Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment

67

Blue, blue sky, above the clouds. The air is colder, but the sun is warmer up this high. The air is thin and light, like champagne. You ought to try it sometime.

I felt happy. The six of us were homeless, aimless, on the run-and might be for the rest of our lives, however long or short they might be. But…

Yesterday we’d escaped the hounds of hell at the School, after all. We’d had the pleasure of seeing our friends the hawks do some slice ‘n’ dice on the white-coats and the Erasers.

We had Angel back.

I glanced over at her-she was still a mess. It would take her a while to heal after what they had done to her. Every time I thought about it, chains of anger tightened around me, till I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Sensing me looking at her, she turned and smiled. One whole side of her face was green and yellow-a healing bruise.

“God!” Nudge said, speeding up a bit to catch my slipstream. “It’s just so, so… you know?” She swooped down gracefully, then rose again and pulled alongside.

“Yeah, I know,” I said, grinning at her.

“I mean, the air, and we’re up so high, and no one’s after us, and we’re all together, and we hit IHOP for breakfast.” She looked over at me, her brown eyes bright and untroubled. “I mean, God, we’re just up here, and it’s so cool, and down below kids are stuck in school or, like, cleaning their rooms. I used to hate cleaning my room.”

Back when she had a room. I sighed. Don’t think about it.

Then, in the next second, I choked. I think I made some kind of sound, then a blinding, stunning pain exploded behind my eyes.

“Max?” Nudge screamed.

I couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do a thing. My wings folded like paper, and I started to drop like a hailstone.

Something was incredibly wrong.

Already.

68

Tears streamed from my eyes, and my hands clutched my head to keep the pain from splitting my skull wide open. The only semicoherent thought I had was Please let me go splat soon, so this freaking pain will stopstopSTOP.

Then Fang’s arms, ropy and hard, scooped me up, and I felt myself rising again. My wings were mushed between us, but nothing mattered except that my brain had been replaced by a bursting nova of raw agony. I had just enough consciousness to be embarrassed at hearing myself moan pitifully.

Death would have been so great just then.

I don’t know how long Fang carried me. Slowly, slowly, the pain leached away. I could almost open my eyes a slit. I could swallow. Cautiously, wincing, I let go of my head, half expecting huge shards of skull to come away in my hands.

I blinked up at Fang, his dark eyes looking down at me. He was still flying and carrying me.

“Man, you weigh a freaking ton,” he told me. “What’ve you been eating, rocks?”

“Why, is your head missing some?” I croaked. His mouth almost quirked in a smile, and that’s when I knew how upset he’d been.

“Max, are you okay?” Nudge’s face was scared, making her look really young.

“Uh-huh,” I managed. I just had a stroke or something.

“Find a place to land,” I told Fang. “Please.”

69

An hour or so later, I thought that I had recovered-but from what? We were making camp for the night.

“Yo, watch it!” I said. “Clear more of that brush away- we don’t want the whole forest to burn down.”

“Guess you’re feeling like your old self,” Fang murmured, kicking some dead branches away from where Iggy _Was lighting a fire.

I shot him a look, then helped Nudge and Angel surround the pile of kindling with big stones. Why was the blind guy playing with matches, you ask? Because he’s good at it. Anything to do with fire, igniting things, exploding things, things with fuses, wicks, accelerants… Iggy’s your man. It’s one of those good/bad things.

Twenty minutes later, we were exploring the limits of what could be cooked on sticks over an open fire.

“This isn’t half bad,” the Gasman said, eating a curled piece of roasted bologna off his stick.

“Don’t do bananas,” Nudge warned glumly, shaking some warm mush off into the bushes.

“S’mores,” I cooed, mashing a graham cracker on top of the chocolate-and-marshmallow sandwich I had balanced on my knee. I took a bite, and pure pleasure overwhelmed my mouth.

“This is nice,” the Gasman said happily. “It’s like summer camp.”

“Yeah, Camp Bummer,” said Fang. “For wayward mutants.”

I nudged his leg with my sneaker. “It’s better than that. This is cool.”

Fang gave me an “if you say so” look, and turned his bacon over the fire.

I stretched out with my head against my balled-up sweatshirt. Time to relax. I had no idea what that pain had been, but I was fine now, so I wasn’t going to worry about it.

What a lie. My knees were practically knocking together. The thing is, the “scientists” back at the School had been playing with risky stuff, combining human and nonhuman DNA. Basically, the spliced genes started to unravel after a while, and the organisms tended to, well, self-destruct. The flock and I had seen it happen a million times: The rabbit-dog combo had been such bad news. Same with the sheep-macaque monkey splice. The mouse-cat experiment had produced a huge, hostile mouse with great balance and an inability to digest either grain or meat. So it starved to death.

Even the Erasers, as successful as they were, had a huge downside: life span. They went from embryo to infant in five weeks, and from infant to young adult in about four years. They fell apart and died at around six years, give or take. But they were being improved all the time.

How about us? How long would we last? Well, as far as I knew, we were the oldest recombinant beings the School had ever produced.

And we could devolve and expire at any time.

And maybe it had started happening to me today.

‘Max, wake up,“ said Angel, tapping my knee.

“I’m awake.” I pulled myself up, and Angel crawled over and climbed into my lap. I put my arms around her and stroked her tangled blond curls away from her face. “What’s up, Angel?”

Her large blue eyes looked solemnly into mine. “I’ve got a secret. From when I was at the School. It’s about us. Where we came from?”

70

“What do you mean, sweetie?” I asked softly. What fresh hell is this?

