Max

1

“AND A-ONE, and a-two -” Nudge said, leaning into a perfect forty-five-degree angle. Her tawny russet wings glowed warmly in the afternoon sunlight.

Behind her, the Gasman made squealing-brakes sounds as he dropped his feet down and slowed drastically. “Hey! Watch gravity in action!” he yelled, folding his wings back to create an unaerodynamic eight-year-old, his blond hair blown straight up by the wind.

I rolled my eyes. “Gazzy, stick to the choreography!” He was sinking fast, and I had to bellow to make sure he heard me. “This is a paying job! Don’t blow it!” Okay, they were paying us mostly in doughnuts, but let’s not quibble.

Even from this high up, I could hear the exclamations of surprise, the indrawn gasps that told me our captive audience below had noticed one of us dropping like a rock.

I’d give him five seconds, and then I’d swoop down after him. One… two…

I wasn’t sure about this whole air-show thing to begin with, but how could I refuse my own mom? After our last “working vacation” in Ant-freaking-arctica, my mom and a bunch of scientists had created an organization called the Coalition to Stop the Madness, or CSM. Basically, they were trying to tell the whole world about the dangers of pollution, greenhouse gases, dependence on foreign oil – you get the picture.

Already, more than a thousand scientists, teachers, senators, and regular people had joined the CSM. One of the teacher-members had come up with the traveling air-show idea to really get the message out. I mean, Blue Angels, Schmue Angels, but flying mutant bird kids? Come on! Who’s gonna pass that up?

So here we were, flying perfect formations, doing tricks, air dancing, la la la, the six of us and Total, whose wings by now had pretty much finished developing. He could fly, at least, but he wasn’t exactly Baryshnikov. If Baryshnikov had been a small, black, Scottie dog with wings, that is.

By the time I’d counted to four, the Gasman had ended his free fall and was soaring upward again, happiness on his relatively clean face.

Hanging out with the CSM folks had some benefits, chiefly food and decent places to sleep. And, of course, seeing my mom, which I’d never be able to get enough of, after living the first fourteen years of my life not even knowing she existed. (I explained all this in earlier books, if you want to go get caught up.)

“Yo,” said Fang, hovering next to me.

My heart gave a little kick as I saw how the sun glinted off his deeply black feathers. Which matched his eyes. And his hair. “You enjoying being a spokesfreak?” I asked him casually, looking away.

One side of his mouth moved: the Fang version of unbridled chortling.

He shrugged. “It’s a job.”

“Yep. So long as they don’t worry about pesky child labor laws,” I agreed. We’re an odd little band, my fellow flock members and I. Fang, Iggy, and I are all fourteen, give or take. So officially, technically, legally, we’re minors. But we’ve been living on our own for years, and regular child protection laws just don’t seem to apply to us. Come to think of it, many regular grown-up laws don’t seem to apply to us either.

Nudge is eleven, roughly. The Gasman is eightish. Angel is somewhere in the six range. I don’t know how old Total is, and frankly, what with the calculations of dog years into human years, I don’t care.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Angel dropped down onto me with all her forty-one pounds of feathery fun.

“Oof! What are you doing, goofball?” I exclaimed, dipping about a foot. Then I heard it: the high-pitched, all-too-familiar whine of a bullet streaking past my ear, close enough to knock some of my hair aside.

In the next second, Total yelped piercingly, spinning in midair, his small black wings flapping frantically. Angel’s quick instincts had saved my life. But Total had taken the hit.

2

IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE, I rolled a full 360, spinning in the air, swooping to catch Total and also performing evasive maneuvers that, sadly, I’ve had way too much practice doing.

“Scatter!” I shouted. “Get out of firing range!”

We all peeled away, our wings moving fast and powerfully, gaining altitude like rockets. I heard applause floating up to me – they thought this was part of the act. Then, I looked down at the limp black dog in my arms.

“Total!” I said, holding his chunky little body. “Total!”

He blinked and moaned. “I’m hit, Max. They got me. I guess I’m gonna live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse, huh?”

Okay. In my experience, if you’re really hit or seriously hurt, you don’t say much. Maybe a few bad words. Maybe grunting sounds. You don’t manage pithy quotes.

Quickly I shifted him this way and that, scanning for wounds. He had both ears, and his face was fine. I patted along his wings, which still looked too short to keep him aloft. Bright red blood stained my sleeve, but so far he seemed to be in one unperforated piece.

“Tell Akila,” Total gasped, eyelids fluttering, “tell her she’s always been the only one.” Akila is the Alaskan Malamute Total had fallen for back on the Wendy K., the boat where we lived with a bunch of scientists on our way to Antarctica.

“Shh,” I said. “I’m still looking for holes.”

“I don’t have many regrets,” Total rambled weakly. “True, I thought about a career in the theater, once our adventures waned. I know it’s just a crazy dream, but I always hoped for just one chance to play the Dane before I died.”

“Play the huh?” I said absently, feeling his ribs. Nothing broken. “Is that a game?”

Total moaned and closed his eyes.

Then I found it: the source of the blood, the place where he’d been shot.

“Total?” I said, and got a slight whimper. “You have a boo-boo on your tail.”

“What?” He opened his eyes and curled to peer at his short tail. He wagged it experimentally, outrage appearing on his face as he realized a tiny chunk of flesh was missing near the tip. “I’m hit! I’m bleeding! Those scoundrels will pay for this!”

“I think a Band-Aid is probably all you need.” I struggled to keep a straight face.

Fang swerved closer to me, big and supremely graceful, like a black panther with wings.

Oh, God. I’m so stupid. Forget I just said that.

“How’s he doing?” Fang asked, nodding at Total.

“He needs a Band-Aid,” I said. A look passed between me and Fang, full of suppressed humor, relief, understanding, love -

Forget I said that too. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

“Got your sniper,” Fang went on, pointing downward.

I shifted into battle mode. “One sniper or a whole flotilla of baddies?”

“Only see the one.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So, what, we’re not worth a whole flotilla anymore?” I looked down at Total. “Wings out, spud. You gotta fly on your own.”

Total gathered himself with dignity, extended his wings, and jumped awkwardly out of my arms. He flapped frantically, then with more confidence, and rose to keep up with us.

“What’s up?” Iggy had coasted on an updraft for a while, but now he and the others were forming a bird-kid sandwich around me.

“Total’s okay,” I reported. “One sniper below. Now we gotta go take him out.”

Angel’s pure-white wing brushed against me. She gave me a sweet smile that melted my heart, and I tried to remember that this kid had many layers, not all of them made of gumdrops and roses.

“Thanks, lamby,” I said, and she grinned.

“I felt something bad about to happen,” she explained. “Can we go get that guy now?”

“Let’s do it,” I said, and we angled ourselves downward. Among the many genetic enhancements we sport, the mad scientists who created us had thoughtfully included raptor vision. I raked the land below, almost a mile down, and traced the area where Fang pointed.

I saw him: a lone guy in the window of a building close to the air base. He was tracking us, and we began our evasive actions, dropping suddenly, swerving, angling different ways, trying to be as unpredictable as possible. We’re fairly good at being unpredictable.

“Mass zoom?” Fang asked, and I nodded.

“Ig, mass zoom, angle down about thirty-five degrees. Then aim for six o’clock,” I instructed. And why was I only giving Iggy instructions? Because Iggy’s the only blind one, that’s why.

We were moving fast, really fast, dropping at a trajectory that would smash us into the sniper’s window in about eight seconds. We’d practiced racing feet-first through open windows a thousand times, one right after the other, bam bam bam. So this was more of a fun challenge than a scary, death-defying act of desperation.

The two things often look very similar in our world.

Seven, six, five, I counted silently.

When I got to four, the window exploded outward, knocking me head over heels.

3

THREE DAYS LATER…

Here, in no particular order, is a massively incomplete list of things that make me twitchy:

1) Being indoors, almost anywhere

2) Places with no easy exits

3) People who promise me tons of “benefits” and assume that I don’t see right through the crapola to the stark truth that actually they want me to do a bunch of stuff for them

4) Being dressed up

So it won’t take a lot of imagination on your part to guess how I reacted to our appointment at a Hollywood talent agency.

“Come in, guys,” said the most gorgeous woman I’ve ever seen. She flashed glowing white teeth and tossed back her perfect, auburn hair as she ushered us through the heavy wooden door. “I’m Sharon. Welcome!”

I could see her trying to avoid looking at our various bruises, scrapes, and cuts. Well, if you’re six feet away from a building when it explodes at you, you’re gonna get a little banged up. Fact of life.

We were in a big office building in Hollywood. If you’ve been keeping up with our nutty, action-packed shenanigans, you’ll remember how many incredibly bad experiences we’ve had inside office buildings. They’re pretty much my least favorite place to be, right after dungeons and hospitals, but before dog crates and science labs. Call me quirky.

A member of the CSM had a friend who had a friend who had a cousin who was married to someone who knew someone at this huge, important Hollywood talent agency and volunteered us for an interview, without asking us. The CSM thought we spokesbirds were doing a bang-up job of getting their message out. Emphasis on bang, given the suicide sniper. But more on that later.

“Come in! Come in!” A short, balding guy in a flashy suit waved us in, big smile in place. I ratcheted up my DEFCON level to orange. “I’m Steve Blackman.”

There were four of them altogether, three guys and Sharon with the great hair. She blinked when Total trotted in after us, a small white bandage still covering the tip of his tail. He’d gotten more mileage out of that weensy flesh wound than I’ve gotten out of broken ribs.

“Good God,” I heard Total mutter as he looked at the woman. “She can’t be real.”

“Max!” said Steve, holding out his hand. “May I call you Max?”

“No.” I frowned and looked at his hand until he pulled it back.

The other two guys introduced themselves, and we just stood there, unsmiling. Actually, Nudge smiled a little. She loves stuff like this. She’d even worn a skirt. Angel was wearing a pink tutu over her jeans. My clothes were at least clean and not blood-spattered, which is about as good as it ever gets with me.

“Well!” said Steve, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s sit down and get to know each other, huh? Can we get you something to drink? You kids hungry?”

“We’re always hungry,” said the Gasman seriously.

Steve looked taken aback. “Ah, yes, of course! Growing kids!” He was trying hard not to look at our wings, with limited success. He reached over and tapped a button on his desk, which was so big you could practically land a chopper on it. “Jeff? How about some drinks and snacks in here? Thanks.”

“Please, sit down,” Sharon said, with another hair toss. I made a mental note to practice doing that in a mirror the next time I saw one. It seemed a useful skill, right up there with roundhouse kicks.

We sat, making sure no one was in back of us or could sneak up on us. I was wound so tight I was about to break out in hives.

A young guy in a purple-striped shirt came in with a tray of sodas, glasses of ice, and little nibbly things on several plates. “They’re tapas,” he explained. “This one’s calamari, and this one’s -”

“Thanks a million, Jeff.” Steve cut in with a smile. Jeff straightened and left, closing the door quietly behind him. Then, as we fell on the food like hyenas, Steve turned to us again, looking so dang enthusiastic that I wondered how much coffee he’d had this morning. “So! You kids want to be big stars, eh?”

“God, no!” I said, almost spewing crumbs. “No way!”

Oddly, this seemed to throw a petite wrench into the convo.

4

SHARON AND STEVE and the other two agents went silent, looking at us in surprise.

