He started on the R, first drawing it backward. I didn’t know if this was normal for his age or whether his brain had been affected by all the experiments done on him. I rubbed it out and showed him how to do it correctly.
Jeb had taught me and Fang to read. I’d taught Gazzy and Nudge and Angel. We were a little shaky with spelling and grammar sometimes, but all of us could forge signatures like a pro. He hadn’t taught his own son.
“How come you’re doing this?” Ari’s hesitant question caught me off guard.
“Uh—to make up for almost killing you in New York?”
Ari didn’t look at me. “You did kill me,” he said. “They brought me back. Fused some of the bones in my neck.” He ran a meaty paw over his neck as if it still pained him.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times those words have passed my lips. And three of them had been in the last five minutes. “You were trying to kill me first.”
He nodded. “I hated you,” he said calmly. “Dad gave you everything, he really loved you. I was his son, and I didn’t mean anything to him. You were so strong and perfect and beautiful. I just hated you. Wanted you dead. And he used that. He used me as part of your testing.”
I was rattled. Ari seemed so matter-of-fact. “He was proud of you,” I said, dredging up memories of a long time ago, before Jeb had stolen me and the rest of the flock out of the lab. “He liked you following him around in the lab.”
“You never even noticed me,” Ari said, slowly tracing the I in his name.
“I did,” I said, thinking back. “You were a cute little boy. I used to be so jealous of you because you were his son. You belonged to him in a way that I didn’t belong to anyone. I wanted to be perfect so Jeb would love me.”
Even as I said the words, I was just realizing them myself. Ari looked up at me, surprised. I rocked back on my heels, facing these painful truths. It was like Dr. Phil had apparated right into our dungeon.
“I knew I was a freak,” I said softly. “I had wings. I lived in a dog crate. But you were a regular little boy. You were Jeb’s real son. I kept thinking, If I’m strong enough, if I do everything he tells me, if I’m the best at everything, then maybe Jeb will love me too.” I looked down at my new boots, already dull with dirt. “I was so, so happy when he stole us from the lab.” My throat got tight, remembering. “I didn’t think it could last. I was afraid. But I was happy that I was going to die away from the lab. Not in a dog crate. And then it went on. No one found us. Jeb took care of us, taught us stuff, how to survive. It was almost like a normal life, like normal kids. And you know, Ari,” I said, “I was so happy to be gone, so happy to have Jeb, that I didn’t even think about the little boy he’d left behind. I guess I just thought you were with your mom or something.”
Ari nodded, and after a moment he swallowed and cleared his throat. “I don’t have a mom.”
“It’s not what it’s cracked up to be,” I said, and he smiled.
“I understand now,” he said. “It wasn’t your fault. You were just a kid, like me. It wasn’t either of our faults.”
I pressed my lips together hard, determined not to make poignant tear streaks down my no doubt filthy face.
“I saw a Shakespeare movie on TV once,” I said. “The guy said something like, ‘Anyone who fights with me today is my brother.’ So—if you fight with me today...”
He smiled again and nodded, understanding. Then we hugged, of course, because the Hallmark moment wouldn’t be complete without it.
97
Not long after the Hallmark commercial, several Flyboys appeared in the dungeon and moved us—to somewhere even worse.
“This is great,” I said, radiating sincerity. “I love what you’ve done with the place. Really.”
The thing about sarcasm is that it’s lost on robots, like Flyboys, for example. But I could always hope that they had voice-activated recorders on them and that later they’d be playing my snide message back to Crazy Old Mom.
The Flyboys turned, rotors humming, and stalked away. No sense of humor.
Nudge, Angel, Total, Ari, and I surveyed our change of scenery.
“Let’s see,” I said. “High stone walls, lifeless span of grit, mutants marching around...I don’t know—I’m thinking it says ‘prison yard.’ How about you guys?”
“Prison yard sums it up,” Total agreed, then trotted off to pee on the wall.
