“You know what they say about rat,” I began.
“Everyone gets a drumstick,” Fang and I finished together.
I looked at Fang, his sharp, angular face cast with shadows from the fire. I’d grown up with him, I trusted no one more than him, I depended on him. And now we felt a little like strangers.
I moved away from the fire and sat down with my back against the cave wall. Fang wiped his hands on his jeans and came to sit next to me. Outside, it was nighttime, the stars blotted out by thick, rolling clouds. This place probably got only a few inches of rain a year, and it looked like it was about to get some. I hoped the rest of the flock was curled up safe and warm where we had left them.
“What are we doing here, Fang?”
“The kids want us to find a place to settle down.”
“What about the School and saving the world?” I asked with scalpel-like delicacy.
“We have to quit playing their game,” Fang said softly, watching the fire. “We have to remove ourselves from the equation.”
“I can’t,” I admitted in frustration. “I—just have to do this.”
“Max, you can change your mind.” His voice was like autumn leaves dropping lightly onto the ground.
“I don’t know how.”
Then my throat felt tight, and I rubbed my fists against my eyes. I dropped my face onto my arms, crossed over my knees. This sucked! I wanted to be back with the oth—
Fang’s hand gently smoothed my hair off my neck. My breath froze in my chest, and every sense seemed hyperalert. His hand stroked my hair again, so softly, and then trailed across my neck and shoulder and down my back, making me shiver.
I looked up. “What the heck are you doing?”
“Helping you change your mind,” he whispered, and then he leaned over, tilted my chin up, and kissed me.
18
At that moment, I had no mind to change, or not change, or throw against the nearest wall. My mind had shorted out as soon as Fang’s lips touched mine. His mouth was warm and firm, his hand gentle on my neck.
I’d kissed him once before, when I thought he was dying on a beach. But that had lasted a second. This was...going on and on.
I realized I was getting dizzy, and then realized it was because I hadn’t taken a breath yet. It seemed like an hour before we broke apart. We were both breathing raggedly, and I stared into his eyes as if I would find answers there.
Which of course I didn’t. All I saw was the dancing flames of our small fire.
Fang cleared his throat, looking as surprised as I felt. “Forget the mission,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Let’s just all be safe somewhere together.”
And boy, did that seem like a swell idea just then. We could be like Tarzan and Jane, swinging through a jungle, snagging bananas right off a tree, living at one with nature, la-di-da—
Tarzan and Jane and their band of merry mutants!
Fang’s hand was making slow, warm circles between my wings, and that plus the hypnotic fire and the stress of the day all combined to make me tired and unable to think straight.
What does he want from me? I thought. I half expected the Voice to chime in here, sure it had been eavesdropping on this whole embarrassing scene.
Now Fang was rubbing my neck. I was both exhausted and hyperaware, and just as he leaned in—to kiss me again?—I jumped to my feet.
He looked up at me.
“I—I’m not sure about this,” I muttered. How’s that for silver-tongued rapier wit, eh? Overreacting impressively, I raced to the front of the cave and launched myself out into the night, unfurling my wings, feeling the wind against my burning face, hearing the rush of air all around me.
Fang didn’t follow, though when I glanced back I saw his tall, lean form standing in the cave entrance, highlighted by the fire.
Not too far away, I found a narrow rock ledge, well hidden in the night, and I collapsed there in tears, feeling confused and upset, and excited and hopeful, and appalled.
Ah, the joys of being an adolescent hybrid runaway.
19
What was Fang going to do, blog about Max throwing herself out into space just so she wouldn’t have to kiss him again? No! Instead he smashed his fist against the cave wall, then grimaced with the pain and stupidity, seeing his bloodied knuckles, the almost instant swelling.
He banked the fire, keeping a small pile of embers glowing in case she came back and needed help finding the entrance. Neither was likely.