Steve recovered quickly. “Models?” he suggested, his eyes noting that we were all tall and skinny for our age.

I almost snorted Sprite through my nose. “Yeah. ‘Wings are being worn wide this year,’ ” I pretended to quote. “ ‘With the primary feathers tinted fun shades of pink and green for a party look.’ I don’t think so.” I tried not to notice Nudge’s momentary disappointment.

“Actors?” Sharon said.

Total perked up, chewing busily on calamari, which, if you’re interested, is Italian for rubber bands.

“Nope.” I could see this interview was going south, so I started inhaling food while I could.

“Max, I mean – Max,” Steve said, with no idea what else to call me. “You’re selling yourself short. You guys could do anything, be anything. You want your own movie? You want flock action figures? You want to be on T-shirts? You name it, kid – I can make it happen.”

“I want to be an action figure!” Gazzy said, wolfing down some mini-enchilada thingies.

“Oh, yeah!” Iggy said, holding up his hand for a high five. The Gasman slapped it.

Steve smiled and seemed to relax. “Hey, I didn’t catch everyone’s names. You, sweetheart,” he said to Angel. “What’s your name?”

“Isabella von Frankenstein Rothschild,” said Angel, absently picking something out of her teeth. She’d lost one of her front ones recently, so her grin had a black hole in it. “You got your shoes on eBay,” she told Sharon, whose eyes widened about as far as they could. “But you’re right – it doesn’t make sense to go retail, not on what Skinflint Steve pays you.”

Yep, that’s my little mind-readin’ darlin’!

There was dead silence for a few moments. Sharon blushed hotly and looked anywhere but at Steve. One of the other agents coughed.

“Ah, huh,” Steve said, then turned to Gazzy. “How about you, son? You want to be an action figure, right? What’s your name?”

Gazzy nodded eagerly, and I promised myself I’d kick his butt later. “They call me the Sharkalator.”

“The Sharkalator,” Steve repeated, his enthusiasm waning. What can I say? We have that effect on grown-ups. Even on other kids. Well, okay, on pretty much everyone. We were created to survive, not to be the life of the party.

“I’m Cinnamon,” said Nudge, licking her fingers. “Cinnamon Allspice La Fever. This shrimp is awesome.”

Steve started to look depressed.

“They call me the White Knight,” said Iggy, expertly finding the remaining food on the trays with his sensitive fingers.

“Oh?” Sharon said, trying to salvage the situation. “Why is that?”

Iggy looked in her general direction. He gestured to his pale blond hair, pale skin, unseeing blue eyes. “They’re not gonna call me the Black Knight.”

Fang had sat silently this whole time, so still that he was practically blending into the modern tufted sofa. He had drunk four Cokes in about four minutes and steadily worked his way through a plate of fried something-or-others. Now he felt all eyes turn to him, and he looked up, the expression on his face making me shiver.

No one looks like Fang – dark and still and dangerous, like he’s daring you to set him off. But I’d seen him rocking Angel when she’d hurt herself; I’d seen him smile in his sleep; I’d seen the deep, dark light in his eyes as he leaned over me…

I blinked several times and chugged the rest of my Sprite.

Fang sighed and wiped his fingers on his black jeans. He looked around the whole room, at the four agents, at the younger kids having a ball with this, at Total slurping Fanta out of a bowl, at me, sitting tensely on the edge of my chair.

“My name is Fang,” he said, standing up. “And I’m outta here.” He walked to the sliding glass doors that led to a landscaped balcony, twenty-two stories above the ground.

I nodded at the flock and reached over to tap the back of Iggy’s hand twice. He stood up and followed Fang’s almost silent footsteps, weaving unerringly around tables and large potted plants.

Fang slid the door open. It was windy on the balcony, and he raised his face to the sun. I hustled the rest of the flock outside, then turned and waved lamely at the four open-mouthed, big-shot Hollywood agents.

“Thanks,” I said, balancing on the balcony edge as my family took off one by one, leaping and unfurling their wings like soft, rough-edged sails, “but no thanks.”

Then I threw myself out into the open air, feeling it rush through my hair, my feathers; feeling my wings buoy me up, every stroke lifting me twelve feet higher.

We’re just not cut out for all this media circus crap.

But then, you already knew that.

5

“ALL I’M SAYING IS, would going on Oprah just once be the end of the entire world?” Nudge crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at me. Since Nudge is about the sweetest, easiest-going recombinant-DNA life-form I’ve ever known, this was serious.

“No,” I said carefully. “But the end of the entire world would be the end of the entire world, and that’s what we’re still trying to stop.” For those of you who are still catching up, I’ve been told that my mission in life is to save the world. No pressure or anything.

“I want to be an action figure,” said Gazzy.

“Guys,” I said, rubbing my temples, “remember four days ago? The bullets whizzing past, the sniper, the exploding building?”

“I certainly haven’t forgotten.” Total huffed, looking at his tail.

My pool of patience, never deep on the best of days, became yet shallower. “My point is,” I went on tightly, “that clearly, someone is still after us, still wants us dead. Yes, our air shows for the CSM are big hits; there are people who are sort of accepting us as being… different, but we’re still in danger. We’ll always be in danger.”

“I’m tired of being in danger!” Nudge cried. “I hate this! I just want to -”

She stopped, because there was no point in going on. Trying not to cry, she flopped down on the hotel bed. I sat down next to her and rubbed her back, between her wings.

“We all hate this,” I said quietly. “But until someone can prove to me beyond a doubt that we’re safe, I have to make decisions that will keep us more or less in one piece. I know it sucks.”

“Speaking of things sucking,” said Fang, “I say we ditch the air shows completely.”

“I like the air shows,” said Gazzy. He was lying on the floor, half beneath our coffee table. My mom had gotten him some little Transformer cars, and he was rolling them around, making engine noises. Yes, he could best most grown men in hand-to-hand combat and make an explosive device out of virtually anything, but he was still eight years old. Or so.

I always seemed to forget that.

“I like the air shows too,” said Nudge, her tangly hair fanned out around her head. “They make me feel like a famous movie star.”

“They’re not safe,” Fang said flatly.

I was torn. The sniper who had shot at me had turned out to be a new form of cyborg/human – or at least that’s what we’d figured after we found part of one arm. Instead of a hand, he’d had an automatic pistol connected directly to his muscles and nerves. It hadn’t actually been the building that exploded when we were close – it had been the sniper himself. He’d blown himself up rather than let us catch him or really see him.

That’s dedication for ya.

That thing hadn’t grafted that gun to his arm by himself. Someone had made him. That someone was still out there and possibly had made more things like him.

On the other hand… the CSM was really counting on us to continue the air shows. These shows were taking place in some of the most polluted cities in the world: Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Moscow, Beijing. So far they’d been big successes, and the CSM had been able to hand out tons of cards and leaflets educating people about pollution and greenhouse gases.

My mom was a member of the CSM. She’d never want to put us in danger, but… I hated to let her down. She’d saved my life a bunch of times. She was helping the flock any way she could. This was the only thing she’d ever asked me to do. How could I tell her that I wanted to bail?

“Maybe if we just do the air shows but have them way step up security,” I said slowly.

“No,” said Fang.

Okay. I may be fabulous in a lot of ways, but I know I have a couple tiny flaws. One of them is a really bad knee-jerk reaction whenever anyone tells me no about anything.

You’d think Fang would have picked up on that by now.

I raised my chin and looked him in the eye. The flock, being smarter than the average gang of winged bears, went still.

Slowly, I stood up and walked closer to Fang. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Total slither beneath a bed, saw Gazzy quickly pull Iggy into the boys’ room next door.

Until last year, I’d been taller than both Fang and Iggy. They’d not only caught up but had shot several inches past me, which I hated. Now Fang looked down at me, his eyes so dark I couldn’t see where his pupils were.

“What?” I asked, deceptively mildly. I saw a flash of pink tutu as Angel and Nudge crawled with quick, silent efficiency into the boys’ room.

“The air shows are too dangerous,” Fang said equally mildly. I heard the connecting door between the two rooms ease shut with the caution of prey trying hard not to attract its predator.

“I can’t let my mom down.” This close, I could see his thick eyelashes, the weird glints of gold in his eyes.

He let out a breath slowly and clenched his hands.

“One more show,” I offered.

His hands unclenched as he weighed his options. “All right,” he said, surprising me. “You’re right – we don’t want to let the CSM down.”

I looked at him in narrow-eyed suspicion, and then it hit me: Dr. Brigid Dwyer, the eighth wonder of the world, was part of the CSM. She’d planned on meeting us in Mexico City, our next show.

That was why Fang had agreed to just one more – so he could get all caught up with his favorite brilliant, underage scientist.

I walked stiffly to the bathroom, locked the door, and turned on the shower as hard as it could go. Then I buried my face in a fluffy towel and shrieked like a banshee.

6

I’M NOT a great sleeper. When you’ve spent your whole life facing imminent pain and death, you tend not to sink too deeply into the arms of Morpheus. So it was nothing new that I lay awake for hours that night, turning this way and that.

I know what you’re thinking: how do the wings fit into the whole sleeping thing? Well, even though our wings fold up pretty neatly and tightly along our spines, we’re generally not back sleepers. We’re mostly side or stomach sleepers. Little bit of insider bird-kid info for ya there.

Right now I was flopped on my stomach, my head hanging off the side of the bed I was sharing with Angel. Nudge won the Flock Member Most Likely to Cause Injuries by Kicking During Sleep award last year, so she got a bed to herself.

My wings were unfolded a bit, and I reached around to pull a twig out of my secondaries. Here’s what I was thinking about:

1) Who this new threat was

2) The air show in Mexico City

3) My mom and my half-sister, Ella

4) How to get Total to quit milking his tail injury, because enough was enough

5) Fang

6) Fang

7) Fang

I’ve grown up with Fang, from the very beginning, when our dog crates were stacked next to each other in the lab of experimental horror that we called the School. I know, just another typical romantic story about the boy next door.

Then we’d been rescued by our bad guy, turned good guy, turned bad again, turned I don’t know what lately – and Fang and I had been like brother and sister with the rest of the flock, hidden away in the Colorado mountains.

Then Jeb (see description above) disappeared, and I became flock leader. Maybe because I was the oldest. Or the most ruthless. Or the most organized. I don’t know. But I was the flock leader, and Fang was my right-wing man.

This past year, things had started to change. Fang had been interested in a girl (see Red-Haired Wonder, book two), and I’d hated it. I’d had my first date with a guy (possibly evil, not sure), and Fang had hated it. Then, last month, he’d gotten all cozy with Dr. Brigid Dwyer, the twenty-year-old scientist who’d been part of the research team down in the land of ice and snow and killer leopard seals. And – get this – she’d sort of flirted back with him. And he’s – practically – just a kid!

In the midst of all this, Fang had kissed me. Several times. So now I was freaked and tempted and terrified and worried and longing – and also angry at him for even starting this whole thing to begin with. But it was started and couldn’t be unstarted. (Again, his fault.)

And now I was trying to brush my hair, you know, when I thought about it, and looking at myself in mirrors, wondering if I was pretty. Pretty! A year ago, when my hair got in my eyes, I hacked it off with a knife. The only thing important about my clothes was whether they were too stiff with whatever to move fast in battle. And Fang had been my best friend and an excellent fighter.