Angel twisted the hem of her shirt in her fingers, not looking at me. I clamped down on any thoughts I had, so Angel couldn’t pick up on my alarm.

“I heard stuff,” she said, almost whispering.

I gathered her closer. When the Erasers had taken her, it felt like someone had chopped my arm off. Getting her back had made me whole again.

“Stuff people said or stuff people thought?” I asked.

“Stuff people thought,” she said. I noticed how tired she looked. Maybe this should wait till tomorrow.

“No, I want to tell you now,” she said, obviously reading my thoughts. “I mean, it’s just stuff I sort of heard. I didn’t understand all of it-chunks were missing. And it was from a couple different people.”

“From Jeb?” I asked, my throat tight.

Angel’s eyes met mine. “No. I didn’t get anything from him at all. Nothing. It was like he was dead.”

Angel went on. “They kept doing tests, you know, and they were all thinking about me, about the flock, like, wondering where you were and if you would try to come get me.”

“Which we did,” I said proudly.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Anyway, I found out that another place has information about us-like where we came from.”

My brain snapped awake. “Whaat?” I said. “Like our life span? Or where they got our DNA?” Did I even want to know our life span? I wasn’t sure.

Angel nodded.

“Well, spill it!” Iggy, who must have been awake and listening to us, demanded in that sensitive way of his. I shot him a look-which was useless, of course. And now everyone was awake.

“They have files on us,” Angel said. “Like, the main files. They’re in New York. At a place called the Institute.”

“The Institute?” I asked. “In New York City or upstate New York?”

“I don’t know,” Angel said. “I think it was called the Institute. The Living Institute or something.”

Fang was looking at me, still and intent. I knew he had already decided to go check it out, and I nodded briefly.

“There’s more,” Angel said. Her small voice wavered, and she pressed her face into my shoulder.

“You know how we always talk about our parents but didn’t really know if we were made in test tubes?” Angel said. I nodded.

“I saw my name in Jeb’s old files,” Nudge insisted. “I really did.”

“I know, Nudge,” I said. “Listen to Angel for a minute.”

“Nudgeisright,” Angelblurted.“Wedidhave parents-real parents. We weren’t made in test tubes. We were born, like real babies. We were born from human mothers.”

71

I think if a twig had snapped right then, we all would have leaped ten feet into the air.

“You’ve sat on this since yesterday?” Iggy sounded outraged. “What’s the matter with you? Just because you’re the youngest doesn’t mean you have to be the dumbest.”

“Look,” I said, taking a breath, “let’s all calm down and let Angel talk.” I brushed her curls out of her face. “Can you tell us everything you heard?”

“I only got bits and pieces,” she said uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, everybody. I’ve just felt yucky… and it all makes me really, really sad too. I don’t wanna cry again. Awhh, I’m crying again.”

“It’s okay, Angel,” Fang said in his low, quiet voice. “We understand. You’re safe now, here with us.”

Nudge looked as if she was about to explode, and I sent her a glance that said, Okay, just hang on. The Gasman edged closer to me and took hold of my belt loop for comfort. I put one arm around him and held on to Angel with the other.

“It sounded like,” Angel began slowly, “we came from different places, different hospitals. But they got us after we were born. We weren’t test-tube babies.”

“How did they get us?” Fang asked. “And how did they get the bird genes into us?”

“I didn’t really understand,” said Angel. “It sounded like-like they got the genes into us before we were born somehow.” She rubbed her forehead. “With a test? An amino… ammo…”

“Amniocentesis?” I asked, cold outrage creeping down my spine.

“Yeah,” said Angel. “That’s it. And somehow they got the bird genes into us with it.”

“It’s okay, just keep going,” I said. I could explain it to them later.

“So we got born, and the doctors gave us to the School,” Angel went on. “I heard-I heard that they told Nudge’s mom and dad that she had died. But she hadn’t.”

Nudge made a gulping sound, her large brown eyes full of tears. “I did have a mom and dad,” she whispered. “I did!”

“And Iggy’s mom-”

I saw Iggy tense, his acute hearing focused on Angel’s small voice.

“Died,” Angel said, and took in a shuddering breath. “She died when he was born.”

The look of stunned grief on Iggy’s expressive face was awful to see. I didn’t know what to do, what to say. I just wanted to take away everyone’s pain.

“What about us?” the Gasman asked. “How could they get both of us, two years apart?”

Angel wiped her eyes. “Our parents gave us to the School themselves,” she said, and started crying again, her thin shoulders shaking.

The Gasman’s mouth dropped open, his eyes as round as wheels. “What?”

“They wanted to help the School,” Angel said, gasping out the words through her sobs. “They let them put bird genes in us. And gave us away for money.”

My heart was breaking. The Gasman tried so hard to be brave, but he was just a little kid. He leaned against me, burying his face in my shirt, and burst into tears.

“Did you hear anything about me? Or Max?” Fang was stripping the bark off a stick. His tone was casual, but his shoulders were tight, his face stiff.

“Your mom thought you died, like Nudge,” Angel said. “She was a teenager. They don’t know who your dad was. But they told your mom you died.”

The stick Fang was holding snapped in two, his knuckles white in the darkness. I saw pain in his dark eyes. Pain and sadness, and the reflection of our fire.

I cleared my throat. “What about me?” I’d always dreamed of having a mom. Even-and this is so awesomely embarrassing that I’ll never admit I said it-hoping that someday she would show up and be so wonderful and marry Jeb. And take care of all of us. I know. Pathetic, isn’t it?

Angel blinked up at me. “I didn’t hear anything about you, Max. Nothing. I’m real sorry.”

