Star put an arm around her friend, and her usually harsh features softened. “We’re sorry, Fang, but Maya… wasn’t our fault. She was our friend.”
Fang’s laugh was harsh, his sneer horrifying. “Liar!” he shouted, towering over her. “Like I was your friend? You hated her,” he spat, his eyes flashing.
Star shifted uncomfortably and tucked a stray piece of blond hair behind her ear, her elflike face tightening. “I never wanted her dead,” she said quietly.
“Please, Fang,” Kate hedged, sensing he was about to snap. “We were afraid. There’s just too much danger following you. Jeb didn’t tell us they’d try to kill—”
“How do you know Jeb?” Fang asked, his voice low and murderous. A vein pulsed in his temple as he absorbed the flare of shock at hearing Jeb Batchelder’s name. Jeb, the man who’d once taken care of the flock like a father, but who’d turned out to be just another traitor. “How is he involved in this?”
“He said he’d keep us safe,” Star shot back, her blue eyes accusing. “Which is more than you could do.”
Fang’s growl was fierce and guttural as he lunged for Star’s throat like a wounded animal taking a last stand.
“Fang, don’t!” Holden pleaded, his voice cracking.
Ratchet had grabbed Fang’s arms. “Chill, man. Just chill. They’re not worth it.”
“You should know better than anyone that survival comes first,” Star said smugly, but she cowered as Fang surged against Ratchet’s grasp, gnashing his teeth.
Angel knew that Ratchet couldn’t hold Fang back if he really wanted to kill Star and Kate. As angry as he was, he was choosing to spare them.
“Traitors!” Fang shrieked after the girls as they took off down the desert road. “Go on, run. Get out of my sight! If I ever see your faces again I’ll tear you apart with my bare hands.”
Then the vision ended, leaving Angel with the image of Fang’s furious eyes, an ocean of hurt behind them. She blinked rapidly as the desert scene melted away, leaving her with a dull ache in her chest.
Max was alive, at least, but everything else seemed to be falling apart. Angel hunched into the emptiness of her dog crate, the thick smell of chemicals surrounding her and pain throbbing in every part of her body. She missed the flock so much.
If only Fang or Max were here with her.
23
“THAT IS MESSED up,” Ratchet said angrily, standing over Fang. “You’re not kicking us to the curb now, when we still gotta get back at that fanged freak. No way, man.”
Fang nodded, staring into the smoldering embers of their campfire. He was aching all over, and his shirt was still covered in Maya’s blood. “Sorry.”
“Is this about Star and Kate?” Ratchet demanded. “You think we’re like them? That I’d snitch? You know I don’t roll like that.” Even with his aggressive front, Fang could hear the real hurt in Ratchet’s voice. “Look at these battle scars.” Ratchet pulled up his sleeve, and his dark skin gleamed in the firelight. His arm was covered in slashes and bruises. “For you.”
“It’s not that,” Fang said. “I just can’t… do this. Besides Star and Kate, Maya’s dead, and… Look, there’s nothing left. Fang’s gang was a stupid fantasy. I’m just better on my own.”
A fleeting thought of the flock made his chest tighten.
“No man is an island,” Holden said with an awkward laugh, but Fang didn’t react.
“Shut up, Starfish,” Ratchet said halfheartedly, kicking an empty can into the darkness in frustration.
Holden brushed his sandy hair out of his face and pulled absentmindedly at the chunk of new skin on his earlobe, which had already grown back after one of the Erasers had bitten it off. After a minute, he said in a small voice, “Where are we supposed to go now?”
Fang sighed. “Go home.”
“We don’t have homes to go back to!” Ratchet exploded. “My guys saw me go off with you. You think they’ll take me back? What’ve I got? Nothing.”
“I can’t go back, either,” Holden said softly. “My parents don’t want me around. They’re… they’re scared of me.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know what to tell you.” Fang pinched the bridge of his nose. He was exhausted. Maybe more exhausted than he’d ever been. He was tired of making plans, of solving problems. He didn’t know how Max had stood it for so long. “You’ll figure it out.”