Now everything was upside down.

“You are really pretty, Max,” said a small voice next to me.

I pressed my face into my pillow and squelched some extracolorful words. Way to go, ace – have embarrassing personal thoughts while you’re two feet from a mind reader.

Yes. Along with the wings and the raptor eyesight and the weird bones, the insane scientists who’d created us had given us the potential to suddenly develop other skills. Iggy can feel colors. Nudge can draw metal stuff toward her and hack any computer. Fang can pretty much disappear into whatever background he’s near. Gazzy can imitate any voice, any sound, with 100 percent accuracy. His other skill is unmentionable. I can fly faster than the others, and I have a Voice in my head. I don’t want to talk about that right now.

But it was Angel who’d hit the genetic jackpot. She can breathe under water, communicate with fish, and read people’s minds. We’re talking about a six-year-old. And, you know, six-year-olds are famous for having excellent judgment and decision-making skills.

“You have nice hair and really pretty eyes,” Angel went on earnestly.

I rolled over a bit. “Yeah. Brown and brown.” Have I mentioned how much Fang loves red hair? I believe I have.

“No, your hair has little sun streaks in it,” Angel informed me. “And your eyes are like – you know those chocolates we had in France? With the gooey stuff in the middle, with the alcohol in ’em except we didn’t know, and Gazzy ate a million and then barfed all night? Those chocolates?”

As much as I had tried to suppress all memory of that incident, it rushed back to me in vivid Technicolor. “The color of my eyes is like barfed-up chocolate?” Despair settled over me. There was no hope.

“No, the chocolates before they were barfed,” Angel clarified.

So there you have it, the extent of my charms: brown hair and eyes like unbarfed chocolate. I’m a lucky girl.

“Max,” said Angel. “You know Fang is the best guy ever. And he loves you. ’Cause you’re the best girl ever.”

With anyone else, I could ask them how they know that and then discredit them. Not Angel. She knew because she’d seen it, in his mind.

“We all love each other, Ange,” I said impatiently, hating this whole conversation.

“No, not like this,” she went on relentlessly. “Fang loves you.”

Here’s a little secret you might not have picked up on about me: I can’t stand gushy emotion. Hate crying. Hate feeling sad. Am not even too crazy about feeling happy. So all this – the vulnerability, the longing, the terror – I desperately wanted it to all go away forever. I wanted to cut it out of me like they’d cut out that chip. (See book three; I can’t keep explaining everything. If I’m gonna take the trouble to write this stuff down, the least you can do is read it.)

But right now, I needed Angel to shut up.

“Okay, maybe I’ll give him a break,” I said, rolling over and closing my eyes.

“Maybe you should give him more than that,” Angel pressed.

My eyes flared open as I didn’t dare to think what she might mean.

“He could totally be your boyfriend,” she went on with annoying persistence. “You guys could get married. I could be like a junior bridesmaid. Total could be your flower dog.”

“I’m only a kid!” I shrieked. “I can’t get married!”

“You could in New Hampshire.”

My mouth dropped open. How does she know this stuff? “Forget it! No one’s getting married!” I hissed. “Not in New Hampshire or anywhere else! Not in a box, not with a fox! Now go to sleep, before I kill you!”

Oh yeah, like I got any sleep after that.

7

YOU’VE NEVER SEEN just how mega a megalopolis can be until you’ve seen Mexico City. I guess there might be bigger burgs in like China or something, but boy howdy, Mexico City seems endless.

Anyway, the Bane of My Existence and I had agreed to one more air show, and of course it was the one in Mexico City, where Dr. Wonderful would be meeting us.

So we were over a ginormous open-air stadium, the Estadio Azteca, which held about 114,000 people. Every seat was filled. We’d changed the choreography and order of stunts since the last show, so if anyone had made a plan to take us out, they’d have to rethink it. Around us, mile upon mile of densely packed buildings stretched as far as we could see, and we can see pretty dang far.

“I need a scuba tank,” Nudge said, flying over to me. She was holding her nose with one hand. “And a face mask.” She gave a couple of coughs and shook her head, her eyes watering.

“I assume you’re referring to the wee pollution problem?” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the wind and the multitudes cheering below. The people in the stadium were looking up to see us silhouetted against a thick gray sky. But it was not a cloudy day. The thing is, with nineteen million-plus people and four million-plus cars and a bunch of businesses making stuff, Mexico City is incredibly, horribly, nauseatingly polluted.

Which was why the CSM wanted us to be there – to bring international attention to it. When Dr. Wonderful was prepping us for the air show, she’d told us that there had been half a million pollution-related hospital cases just in the past year.

Now we were wondering if we were going to raise that number to half a million and seven.

“I’m getting a headache,” Gazzy said, circling closer to me. We split apart in a six-pointed star, with Total in the middle, and the crowd below went crazy. Like a huge, rolling wave of sound, the chants came to us.

“We have the power! The future is now! Kids rule!”

I raised an eyebrow at Fang. “Kids rule?”

He shrugged. “I can’t control what they quote from the blog,” he said. “What am I gonna say? ‘More power to grown-ups?’ I don’t think so.”

“How many readers do you have now?” Fang had started a blog months ago, using our super-duper-contraband computer. He had his own fan clubs and everything. Girls sent him ridiculous e-mails about how wonderful he was, what a hero, etc. It was enough to turn your stomach.

“About six hundred thousand log in pretty much every day,” Fang said, automatically scanning the airspace around us. He and I suddenly soared upward, facing each other, about two feet apart. The crowd below gasped, and I knew it looked impressive as all get-out.

Then Iggy zoomed up to join us, and he, Fang, and I made a triangle, our wings moving in perfect order so that we didn’t whap each other on the upstroke. Total hovered way above us, like a star on top of a Christmas tree.

A hundred yards below us, Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel were a triple stack of bird kids, centered one over the other, moving their wings in unison: everyone up, everyone down. At Gazzy’s signal, they all turned and started rocketing earthward, still precisely stacked.

Fang, Iggy, Total, and I counted to ten, then angled downward also: it was time for us to land on the field. Supposedly they were going to give us some kind of award.

“You’re national heroes,” Dr. Amazing had said earlier, pushing her, yes, red hair out of her eyes while Fang watched her with interest. “Not only here, but in other countries too. You guys are so young, but you’ve accomplished so much and exposed so much evil. Plus, you helped publicize the melting of the planet’s ice, and spoke to Congress. You’re amazing.”

Who was she beaming at? Yes. Fang.

Who, exactly, had gotten up the nerve to speak to Congress? That would be moi.

But, judging from Brigid Dwyer’s unprofessional adoration, Fang alone had just saved the entire known world with one wing tied behind his back.

It had been all I could do not to trip Brigid on her way out. Which was stupid, because why did I care? Never mind. Forget I asked.

The field below – big enough for the World Cup, the Olympics, and anything else where 114,000 people suddenly needed to be at the same place at the same time – beckoned us. There was a line of uniformed security guards hired by the CSM ringing the perimeter to protect us.

I saw Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel land flawlessly and wave at the crowd as a hundred thousand cameras flashed. Unfortunately, since a camera flash bears a striking resemblance to the flash a gun makes when it’s fired, by the time I reached the ground, I was so twitchy and pumped full of adrenaline that I felt like I might hurl.

We joined the rest of the flock on the green turf and then all automatically circled, facing outward, as if we were six (and a half) cute little covered wagons warding off Indians who were inexplicably ticked off that we’d taken all their land and given them colds and killed most of them.

The crowd was roaring too loudly for us to hear guns. Heck, we wouldn’t have been able to hear a chopper. It was, pretty much, the most nightmarish situation I could possibly imagine, without literally involving a dog crate.

And you know what’s coming, right?

Yeah. The actual nightmare part.

8

The setting: An impossibly big open stadium in impressive but noxious Mexico City.

The cast of characters: The flock, Total, Dr. Amazing, and some very nice Mexican officials who wanted to give us an award. Plus a TV crew.

The plot: Just wait. It’s coming.

“I hate this. Get me outta here,” I said to Fang, keeping a smile stuck to my face. We were waving to the crowd, so many camera flashes going off that I was sure I’d be blind in a minute.

“This is not a good setup,” Fang agreed, looking around constantly.

Total, Iggy, Gazzy, and Nudge were working the crowd like old hands, bowing and soaking up the applause. Gazzy was spreading his wings and doing little six-foot hops into the air, and each time the crowd roared even louder.

Finally, one of the assembled officials tapped on a microphone located at the center of the stadium. Brigid Dwyer stood next to them, ready to give a speech about the CSM and what it was trying to accomplish worldwide.

The official said something in Spanish, and the crowd cheered and clapped, chanting quotes from Fang’s blog. Then Brigid took the microphone and waited for relative quiet.

“Buenos días, señors y señoras,” Brigid said, and people cheered. “Hoy nosotros -”

Right then, a piercing scream soared above the crowd’s murmur and stopped Brigid cold. Gazzy saw them first: ninja-type thingies leaping over the upper ledge of the stadium and rappelling down to the field.

“Heads up!” Fang shouted. We had a second to exchange glances, thinking the same thing: We hadn’t seen them on the roof, just minutes before. Where had they come from?

“Up and away!” I yelled to the flock, then saw the problem: Brigid couldn’t fly out with us. We couldn’t leave her to the ninjas’ mercy, or lack thereof. We couldn’t abandon her and the rest of the people who had hosted us.

The officials, Brigid, and the TV crew gazed openmouthed as at least sixty slim, dark figures hit the ground and headed for us. I sized up the situation in an instant: a hundred thousand people who might be injured or killed in crossfire; innocent people right here on the field who would only get in our way; the seven of us up against about sixty of whatever this new threat was.

It was like old times.

“Belay that!” I shouted. “Battle up!”

As a maternal figure, I always try to keep the flock safe, of course. But I admit, it did my heart proud to see the instant blood-lust pop into Gazzy’s blue eyes and to see little Angel automatically tense up and get into fighting stance, ready to rip someone’s head off. They were just so – so dang adorable, sometimes.

We were a tiny bit out of practice. I hadn’t taken anyone apart in several weeks. But once you’ve learned the nasty, street-fighting, no-holds-barred art of Max Kwon Do, you never really forget it.

“Get ’em!” I shouted as the dark figures raced toward us. Liquid-fire adrenaline surged into my veins, making me jittery and lightning fast.

As soon as one was within striking range, I jumped up and out, both feet forward. They connected heavily, slamming the New Threat in its middle. It doubled over but snapped upright quickly, its dark hood slipping back to reveal a weird, humanish face. Humanish except for the glowing green laserlike eyes.

I landed, spun on one heel, and snapkicked backward as hard as I could. I caught it in the shoulder and heard a crunching, breaking sound.

With its good arm, it swung at my head, much faster than a human could and with more force. I leaped backward just in time, feeling the barest brush of its knuckles against my cheek.

A second one rushed up, followed by a third. One grabbed me from behind, tearing my jacket – my new jacket that my mom had given me. Brand-new, not from Goodwill or a Dumpster. He’d torn it.

Now I was mad. A split-second glance revealed that the flock was doing what it did best: deconstructing things. No one needed help, so I balled my fists, put my head down, and went after my attackers.

