Spinning, he fired, catching all the Flyboys directly behind him. Then he changed angles and shot up into the sky, watching with satisfaction as several Flyboys started flying lopsidedly, smoke streaming off them.
“Hey!” shouted the Gasman from above. “Watch that thing!” Fang looked up to see the Gasman pointing to two holes in his jeans—Fang had shot right through his pants, but amazingly hadn’t hit him.
“My bad!” Fang yelled. The drawback with guns, besides the fact that you might hit members of your own flock, was that they didn’t take out hundreds of bad guys all at once. He needed something more massive. If Iggy or the Gasman had had any bombs, they would have used them by now. It was up to Fang.
He leaped into the chilly air again, shooting more carefully at Flyboys. When he was about five hundred feet up, he saw a broad expanse of gray with a rim of fire at its far edge.
The ocean. With the sun breaking at the horizon.
“It is your time to die,” droned a full squadron of Flyboys, following him.
“I am one of many!” Fang shouted, heading east, away from the hangar. “I am one of many! You have no idea!”
117
I was braced and ready to launch into my next move against Omega when I heard the Director’s voice boom, “Wait!”
I wasn’t about to start listening to her now, and I sprang forward, fingers stiff to shatter his trachea—
But the metal collar around my neck zapped me with a nerve-shattering dose of electricity, and I dropped to the ground like a chunk of cement.
A while back, I’d been hit with a bunch of skull-exploding headaches that had left me weak and nauseated; this was a lot like that. When my scrambled brain finally cleared and my synapses began firing again, I was on my back with my worried miniflock p
eering down at me.
I shot to my feet as fast as I could, a little off balance, to see Omega standing to one side, ramrod straight like a soldier, not looking at me.
I shot Nudge a questioning glance, and she shrugged.
“You have anticipated my commands,” said the Director, sounding unthrilled.
I didn’t start it, lady, I was going to say, but then I remembered that, technically, I had, so I kept my mouth shut.
“The first part of the battle will be a test of speed,” said the Director.
The crowd of lemmings parted in anticipation of a race.
“Begin where you are,” intoned the Director. “Run to the opposite castle wall and back, four times. May the better man win.”
I gritted my teeth. The Director was a sexist pig on top of all her other faults.
The wall was about six hundred yards away. There and back, four times.
Someone scraped a line in the dirt with his boot, and Omega and I stood on it. What else could I do? I was shook up and barfy from the electric shock. I didn’t think being a conscientious objector would go over well at this point.
Omega seemed unruffled, cool, and not like he’d just popped his shoulder back into place.
“You can’t win,” he said calmly, not looking at me. “No human can run faster than I can.”
“Bite me,” I replied, and leaned over to get a good start. “Also, watch my dust!”
“Go!” the Director cried, and we were off.
Well. I must say, Omega was a speedy little sucker, I’ll give him that. He hit the opposite wall several seconds ahead of me, and I was dang fast, and taller than he was. By our third lap, he had about a quarter length on me. Neither one of us was breathing that hard—he was Superboy, and I was designed to be able to breathe in very thin air, way up high.
But he had no emotion—he wasn’t angry, didn’t seem determined to win at all costs, didn’t seem invested in beating me.
Which made three more differences between us.
Finally we were on the last lap. He had almost a three-quarter-length lead on me. The crowd was silent—no one dared cheer. The only sounds were our breathing and the pounding of our boots on the ground.
When Omega was about thirty yards away from whipping my butt, I suddenly dove forward, pulled out my wings, and went airborne. I thought I heard the crowd gasp.
Keeping very low to avoid the electrified net at the top of the castle walls, which Max II had warned us about, I streaked toward the finish, my wings working smoothly. I tilted as I passed Superboy, so I wouldn’t whap the back of his head with a wing—tempting though it was.
Then I shot across the finish line, ten feet ahead of him, and ran to a somewhat clumsy halt, trying not to careen into the gray sea of spectators.
I stood up, breathing hard, and punched my fist in the air. “Max, one!”
118
“Cheating disqualifies you!” The Director said, looking mad.
“I didn’t cheat! Did you say ‘no flying’? Did anyone say ‘no flying’? No.”
“It was a race on the ground!”
“Again, said who? Just because Wonderlad is stuck to the ground doesn’t mean I have to be. I’ve evolved past being stuck to the ground.”
Now the Director looked really mad. The sea of indistinct faces murmured; feet shifted on the ground. I folded my wings in, aware of dozens of eyes watching me.
“You are disqualified,” the Director said shortly. “Omega is the winner.”
“Whatever,” I said, pushing down my disgust. I shot Omega a sideways glance. “Does she tie your shoes for you too?”
His perfect eyebrows drew together, but he didn’t speak.
Nudge and Angel took my hands and stood close, and Ari came up behind me, as if to protect my back. I felt very comforted by their being there. I would have felt even better if I had seen Fang standing with me, ready to back me up.
“Next will be a contest of strength,” said the Director. “Omega’s muscles are approximately four hundred percent stronger and denser than a regular boy’s. Bring out the weights!”