72

“I can’t believe it,” the Gasman said for the thirtieth time. “They gave us away. They must be sick. Sick jerks. I’m glad I don’t know them.”

“I’m sorry, Gazzy,” I said for the thirtieth time, digging down deep for my last shred of patience. I totally, totally felt for him, but I had reached my limit about thirteen times ago.

Anyway, I ruffled his fine, light hair and hugged his shoulders. His face was dirty and streaked with tears. I wished we could just go back to our mountain house. The Erasers knew where it was, had swarmed all over it. We could never go back. But right now, I so wished I could just stick Gazzy under a hot shower, then tuck him into bed.

Those days were gone, baby.

“Angel? It’s late, sweetie. Why don’t you try to get some sleep? Actually, we could all use an early night.”

“I’m going to sleep too,” said Nudge, her voice still thick from crying. “I just want this day to end.”

I blinked. That was the shortest sentence I’d ever heard her utter.

The six of us gathered around. I held out my left fist, and Fang put his on top of it, and everyone else did too. When we had a stack, we tapped the backs of one another’s fists with our right hands.

We always do it, wherever we are. Habit. Angel curled up in her spot, and I covered her with my sweatshirt. The Gasman lay down next to her, and then Nudge settled down too. I knelt next to her and tucked her collar around her neck.

I almost always go to sleep last-like I have to make sure everyone else is down. I started to bank the fire, and Fang came and helped me.

“So maybe you were hatched after all,” Fang said. The six of us had always teased one another, saying we’d hatched out of eggs.

I laughed drily. “Yeah. Maybe so. Maybe they found me in a cabbage patch.”

“In a way, you’re lucky,” he said quietly. “Not knowing is better.”

I hate the way he can read my mind, since he doesn’t even have mind-reading abilities.

“It leaves all the possibilities open,” he went on. “Your story could be worse, but it could also be a hell of a lot better.”

He sat back on his heels, watching the fire, and then extended his wings a bit to warm them. “A teenager, jeez,” he said in disgust. “She was probably a crack addict or something.”

He never would have said that if the others were awake. Some things we trusted only each other to understand.

“Maybe not,” I said, covering the fire with ashes. “Maybe she was a nice kid who just made a mistake. At least she wanted to actually wait the nine months and have you. Maybe she would have kept you or let a really nice family adopt you.”

Fang snorted in disbelief. “On the one hand, we have a mythical nice family that wants to adopt me. On the other, we have a gang of insane scientists desperate to do genetic experiments on innocent children. Guess which hand I get dealt?”

Tiredly, he lay down next to Gazzy and closed his eyes, one arm over his forehead.

“I’m sorry, Fang,” I mouthed silently.

I lay down myself, reaching out my foot to touch Nudge, putting an arm around Angel. I was too tired to worry about my brain attack earlier. Too tired to wonder how we would find the Institute in New York. Too tired to care about saving the world.

73

“Yo!” I said loudly. “Up and at ‘em!”

You’ll be relieved to hear that my brief descent into weary lack of caring was totally gone by the time the sun fried my eyelids the next morning.

I got up, started the fire going again-because that’s the kind of selfless, wonderful leader I am-then started affectionately kicking the flock awake.

There was much grumbling and groaning, which I ignored, instead carefully balancing a pan of Jiffy Pop popcorn over a branch on the fire. Popcorn for breakfast! Why not? It’s a grain. It’s like, like, grits, but with high self-esteem.

Plus, no one can sleep through the machine-gun sound of popcorn popping. Soon the rest of the flock was gathering glumly around the fire, rubbing sleep out of their eyes.

“We’re headed for the Big Apple, guys. The city that never sleeps. I think we’re maybe six, seven hours away.”

Twenty minutes later, we were taking off, one by one. I was last, after Angel, and I ran about twenty feet, then leaped into the air, beating my wings hard. I was maybe ten feet off the ground when it happened again: Some unseen force shoved an unseen railroad spike through my skull.

I cried out, falling, then smacked into the ground hard enough to knock my breath away.

I curled up in a fragile ball of pain, holding my head, feeling tears dripping down my cheeks, trying not to scream.

“Max?” Fang’s gentle fingers touched my shoulder. “Is it like before?”

I couldn’t even nod. It was all I could do to hold my head together so my brains wouldn’t splatter all over my friends. A high, keening sound reached my ears. It was me.

Behind my eyes, bursts of red and orange flooded my brain, as if fireworks were exploding inside me. Then it was as though someone had jacked a movie screen directly into my retinas: Lightning-fast images shot through me so fast it made me feel sick. I could hardly make any of them out: blurred buildings, fuzzy landscapes, unrecognizable people’s faces, food, headlines from papers, old stuff in black-and-white, psychedelic stuff, swirly patterns…

I don’t know how long it went on-years? Gradually, gradually, I realized I could move, and as soon as I could, I crawled over to some bushes and barfed my guts up.

Then I lay gasping, feeling like death. It was a while before I could open my eyes and see blue sky, puffy white clouds-and five worried faces.

“Max, what is the matter with you?” Angel said, sounding as scared as she looked.

“Think you should see a doctor?” Fang asked mildly, but his eyes were piercing.

“Oh, yes, that’s a good idea,” I said weakly. “We need to let more people in authority know about us.”

“Look,” Fang began, but I cut him off.

“I’m okay now,” I said, lying through my teeth. “Maybe it’s a stomach bug or something.” Yeah, the kind of stomach bug that causes brain cancer. The kind of bug you get when your whole genetic makeup is about to unravel. The bug you get before you die.

“Let’s just go to New York,” I said.