“So that’s it.” Ratchet’s voice was cold. “After all we’ve been through, you’re just saying, ‘So long, it’s been fun’?”
“Sorry,” said Fang. “But it actually hasn’t been that fun.” And then he stood up and limped away into the desert night.
24
COOL FINGERS PRESSED against Angel’s forehead. Someone was taking the bandages off her eyes.
She didn’t even struggle; she just lay there limply. There was no point fighting it anymore.
“Hey, sweetie,” the someone said, and Angel gasped—she knew that voice. She’d heard that voice so many times.
Jeb.
Jeb here, in the School, taking off the bandages from the operation.
“You.” Angel cringed away from his hands, fury coursing through her. “Don’t touch me!” she spat. “You deserted us. Again. I’m here because of you.”
“I know, sweetheart,” Jeb said. “I’m so sorry, Angel. I can’t explain to you how sorry I am. You have to let me explain—”
“No,” Angel growled, and felt his hands twitch; he was startled. “I don’t care. You don’t get to explain after this.” She touched her tender face.
“Sweetheart…”
“Don’t call me that ever again,” she cried. “I said I don’t care—I don’t care about any of it. About your excuses. About you. About the rest of the human race.” She was seething, and her voice was harsh and icy even to her own ears. “All people do is hurt one another,” she continued bitterly. “So let them all die. Let the doomsday, or whatever they’re calling it now, happen. I don’t care.”
Jeb brushed her dirty hair away from her face, her curls damp with sweat, but Angel clawed at his fingers. “Angel, please listen to me. I’ll make everything okay again, no one will hurt you—”
“I said shut up!” she shrieked. Her small body was shaking. “You just couldn’t stop at Iggy, could you, Jeb?”
“What do you mean?” Jeb asked. He sounded on the verge of horror.
“What do you think I mean?” asked Angel, her voice rising with hysteria. She felt clumsily for the sides of her cage. “I’m blind.”
25
FANG LEANED AGAINST the cold, rough tombstone.
It was twilight, and the sky above the graveyard was a pale indigo. The trees rustled with a slight breeze, but no birds sang, no crickets chirped. Fang was completely alone.
Blood trickled slowly from the wound on his wing, where the bone had cracked and punctured the skin as he’d flown up to catch Maya. At the time, he hadn’t even noticed the pain. It was pulsing dully now, and he was letting it bleed.
Pain from somewhere other than his heart was a welcome change.
He deserved the pain, Fang told himself. Everything was his fault.
If he had paid more attention in that battle with the henchgoons, if he had kept tabs on Maya the entire time, she wouldn’t have fought Ari in the air. She wouldn’t have died in Fang’s arms. She would still be alive today, warm and happy and Maxish and not Maxish, having his back when things got too real.
Fang stared up at the moon, only barely visible in the murky dusk. Things had gotten too real.
First Angel. Then Maya. Both innocent, both dead.
All his fault.
He was a murderer.
He let his head drop into his hands, and shut his eyes tight. At least Ratchet and Holden were okay now—without Fang and the danger that came with him, they’d be all right. Fang could not be trusted as a leader; that much was horribly obvious. How could he save the world if he couldn’t even protect the few people he loved?
> Swallowing, Fang looked up, around the graveyard. Tombstone after tombstone, death after death, epitaph after epitaph, summing up a life, or a worldview, in a few words. What would his gravestone say, he wondered, assuming he wasn’t left to rot in the open air?
FANG: GREW UP IN A DOG CRATE. FELL IN LOVE. SCREWED IT UP. FAILED AT LIFE.
Wait a second. Something caught his eye.
Fang scrambled to his feet and crossed to the tombstone that read JULIE EVANS, 1955–2010 in two strides. He knelt before it, reaching out and tracing the epitaph.
YOU HAVEN’T FAILED UNTIL YOU QUIT TRYING.
A sign from the universe? Fang’s brain being so pathetic that it was making up coincidences?