I am weirdly, wickedly strong, and not just for a girl, not just for my age. I’m stronger than just about any grown-up, man or woman. We all are. But I didn’t have the bulk that Superboy did, and in general I was designed to be smart and fast, and to fly well. Not to be able to compete in a tractor pull.
It really was a tractor pull, in a way. Heavy weights were loaded onto a wooden platform. We were each given a thick chain. The idea was literally to pull the platform across the dirt. We were even until about five hundred pounds, then Superboy started to edge past me. I could barely budge six hundred and fifty pounds—he pulled it three feet.
They piled on more weight—eight hundred pounds. I couldn’t believe I was going to lose a strength contest to a boy. There was no way.
I gritted my teeth, cracked my knuckles, and put the chain over my already bruised shoulder. Omega and I looked at each other, side by side. When the Director blew sharply on her whistle, I put my head down, planted my feet in the dirt, and pulled with all my might. Sweat broke out on my forehead. It felt as though the chain were wearing a furrow in my shoulder. Breath hissed through my clenched teeth.
I made the platform tremble a little, moved it maybe a quarter of an inch.
Omega hauled it almost a foot.
When he was pronounced the winner, he looked at me with those weird, expressionless eyes. I didn’t think he was a robot, like the Flyboys, but I did wonder if his emotions had been designed out of him. Of course, with a guy, how could I tell? Ha ha!
Anyway.
You might not know this about me, but I hate losing. I’m not a good sport, I’m not gracious in defeat, and I hated Omega for making me lose. I was gonna get him. I didn’t know how, I didn’t know when, but I knew I would.
“The next contest will be intelligence.” The Director looked smug.
I almost groaned. Of course I’m really sharp, really bright. But I’d had almost no schooling. What I knew I’d learned either from television or from Jeb. I knew a lot about how to fight, how to survive. I knew a bit about some places, like Egypt and Mongolia, from N
ational Geographic. But I didn’t have much book learning at all. The couple of months I’d spent at that hellhole of a school in Virginia had shown me that compared with most kids my age, I was a village idiot. Just in terms of book learning. Not about stuff that mattered.
“First question,” said the Director. The crowd turned to watch me and Omega in our duel of wits. “The castle walls are eighteen feet high, seven feet thick, and one thousand, twenty-seven feet long. One cubic yard of stone and mortar weighs one thousand, one hundred twenty pounds, or exactly half a ton. How many tons of stone and mortar are contained within the walls?”
Omega looked off into the distance, obviously starting to calculate.
“You are kidding me,” I said. “Why would I ever need to know that?”
“Like, if you had to make repairs?” Nudge guessed.
“Couldn’t I just hire a wall repair company?” I asked.
“It’s a simple calculation,” said the Director, still smug.
“Yeah? Let’s see you do it.”
Her cheeks flushed, but she stood tall. “Are you conceding?”
“I’m not conceding anything,” I said. “I’m just saying it’s completely pointless. How about I just pick a lock instead? Me and Omega. Let’s see who can do it faster.”
“Two thousand, three hundred ninety-six point three three tons,” said Omega.
“Okay, smartyboots, how about if you’re flying at eighteen thousand feet at, say, a hundred and forty miles an hour,” I said. “You’re facing a southwest wind of about seven knots. How long would it take you to fly from Philadelphia to Billings, Montana?”
Omega frowned as he started to work the math.
“Are you saying you know how to make that calculation?” the Director asked.
“I’m saying I’m smart enough to know that I’ll get there when I get there!” I almost shouted. “The questions themselves are dumb: They don’t have anything to do with being able to survive.”
“In the new world they do, Max,” said the Director. “Maybe not in your world. But your world is over.”
119
I was having a really bad day. These tests were a waste of time. I was expecting to get jolted with a lightning bolt of electricity at any moment. I was losing to a boy. Still remaining in this contest was a fight to the death.
And Fang still wasn’t here.
I knew he hadn’t had enough time to get here. There was a reasonable hope that he could be here within the next six hours or so. But he wasn’t here now, and I was reaching my breaking point.
I looked at Nudge and Angel. Nudge seemed very tense, and her fingers were curling at her sides. Angel had that scary intent expression she got right before she convinced a stranger to do something. All of a sudden, I remembered that Dr. Martinez was my real mom. Probably. I’d been lied to so many times that it was hard for me to accept anything as fact. But she might have been my real mom.
I wanted to see her. And my sister, Ella.
I needed to get out of here.
Next to Angel, one of the mutants frowned, looking confused. She blinked. I saw Angel stare at her, concentrating. Uh-oh. Then the mutant leaned to the one next to her and whispered something so softly I couldn’t hear it.
Angel looked pleased, and my stomach knotted up.
“What’s going on, sweetie?” I whispered through clenched teeth.
“Things are going to get exciting,” Angel said with satisfaction.
“Define ‘exciting,’” I said cautiously.
Angel thought. “Everyone freaking out?” she offered.
“Uh...in a good way?”
“In an exciting way,” she said, watching the crowd.
“Now we come to the definitive battle,” the Director said into the loudspeaker.