74

After giving me a long, level look, Fang shrugged and motioned to the Gasman to take off. Reluctantly, he did, and the others followed. “After you,” Fang said, jerking his thumb toward the sky.

Gritting my teeth, I got to my feet and ran shakily, opening my wings and leaping into the air again, half braced for another explosion of pain. But it was okay. I still felt like I might hurl, and I thought about how awful that would be in midair.

“Are you okay?” Nudge asked once we were airborne. I nodded.

“I’ve been thinking about my mom and dad,” she said. Her tawny wings beat in unison with mine, so we just barely missed each other on the downstrokes. “I bet-if they’ve been thinking I died eleven years ago, then I bet they would be pretty happy to see me again, right? I mean, if all this time they wished I had gone home with them and grown up-then they would be pretty happy to see me, wouldn’t they?” I didn’t say anything.

“Unless…” She frowned. “I mean-I guess I’m not what they would be expecting, huh? It’s not my fault or anything, but I mean, I’ve got wings.” Yep, I thought.

“They might not want me if I have wings and am so weird and all,” Nudge said, her voice dropping. “Maybe they just want a normal daughter, and if I’m weird, they wouldn’t want me back anyway. What do you think, Max?”

“I don’t know, Nudge,” I said. “It seems like if they’re your parents, then they should love you no matter what, even if you’re different.”

I thought about how Ella had accepted me just the way I was, wings, weirdness, and all. And Dr. Martinez was always going to be my perfect image of a mom. She’d accepted me too.

Now I was gulping, trying not to cry. Because I hadn’t experienced enough emotion already this morning. I muttered a swear word to myself. After I’d heard Angel cussing like a sailor when she stubbed her toe, my new resolution was to watch my language. All I needed was a six-year-old mutant with a potty mouth.

I thought about how Ella and her mom and I had made chocolate-chip cookies. From scratch. From, like, a bag of flour and real eggs. Not store-bought, not even slice ‘n’ bake. The way they’d smelled when they were baking was in-cred-i-ble. It had smelled like-home. Like what a real home should smell like.

They’d been the best dang cookies I’d ever had.

75

“Oh, my God,” I muttered, staring at the lights below us. Most of New York City is at the bottom part of a long, thin island- Manhattan Island, actually. You could tell exactly where it began and ended, because suddenly the dark landscape was ablaze with lights. Streaming pearls of headlights moved slowly through the arteries of the city. It looked like every window in every building had a light burning.

“That’s a lot of people,” Fang said, coming up beside me.

I knew what he was thinking: We all tend to get a little claustrophobic, a little paranoid when we’re around lots of people. Not only had Jeb constantly warned us about interacting with anyone for any reason, but there was always the possibility that one of those strangers could suddenly morph into an Eraser.

“Oh, my gosh, oh, my gosh,” Nudge was saying excitedly. “I want to go down there! I want to walk on Fifth Avenue! I want to go to museums!” She turned to me, her face alight with anticipation. “Do we have any money left? Can we get something to eat? Can we, like, go shopping?”

“We have some money,” I told her. “We can get something to eat. But remember, we’re here to find the Institute.”

Nudge nodded, but I could tell half of my words had gone right out her other ear.

“What’s that sound?” Iggy asked, concentrating. “It’s music. Is there music below us? How could we hear it, way up here?”

Central Park was a big, relatively dark rectangle below us. At one end, in a clearing, I could see an enormous crowd of people. Huge floodlights were shining over them.

“I think it must be a concert,” I told Iggy. “In the park. An outdoor concert.”

“Oh, so cool!” Nudge said. “Can we go? Please, Max, please? A real concert!” If it’s possible for someone to bounce up and down with excitement while flying, Nudge was doing it.

The park was pretty dark. There were hundreds of thousands of people down there. Even Erasers would have a hard time finding us in that crowd.

I made an executive decision. “Yes. Try to come down right behind a floodlight’s beam, so we won’t be seen.”

We landed silently among a group of thick-trunked oaks. We took a moment to shake out our legs, and fold in our wings and cover them with windbreakers. After a quick head count, I led the way toward the crowd, trying to look casual, like, Fly? Me? Nah.

The music was unbelievably loud: Speakers taller than Iggy were stacked on top of one another, three high. To me it felt as if the actual ground was vibrating.

“What concert is this?” Iggy asked, yelling in my ear.

I peered over tens of thousands of heads to see the raised stage. Thanks to my raptorlike vision, I had no trouble making out the musicians. And a banner that said Natalie and Trent Taylor. “It’s the Taylor Twins,” I reported, and most of the flock whooped and whistled. They loved the Taylor Twins.

Angel kept close to me, her small hand in mine, as we stood among the crowd. We were enough on the edge that we avoided the sardine effect of the people closer to the stage. I think we all would have freaked out if we’d been that hemmed in, that unable to move. Iggy put the Gasman on his shoulders and gave him his lighter to burn, like thousands of other people. The Gasman swayed in time to the music, holding the lighter high.

Once he looked down at me, and his face was so full of happiness I almost started crying. How often had I seen him look like that? Like, twice? In eight years?

We listened to Natalie and Trent until the concert ended. As soon as the rivers of people began to flow past us, we melted into the shadows of the trees. The branches above us were thick and welcoming. We flew up into them, settling comfortably.

“That was awesome,” Nudge said happily. “I can’t believe how many people there are, all crowded into one place. I mean, listen… There’s no silence, ever. I can hear people and traffic and sirens and dogs barking. I mean, it was always so quiet back at home.”

“Too quiet,“ said the Gasman.

