Angel

24

“DO YOU SEE any guards?” I asked Dylan. Of course, I was still quietly freaking out about the second “coincidence,” but he didn’t need to know that…

“Not yet,” he said. “But they must be there. Are we thinking drop down onto the roof? Or land in the desert, then sneak up?”

“Roof,” I said, and he nodded. I hated it when he was agreeable.

Naturally, they weren’t going to let us just drop down onto the roof. My life could never be that easy. After all, this was a top-secret facility where new life-forms were being created. You think they’d let strangers plunk right down onto the roof?

No.

As soon as we were within three hundred feet, a door on the roof swung open, and figures all in black complete with ninja hoods, leaped out. They popped rifles up on their shoulders and took aim.

“Evasive maneuvers!” I yelled, but Dylan was already matching me zig for zag as we poured on the speed, blazing into the sky.

A bullet whistled past my ear. They were using long-distance sniper’s rifles.

“Watch it, Max!” Dylan grabbed my hand and yanked me to the left, just as another bullet streaked by, right where my head had been. I gaped at him, and he dropped my hand sheepishly. He shrugged. “I saw the guy aim.”

The people on the roof were little stick figures by now. Another hundred feet up and they’d disappear from my view.

“Freaking whitecoats!” I screamed, even though they’d been dressed in black. “So, what? You think if you can create life, you can destroy it too?”

Dylan looked down again, squinting. “Wait. They’re not whitecoats,” he said. “They’re not even grown-ups. They’re… I think they’re kids.”

“Oh, come on,” I protested. “They might have been a little short, but—”

“I could see them,” Dylan insisted, sounding agitated. “Inside their masks. They were kids, Max. I’m positive. And it gets worse. They didn’t, they didn’t have—eyes.”

“What?” I gasped. We’d reached a good cruising altitude, well out of range of fire. From this height, the land below looked like a crazy quilt stitched together.

“They didn’t have eyes,” he repeated, genuinely troubled.

“Great, give the blind kids guns,” I said, trying to lessen his horror. “I don’t even let Iggy have a gun. Usually.” I glanced over at Dylan, but he wasn’t smiling.

“But… they could still aim. They still knew we were there, somehow,” he said.

“They must have some sort of alternate sensing system. I wonder if they have no eyes on purpose, or if it was a mistake? I mean, Iggy is blind because they operated on him, trying to give him better night vision.”

Dylan looked appalled. “You’re kidding.”

“Don’t you get it?” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. “People like that—mad-scientist types—we aren’t human to them. We’re experiments. And those kids down there, kids who have been trained to kill, kids who have no eyes—they’re experiments too.”

“That’s all we’ll ever be, isn’t it?” Dylan shook his head sadly. “Lab rats. Just someone’s theory, someone’s pipe dream. And they’ve already replaced us with the next best thing.”

He looked so pitiful, so lost, that before I even knew what I was doing, I took his hand in mine. On purpose. It was warm and soft. Not battle hardened yet.

Then I said something that I’ve said very rarely in my life—even more rarely than “I love you.”

“I’m sorry,” I told him.