Right then, all heck broke loose. The best way to describe it would be to say that suddenly everyone drank crazy juice and went haywire. Mutants spontaneously began fighting with one another. Some of them had clearly been trained to be soldiers, but there was quite a bit of catfight face-slapping and shoving going on too.
“People!” the Director yelled into her loudspeaker. “People! What is going on?”
“They don’t want to be here anymore,” Angel said, watching them.
“We don’t want to be here anymore!” the crowd yelled.
“They’re tired of being treated like numbers and experiments,” Angel explained.
“We’re not numbers!” I heard angry voices cry. “We’re not experiments!”
“Hmm,” I said, scanning the area, looking for ways to escape.
“They feel like pawns,” Angel went on.
“We’re not just pawns!” the mutants yelled.
“They’re people too, even if they were just cloned and created,” Angel said, stepping closer to me and taking my hand.
“We’re people too!” voices shouted. “We’re people too!”
“O-kaaay,” I said, and quickly gathered Nudge, Angel, Ari, and Total. “Let’s get out of here. We’ll make our way to the wall and go along it till we see a way to break out.” They nodded and we began to move through the crowd, dodging flying fists and angry shoving.
“Robots!” yelled the Director, and everywhere, the robots stood at attention and armed their weapons. “Get this crowd under control!”
120
Yeah, because it wasn’t bad enough, with everyone fighting. Now we had to get the bloodthirsty robots involved. And they had guns.
We continued to push through the crowd, trying to reach a castle wall. I saw Flyboys starting to wade into the crowd of angry, fighting people.
“Why are they fighting each other?” Nudge asked, close to my shoulder. “They should all gang up on the Flyboys.”
Angel looked around. “Oh. Yeah.”
She stood still for a minute, her brow furrowed with mighty concentration. Then, one by one, all around us, mutants slowed down in their fight, looked around, then turned to attack the Flyboys.
I grabbed Angel’s hand and started to push through the crowd again, keeping low. “You are a scary, scary child, you know that?” I asked her.
She smiled.
I almost walked right into a thick line of Flyboys. Looking up, I saw solemn Eraser faces with glowing red robot eyes.
“You must stop,” intoned one.
“I disagree.” In an instant I launched myself at it, trying to knock it off balance. It was the second-to-last model, and I knocked its weapon out of its hands.
But not fast enough to avoid another Flyboy clocking me in the head with the butt of its gun. I staggered as a starburst of pain exploded behind my ear. A second later, warm blood started running down into my collar.
My flock sprang into action. Nudge jumped high in the air, whipping out her wings to hover below the electrified net but above the fray. Total chomped down hard on a Flyboy’s ankle, and I could hear his fangs hit the metal below the thin layer of skin.
“The base of their spines!” I heard a voice call from behind.
I spun to see Jeb wading through the crowd toward us, dodging punches and kicks. “Hit the Flyboys at the base of their spines,” he said. “It’s a design flaw.”
I had zero reason to trust him, despite all his yapping about being my dad, blah blah blah. Still, I had nothing to lose. Wheeling, I escaped my Flyboy and whipped around in back of another one. As hard as I could, I aimed a flying sideways kick with both feet right at its tailbone area.
Crack! Its legs crumpled, and it snapped forward from the hips, unable to move. A couple seconds later, the red glow in its eyes faded.
Huh. Whadaya know.
121
Then it was like a flashback to when I was eleven years old, fighting side by side with Jeb. He was the one who’d taught us to fight so well, to win at any cost. It was Jeb who’d taught us to never play fair, never telegraph our punches, always use any means to win a battle. Now, with him taking out Flyboys right next to me, it was just like those training days,
like I was a little kid again, pretending he was my dad.
“Block it!” Jeb yelled, yanking me off memory lane. Instinctively I threw my arm up in time to block a Flyboy’s overhand punch.
“Nudge! Angel! Attack the base of their spines!” I shouted. “Snap them!”
The fight began to turn in our favor then. As long as we could get behind a Flyboy, we could take it out about 80 percent of the time, which was all we needed.
Some of the mutants, however, didn’t seem to have gotten Angel’s latest memo and were still fighting one another, and us too.
Behind me, Ari was using his enormous strength to literally toss smaller mutants over his head into the mosh pit of death that made up the castle courtyard. He saw me snap a Flyboy’s back, and he spun to do the same. The Flyboy managed to catch Ari with a hard punch under his jaw, and I saw his head jerk upward.
Roaring with fury, Ari righted himself and lunged at his attacker...only to sink to his knees slowly, a puzzled look on his face.
“Cover me!” I shouted at Nudge, Angel, and Total, and sprang to Ari’s side.
I grabbed him under one arm and tried to help him stand. I couldn’t get him up.
“Max?” he said, sounding confused.
“You hurt? You get shot? Where?” I demanded.
He looked down at his shirt and jacket. There were no spreading rosettes of blood. He shook his head. “I just...”
He glanced up at me, and there he was—seven-year-old Ari, the little kid who used to follow me around. I saw him there clearly in those eyes.
“I just...Oh, Max,” Ari said, and then he slumped against me, eyes still open, weight so heavy on me that I fell to my knees next to him. I stared at his face, shook his shoulder.