These skirmishes always seem to last much longer than they actually do. I felt like I was punching and kicking and swinging and whaling for two hours, but it was probably about six minutes or so. During that time, I figured out that these New Threat thingies had a couple vulnerable spots: If you brought both hands down in a chopping motion right on top of their heads, their heads actually split open into several metallic strips, like a sectioned orange. Okay, a really gross orange, but you get the idea.

Another vulnerable spot: their trim little ankles. One good strong kick, and they snapped like balsa wood.

In less than ten minutes, thanks to us and the hired security force, the grassy lawn looked like a combination of an army field hospital and an automobile chop shop. Brigid and the officials were white-faced, huddled together by the podium. A quick inventory of the flock revealed the usual bruises, bloody noses, and black eyes, but nothing serious.

Fang came up to me, his face grim, his knuckles raw and bleeding.

I knew what he was going to say. “Okay. No more air shows,” I said.

9

DR. DWYER AND THE CSM had arranged for a special safe house for us – actually five, four were decoys – and kept the real location a secret until we were in a car headed there.

“Seeing battles is hard, if you’re not used to it,” Fang said, watching Brigid’s white face. She nodded tensely, struggling to maintain her cool. She hadn’t been hurt, but her clothes were spattered with blood – I’d been standing right next to her when I had happily discovered the New Threat’s orangey weakness.

“It’s not a picnic even if you are used to it,” I said.

“What were those things?” Iggy asked, rubbing his bruised and scraped knuckles.

“Not sure,” I said. I’d been trying to figure that out myself. They hadn’t been Erasers, those wolf-human hybrids that had tried to kill us about once every hour for the last four years. They hadn’t been Flyboys, which were the flying, cyborg version of Erasers. They hadn’t been straight robots. They were roboty, but with a bit of flesh grown over their frames, and apparently didn’t fly. They hadn’t spoken, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t.

“It’s a mystery,” I said, deciding to worry about it later. Right now I was hungry and a little shaky from the drop in adrenaline.

I pushed my hair out of my eyes, and just then noticed that Dr. Brilliant’s hair was actually cut in a style, like on purpose. I’ve had my hair cut by an actual hairdresser exactly once in my life, and that was many, many battles ago.

I felt like a truck driver next to Brigid Dwyer. A truck driver with bad hair, a black eye, dried blood around my nose, and ripped and bloody clothes. Not an unusual look for me, but all of a sudden, I felt – I don’t know. I don’t know what I felt.

“Here we are,” said Brigid as we pulled into the driveway of a smallish stucco house. The houses were packed tightly together here, and the streets were full of dogs and cars, the yards strung with lines of clean laundry.

I automatically scanned the area for possible hiding places, points of vulnerability, whether the windows were breakable, whether the trees would get in our way. Fang got out first, raked the area with his stare, and determined that it was safe.

The rest of us piled out quickly and hurried to the back of the house. I felt tired and irritable and, worse, kept sensing Brigid looking at Fang. I just wanted to eat about three banana splits and then collapse.

Warm yellow light spilled out a window, forming a slanted rectangle on the grass. Just as we reached the back door, it swung open. I stopped so suddenly that Angel bumped into me. I got on the balls of my feet, ready to leap into action if someone dangerous was behind that door.

At first all I saw was a silhouette. At the same moment, a delicious, familiar scent wafted out into the warm night air.

Chocolate chip cookies, fresh from the oven.

The silhouette was my mom, Dr. Valencia Martinez, and she was smiling at me.

And the world seemed loads better.

10

“MAN, I FEEL GREAT,” Gazzy said an hour later. He tipped back in his chair and patted his stomach, now full of enchiladas, tacos, chips and salsa, and cookies. “Looove Mexico,” he crooned. “Looove Mexican food.”

“It’s so good to see you again,” my mom said, kissing my cheek. Again.

I beamed at her. “You too. And I haven’t seen Ella in ages.”

“I’ve got so much to tell you,” my half sister said to me. She quickly pushed a couple tortilla chips into her mouth, her eyes wide. “We had a dance at my school!”

My mom smiled at Ella, looking tired and proud. “Yes, she even gave up two hours with me to attend. Ella and I have been stuffing envelopes and making phone calls for the CSM in every spare minute.”

For a second I was jealous – Ella had so much more of my mom, all the time, her whole life. Then I felt guilty. Ella deserved to have our mom, and it wasn’t her fault that I couldn’t. The fact was, my mom had had Ella in the normal way. I had been an egg donated to science and was fertilized in a test tube. Neither of us knew the other existed until this past year. And now, no matter how much we cared about each other, it was still too dangerous for me to live in one place for any length of time. Being with my mom would also mean putting her and Ella at risk. And I wouldn’t do it.

Amazingly, I’m not that selfish. Yet.

“You’ve been doing an incredible job for the CSM too, honey,” my mom said to me. “But I agree that the air shows must be canceled. There’s just no way to guarantee your safety.”

Jeb Batchelder pulled out a chair and sat down, propping his elbows on the table and lacing his fingers together. “Has everyone had enough to eat?” he asked.

I slowly let out a breath, not looking at him. I would never get used to seeing him again, after thinking he was dead for years. I would never accept that he was a good guy, after everything he’d done to me and the flock over the last – what was it now? Eight months? Time was so – stretchy, in my life.

Somehow my mom trusted him. And I trusted my mom. But that was as far as it went, despite the fact that as far as I knew, he was my biological father, the other half of the test-tube cocktail that had produced me. But I never, ever thought of him as my father. Ever.

“The CSM isn’t our only concern right now,” Jeb said. His hair was starting to go gray. I’d love to think that I caused some of it. “We need to discuss your next steps.”

Instantly I felt my face set like stone. I didn’t look at Fang but knew that he’d have the same expression. None of us had ever reacted well to the amusing notion of having grown-ups decide things for us – like our future, or what we did, and so on.

“Oh?” I said in a voice that would have made most people pause.

Jeb was used to it, having heard it from me since I was about three years old.

“Yes,” he said. “A new school was recently created – the Day and Night School. It’s for gifted children, and it’s designed to let kids learn at their natural pace, in ways that suit them best. You’d all do really well there. It’s one of the only schools on earth where you’d fit in.”

“Yeah, we’re all about fitting in,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Where is it?” Nudge asked. I heard the eagerness in her voice, and groaned to myself.

“In a beautiful and secluded part of Utah,” Jeb said. “It’s got mountains, a lake to swim in, and horses to ride.”

“Ooh,” said Nudge, her brown eyes wide. “I love horses! And school -” A wistful expression came over her face. “Tons of books, and other kids to talk to…”

“Nudge, it’s out of the question,” I said. I hated to rain on her parade, but she knew this was crazy. There was no way we could go to some school somewhere. Had she forgotten what had happened the other times we’d tried to go to school? It was like, regular usual nightmare, plus homework.

Nudge turned pleading eyes to me. “Really? It would be nice to be in one place for a while, and learn things.”

“I like school,” said Ella. “Even though some kids are buttheads.”

“We usually have bigger problems than kids being buttheads,” I said, trying to squelch my growing irritation. “Nudge, you know we have to keep on the move. Remember the suicide-sniper guy? There’s no way we’d be safe.”

“We can guarantee your safety,” Jeb offered. “This is the real deal, kids.”

“Oh, the real deal,” I said, sarcasm dripping. “So it’s better than all the fake deals, huh? Guarantee our safety? Please. How can you even say that with a straight face?”

“I’ve checked into it,” my mom said. “I have to admit, it seems like a good program. And the woman who runs it is one of my friends from college.”

Well, Buddha himself could come to me in a dream and tell me it was the right thing to do, and I still would not get on board. Because when it comes right down to it, in the end, when push comes to shove, when my back’s against the wall, when I can’t think of another freaking cliché to throw your way, the only person I really, really, really trust, no matter what, is me.

This policy has paid off for me any number of times.

The next person I trust after me is Fang.

There really isn’t a third person, not because I don’t love the flock or my mom or whoever, but because Fang is the only person I know almost as well as I know myself, and he’s the only person I know who is close to being as tough as I am. He will not break under torture; he will not sell me out.

So, on various levels of trust after Fang, I’d choose the rest of the flock, my mom, and Ella. Jeb didn’t make the list.

“School is out,” I said firmly. “Next question.”

11

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW what’s the closest thing to feeling the most powerful you can feel? Flying alone at night. Risky. Nothing but you and the wind. Soaring way above everything, slicing through the air like a sword. Up and up until you feel like you could grab a star and hold it to your chest like a burning, spiky thing…

Oh, the poetry of a bird kid. Remind me to collect it all into one emotional, mushy volume someday, under some fake, poetic-sounding name, like Gabrielle Charbonnet de la Something-Schmancy. (I’m not kidding. I saw that name on a backpack in France. Poor kid.)

I wheeled through the sky, racing as fast as I could, my wings moving like pistons, up and down, strong and sleek. When I felt an updraft of warmer air, I coasted, breathing in the night’s thin coolness, dipping a wing to turn in huge, smooth circles as big as football fields.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Everyone was back at the house, asleep, I hoped. I’d sneak in before anyone woke up and saw I was gone and freaked out and thought I’d been kidnapped or something. But right now I needed some time. Some space. Some breathing room.

Once again, the fate of the flock was in my hands, and once again, I seemed to be the only one seeing or thinking clearly enough to know that there really wasn’t even a choice here. School was never actually a real choice.

Why didn’t the rest of the flock ever see that?

We’re the flock. We’re the last, most successful, still-living recombinant life-form that the Dr. Frankenstein wannabes at the School had created. That pretty much cemented us to one road in life, one fate: to run – forever.

Why did the rest of the flock keep pretending that we had choices? It was a waste of time. Worse, it was always up to me to be the bad guy, the one who shot down everyone’s hopes and dreams. You think I liked being the heavy? I didn’t.

Breathe in, breathe out.

And Fang. He usually supported me. Which I appreciated. But lately he’d been lobbying for us to find a deserted island somewhere and just kick back, eat coconuts, and chill, without anyone knowing where we were.

Sometimes that sounded really good.

But how long could that last? Sooner or later, Nudge was going to want new shoes, or Gazzy would run out of comic books, or Angel would decide she wanted to rule the world, and then where would we be?

Right. We’d be back to me telling everyone no.

And Fang. I didn’t know what he was doing, kissing me and then flirting with Dr. Stupendous and then making hot, dark eyes at me.

It was enough to make a girl nuts or more nuts -

Pssshh!

It took several seconds for the pain neurons to fire all the way from my right wing to my befuddled brain. And since I was conditioned to try not to scream out in surprise or pain – it’s a survival thing – I was still staring stupidly at the weirdly big hole even as I started to spiral awkwardly down to earth, way too fast.

I’d been shot. I was plummeting to the ground. And I couldn’t stop.

12

FOR THOSE OF YOU studying animal physiology, I’ll confirm that there’s a very good reason flying creatures always have two wings. One wing doesn’t cut it.

By the time I’d processed what had happened, I was about ten seconds from a flat, crunchy death. I sent all available power into my unharmed wing and desperately tried to get some lift, managing to look like a dying loon, rising awkwardly a few feet, then sinking, all the while spiraling down like one of those copter toys.

This was it. After everything I’d ever been through, I was going to die suddenly, with no warning, and alone. I’m a tough kid, but I’ll admit, I closed my eyes when I was about thirty feet from the asphalt of some parking lot.