He kicked most of the rocks off a Fang-sized place and lay down, rubbing his wings against the fine silt because it felt good. He didn’t want to check his blog—he’d had almost eight hundred thousand hits earlier—didn’t want to do anything except lie still and think.
Max.
God, but she was stubborn. And tough. And closed in. Closed off. Except when she was holding Angel, or ruffling the Gasman’s hair, or pushing something closer to Iggy’s hand so he could find it easily without knowing anyone had helped him. Or when she was trying to untangle Nudge’s mane of hair. Or—sometimes—when she was looking at Fang.
He shifted on the hard ground, a half-dozen flashes of memory cycling through his brain. Max looking at him and laughing. Max leaping off a cliff, snapping out her wings, flying off, so incredibly powerful and graceful that it took his breath away.
Max punching someone’s lights out, her face like stone.
Max kissing that weiner Sam on Anne’s front porch.
Gritting his teeth, Fang rolled onto his side.
Max kissing him on the beach, after Ari had kicked Fang’s butt.
Just now, her mouth soft under his.
He wished she were here, if not next to him, then somewhere in the cave, so he could hear her breathing.
It was going to be hard to sleep without that tonight.
20
Before Fang took the computer with him, and before they’d almost gotten nailed by robot Erasers, Nudge had been reading camping recipes online. She was tired of Ding-Dongs and hot dogs on a stick.
She’d found out that you could do amazing stuff, like cooking whole meals wrapped in foil in the embers of a fire. She decided to get a frying pan next time she had a chance. It wouldn’t be too hard to carry around one little frying pan, would it? And if they had a frying pan, Iggy could make almost anything. Just thinking about it was making her stomach rumble.
“That smells good,” said Angel, coming over to kneel by the fire. “Is that what that foil was for?”
“Uh-huh,” Nudge said, poking at the foil package with a stick.
The next second, the waning sun blinked out.
They both looked up in surprise, and Gazzy and Iggy stopped playing tic-tac-toe.
Angel drew in her breath so fast it sounded like a whistle. Nudge felt like her own breath had turned to a chunk of concrete in her throat, because she couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t move.
Hundreds of those robot things, the things that Iggy called Flyboys, were covering the sky above their canyon and coming in both ends. Nudge guessed the few that had survived the earlier fight had gone to get reinforcements. There must have been ten times as many this time.
The flock was trapped.
“Dinner’s ready,” said Angel. “And it’s us.”
21
“Up and away?” Iggy asked, and Gazzy answered, “No! They’re above us too! Everywhere!”
Nudge’s ears were filled with a horrible droning sound, like a thousand bees, and as the Flyboys dropped closer, it started to sound like chanting, like, “We are many! You cannot win!”
“We can sure as heck try!” Gazzy yelled. Leaning down, he grabbed a bunch of sticks from the fire and threw them into the air. Several of the Flyboys caught fire. Excellent. They were flammable!
Nudge raced over and grabbed some burning sticks too, but she held one too close and singed her hand. Still, she threw them into the air as hard as she could, watching in amazement as Flyboys burst into flame.
; “Cool!” Gazzy grinned, forgetting to panic for a moment. “It’s like they were dipped in gasoline!”
“They don’t have minds,” Angel said.
Nudge looked at her.
“They don’t have minds,” Angel explained again, upset. “I can’t do anything.”
“Well, I can bite ’em!” Total cried, racing in circles around their feet. “Let me at ’em! Let me get my fangs on ’em!” He made little leaps into the air, snapping his jaws.
“Total!” Angel said. “Be careful! Come back!”
“Let me teach ’em a lesson!” Total yelled.
The flock fought hard—of course. Max had taught them to fight, to never, ever give up. Unless running away made more sense, she’d always added.
Running away would have been so great, Nudge thought, but in this case there was nowhere to run. The canyon was clogged with Flyboys. They seemed to be mostly metal with a thin Eraser covering on the outside. The ones that had burned were all metal now, their skin and fur charred and shriveled against them, smelling god-awful.