“Well, I hate it,” Iggy said flatly. “When it’s quiet, I can tell where the heck things are, people are, where echoes are bouncing off. Here I’m just surrounded with a thick, smothering wall of sound. I want to get out of here.”

“Oh, Iggy, no!” Nudge cried. “This place is so cool. You’ll get used to it.”

“We’re here to find out what we can about the Institute,” I reminded both of them. “I’m sorry, Iggy, but maybe you’ll get a little more used to it soon. And Nudge, this isn’t a pleasure trip. Our goal is to find the Institute.”

“How are we gonna do that?” Angel asked.

“I have a plan,” I said firmly. God, I was really going to have to get all this lying under control.

76

Basically, if you put a fence around New York City, you’d have the world’s biggest nontraveling circus.

When we woke up at dawn the next morning, there were already joggers, bicyclers, even horseback riders weaving their way along the miles and miles of trails in Central Park. We slipped down out of the trees and casually wandered the paths.

Within an hour, speed skaters were rushing by, street performers were setting up their props, and the paths were almost crowded with dog walkers and moms pushing jogging strollers.

“That lady has six white poodles!” Nudge hissed behind her hand. “Who needs six white poodles?”

“Maybe she sells them,” I suggested, “to kids with big wide eyes.”

“Something smells awesome,” Iggy said, swiveling his head to detect the source. “What is that? It’s over there.” He pointed off to my left.

“There’s a guy selling food,” I said. “It says honey-roasted peanuts.”

“I am so there,” said Iggy. “Can I have some money?”

Iggy, Angel, and I went to buy six small bags of honey-roasted peanuts (they really did smell like heaven), and Fang, Nudge, and the Gasman went to look at a clown selling balloons.

We were walking over to join them when something about the clown caught my eye. She was watching a sleek, dark-haired guy strolling down a path. Their gazes met.

A chill went down my back. Just like that, my enjoyment of the day burst. I was swept into fear, anger, and an intense self-preservation reflex.

“Iggy, heads up,” I whispered. “Get the others.”

Beside me, Angel was wound tight, her hand clenching mine hard. We walked fast toward the others. Fang, doing an automatic sweep of the area, saw my urgent expression. In the next moment he had clamped a hand on Nudge’s and the Gasman’s shoulders and spun them around to walk quickly away.

We met on the path and sped up our pace. One glance behind me showed the dark-haired guy following us. He was joined by a woman who looked just as intent and powerful as he did.

A flow of heroically suppressed swear words ran through my brain. I scanned the scenery for escape routes, a place where we could take off, a place to duck and cover.

They were gaining on us.

“Run!” I said. The six of us can run faster than most grown men, but the Erasers had also been genetically enhanced. If we couldn’t find an out, we were done for.

Now there were three of them-they’d been joined by another male-model type. They had broken into an easy trot and were closing the space between us.

Paths merged into other paths, sometimes narrowing, sometimes widening. Again and again, we almost crashed into bikers or skaters going too fast to swerve.

“Four of them,” Fang said. “Pour it on, guys!”

We sped up. They were maybe twenty yards behind us. Hungry grins marred their good-looking faces.

“Six of them!” I said.

“They’re too fast,” Fang informed me unnecessarily. “Maybe we should fly.”

I bit my lip, keeping a tight grip on Angel’s hand. What to do, what to do. They were closer, and even closer-

“Eight of them!” said Fang.

77

“Left!” Iggy said, and without question we all hung a sudden left. How he knew it was there, I have no idea.

Our path suddenly opened into a wider plaza surrounded by vendors selling all kinds of stuff. Some brick buildings were on the left, and a big crowd of kids was passing through a metal gate.

I caught a glimpse of a sign: Central Park Zoo.

“Merge!” I whispered, and just like that, we melted smoothly into the horde of schoolkids. Fang, Iggy, Nudge, and I ducked down to be shorter, and we all wormed our way into the middle of the group, so we were surrounded by other kids. None of them seemed to think it was weird we were there-there must have been more than two hundred of them being herded through the gate.

I repressed an urge to moo and peeped over a girl’s shoulder. The Erasers had spread out and were searching for us, looking frustrated.

One of the big creeps tried to push past the policeman at the zoo gate, but the cop blocked his way. “School day only,” I heard him say. “No unauthorized adults. Oh, you’re a chaperone? Yeah? Show me your pass.”

With a low snarl, the Eraser backed away and rejoined his companions. I grinned: stopped in his tracks by a New York cop. Go, boys in blue!

We reached the entry gate: the moment of truth.

We got waved in!

“Pass, pass, pass,” the gate person muttered, motioning us through without looking at us.

Inside the zoo, we scrambled off to one side, then paused for a moment and slapped high fives.

“Yes!” the Gasman said. “School day only! Yes! I love this place!”

The zoo!“ Nudge said, practically quivering with excitement. ”I’ve always wanted to see a zoo! I’ve read about ‘em-I’ve seen them on TV. This is so great! Thanks, Max.“

I hadn’t had anything to do with it, but I smiled and nodded: magnanimous Max.

“Come on, let’s get farther in,” said Iggy, sounding nervous. “Put some distance between us and them. Jeez, was that a lion? Please tell me it’s behind bars.”

“It’s a zoo, Iggy,” Nudge said, taking his arm and leading him. “Everything is behind bars.”

Like we used to be.

78

“Oh, man, look at the polar bear!” The Gasman pressed his face against the glass of the enclosure, watching as the huge white bear swam gracefully in its big pool. The bear had an empty steel beer keg to play with, which it was batting through the water.