“Prison yard is too good for this,” said Nudge. “Like, cheerless, joy-sucking plain of despair would be more like it.”
I looked at her in admiration. “Nice! You’ve been reading the dictionary again, haven’t you?”
Nudge blushed happily.
“Look! There I go,” Angel said, pointing. Twenty yards away, her clone rambled about with the others, looking more like Angel than Angel did. About two hundred beings were in what used to be the castle stable area, I guessed. No one was talking. Mostly they were shuffling in a large, clockwise circle, getting their “exercise.” They seemed so much like a mindless school of fish, or perhaps a flock of sheep, that I wanted to run through them, shouting, to see if they’d scatter.
“Do you see me?” Nudge asked, peering through the crowd.
“I still can’t believe I don’t have a clone,” Total huffed, trotting back.
“You’re unduplicatable,” I said.
“I doubt it,” he said. “I mean, maybe it wouldn’t talk, maybe it would just go arf, but still. Like, what, they couldn’t bother?”
“Arf?” I said.
“Oh, there I am!” said Nudge, up on her tiptoes. “I see the other me has hair issues too.”
“Why would they make clones of us?” I wondered out loud.
“You.” The metallic voice had no inflection. We spun to see a Flyboy behind us.
“Yes, C-Threepio?” I said politely.
“Walk.” The Flyboy pointed at the throng, then took a step toward us.
Well, you don’t have to threaten me twice. We quickly headed into the crowd and started pacing along with the rest of them.
I was keeping my eye out for Max II, who, last time I’d had a close encounter with her, had been trying to kill me and had narrowly escaped being killed by me. In case she wasn’t a ‘let bygones be bygones’ kind of gal, I was braced for the worst.
“So is this what prisons will be like after Re-Evolution?” Angel asked, holding my hand. “With the collars and everything?” She rubbed the one around her neck, its green LED blinking every two seconds.
“I guess so,” I said, resisting the urge to tug at my own collar. “I guess they have these things rigged up to shock us if we try to escape. They probably have tracers in them too.” Which was why we hadn’t done an up-and-away as soon as we got out here.
“How come they’ll still have prisons, after half of everyone is dead?” Nudge asked. “I thought people would quit fighting for stuff. I thought the future people would be perfect. If they’re perfect, they won’t go around committing crimes, will they?”
“There,” I said. “Decades of psycho logic picked apart in three seconds by an eleven-year-old. Take that, modern science!”
And speaking of modern science, I was about to be confronted by one of its marvels. Or disasters. All depends on your point of view.
“Max.”
I turned quickly at the too-familiar voice. And there I was, pretty as heck, brown eyes, a few freckles, fashion challenged, and a bad attitude. Max II.
98
“Gosh,” I said. “It’s like looking in a mirror.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Except I’ve had a bath recently.”
“Touché. So, me, how’s tricks?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Selling Girl Scout cookies,” I said. “Want some? The Samoas are terrific.”
Max II started walking next to us, and we kept pace with the crowd, moving in a big oval around the barren yard. I stayed on guard, in case she suddenly attacked me.
r />
“Baa,” Nudge bleated. “Baaa.”
I laughed, and Max II looked at me. “How can you laugh?” She gestured angrily at the walls, the guard towers, the armed Flyboys that stood around like remote-controlled puppets.
“Well, she baaed like a sheep,” I said. “It was pretty funny.” I patted Nudge’s head. “Especially with her lamby hair. Maybe I should call her Lamby from now on.”
Nudge grinned, and Max II got angrier. “Don’t you realize what’s going on? Where we are?”
“Uh, a honking big castle of evil in Germany?” I offered. “I’ve narrowed it down that far.”
Max II glanced around, as if making sure we weren’t overheard. Since we were shoulder to shoulder with a couple hundred other people, it was kind of a wasted gesture.
“This is the last stopping place,” she said under her breath, not looking at me. “Look around. We’re all rejects. They were trying to build an army out of us, but then they got the Flyboys to work. Now we’re obsolete. And every day, a bunch of us disappear.”