Iggy threw every bomb he had (Nudge had no idea where he’d been hiding them, and she bet Max didn’t know about them either), but all the bombs destroyed only fifteen or twenty Flyboys. Not enough, nowhere close to enough.
The flock was caught. Maybe if Max and Fang had been there, it would have taken the robots another minute or two. That’s how bad it was, how hopeless.
Within twenty minutes, the flock had been duct-taped into unmoving bundles, even Total. Then Flyboys grabbed them and took to the air, flying like big toasters or something.
Nudge saw Iggy, Gazzy, Angel, and Total, their mouths taped shut like hers.
Don’t worry. Angel sent the thought out to each of them. Don’t worry. Max and Fang will come back. They’ll find us. They’ll be really mad too.
Nudge tried not to think, so Angel wouldn’t be more scared, but she wasn’t able to shut her brain down completely. So Angel might have felt her think: Not even Max and Fang can get us out of this. No one can. This is the end.
22
I went back to Fang the next morning and pretended that nothing had happened, that my little DNA-enhanced heart hadn’t gone all aflutter and that I hadn’t imagined myself in a hoopskirt, coming down the stairs at Tara like Scarlett O’Hara.
Nope. Not my style. Instead I showed up, skidding on my landing, sending grit and pebbles everywhere, and said, “Let’s roll!”
Topping the list of thorns in my side for today were:
1) Weirdness between me and Fang
2) Worry about leaving the flock
3) Gnawing sense of pressure about getting back to the mission
4) The usual: food, shelter, safety, life expectancy, etc.
5) And then, of course, that whole actual saving-the-world thing
Gosh, it was hard to figure out what to worry about first. Everything wanting to contribute to my ulcer, Get in line and take a number!
“You’re quiet.” Fang broke into my thoughts. Below us, barren miles of mountains, plains, Indian reservations, and desert looked like wrinkles on a dirt-colored tablecloth.
I glanced at him. “Enjoy it while you can.”
“Max.” He waited till I looked at him again. “The one thing we have is each other. The one thing we can depend on, no matter what. We have to...talk about stuff.”
I would pretty much rather have been torn apart by wild animals. “I liked it better when you didn’t talk,” I said. “I mean, there’s a reason people don’t look under rocks, you know?”
“Meaning what?” He sounded irritated. “We’re going to pretend nothing’s going on? That’s stupid. The only way to deal with any of this is to get it out in the open.”
Ugh. “Have you been watching Oprah again?”
Now I had made him mad, and he fell silent. I was relieved, but I knew this subject wasn’t closed. Then my eyes registered the particular area we were flying over at high speed. It was a little hard to tell where Arizona left off and California began—you’d think they would just go ahead and paint those blue map lines everywhere, divvying up the states—but I recognized this place.
“Going down!” I announced, angling my body and tucking my wings behind me.
Fang followed me without comment. I could practically feel the strong “wring her neck” vibes coming from him, but it wasn’t the first time he’d been really angry at me, and God knew it wouldn’t be the last.
I landed at the edge of a woods near a dinky little Arizona town and started walking west. After two minutes I stopped, looking straight ahead at a small, tidy house surrounded by a somewhat scraggly yard.
Max, you’re making a serious mistake, said the Voice. Get up and get out of here right now. Get back to your mission. I’m very serious about this.
I ignored it, emotions starting to swirl inside me.
“Where are we?” Fang whispered.
“At Ella’s house,” I said, hardly able to believe it myself. “And Dr. Martinez.”
23
“If we can all fly, why are we in the back of a semi?” Iggy whispered.
He was rewarded by having one of the Flyboys kick him hard in the ribs. “Oof!”
Nudge winced, practically feeling his pain with him. Since he was blind, he couldn’t see her face or the sympathy she was trying to send his way.
Everything hurt. Nudge didn’t know how long they’d been lying on the floor in the back of this big truck, feeling every bump in the road. They’d been tied up for hours, and she couldn’t feel her hands anymore. Every time the truck bounced, her shoulder or her hip banged against the hard floor, and she was sure she’d have humongous bruises. They all would.