I felt sorry for whoever would find me. I hoped the flock would know I was dead and not just missing, so they wouldn’t have to look for me. I thought about everything I had left unsaid to virtually everyone in my life, and wondered whether that had been a good -

Boing!

“Aiiiieee!!!!”

Interestingly, though I’m silent as the grave when shot or snuck up on, I discovered that I squeal like a little girl when I’m facing imminent death and then find myself bouncing hard on a trampoline.

The impact jolted my hurt wing, making me wince and suck in a breath, and then I was bouncing again, not so high, and again. I pulled my injured wing in tight, feeling warm, sticky blood clotting my feathers.

A couple more bounces and I managed to stand up, looking around me wildly. There were about a hundred of the New Threat guys, standing around the trampoline, watching me bounce, as if I were a mouse and they were all cats, honing in on me with bright eyes.

“Mr. Chu wants to see you,” one of them intoned in a telephone operator’s static voice.

They tipped me off the trampoline and immediately surrounded me, eight deep, not taking any chances. I couldn’t fly. There were too many of them for me to realistically break free. This is probably how most humans feel all the time.

It sucks.

13

I WAS PUSHED into the back of a truck, fenced in by so many armed guards that I couldn’t see anything.

My family had no idea where I was.

My right wing had a big hole in it, and one of its bones was probably broken.

I was completely outnumbered, going who knew where, to meet my mysterious new enemy, “Mr. Chu.”

I decided to take a nap.

“Excuse me, pardon me,” I murmured, sinking to my knees. Many of the guards immediately hunched down next to me, waiting for the daring escape I’d make by, what, slithering out between their legs?

Instead, I pushed and shouldered and kneed these things away and curled up on my left side, keeping my injured wing carefully on top. It hurt like heck, a throbbing, burning pain that reminded me with every beat of my heart that I couldn’t fly.

The guards didn’t know what to make of this. I guessed they hadn’t been programmed to shrug their shoulders or make a “Whatever” face.

They weren’t Erasers. They weren’t Flyboys. They weren’t the increasingly advanced robot soldiers that the diabolical brains-on-a-stick criminal known as the Uber-Director had created.

Heck, I didn’t know what they were. Just – killing machines with delicate heads and ankles. Kind of geeky. Machine geeks. Hey! M-Geeks.

Good. Now they had a name, at least in my head.

I was very tired. And I went to sleep.

14

“I TOLD YOU she was not to be killed!”

The harsh, strongly accented voice filtered into my drowsy ears. The next thing I was aware of was the pain in my wing. It hurt so much that I wanted to cry. Or at least whimper loudly.

“It is not dead,” said an M-Geek. I loved that name. “It is… limp.”

These things had been given quite the vocab.

“She’s bloody.”

“We shot it to get it out of the sky.”

Okay, so it wasn’t lilting poetry, but it was leagues ahead of chess-playing computers.

As much fun as it was to listen to them talking about me like I wasn’t there, I decided time was a-wasting. I opened my eyes and coughed.

I was on a blanket on a floor. The floor was shifting subtly in a way I immediately recognized: I was on a boat. I got to my feet, trying to keep from shrieking in pain.

Standing before me was an Asian man, a couple inches shorter than me, but then I’m weirdly tall. He was stocky and wore glasses and the kind of plain, navy Chinese jacket you see in old movies. Thick black hair was brushed back severely from his face.

“Maximum Ride,” he said, not holding out his hand. “I am Mr. Chu.”

“What do you want, Mr. Chu?” Might as well cut right to the chase.

“I want to explain to you that you must immediately sever your ties to the Coalition to Stop the Madness,” the man said, looking intently into my eyes.

That couldn’t be all. “And?” I prompted.

“You do not know what they are really up to,” he went on. “They are just using you to promote their own agenda.”

“They’re paying us in doughnuts,” I felt compelled to point out.

“I represent a group of very powerful, very wealthy businessmen from around the world,” said Mr. Chu.

“Of course you do,” I said soothingly, trying to look for an exit without being too obvious.

“We are the only ones who really know what is going on.”

“Of course you are.”

There was a tiny skylight. Could I – oh. Max no fly. Bummer.

“There is an apocalypse coming,” said Mr. Chu, seeming to grow more and more agitated.

“You’re not the first person who’s told me that.”

“It is true! My group will survive the apocalypse. We are the only ones who will not become extinct after the world leaders succeed in their quest to destroy one another.”

“Kinda makes you wish you were a world leader yourself, huh,” I said sympathetically.

Smack!

My lightning-fast reflexes had let me whip my head to one side as he lunged forward, but he still gave me a good clip on the cheek. Slowly I straightened, feeling my cheek burn, my rage growing.

“You stupid, arrogant girl.” He almost spit. “If you and your flock will join our group, then you will not be hunted down and destroyed. We can use you on our team. But if you keep up with the wisecracks and your stupidity, you will soon be eliminated. There will be no room for you in the new world.”

“Again, not new information,” I snarled, my fists clenched at my side. “The flock and I aren’t for sale, Chuey. So all I can say is, Bring it!”

I braced for all of them to leap on me, steel-hard fists adding to Mr. Chu’s unconvincing argument. Instead, the man leaned closer. He smelled of cigarettes.

“I am sorry that you and the flock will be dead soon. But my scientists will enjoy taking you apart to find out what makes you tick.”

“If your scientists take me apart,” I said solemnly, “clearly, I won’t be ticking anymore.”

Mr. Chu was practically steaming with anger, but he stuck to his script. “You may think I am dreaming, but I am not. What I say is true. It is as real as the pain in your wing and on your face. And speaking of pain, Maximum… you should know that we are experts in the art of persuasion.”

“Pain fades,” I said slowly. “But being a nutcase seems to stick around. Guess who got the better deal here?”

The last thing I remember is Mr. Chu’s face blazing with fury.

15

I AM A BONA FIDE, kick-butt warrior, so it was pretty humiliating to be shoved out of a fast-moving car about half a mile from the safe house. I landed on my hurt wing, of course, and winced as I rolled to a crumpled stop.

My hands were bound behind my back. I got to my knees as soon as I could, then to my feet, feeling shaky and ill. My wing was streaked with clotted blood. I was light-headed and starving. My face hurt, and my cheek was swollen and warm.

The flock and I all have an acute, innate sense of direction, so after a minute I turned and started trotting east. Once I reached the safe house, I headed for the back door, which was locked, of course, because I had gone out through a second-story window hours before. My plan to be all sneaky so that no one would notice I was missing had been blown to heck. Sighing, I turned around and headed for the front door.

This whole sucky episode ended with my having to actually ring the doorbell at the front of the house with my shoulder. Total even barked like a real dog. A curtain twitched, and then my mom opened the door, her brown eyes wide.

My mom is a veterinarian, an animal doctor, so let’s all put our hands together for the irony there. She patched my wing while she and Jeb tried unsuccessfully to find out what had happened. I wanted to mull things over for a while, maybe do some research on the Chu-ster, so I just mumbled something about getting hit by a stray bullet in a freak accident.

“You shouldn’t fly for at least a week,” my mom said firmly.

I instantly interpreted that to mean three days.

“And I really mean a week,” she went on, looking stern. “Not three days.”

She was getting to know me.

Later that day, the CSM moved us to another house, this time in the Yucatan, which is a jungley part of Mexico. There weren’t as many people there, and the air was much more breathable, with less texture.

But what did the air quality matter, anyway? I couldn’t fly.

Me being unable to fly is not only my worst nightmare, but everyone else’s too, because I turn into such a cranky witch. By the afternoon of the first day, the flock was staying out of my way. They went out and did flocklike things. Total was practicing his takeoffs and landings, both of which he still sucked at.

I warned them to be careful, to be on guard, not to stay out too long. They were fine. Had no problems. Did not get shot at. Did not get kidnapped and taken to see a short, angry Asian man.

I stayed home and was forced to heal.

“Jeb,” I said, speaking to him voluntarily for the first time in ages. He smiled and raised his eyebrows at me. “Have you ever heard of a Mr. Chu?”

The blood seemed to drain from his face, and I saw him struggle to keep a calm expression. “No,” he said slowly, shaking his head. “Can’t say that I have. Where did you hear that name?”

I shrugged and walked away. He’d given me all the answer I needed.

Later I watched my flock fly away without me, off to have loads of bird-kid fun.

“Max.”

“What?” I snarled, turning from the window.

My mom stood there. I felt a little bad about snarling.

“Come on. I’m going to show you how to make Puchero Yucateco.” She gently pulled me away from the window.

Please don’t let this be a craft, I prayed silently. If she pulls out yarn, I’ll -

As it turns out, Puchero Yucateco is a stew made with three kinds of meat.

Me, my mom, and Ella spent all afternoon in the kitchen, chopping up things, stirring, mixing. My mom showed us how to tell when onions had cooked enough to be sweet, and how to tell when meat was done (usually I just try to wait for it to stop moving). We cut up habanero peppers, and despite all her warnings, I managed to brush my finger against my nose, so my nose burned and ran, and my eyes watered, and I staggered around the kitchen going “Uh, uh, uh!” while Ella collapsed with laughter.

Typical family stuff. With a nonflock family.

“Huh – why is Max in the kitchen?” Gazzy asked as he walked in. His face was flushed, hair permanently tousled from the wind. Clearly he’d been having a glorious, exhilarating time, coasting high above the world. And wasn’t that special for him.

“We’re cooking,” said my mom.

“She’s just keeping you company, right?” he asked nervously as my eyes narrowed. Nudge, Fang, Iggy, Angel, and Total all crammed into the kitchen and stared at the wooden spoon in my hand.

“No,” my mom replied, trying to keep a straight face. “She’s cooking.”

Quick, alarmed glances were exchanged among the flock.

“Cooking… food?” Nudge asked. I heard someone murmur something about ordering a pizza.

“Yes, I’m cooking food, and it’s great, and you’re going to eat it, you twerps!” I snapped.

And that was how I spent my three days of forced rest. The flock saw all the Mayan wonders of the Yucatan, and I learned how to cook something besides cold cereal.

So there was much amazement all around.

But my wing healed, and soon it was time to leave. I was thinking of maybe going to South America.

But the flock had different ideas. While I was healing, they’d taken a vote.

They wanted to try Jeb’s Day and Night School.

16

“WE STILL HAVE NO SIGHTINGS of the girl Maximum Ride,” reported one scout.

The team leader glanced up from the radar images on his desk. “What about the others?”

“We’ve been tracking them for three days,” his subordinate confirmed. “We’ve triangulated their origination point to within a half mile.”

The team leader looked up, but his frown was lost on the combat robot, who hadn’t been upgraded to recognize emotion.

“What’s the fastest they were clocked at?” he asked.

“The large dark one can achieve speeds of more than two hundred fifty miles per hour,” said the scout. “When they are aiming downward, they have been recorded at more than three hundred fifty miles per hour.”

The team leader nodded, wondering why the upgrade also apparently hadn’t been programmed to use metric. He sighed. The history of these genetic mistakes was a litany of embarrassing failures. Even Itexicon – with its massive, global resources, the years of research, the trillions of dollars spent – had ended up a shattered shell, unable to stop six children. And the Erasers! People were still making jokes about them.