I’ll just tell you flat out: We’d never seen any of these animals before, not in real life. We didn’t grow up going on field trips, having Sunday outings with the ‘rents. This was a completely different, foreign world, where kids swarmed freely through a zoo, animals were in habitats and weren’t undergoing genetic grafting, and we were strolling along, not hooked up to EEG monitors and blood pressure cuffs.

It was wild.

Like this bear. Two bears, actually. A big main bear and a smaller backup bear. They had a pretty large habitat, with huge rocks, an enormous swimming pool, toys to play with.

“Man,” said Gazzy wistfully. “I’d love to have a pool.”

Or, hey! How about a house? Safety? Plenty of food?

Those were about as impossible as a swimming pool. I reached out and rubbed Gazzy’s shoulder. “That would be really cool,” I agreed.

All these animals, even though they were stuck in enclosures, probably bored out of their minds, possibly lonely, still had it so much better than we’d had it at the School. I felt edgy and angry, nervous, still coming off my adrenaline high after being chased by the Erasers. Seeing all these animals made me remember too much about when I was little, when I lived in a cage so small I couldn’t stand up.

Which reminded me: We were here to find the Institute, whatever that was. In just a short while, we might know who we were, where we came from, how our whole lives had happened.

I rubbed my hand across my mouth, really starting to feel twitchy and kind of headachy. But Nudge, the Gasman, Angel, and Iggy were having a great time. Nudge was describing everything to Iggy, and they were laughing and running around. Just like normal kids. I mean, except for the retractable wings and all.

“This place gives me the creeps,” Fang said.

“You too? I’m going nuts,” I admitted. “It’s flashback city. And I have-” I started to say “a headache,” but then didn’t want to complain or have Fang tell me to see a doctor again “an overwhelming desire to set all these animals free.”

“Free to do what?” Fang asked drily.

“Just to be out, to escape,” I said.

“Out in the middle of Manhattan?” Fang pointed out.

“Free to live without protection, without someone bringing them food, with no idea of how to take care of themselves? They’re better off here. Unless you want to fly to Greenland with a polar bear on your back.”

Logic is just so incredibly annoying sometimes. I shot Fang a look and went to round up everyone.

“Can we leave?” I asked them, trying not to whine. Very unbecoming in a leader. “I just-want to get out of here.”

“You look kind of green,” the Gasman said with interest.

I was starting to feel nauseated. “Yeah. Can we split before I upchuck in front of all these impressionable kids?”

“Over here,” Fang said, motioning us to a big crevice between two huge manufactured rocks. It led back to a path that must have been for the zookeepers-it was empty and roped off.

I managed to get out of there without crashing, screaming, or throwing up. What a nice change.

79

“You know what I like about New York?” the Gasman said, noisily chewing his kosher hot dog. “It’s full of New Yorkers who are freakier than we are.”

“So we blend?” Iggy asked.

I glanced over at him. He was licking an ice-cream cone that was like a mini him: tall, thin, and vanilla. He was already just over six feet tall-not bad for a fourteen-year-old. With his height, his pale skin, and his light reddish-blond hair, I’d always felt he was the most visible of all of us. But here on this broad avenue, we were surrounded by gorgeous supermodels, punk rockers, Goths, and leather-ites, suits, students, people from every other country-and, well, yeah, six kids with bulky windbreakers, ratty clothes, and questionable hygiene didn’t really stick out.

“More or less,” I said. “Of course, that won’t help with the Erasers.” Automatically, I did a perimeter sweep, a 360 around us to pick up signs of trouble.

“Speaking of which,” Fang said, “we seem to be dealing with version 6.0.”

“I was thinking the same thing,” I said. “This year’s crop looks more human. And there are females. Which is a bummer.” Even as I said the words, I was examining every face we passed, looking for a hint of feral sleekness, a cruel light in the eyes, a hard slash of a mouth.

“Yeah. We all know how bloodthirsty females are. Dirty fighting and so on,” Fang said.

I rolled my eyes. What a comedian.

“Can I have a burrito?” Nudge asked as we approached yet another street vendor. She faced me, bouncing backward down the sidewalk. “What’s a nish? I can have a burrito, right?”

“Ka-nish,” I corrected her. “It’s like a square of mashed potatoes, fried.” I was scanning every building-for what, I didn’t know. A big sign that said The Institute?

“What’s sauerkraut?” Angel asked.

“You don’t want it,” I said. “Trust me.”

We each got a burrito, hot and wrapped in foil.

“I like being able to just buy food as we walk along,” Nudge said happily. “If you walk a couple blocks, there’s someone selling food. And delis. I love delis! They’re everywhere! Everywhere you go, there’s everything you need: food, delis, banks, subway stops, buses, cool stores, fruit stands right on the street. This is the best place, I’m telling you. Maybe we should always live here.”

“It would certainly be convenient for the Erasers,” I said. “They wouldn’t have to track us down in the middle of nowhere.”

Nudge frowned, and Angel took my hand.

“But you’re right, Nudge,” I said, sorry for raining on her parade. “I know what you mean.” But it was costing money, and we were running out. And we had a mission.

Suddenly, I stopped dead, as if I’d been poleaxed.

Fang examined my face. “That pain?” he asked quietly, glancing around as if planning where to take me if I suddenly crumpled.

I shook my head and inhaled deeply. “Cookies!”

He looked at me blankly.

I spun in a circle to see where the aroma was coming from. Duh. Right in front of us was a small red storefront. Mrs. Fields. The scent of cookies right out of the oven wafted out onto the street. It smelled like Ella’s house, like safety, like home.

“I must have cookies,” I announced, and went into the store, Angel trotting at my side.

They were fabulous.