I studied her. “I’m sorry—did I miss something? Last time I saw you, you were trying to kill me. Are we friends now? Did I miss the memo? Now you’re clueing me in on the sitch?”
“If you’re against them, then we’re on the same side,” Max II said firmly.
She could have totally been lying, of course. In fact, it was safest to assume that she was. But her words were all too likely to be the truth.
“How long have you been here?” I asked her.
She looked away. “Since Florida. They...were really mad that I let you beat me.”
“You didn’t let me do squat,” I said.
Sighing, she gave a brief nod. “I was supposed to win. I was supposed to finish you off. They never counted on you winning. And then you didn’t kill me. It was awful.”
“You’re welcome,” I said, feeling fresh anger ignite. “I’ll try not to humiliate you by letting you live next time.”
Max II looked at me sadly, and it really was creepy; so much like looking in a mirror that I felt my face try to assume the same expression, so we’d match.
“There won’t be a next time,” she said. “I’m telling you, this is the last stop. They brought us here to kill us.”
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” I said.
“You don’t understand,” Max II said, agitated. “We’re all slated to die. Every day, more of us disappear. When I first came here, this yard was so full, we had to take shifts. There were thousands of us. Now this is all that’s left.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“With this many of us, I guess we have until...maybe tomorrow,” she said, looking around, mentally calculating.
Okay, this was not sounding good. I thought we’d have a couple days to regroup, find a way out of this. If Max II wasn’t lying, then I needed to step up our time frame in a big way. If Max II was lying, I still had no reason to want to hang around.
We continued to shuffle in big circles, and now both Nudge and Total were baaing occasionally. I was deep in thought, trying to come up with one of my typically brilliant plans, when a mutant bumped into me for a split second, then moved away.
It left something in my hand.
A piece of paper.
Very, very surreptitiously, I unfolded it and glanced down. It was a note, and it said: Fang on his way with flock. Says it better not be a joke.
Inside me, a hard knot of tension that I hadn’t even known I had seemed to unravel. Oh, God. Fang was coming. I would have been more suspicious, but the “it had better not be a joke” thing could only have come from him.
Fang was on the way. With Iggy and Gazzy. We would all be together again.
“Max? What’s wrong?” Nudge looked at me with concern. “You’re crying.”
I touched my cheek to find that I was crying, tears streaking down my face. I wiped them away on my sleeve and snuffled. I was too happy to speak for a moment.
“Fang’s coming to help us,” I said under my breath, looking straight ahead. “He’s on his way.”
99
We all exercised in the Yard of Despair for another half hour. My mind was spinning—knowing Fang was on his way had given me a jolt of adrenaline. I wondered when he had left. I wondered if I would be able to bear it if Fang’s message was all another “test,” if it wasn’t real.
On the other hand, sometimes a happy delusion is better than grim reality.
In the meantime, I took baby steps behind the mutant in front of me, holding Angel’s hand, feeling Total’s little side brushing against my leg from time to time.
And I started watching and listening more intently. I’d thought the mutants were silent, but now I began to pick up on things they were saying so softly that the words almost got lost in the dry shuffling noise of their boots against the grit.
I tapped Nudge’s hand and nodded my head at the crowd. Angel looked up at me, feeling my intention, and started paying attention also.
Like a prison, the mutants were murmuring, as softly as the wind. Unfair. Lied to us. So many of us gone. Don’t want to disappear. Don’t want to be retired. What to do? There are so many of them. Too many of them. This is a prison. A prison of death. Unfair. I did nothing wrong. Except exist.
I moved slowly through the crowd, listening to the murmurs, the messages. Angel was picking up on their thoughts. I saw her blue eyes become troubled with her new knowledge.
By the time a strident electronic buzzer told us to go back inside, I had formed a semiclear picture of the group’s emotions. They didn’t want this to happen to them—what had happened to their fellow inmates. They wished they could change things. Some of them were really angry and wanted to fight, but they didn’t know how. I guessed their fighting instincts had been engineered out of them. Mostly, they were confused and disorganized.