When he’d first heard about the Erasers, he’d thought they were simply an amusing experiment. Despite their speed, relative intelligence, and overwhelming bloodlust, they’d proved quite ineffective. So they’d decided to dispense with the biological base and went to robots covered with flesh – inexplicably designed to look like Erasers. Then they’d made Flyboys – basically, Erasers with wings. All of which the mutant kids had already defeated.

Since then, it had been basically the same old, same old – one generation of enhanced individual tracking and killing machines after the next. Given all kinds of fancy names, tweaked this way and that. None of them seemed up to the task.

The team leader was truly surprised that Devin had failed. Truly, truly surprised. Devin had never failed at a job for as long as the team leader had known him. He’d lost a hundred dollars on that bet.

However, there did seem to be a sufficient quantity of version 5.0 to perhaps stall or contain the mutated kids until someone better, smarter, more experienced, more focused came along.

Someone like him.

“Should we pinpoint their location and destroy them?” the robot asked.

The team leader shook his head. “No. Just surveillance at this point.”

He’d lost a bunch of good men in Mexico City, and he wanted payback.

So did Mr. Chu.

17

MY DAY:

1) Back in America. In one of the western states with all the ninety-degree angles.

2) Wing still messed up; perhaps need longer than three days till it’s fully functional.

3) Had to say good-bye to Mom and Ella. Many mushy tears, soggy hugs. All that stuff I love.

4) Strong sense of betrayal by flock about Day and Night School. But without a 100 percent fly-ready wing, I couldn’t soar off in a huff the way I wanted to.

5) Fang has hardly spoken to me for three days. He doesn’t seem mad – more like thoughtful. Watching me. What is on his freaking mind?!

“School, school, school,” Nudge sang as she got ready. My mom had gotten her some stuff to put in her hair, and now it floated around her face in delicate, caramel-colored tendrils.

Delicate, caramel-colored tendrils. I’m really starting to worry myself.

Anyway. We all got ready. We were wearing clean clothes. We went to school with various levels of enthusiasm.

The school was long and low and spread out, painted in dusty pastels so it coordinated with the desert. It was not fenced in. There was a ton of open space around it, plenty of places to take off from, land, escape from.

Jeb stood by the car, knowing better than to try to hug any of us good-bye. I was almost inside when he called my name.

“Max.”

I went back over to him. “Please don’t impart any pearls of wisdom. I just ate.”

He shook his head. “Just – beware of Mr. Chu. He makes Itex look like Sesame Street.”

Then, while I stared at him, he got in the car and drove away, headed for a plane to California. Which cheered me up but only a little.

We were met at the door of the school by a woman holding a clipboard. “Hello,” she said, smiling. Her smile reached her eyes, an important trait. “I’m Ms. Hamilton, Max. It’s good to finally meet you. Your mom and I went to college together. Welcome to the Day and Night School. I hope you’ll be happy here.” She paused, only momentarily taken aback at the sight of Total, trotting along by Angel’s side.

Don’t hold your breath, I thought. That’s when it hit me: when had I last heard the Voice? I frowned, trying to remember. I couldn’t. It was ages ago, or at least a week. A week can seem like a really long time in my life. Was I down to just one personality inside my head?

“First we need to test your knowledge, so we’ll know your strengths and weaknesses,” Ms. Hamilton went on cheerfully. “Then we’ll know what classes will be best for you.”

Nudge skipped along at Ms. Hamilton’s side, glancing back to beam at me. I managed a slight grimace in return. We walked down a couple of hallways. There were exits at reassuring intervals. Through glass-paned doors, we saw large, sunny classrooms with small groups of kids in them. The kids looked happy to be here. Saps.

Ms. Hamilton took us to an empty classroom. We sat down in chairs that were designed to accommodate the wingless. I shot pained looks at everyone who met my eye, letting them know that this was not my idea of a good time.

I couldn’t believe they had decided to do this. It was like – my plans for our lives weren’t good enough anymore. They actually thought this situation would be better – which, I might add, included not being led by me.

Now my stomach hurt, and I felt weighed down by a gray cloud.

“First, we’ll see how you do at math.”

I tried not to groan out loud. We’re street-smart, not book-smart. How many people had tested us over the years?

“Math, okay, bring it,” said Total, hopping up on a chair. “Are we allowed to use calculators? Do you have some that are, you know, paw-ready?” He held up his right paw.

Ms. Hamilton stopped and stared at Total. I snickered to myself. I had almost forgotten how much fun it could be to bait people. I sat up a little straighter.

Then Ms. Hamilton smiled.

At Total.

“No, we don’t have any paw-ready calculators,” she said. “But you probably won’t need one for these questions, anyway.”

Just like that, this grown-up had accepted the talking dog.

Four hours later, Ms. Hamilton told us that our reading levels ranged between first grade and twelfth grade and that we had amazing vocabularies. (Angel was not the one who read on a first grade level, and Fang, Iggy, and I were not, sadly, the ones who read on a twelfth grade level.) We spelled about as well as four-year-olds do but had off-the-chart visual memories. We were majorly lame at math but could solve most problems anyway.

“In short, you’re very, very, very bright kids who haven’t had much schooling,” said Ms. Hamilton.

I could have told her that before we’d wasted all this time. And she didn’t even know about the other stuff we could do, like hack computers and jack cars and break into most buildings.

“Angel, you’re so far off the chart that we’ll have to invent a special chart just for you.” Ms. Hamilton laughed.

“I thought you might,” Angel said.

I’d been here five hours, and so far I hadn’t really wanted to take anyone apart. Weird.

But that didn’t mean I wanted to stay at the Day and Night School.

Was I the only one?

18

“ SOUTH AMERICA,” I said coaxingly. “It’ll be warm. They have llamas. You like llamas.”

Nudge crossed her arms over her chest. “I want to stay here.”

We were in her room at a safe house that belonged to the school. It wasn’t a bad setup. God knows we’ve had worse. But it was still part of a bigger confining situation, and my skin was crawling.

“How long do you think it will take another suicide sniper to find us?” I asked.

Nudge shrugged. “This place is out in the desert. And Ms. Hamilton told us about all the safety measures – the alarms, the lights, the radar. This is what we’ve been looking for.”

A year ago I would have ignored what Nudge was saying and just browbeaten her into getting up, throwing her stuff together, and bugging out.

And it would have worked. But we’d been through a lot in the past year. There had been a couple of times when the flock had almost split up. The stuff I had done to make sure we’d survive when the others were little was not the same stuff that would work now. I needed a new way to bend them to my will.

Only problem was, I didn’t have any other way. And Nudge had found something she wanted even more – more than me, more than the flock, maybe even more than survival.

She wanted to learn.

“I’m tired of being scared, Max,” she said, her large, coffee-colored eyes pleading.

“We all are! And as soon as we finish our big mission, we’ll be able to relax. I promise!”

Note: I mentioned the Big Mission, the apocalypse, the end of the world, and so on. Basically, I’m supposed to “save the world.” As in, save the entire freaking world. Jeb said everything that had happened to me, to us, was to toughen me up and teach me survival skills. In a way, everything seems like part of that plan, like it’s connected. Like we have people trying to kill us partly because they think we’re genetic mistakes, dangerous experiments that have gone wrong and so need to be eliminated – and partly because other people think that if I save the world, it’ll cut way into their profit margins.

I have to believe that if I keep trying to figure out the bigger picture, it’ll all make sense. If it doesn’t, I’ll be ready for a loony bin. And as hard as all that was for me to accept, it had to be even harder for the younger kids.

“I just want to fit in,” Nudge said. She looked down at her tan feet, side by side on the new, clean carpet. “I want to be like other kids.”

I breathed in to the count of four. “Nudge, most of the other kids here seem like spineless, gullible weenies who wouldn’t survive one day on their own,” I said gently.

“That’s the point!” Nudge said. “They don’t need to! They’re not on their own – people take care of them.”

“I’ve always taken care of you and the others as best I could,” I said, stung.

Nudge’s eyes softened. “But you’re just a kid yourself.” She brushed her fluffy hair behind one ear. “Max, I want to stay.”

Time to get firm.

“We can’t stay,” I said briskly, standing up. “You know that. We have to go. This has been, well, not fun exactly but better than a punch in the gut. But it’s over now, and we have to get back to reality, however much that might suck.”

“I’m staying.”

Had I heard her right? Nudge was always on my team. She was the agreeable one. Sure, she talked a whole lot and had a weird interest in clothes and fashion, but she was my… Nudge. Almost never in a bad mood. Never fought with the others.

“What?” I said, my mind reeling.

“I want to be normal. I want to be like other kids. I’m tired of being a freak and having to run all the time and never being able to settle down. I want a home. And I know how to get one.”

My chest felt tight, but I forced myself to say, “How?”

Nudge mumbled something, her hair covering her face as she looked down.

“What?” I asked again.

“If I don’t have wings.”

This time I’d heard it, though it was barely a mumbled whisper.

“Nudge, you come with wings,” I said, not even understanding what she meant. “You’re the winged version. There’s no optional Nudge with no wings.”

She mumbled something again, which sounded bizarrely like, “Take them off.” Then she was crying, and I sat back down and held her. Her tears got my shirt wet and her hair kept tickling my nose so I had to keep blowing little puffs of air to keep it away from my face. I was so horrified by what she’d said that it took a couple minutes to come up with something.

“Nudge, getting your wings taken off won’t make you not a bird kid,” I said. I am not at my best in situations like this and mostly just wanted to smack someone and say, “Snap out of it!” So I was really stretching here. “Being in the flock is more than just about having wings. You’re different from other people all the way down to your bones and your blood cells.”

She sobbed harder, and I backtracked quickly.

“What I mean is, you’re special, every bit of you. More special than any other kid in the whole world, including the ones you want to be like. You’re beautiful, and powerful, and unique. Kids without wings don’t have your strength, your smarts, your determination. Remember that guy in the junkyard when we were stealing those bits of cable? Whose idea was it to hit him with a two-by-four, huh? Yours!”

Nudge sniffled.

“Remember when Gazzy was really starting to imitate things, all the time, and he kept sneaking up on us and making a police-siren sound, and we’d always freak? Who was it who taped his mouth shut with duct tape while he slept? You.”

She nodded against my soggy shoulder.

“And what about that time we tried to shoplift underwear from Walmart, and the store manager was chasing us? You ripped a fire extinguisher right off the wall and hurled it at his feet, didn’t you? He went down like a lead balloon, and we got away.”

Nudge was silent. I was congratulating myself for averting disaster when she said quietly, “There’s a difference between being special and being a total freak. I’m a total freak. And I’m staying here.”

19

“THEN SHE SAID that she is a total freak and that she’s staying here. After everything I came up with, everything I could think of, she said she’s staying here.”

My voice seemed unnaturally loud in the quiet night air, and I lowered it. Next to me, Fang leaned back against a huge boulder that was still warm from the day’s sun. After my unsuccessful emo-weep-apalooza in Nudge’s room, Fang and I had flown out into the desert, to a bare place where we could see anything coming from miles away.

Fang frowned and rubbed his forehead. “She’s confused,” he said. “She’s just a kid.”

“You know we have to go,” I said. “What if she really won’t come with us?”

The moon lit the contours of his face. His eyes were the same color as the sky – just as deep, just as dark.

“How can we force her?”

He’d said “we,” which made me feel better. But the hard truth was that we couldn’t force Nudge. “Even if we made her come,” I admitted, “she’d just hold it against us. She’d be mad.”