Either way, he couldn’t quit yet. Fang had a role in this—whatever it was—and now that he’d lost two people, he wouldn’t lose any more.
Fang touched the engraved words one more time, then kicked off from the grass and soared into the darkening sky.
26
FANG STARED AT his warped, distorted reflection.
He was standing in Millennium Park, Chicago, in front of the huge stainless-steel sculpture nicknamed “The Bean.” Around his reflection curved the city skyline, clear blue sky and tall majestic buildings. This place was one of the many stops he’d made in the past few days. He was newly motivated, as if the words on the gravestone had injected him with pure determination.
Fang was trying to understand the 99% Plan.
His wing was still messed up, so he’d taken buses and trains—had even hitchhiked—all over the country, from South Florida, thick with gray fog, to the smooth golden plains of Oklahoma. He had seen the vivid colors of the Arizona sunset. He had watched small waves lap the shores of Lake Erie.
Every place he had visited had held rumors and evidence. All over America, people were stirring restlessly in anticipation. You could feel the energy in the air, building to the breaking point. It was like the calm before the storm.
But this was not a storm of revolution, like so many others in history. This was a darker, more violent storm—twisted, raging. It was a storm of desolation.
There had been dozens of demonstrations, some of which turned into senseless riots. Celebrities were updating their Twitter profiles en masse, writing things like “Earth is mine, 1 more for 99.” Slack-jawed Plan members were milling around outside hospital maternity wards wearing sheets scrawled with such slogans as LESS IS MORE. END REPRODUCTION NOW. The brutal stoning of a homeless amputee (“the Plan does not allow for the weak”) was just one example of the escalating violence.
There were large meetings in every city, held in universities and government buildings, in which “rational” lectures were led by smiling, serenely confident “experts,” discussing the benefits of “selection.” All of which, to Fang’s utter disgust, the news outlets covered with a mix of excited panic and restrained approval.
They wouldn’t be so approving, Fang thought, if they really understood the extent of the 99% Plan. Because through eavesdropping—and, okay, a couple of bribes—Fang had confirmed what he’d feared: These people, the remnants of the Doomsday Group and the By-Half Plan, wanted to reduce the earth to only the enhanced.
That is, to exterminate the human race.
Fang shook his head in revulsion, still unable to comprehend it. The same crazies from the past had somehow become even crazier. That was no surprise.
But the American people were actually going along with it.
Fang’s fists clenched as he thought of all of the places he’d seen, the millions of people struggling through their individual lives, their loves….
All that beauty.
All that history.
And all these people, so eager to destroy it.
Book Two
AND SO
IT BEGINS
27
ANGEL HEARD JEB’S breath catch in horror.
“They didn’t,” he said hollowly. “Not you, too. Not your eyes.”
“You’re just upset because you wrecked your perfect little specimen,” Angel spat, shoving away his hands and retreating farther into her dog crate. She still ached all over.
Jeb clutched the door of the cage, shuddering so hard that he rattled the metal grid. “Oh, Angel…”
“Save it.”
“It’s like Ari all over again,” he said brokenly. “So many failures… so many mistakes. You can’t imagine the remorse I feel, Angel….”
It’s your own fault, Angel thought, but she was almost surprised to hear tears in his voice. She couldn’t remember Jeb ever crying, no matter what happened.
“I was such a bad father to him,” continued Jeb dejectedly.
Angel bristled. Ari had been a disaster, that was for sure, but he was dead. Angel was the one who was here; she was the one whose eyes had been ruined. His apology had been meaningless, but this little heart-to-heart about Ari was straight-up insulting.
And he wouldn’t shut up. “After Ari died, I just… I had to try again. I had to give myself another chance at being a father, at caring for a son. That’s why I worked so closely with Dr. Gunther-Hagen.”
Wait, what? Angel sat up straight inside her crate, her attention snapping back to Jeb. She forgot her anger for a moment. “You were creating another Ari?”
“I swore this time I wouldn’t fail. I would be a good father….” Jeb’s voice caught in his throat. “And he would be a good son. I would retire from my work with the School and care for him with all my heart.”