Which is where a—ahem—leader would come in.
My plans were starting to percolate as I marched with the others back into the fantasy world of mad scientists, and that plus the knowledge that Fang was on his way made me almost cheerful.
Until three Flyboys stepped in front of me, Angel, Nudge, Ari, and Total, pointing guns at us.
I groaned. “What now?”
“You come with us,” they intoned, as if one.
“Why?” I asked belligerently.
“Becuss I vant to talk to you,” said our old pal ter Borcht, stepping out from behind them. “Vun last time.”
100
We were prodded through long, winding stone corridors in the bowels of the castle, occasionally tripping on the uneven stone floor. I felt as though I’d been chilly for days and rubbed Angel’s and Nudge’s arms to help them keep warm in the dank chill.
“I hate this guy,” Ari muttered, keeping his head down.
“There’s a club,” I told him. “The Haters of ter Borcht Club. Have you gotten your badge yet?”
Finally we were pushed into a—come on, you can guess—yes: a white, sterile-looking lablike room filled with tables holding schmancy, no doubt expensive science equipment that I longed to start whacking with a baseball bat.
Once we were in, the doors slammed shut behind us, and several Flyboys stood in front of them, guns ready.
“The meeting of the Haters of ter Borcht Club will now come to order,” I murmured. Nudge swallowed a snort, and Angel projected a grin into my head. Can you do anything with him? I sent her in a directed thought.
No, came her regretful reply. I get stuff from him—awful, scary, disgusting stuff, but I can’t seem to send anything in.
Which messed up Plan A.
“So!” said ter Borcht, coming toward us. “I vass verry disappointed dat you are not dead by now!”
“Vee feel de same vay about you!” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
His eyes narrowed. Really, sometimes I impress even me.
“But I don’t tink I vill haf to vait dat much longer,” he said. “Maybe by dinner, yah? In de meantime, some people
vant to talk to you.”
“This oughtta be good,” I whispered.
“Five bucks says they’re scientists,” Total whispered back.
“No kidding.”
The doors swung open behind us, and a team of five people walked in. They were Chinese? I wasn’t sure.
“Tsk,” said Total. “Last season’s white lab coats. So tacky.”
“How can you tell?” I asked, not bothering to lower my voice.
“This year’s has smaller pockets and wider lapels. Their coats are so...I don’t know. Revenge of the Nerds?”
The five Asian whitecoats looked confused, and ter Borcht practically had steam coming out his ears.
“Enuff!” he snapped, clapping his hands together hard. “Dey vill ask you qvestions. You vill answer. Are ve clear?”
“Clear as pea soup!” I said.
If ter Borcht could have hit me, he would have. I guess he didn’t want to do it in front of the Clean Team.
Instead, purple in the face, he stalked behind his desk and sat down, angrily shuffling papers. The Clean Team came closer, looking at us curiously, as if we were a zoo exhibit. Gee, I haven’t felt like that before.
We stayed quiet, but inside I was getting more and more tense. I could take all five of these yahoos out by myself, I thought. And ter Borcht too, as a bonus. Not to mention the Flyboy guards, guns and all. What stopped me? My collar. For all I knew, all he had to do was press a button, and I would drop to the ground, electrocuted.
The Asian scientists talked softly among themselves. I remembered hearing that some country had wanted to buy us, to use as weapons somehow. I know, I know, it sounds totally loony, a child wouldn’t believe it, but you have no idea how incredibly stupid the war guys can be.
Slowly the whitecoats walked around me, Nudge, and Angel, seeming to marvel at how incredibly lifelike we were. Total they ignored completely. When they looked at Ari, they couldn’t disguise their dismay. I’d gotten so used to his appearance that it didn’t register on me anymore. Ari didn’t look human, didn’t look like an Eraser. He just looked like a mistake.