Fang nodded slowly. “You have to want to be with someone, or it doesn’t work. You have to choose.”

I searched his face, wondering if we were still talking about Nudge. “Uh, yeah,” I said awkwardly. I was just about to say something really important about Nudge, and it flew right out of my mind. “Um, and she…” I tried, but my voice trailed off as I got lost in the intensity of Fang’s expression.

He leaned closer. When had he gotten so much bigger than me? Four years ago he’d been a skinny beanpole! Now he was -

“I choose you,” he said very softly, “Max.”

Then his hard, rough hand tenderly cupped my chin, and suddenly his mouth was on mine, and every synapse in my brain shorted out.

We had kissed a couple of times before, but this was different. This time, I squelched my immediate, overwhelming desire to run away screaming. I closed my eyes and put my arms around him despite my fear. Then somehow we slid sideways so we were lying in the cool sand. I was holding him fiercely, and he was kissing me fiercely, and it was… just so, so intensely good. There aren’t any words to describe how good it was. Once I got past my usual, gut-wrenching terror, there was a long, sweet slide into mindlessness, when all I felt was Fang, and all I heard was his breathing, and all I could think was, “Oh, God, I want to do this all the time.”

Gradually our kisses became less hungry and more comforting. Our arms relaxed as we held each other in the cool desert air. Our breathing calmed, and my thoughts began to sort of connect to each other again in comprehensible chunks. I started my inevitable hysterical freak-out, but I tried to do it very quietly inside my head, because this had been so special, and I didn’t want to ruin it. Like I usually did.

I slanted my gaze up to him, and Fang was… smiling. He was lying on his back, holding me against him, and he was looking up at the night sky, with the katrillion stars that you see only when you’re in the middle of nowhere. Then you see stars that you never even knew existed. He was smiling, and his face looked softer and less closed.

I was instantly full of sharp, witty jibes, and it took every ounce of Maximum self-control not to say them. To just lie there and feel vulnerable, and think about everything that had just happened between us, and wonder how it had changed things, and wonder when I had started to love him so much, so painfully, and feel how terrified I was and how elated, and how every cell of my body felt so alive.

It was pretty much the worst thing that could ever happen to a girl.

I highly recommend it.

When Fang asked if it was time to get back, I thought hazily, Back to what?

This is my brain: O

This is my brain after making out with Fang: •

It’s very sad.

Then a couple neurons fired in unison, and I remembered. Oh, back to the entire rest of my family, including Nudge who wants to get her wings cut off.

We hit the sky, and I flew powerfully, wincing only a little at the recently patched section. It was good, it was solid, but it needed a few more days.

“Whoa,” said Fang, and I saw it too. I checked the stars – it was about 2 a.m.

Our newest safe house, alone in the desert, was ablaze with lights. Every window, every doorway.

Never a good sign.

20

IN AN INSTANT, all my warm fuzzies were replaced by stomach-churning fear and guilt. I hadn’t been there. Something had happened, and I’d been locking lips with Fang out in the desert. How stupid could I get? This was exactly why I shouldn’t do stuff like that!

We came down fast, hitting the ground hard in a running stop that kicked up dust. The front door flew open; Gazzy ran out.

I grabbed his arms. “What happened?”

“Max! Fang!” Gazzy yelled. He swallowed. “I thought you were gone! I thought they had gotten you!”

“No, no, sweetie. Just a little nighttime spin,” I said quickly. “What’s going on? Why’s everyone up?”

Nudge and Iggy came out next – where was Angel? My heart seized just as she appeared, with Total behind her. Thank God.

Suddenly it was quiet, the kind of quiet you have out in the desert in the middle of the night when everyone around you goes silent at the same time. Nudge, Iggy, Gazzy, Angel, and Total focused on me and Fang, their faces upset.

I looked from one to the next. They were really freaked, but they weren’t trying to escape anything. They weren’t bloody. They hadn’t been in battle in the past twenty minutes.

“What. Is. Going. On?” I asked very deliberately, searching their eyes.

“It’s, uh…” Nudge began, then cleared her throat. She glanced at the others, then tried again, meeting my gaze bravely. “It’s your mom, Max. Dr. Martinez. She’s been kidnapped. She’s gone.”

21

I’M THE FLOCK LEADER. I’m fast, I’m tough, and I can think on my feet or in flight. My hair-trigger responses have saved our hides more times than I can count. So my brain kicked in to high gear right away as I cut to the heart of the matter.

“Huh?” I managed. I felt like I’d just taken a karate chop to the chest.

“Phone call,” Iggy said.

“Ella called,” Nudge clarified. “She’s hysterical – your mom disappeared from the airport this afternoon while they were between flights. Dr. Martinez just went to the restroom and never came back. Right now Ella’s at her aunt’s house. I don’t think Jeb knows. Ella was going to call him after she talked to us.” She took a deep breath. For once I didn’t mind her wordiness – the more info I had, the better.

“Did they call the police or the FBI?” I asked, already calculating how long it would take me to fly to my half sister.

“We don’t know,” Nudge said. Then we heard the phone ringing inside. I raced in and grabbed it.

“Max?” It was Dr. John Abate, one of my mom’s colleagues at the CSM. “Max, are you all okay?”

“Yes,” I said tensely. I motioned to the others to get inside and lock the door, turn off the lights. We could be the next targets. “What’s going on?” I punched the button to put him on speakerphone.

“A fax just came in to the CSM office,” Dr. Abate said. “Usually no one would be here at this hour, but a couple of us were putting together a press report. Anyway – this fax came, and it says that Valencia has been kidnapped.”

“Yeah, Ella called.” I was pacing, trying not to bite my nails. “Who was the fax from?”

“We don’t know,” said Dr. Abate. “It looks like the origination number got cut off somehow during transmission. But it says that Valencia has been kidnapped and will be held until the CSM quits its efforts to put pressure on big businesses.”

My head whirled. I remembered Mr. Chu telling me that he’d come up with a way to convince me to quit working with the CSM. Maybe he’d just found it.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Anything else?”

“Yes,” John said. “Just a minute ago, we received another fax. It showed Valencia being held hostage. She was alive when the picture was taken, but we don’t know how long ago that was. We enlarged the photo, and the weird thing is, the background looks like she’s being held on a boat.”

“Boat?” That didn’t add up to anything. Oh, wait. Yes it did. When Mr. Chu’s M-Geeks had grabbed me, they’d taken me to a boat. I remembered the rocking sensation. Crap.

“We’ve called the FBI, of course,” said John. “They’re going over everything now. Someone’s flying to Arizona to meet with Ella, see if she remembers anything helpful. But I wanted to make sure you guys were okay.”

“Yeah, we’re okay.” If “okay” was broadened to include the feeling of having your heart ripped out and stomped on.

Life was easier when it was just the six of us. I’d had five other bird kids to worry about, protect, keep in line, care about. Now I had Total – who had somehow glommed on to us, I don’t even know how – and my mom, and my half sister. My circle was still expanding, and it was too hard for me to keep track of everyone, keep everyone safe. I’d certainly failed here. Not telling anyone about Mr. Chu and his threats had put my mom in danger. Maybe cost her her life.

“Max, you there?” Dr. Abate asked.

“Yes.” One-word answers seemed all I was capable of.

“Listen – I’ve got to go talk to the FBI. They’ll probably want to talk to you too. You were among the last people to see her. I want you guys to sit tight for a couple hours, okay?”

“Hm,” I said, unwilling to promise that.

“Hole up there, protect yourselves, but stay put,” he said again. “Let me get some answers before you go charging off.”

“I do not ‘go charging off!’ ” I said, offended.

“Yes, you do,” John said, exactly when everyone else in the flock said it.

“Your middle name is ‘Charging Off,’ ” Total muttered, fortunately out of kicking range.

“Okay, gotta go,” said John. “We’re going to try to figure out if we can tell where the boat was by what we can see in the picture. I’ll call you as soon as I can. Stay by the phone.”

“Okay.” I hung up, just as Fang turned toward me from the window.

“In other news,” he said, “the house is surrounded. It looks like those things from Mexico City.”

22

SITTING TIGHT? Holing up? Waiting for answers?

Those are all things I’m not good at.

Planning a massive attack against mechanical geeky-like things when I was already furious and itching to kill something?

Piece o’ cake.

I took a break from my plotting, clenching and unclenching my hands, to find five pairs of eyes locked on to mine. Iggy’s gaze was locked to a point about two inches above my eyebrows. He’s good, but he’s not perfect.

“What?” I said.

“Dr. Abate said to sit tight,” Nudge said.

“Dr. Abate didn’t know about the combat robots sent to kill us,” I pointed out.

“They haven’t attacked yet,” Iggy said.

“Oh, gosh, I guess they won’t, then,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I just rolled my eyes, Ig. Anyway, how many of them are there?”

“Looks like, about… eighty.” Fang calculated the odds in his head. He nodded once: we could do it.

I began to come up with an attack plan.

“Maximum Ride.”

My eyebrows raised. The voice from outside had been loud, mechanical, and had mispronounced my name. Max-HIH-mum Ride. What a doofus.

Gazzy had been kneeling at a window, curtain raised just enough for him to see. “These guys have… it looks like Uzis attached to their arms. Uzis. The automatic ones.”

He glanced at me, willing me to understand that it wouldn’t be hand-to-wing combat. Eighty-plus submachine guns spewing countless rounds of bird-kid-piercing bullets would be significantly less fun than the rip-roarin’, head-breakin’, ankle-bustin’ jamboree I’d pictured.

“Hm,” I said.

“Max-HIH-mum Ride,” the voice intoned again.

I let out a deep breath. “Everyone, get upstairs to the hall, where there aren’t any windows. Stay down, but be ready to do an up-and-away if you hear a bunch of breaking glass.” I looked at Fang. Our hot-and-heavy make-out session in the desert seemed like a lifetime ago. Two lifetimes. “Should I answer him?” I asked, only half joking.

“I think you should look at him,” Fang said, and something in his voice made me frown.

As the flock scuttled upstairs, I sank to my knees and crawled to a window. Despite Gazzy’s repeated pleas that we get a pair of night-vision goggles, we do see excellently in the dark. So it wasn’t hard for me to focus on the leader in front, the one calling my name.

What I saw was like ice water being poured down my back.

I looked at Fang, who was crouched in the living room’s darkness, waiting.

“But he’s… dead,” I said, my voice hollow. “I mean, dead again.”

Fang’s face was grim. “They just made it look like that to freak you out.”

I nodded slowly. “They succeeded.”

The head robot-soldier had been enhanced, its outer covering made to look more human. Made to look exactly like Ari, my half brother, who I’d killed once, saw killed once, and had buried not that long ago.

23

MY FIRST THOUGHT was Jeb. He’d created the first Ari – maybe he’d had enough DNA left to create another one. Then I thought about how distraught Jeb had seemed at Ari’s funeral.

I took another look.

There were slight differences. The curve of his eyebrows, the wave of his hair. Maybe it wasn’t really Ari’s genes. Just a similar thing made to freak me out, like Fang said.

“So where are these guys from?” Fang asked quietly, crouching next to me on the floor. “They were in Mexico City. Now they’re here. What do they want?”