But not as good as homemade.

80

“So what’s your big plan for finding the Institute?” Iggy asked.

“I’m tired of walking,” Nudge said. “Can we just sit for a minute?” Without waiting for an answer, she sank onto some broad stone steps in front of a building. She rested her head in her hands and closed her eyes.

“Uh…” Just walk around until we see it didn’t seem like a good response. But Iggy had hit the nail on the head: I didn’t know how to find the Institute. I didn’t know what it looked like or even, really, if it was in New York City.

The Gasman and Angel sat down next to Nudge. I was struck once again by what incredibly cute kids they are-for mutants.

“How about a phone book?” Fang suggested. “Every once in a while I see one.”

“Yeah, that’s a possibility,” I said, frustrated by not coming up with something better. We needed an information system of some kind-like a computer we could hack into. A large marble lion caught my eye; this building had two of them. Very fancy-schmancy.

I blinked and saw four lions, like images superimposed on one another. They flickered in front of my eyes, and I shook my head a bit. I blinked again, and everything was normal. A heavy weight settled on my chest-my brain was malfunctioning again.

“So what are we going to do?” Iggy asked.

Yeah, leader, lead.

Stalling for time, worried that my head might explode at any moment, I looked up at the building in front of us. It had a name. It was called the New York Public Library of Humanities and Social Sciences. Hello. A library.

I jerked my head at the building. “We’re going to start in here,” I said briskly, and clapped twice to get the younger set on its feet. “I figure they’ve got computers, databases…” I let my voice trail off and started purposefully up the steps. Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel followed me.

“How does she do that?” I heard Fang ask Iggy.

81

Inside, the library was awesome. None of us had ever been inside one, and we were staring like the out-of-town yokels we were.

“May I help you?” A young guy was standing behind a polished wooden counter. He looked faintly disapproving, but not like he wanted to rip our lungs out, so I figured he wasn’t an Eraser.

“Yes.” I stepped forward, looking as serious and professional as a fourteen-year-old mutant who had never been in a library can look. “I was hoping to find information about a certain institute that I think is in New York.” I smiled at him, putting real warmth into it, and he blinked. “Unfortunately, I don’t know the whole name or where in New York it is. Is there a computer I could use to search? Or some sort of database?”

He glanced over all of us. Angel stepped up next to me and put her hand in mine. She smiled sweetly at the guy, looking, well, angelic.

“Fourth floor,” the guy said after a pause. “There are computers in a room off the main reading room. They’re free, but you have to sign in.”

“Thank you so much,” I said, smiling again. Then we hustled to the elevators.

The Gasman punched number four.

“Well, aren’t you the charmer?” Fang muttered, not looking at me.

“What?” I asked, startled, but he didn’t say anything. We rode upward, hating being in a small enclosed space. Sweat was breaking out on my brow by the time the doors slid open on the fourth floor, and we leaped out as if the elevator had been pressurized.

We immediately found a bank of computers with instructions on how to surf the Net. All we had to do was sign in at the desk. I signed “Ella Martinez” with a flourish, and the clerk smiled at me.

That was the last cheerful thing that happened for the next hour and a half. Fang and I searched in every way we could think of and found a million institutes of one kind or another, in Manhattan and throughout New York state, but none of them seemed promising. My favorite? The Institute for Realizing Your Pet’s Inner Potential. Anyone who can explain that to me, drop a line.

Angel was lying under the desk at our feet, murmuring quietly to herself. Nudge and the Gasman were playing hangman on a piece of scrap paper. Violence occasionally broke out, since neither of them could spell their way out of a paper bag.

Iggy was sitting motionless in a chair, and I knew he was listening to every whisper, every scraped chair, every rustle of fabric in the room, creating an invisible map of what was happening all around him.

I typed in another search command, then watched in dismay as the computer screen blurred and crashed. A string of orange words, fail, fail, fail, scrolled across the screen before it finally went black and winked out.

“It’s almost closing time, anyway,” Fang said.

“Can we sleep here?” Iggy said softly. “It’s so quiet. I like it in here.”

“Uh, I don’t think so,” I said, looking around. I hadn’t realized that most people had left-we were the only ones in the room. Except for a guard, in uniform, who had just spotted us. She started walking toward us, and something about her, her tightly controlled pace, made my inner alarms go off.

“Let’s split,” I muttered, pulling Iggy out of his chair.

We skittered out of there, found the stairs, and raced down as fast as we could. I was expecting Erasers at any moment. But we burst out into the dim late-afternoon light and ran down the stone steps without anyone following us.

82

“Can we take the subway back to the park?” Nudge asked tiredly.

It was late. We’d decided to sleep in Central Park again. It was huge, dark, and full of trees.

“It’s only about eighteen blocks to walk,” I said. But Angel was starting to fade too-she wasn’t back to a hundred percent by a long shot. “Let’s see how much it would cost.”

Five steps down the subway entrance, I was already tense. Nudge, Angel, and the Gasman were too tired to hate being in an enclosed space, but Fang, Iggy, and I were twitching.

The fare was two dollars a person, except kids under forty-four inches, who were free. I looked at Angel. Even though she was only six, she was already over four feet tall. So that was twelve dollars.

Except the fare booth was empty. So we’d have to use the automatic fare machine. That is, if we were going to be troubled about a small thing like hopping over the turnstile when no one was looking.

Once we were inside, ten minutes went by with no train. Ten loooong minutes with me feeling like I was about to start screaming and climbing the walls. If we’d been followed, if Erasers came…

I saw Iggy turn his head, listening to something from inside the dark tunnel.

“What?” I asked.