After the Flyboys had grabbed them, they’d put cloth hoods over their heads. Nudge had smelled something sickly sweet. She’d grown dizzy and then passed out. She’d woken up in the truck, heading God knew where. Well, probably the School. Or the Institute.
Either way, it was going to be a long drive. Which meant she could lie here and dread what was coming minute after minute, hour after hour.
What was coming: a cage. Awful, scary, really painful experiments, usually involving needles. Nudge tried not to whimper, thinking about it. Chemical smells. Whitecoats. Flashing lights, scary sounds. Knowing it was happening to the rest of the flock. And no Max, no Fang.
And all of this, being bound, seeing the rest of her flock also bound and in pain, not knowing where Max and Fang were or even if they’d be able to find the flock again—all of that stuff wasn’t even the worst part.
The worst part was that when she’d woken up, when she’d counted heads in the truck, there had been only three.
Angel was missing.
24
It wasn’t as though they had saved my life or anything—Ella and Dr. Martinez. It was worse: They had shown me what life could be like in Normal Land. It had haunted me ever since I’d left them.
What day was this? No clue. Would Dr. Martinez be at work?
I let my mind focus on this question in order to avoid the bigger, scarier question: Would they even want to see me again?
Or, nightmare: Had something bad happened to them because they’d sheltered me before?
Just like the first time, I stood frozen on the edge of their yard, unable to will myself forward, to knock on the door.
Max, began the Voice, and I answered it inside my head. You’re the one who said connections were important, I reminded it. Well, I’m here to make some connections. Deal with it.
“What the heck are we doing here?” Fang’s tone of mild curiosity meant that he was so stunned he was about to fall over.
I had no answer for him. I didn’t even have an answer for myself.
Then, just like the first time again, fate stepped in; or rather, Dr. Martinez stepped out of her front door. She blinked in the bright sun, then turned to lock the door behind her. Then she paused, as if listening, or sensing something: moi.
Behind me, Fang instinctivel
y faded into the woods, where he would be invisible among the shadows.
Slowly Dr. Martinez turned, while I stood tense and almost quaking at the edge of her yard. Her deep brown eyes swept the area and flashed on me almost immediately. Then her mouth opened soundlessly. I made out the word “Max.”
25
Then Dr. Martinez and I were running toward each other, and it felt like it was all happening in slow motion. I had planned on a cool, casual “Yo? Wha’s happ’nin’?” But that dream was gone, gone, gone, baby. Instead I clung tightly to her, trying not to cry, taking a weird, deep, terrifying satisfaction from the sensation of her holding me.
Her hand stroked my hair as she whispered, “Max, Max, Max, you’ve come back.” Her voice sounded broken, and I didn’t trust myself to speak.
Then I remembered I was indulging in this revolting display of saccharine emotion right in front of Fang. Who would probably never let me hear the end of it. I turned and looked toward the woods. With my raptor vision, I could barely make out his dim outline.
I raised my hand to him, and Dr. Martinez’s gaze shot toward the woods.
“Max? Are you okay?” she asked, her eyes on the trees and shadows.
“Yes. I—I didn’t mean to come back,” I said hesitantly. “But—I...We were in the neighborhood....”
Dr. Martinez’s eyes widened when a stiff-faced Fang slowly emerged from the woods, as if a shadow had taken form and come to life. How’s that for a little bird-kid imagery, eh? The soul of a poet, that’s me!
“This is my...brother, Fang,” I muttered, stumbling over the word brother. Because he’d kissed me. And no southern jokes, please. Ick.
“Fang?” Dr. Martinez said, giving him a slow smile, warming up my day. She held out her hand, and he came toward us as if dragged by an invisible rope, as tense and unyielding as I’d ever seen him. Which is saying something.
He stopped about two yards from us and didn’t take her hand.