, Dylan?”
Dylan frowned. He did not like the turn this conversation was taking. Not at all. But at the mention of a secret, especially one about Fang, Dylan couldn’t help leaning closer. His breath quickened.
“Fang’s DNA, as it turns out, is different…. Dangerous. Dangerous in a way that bad people might use for their own selfish means. You wouldn’t want to help the bad people, would you, Dylan?”
Dylan crossed his arms over his chest. “You can’t expect me to buy this without an explanation.”
As if to emphasize the delicacy of the information, in a hushed voice Dr. Williams described tests, experiments, and discoveries that boggled the mind. Dylan had certainly seen, felt, and heard about a lot of strange twists and turns of science in his few short years on the planet—not the least of which was being genetically enhanced to be able to heal wounds with his own saliva—but his mind was whirring a mile a minute at this strange, fascinating information he was learning about Fang’s DNA. It could be the key to the most important medical discovery in human history….
But he wasn’t even sure he believed it. And he definitely resented Dr. Williams’s condescending tone.
“So you see, Dylan, it’s very important that we contain the threat. That’s where you come in. We need you to capture Fang, to bring him to us. You’re stronger than Fang, Dylan,” the doctor said, touching his arm. It was a compliment, but Dylan flinched. “Superior,” the teacher continued. “You were designed for this. And you’d be doing a great service to the world, of course,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
Dylan’s eyes drifted to one of the chickens, still splayed open on the dissection table, its wings pinned open. They wanted to run more tests. On Fang. Dylan thought back to what Max had said about tests in her early life—about dog kennels and needles and whitecoats and drugs. He shook his head. Regardless of his history with Max’s ex, and regardless of any threat Fang’s DNA might pose, Dylan didn’t hate him that much.
“No,” Dylan said, already heading out of this room that was full of lies and bribes and the smell of formaldehyde. He didn’t need to hear any more. “Find someone else to be your headhunter. You can tell Gunther-Hagen to stick his mission up his—”
“Ah, ah, ah,” Dr. Williams interrupted before Dylan had reached the door. “One more little tidbit, Dylan,” Dr. Williams called after him, holding up one finger. “If you don’t accept this mission, well, we’ll have to kill Max.”
22
ANGEL’S EYES FLEW open and she gasped for air, scrabbling at the sides of her cage in terror. She took a slow, deep breath.
It was just a dream.
Angel slumped against the plastic wall of the dog crate, feeling icky and shaky and sore all over. In the time she’d been held captive, she had been electrif
ied, operated on, beaten, scorched, and worked to exhaustion. But this nightmare was worse than any of it.
It hadn’t been real… had it?
Every time she closed her eyes, images from the dream plastered the inside of her brain: Max, her neck covered in blood, dropping like a rock out of the sky… her brown eyes dulling with death as her skin grew pale… But Max wasn’t dead, of course. Dead Max was the biggest oxymoron in history. Right?
Angel felt a rising panic. Her dreams, her visions, were almost never wrong. Except when she thought Fang would die. That hadn’t happened… yet.
She bit her lip, staring at the roof of her cage through half-lidded eyes, trying to make a connection. And then, like an image appearing through the fog, Fang materialized.
Joy, pure and powerful, surged inside her—until Angel realized that Fang wasn’t there. She was seeing him in another dreamlike vision. He was standing in a sea of red dust and blue sky, covered in blood and dirt and grime, but he didn’t look like Fang, exactly. He looked ferocious and crazed, a mad dog about to attack. Unhinged.
“She’s dead,” Fang said, and Angel drew in a sharp breath, her whole body trembling. She hadn’t dared to think it could really be true.
Fang’s face twisted as he tried to control his anguish. He took a step toward two girls Angel recognized from Fang’s gang: Star and Kate.
“Maya died because of you,” he snarled.
Realization hit Angel like a ton of C4 bricks. Maya. Max II. Relief, and then horrible guilt, surged through her: Max was alive. It was Maya who was dead.
“We didn’t know,” Kate said, weeping, mascara running down her smooth brown cheeks. Kate was superstrong, Angel remembered, but she didn’t look strong now. “Ari wasn’t supposed to—” Her voice caught as she cried, but Fang’s jaw was tensed, his features hard and calculating, his hands balled into fists.
Angel watched in dread. She knew that look. When crossed, Fang was deadly. Get out of there, she thought at the girls.