And despite everything, Angel couldn’t help but feel the tiniest twinge of pity. Here Jeb was, a fully grown man, sobbing over his dead son.
“You have to understand, Angel,” Jeb pleaded. “I had only the best in mind. Just one new Ari. Then it would end.”
“But it didn’t end,” Angel whispered, thinking of the flying mutants they’d battled for months.
“Well, of course there were many less-than-perfect attempts,” Jeb conceded. “But Dr. Gunther-Hagen is an incredibly brilliant geneticist. With his help, I made Ari bigger and better than ever before, seamless and strong. Finally, I had my son back.” Jeb wasn’t crying anymore. He sounded almost triumphant.
Triumphant, and something else.
Angel felt the dread building in her stomach.
“The not-Aris were useful, too,” Jeb said. “Not as sons, but as warriors, designed for one mission, and one mission only.”
“Mission?”
When he spoke, Angel could hear the cold serenity in his tone. “To eliminate Fang.”
28
“WHAT?” ANGEL FELT her skull prickle all over and her hands go numb. The air around her felt like it was vibrating, and she rested her head against the plastic wall of the dog crate, breathing deeply.
With darkness consuming her vision, she couldn’t see Jeb’s face, but she could picture it clearly: the laugh lines around his mouth, a bit of stubble on his jawline, and his eyes—intelligent eyes that she had once known so well, that she had trusted, that even Max had trusted. The eyes that seemed well meaning, even when he was screwing everything up.
She must’ve misunderstood him.
“Wait—what?” she said again, shaking her head to clear it. “Eliminate Fang… as in, kill Fang?”
“That’s what the 99% Plan is all about,” Jeb said simply.
He sounded calm. Creepily, eerily calm. The calm that comes with absolute certainty. It was terrifying.
“Isn’t 99% about sparing the mutants?” Angel tried to keep her voice as calm as Jeb’s, though her body was shaking all over. “How can that mean killing Fang?”
“It’s about the good of the planet versus the good of the people, Angel,” he explained in an indulgent tone, as if they were talking about why she needed to share with others or conserve water. “You know I love Fang like another son.” It was true—she had thought he did. Angel instantly regretted pitying him earlier.
“Then how could you do this?” Angel asked, her voice rising. “I’l
l forgive you, Jeb,” she said suddenly. She touched her eyelids again, choking back tears. “I’ll forgive you, and everything that happened with Ari won’t matter anymore. You can turn it all around. Just don’t do this.” She was gripping the bars of her cage, pleading with him.
Jeb was silent for so long that Angel held her breath, a twinge of hope swelling in her.
Then he sighed heavily. “No. He’s too dangerous now. If he remains alive, his life will become a living hell.”
“But why?” Angel demanded.
“Hans will see to it. Remember back in Dr. Gunther-Hagen’s lab, when Fang almost died?”
She nodded. It was one of her worst memories, even worse than the ones from when she was really little, in the School.
“As a result of those tests, Hans has recently discovered something truly extraordinary about Fang’s DNA.”
“What kind of discovery?” Angel asked bleakly. Jeb had no answers, no explanations—only more vague justifications. She felt empty.
“Something amazing,” Jeb replied with such bright enthusiasm that Angel wanted to hit him. They were talking about the reason for Fang’s death. “Something that would change the world.”
Suddenly, the soft padding sound of footsteps reached Angel’s ears. Someone was coming toward them.
“Yes, Angel, something that would change the world,” a cool female voice said. “And now we need to find out if you, sweetie, have the same… defect.”
Angel felt like she was going to throw up.
She knew that voice.
Dr. Martinez, Max’s mom, was at the School.
29
“REMEMBER, FIRST IMPRESSIONS are key,” Total told me sagely.
I stared. “Total, there is no first impression. I’ve been living with the guy for like three months, for Pete’s sake.”
He flapped his little black wings and sniffed. “Well, excuse me for trying to help with your—might I remind you—first-ever date with Dylan.”