“They want me – us – to quit working for the CSM,” I said. “Remember when I came back with my new, ventilated wing? They did it – they took me to a guy called Mr. Chu. Short, I think he’s Chinese, major bee up his butt. Mr. Chu told me he’d find a way to make me stop working for the CSM. He said he represented a bunch of super-powerful businessmen.”

“And your response was…”

“Unsatisfactory, I guess.” I peeped through the window again: The things had moved closer. They were about twenty yards from the house. The leader was still out front, and I sensed he was about to mispronounce my name again.

“And you didn’t tell anyone because…” Fang had that too-patient tone in his voice that let me know that he knew that I knew that he knew that I’d screwed up.

“I wanted to do some research,” I said too defensively, which let him know that I knew that he knew that I may have conceivably perhaps not chosen the best possible route in this particular instance. “Later I mentioned it to the Jebster, and he went pale like someone had sucked all the blood out of his head.” Okay, I guess that’s a gross image. But still. “And then he convincingly said, ‘Gee, no, haven’t heard of him.’ As if I’d had my brain removed and I might believe that.”

Fang said nothing, which meant that he was thinking. He says nothing and thinks more than anyone I know.

“Max-HIH-mum Ride,” said the Ari wannabe.

“How hard would it be to program him to say my name correctly?” I fumed.

“You must not leave the area,” said the voice.

I peeked out through the curtain again. The Ari-thing was closer, standing directly in the moonlight. I peered at him, and something about him made my blood run cold – and it wasn’t just his Ari-ness.

“Fang,” I whispered. “Look at him. He might not be a robot.”

Fang rose slightly and took a look. “Hm.” There was a whole unspoken paragraph there. You had to read between the lines.

I looked out again. The combat-bots were huddled together, forming an almost perfect circle that I assumed went around the whole house. Their knees were bent, their Uzi-arms raised and braced. Primed and ready for action.

But it was the main guy who stuck out. Despite his jerky movements and mechanical voice, he seemed oddly – human.

“Ew,” I whispered, struck by a thought. “You know how Itex stretched skin stuff over their ’bots to make ’em look like Erasers, or just more humanoid? This guy – it’s like they took a person and then built a robot inside of him. Going from the inside out instead of the outside in. You know? Gross.” My nose wrinkled as I pondered this.

Fang looked at me silently for a few seconds. “Is it hard, being you?”

“Yes, it is, actually,” I said snidely. “For the record. But are you saying that that’s impossible? That no one could possibly be twisted enough to take a person and then grow a cyborg inside it? Gosh, that couldn’t happen, not in today’s world!” I made my eyes big. “That’s almost as unbelievable as a bunch of scientists grafting avian DNA into human embryos! It’s the stuff of science fiction! It couldn’t possibly ever happen!”

“Why are you shouting?” came Gazzy’s whispered voice from the stairs.

“I’m not shouting!” I said, lowering my voice. “Just scoping out the enemy, as usual.”

“Oh,” said Gazzy. “Well, keep scoping, ’cause they’re about to blow up.”

24

YOU COULD LOCK the Gasman in a padded cell with some dental floss and a bowl of Jell-O, and he’d find a way to make something explode.

I immediately crawled away from the window and hunkered down behind the couch. “Blow up?” I repeated. With Gazzy, we take life-saving precautions first and ask questions later.

“If you leave the area, you will be terminated with extreme prejudice,” said the voice outside.

Gazzy cackled. “What a butthead. Wait till you see what’s gonna happen!”

I glanced at Fang, who had moved under a table. “Did you leave the flamethrowers lying around again?”

He shrugged. “I always forget.”

Inside, the house suddenly seemed darker. I looked at the windows. There was no moonlight shining under the curtains. Then I heard the far-off rumble of thunder. We were in the middle of the desert – not a big rainstorm area.

“God in heaven. He can’t manipulate the weather now, can he?” I asked Fang anxiously.

Fang dropped his head into his hands and groaned.

“Max-HIH-mum Ride.”

“I AM a dumb-bot!” I couldn’t help snickering. Fang’s shoulders hunched.

More rumbling thunder. Windowpanes rattling. I peeped over the top of the couch and could barely see the leader-guy through the inch of exposed window. He was looking up at the sky with Ari’s confused expression.

“Okay, here it comes,” I heard Gazzy say from upstairs.

“Did you set the thing?” Iggy asked him.

“Yup.”

“Point it away from the house?”

Oh, yes, please, point whatever it is away from the house, I wished fervently.

“Duh, yeah,” said Gazzy. He chuckled. “Should be any second.”

Suddenly the entire area was lit with a massive lightning bolt – despite the curtains and shades on the windows, the living room was as bright as day. At almost the exact same time, there was a horrible buzzing, crackling sound, and every bit of electricity in the house died – tiny status lights winking out, the AC halting abruptly. Then there was a huge boom of thunder that I felt deep in my stomach.

With an ear-throbbing pop! it was over.

Silence.

“Oh, way, way awesome, dude!” Gazzy shouted, laughing maniacally. I heard many slappings of high fives.

“Did it do it?” Iggy asked. “Never mind – I can smell it.”

“It so did it, man!” Gazzy said excitedly. “This was the pinnacle of our pyromania!” I stood up cautiously as he raced downstairs. Fang crawled out from under the table.

“Max!” Gazzy said, running to me. “We saw big thunderheads forming in the distance – the first time in years, I bet! Then – check it out! This house had a lightning rod on the roof! That’s a metal pole that sends any lightning bolts into the ground. We disconnected it, aimed it at the dumb-bots, and enhanced its powers a tad! Next thing you know, they’re extracrispy! And the best part? They were standing so close together that they helped fry each other!” He hugged himself, jumping up and down. “I’m brilliant! I’m a genius! I can blow up the world!”

I raised my eyebrows.

“Not that I would want to, of course,” Gazzy said, and gave a little cough.

“Should we look outside?” Total asked.

Fang was already standing at a window, using one finger to move a curtain aside. “They’re fried, all right. There’s barely enough parts left to make a can opener.”

Gazzy and Iggy crowed some more and slapped high fives again. Somehow, even though he can’t see, Iggy never misses a high five. It’s a little creepy.

I opened the front door slowly. There was a wide, charred circle around the house, littered with ’bot bits and smoking electronics. “See if there are any salvageable weapons,” I directed. The Ari dobblyganga doppergung dobblemunger look-alike was lying on the ground, mostly in one piece. Mostly human, with a ’bot substructure. Again, ew.

I walked over to him, and it was pretty awful. I can destroy a hundred ’bots and still whistle cheerfully, but this poor mess on the ground seemed as much a victim as we were. Some crucial parts of him were missing, but his eyes blinked as I approached. This close, he still looked a ton like Ari, but I could tell it wasn’t a perfect copy.

Then I remembered that this creature had been prepared to exterminate my family, and that my own mother had been kidnapped, and that the flock had been hiding in the dark wondering if they were about to die.

“So,” I said, leaning down a bit, “how’s Mr. Chu, that scamp?”

His head twitched, and the light behind his eyes went out.

“Tell him hi for me!” I said, then looked at the flock. “Pack light. We’re moving out.”

25

THE PHONE RANG just as we reentered the dark house. I stared at it.

“Regular corded phone. Not connected to the electrical system,” Iggy clarified, somehow knowing what we were all wondering.

I grabbed it. “What?”

“Max – good, you’re there,” said John Abate. “We’ve got some details about Valencia ’s disappearance, but I don’t want to discuss them on the phone. We’ve been tipped that your house might be under surveillance.”

“Um, not so much,” I said, thinking of the mess outside.

“To be on the safe side, we’re sending a car for you. It should be there in about an hour.”

“It’ll be dawn then,” I said, suddenly feeling exhausted and headachy and newly upset about my mom. “Better make it an armored one.”

26

THE SIGHT OF DAWN breaking over the horizon, slowly dispelling the darkness with tendrils of pink and cream, literally the start of a brand-new day – you know how that fills people with joy and hope and a will to somehow go on?

Those people are nuts.

Our dawn showcased a football field of destruction: charred earth, shattered cacti, a blackened spew of twisted metal and melted wires, plus the mangled wreck of some poor sap who had been created to be a weapon in someone else’s war.

We were all waiting in the living room when the armored Hummer arrived in a cloud of dust. Angel and Gazzy were asleep. Nudge was sitting, unusually quiet, her chin resting in her hands. Iggy and Total were snoring on the other couch.

I was purposely not looking at Fang. After making some progress, so to speak, with whatever was happening between us, I felt all my protective shields firmly locked in place again. I couldn’t believe how vulnerable I’d allowed myself to be. It had been a mistake.

Fang was going to kill me when I told him. Yeah, I was looking forward to that.

When the car arrived, I checked it out from behind a curtain. Dr. John Abate stepped out of it, looking anxiously at the evidence of the fight. I opened the front door of the house.

“Hi,” I said. I’d met him several times, and he seemed okay. I knew he was one of my mom’s best friends, and his face showed the worry he was feeling.

His face relaxed, and he came over. “They got the worst of it, huh?” he asked, gesturing to the piles of remains.

“Always do,” I said tiredly.

“Max!”

I froze at the new voice. Yes. To make my evening of horror complete, Dr. Brigid Dwyer stepped out of the Hummer and hurried over to me with a big smile, her red hair flashing.

I allowed myself to be hugged.

“I’m so, so sorry about your mom,” she said sincerely. “We’ll get her back – I promise.”

I nodded, then stood there like a dummy as the rest of the flock came out of the house to be hugged by Brigid. Watching her hug Fang, seeing his arms go around her, was almost enough to make me hurl.

I might need to rethink my protective armor a bit.

“Let’s hurry,” said Dr. Abate. “We’ve got a plane waiting. On the way, you can fill me in on what happened. And vice versa.”

“Max,” said Nudge, and instinctively I braced. I’d known something was up.

“Get in the car, sweetie,” I said, pretending not to notice anything was wrong.

She swallowed. “I’m staying.”

“You can’t. It’s not safe.”

“I’ll be safe at the school, in the dorms,” she said. She gestured limply to the house, its surrounding wreckage. “I can’t do this anymore. I want to go to school. I just want to be a kid. At least for a while.”

I had a million excellent arguments why she was wrong and making the biggest mistake of her life, and I opened my mouth to get started, and then it hit me: it would be pointless. Nudge wasn’t four or five. She was around eleven and would be as tall as me in another year or so. She really meant she couldn’t do this anymore.

If she didn’t want to be with us, didn’t want to fight, she would get hurt – bad. She might cause one of us to get hurt or killed. I needed my flock to be fierce, bloodthirsty warriors. Nudge’s heart just wasn’t in it, and I couldn’t fix that. Oh, God.

I swallowed hard, making my chin stiff, my mouth firm. I’m the flock leader because I can do the gnarly jobs. “You may not get your wings taken off,” I said sternly.

Wonder dawned in her big brown eyes as she realized what I was saying. A huge smile lit her face, and she hugged me fiercely, forcing the air from my lungs. “You may get your ears pierced,” I croaked, trying to breathe. “Or your nose. Or – actually, nothing else. And you absolutely, positively, may never, ever get your wings removed, or I swear to God, I will come kick your skinny, fashion-conscious butt into next week. Do you hear me?”

“Yes!” Nudge said happily. “Yes, yes! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I love you so much!”

Ever notice how often people say that right before they say good-bye?