“People,” he answered. “In there.”

“Workers?”

“I don’t think so.”

I peered into the blackness. Now that I concentrated, I could hear voices too. And way down the line, I saw what looked like the flickering of a fire-its reflected glow from around a bend in the tunnel.

I made a snap decision, which always makes the flock feel so safe and comfortable.

“Let’s go,” I said, and I jumped off the platform and onto the tracks leading into the darkness.

83

“What does that mean?” the Gasman asked, pointing at a small metal plaque that said Stay off the third rail!

“It means the third rail has seven hundred volts of direct current running through it,” Fang said. “Touch it and you’re human popcorn.”

“Okay,” I said. “Good tip. Everyone stay off the third rail.”

Then I shot Fang a look that said, Thank you for that lovely image. He almost grinned at me.

Iggy felt the train first. “Everyone off the rails,” he said, standing still until I took his arm. We all stepped over to a yucky, disgusting wall and pressed ourselves as flat against it as possible.

Thirty seconds later, a train rushed past so fast that its slipstream made us sway toward it. I kept my knee shoved against Angel so she wouldn’t be pulled off her feet.

“Well, that was fairly nerve-racking,” I said as we gingerly peeled ourselves off the wall.

“Who’s there?” The voice was querulous, aggressive, and rough, as if its owner had spent the last fifty years smoking cigarettes. Maybe he had.

We walked forward, on the alert, wings starting to unfold a tiny bit in case we suddenly needed to go airborne.

“Nobody,” I called convincingly as we turned the bend of the tunnel.

“Whoa,” the Gasman breathed.

Before us was a city. A small, ragged city in Manhattan ’s basement. Groups of people clotted a large concrete cavern. The ceiling was three stories above us and dripped with paint stalactites and humid condensation.

Several unwashed faces looked toward us, and someone said, “Not cops. Kids.”

They turned away, uninterested, except for one woman who seemed to be wearing about five layers of clothing. “You got food?” she barked.

Silently, Nudge pulled a napkin-wrapped knish out of her pocket and handed it over. The woman sniffed it, looked at it, then turned her back to us and started eating.

Here and there the cavern was dotted with fifty-gallon oil drums in which people had made fires. It was a warm night, but the fires provided the only light and helped get rid of the dank chill that was creeping up my legs.

It was a whole new world, made up of homeless people, people who didn’t fit in anywhere, runaways… We saw a handful of kids who looked around our age.

I realized that my head was aching. It had been growing worse all evening, and now I just wanted to go to sleep.

“Over there,” said the knish woman, pointing. We looked and saw a narrow concrete ledge built into a wall. It was hundreds of feet long, and people were sleeping on it, sitting on it, marking off their territory with old blankets or cardboard boxes. The woman had pointed out a thirty-foot-long section that seemed unoccupied.

I looked at Fang, and he shrugged. It wasn’t as nice as the park, but it was warm, dry, and seemed somewhat safe. We scrambled up the ledge, with me boosting Angel. Keeping our backs to everyone, we stacked our fists and tapped twice. Almost instantly, Nudge lay down, pillowing her head on her hands.

Fang and I sat with our backs against the wall. I dropped my head into my hands and started rubbing my temples.

“You okay?” Fang asked.

“Yeah,” I muttered. “I’ll be better tomorrow.”

“Go to sleep,” said Fang. “I’ll take the first watch.”

I gave him a grateful smile, and soon I was out, out, out-with no idea how we would ever know it was morning.

84

The brain explosion came again while I was sleeping.

One moment I was lost in a dream in which I was strolling lazily through a field of yellow flowers, like a dopey shampoo commercial, and the next I had jack-knifed into a sitting position, holding my head and feeling like this was it: Death had finally come for me, and it wasn’t taking no for an answer.

My breaths were tight hisses. Jagged shards of pain ripped through my skull, and I heard myself whimper. Please let it be fast, I begged God. Please just end it, end it, end it now. Please, please, please.

“Max?” Fang’s low voice, right by my ear, seeped through the waves of agony. I couldn’t respond. My face was awash with tears. If I had been standing on a cliff, nothing could have kept me from throwing myself off. With my wings tucked in.

Inside my brain, images flashed incomprehensibly, making me sick, assaulting my senses with pictures, words, sounds. A voice speaking gibberish. Maybe it was mine.

As if from a great distance, I felt Fang’s hand on my shoulder, but it was like watching a movie-it seemed totally unrelated to what I was going through. My teeth were clenched so hard my jaw ached, and then I tasted blood-I had bitten into my lip.

When was I going to see the proverbial tunnel of white light I’d heard about? With people waiting for me at the other end, smiling and holding out their hands? Don’t kids with wings go to heaven?

Then an angry voice filtered through the pain: “Who’s screwing with my Mac?”

85

Just as before, the pain slowly ebbed, and I almost cried with frustration: If it was ending, I wasn’t dead. If I wasn’t dead, I could go through this again.

Images flashed across the backs of my eyes, but they were unfocused and undecipherable. If I had been alone, I would have started bawling. Instead I had to desperately try to keep it together, try not to wake the younger ones (if I hadn’t already), try not to give our position away.

“Who are you?” The angry voice came again. “What are you doing? You’ve crashed my whole system, worthless dipstick!”

Ordinarily, I would have been on my feet by now, pushing Angel and the others in back of me, an angry snarl on my face.

However, tonight I was crumpled in a humiliated, whimpering ball, holding my head, eyes squeezed shut, trying not to sob like a complete weenie.

“What are you talking about?” Fang asked, an edge of steel in his voice.

“My system crashed. I’ve tracked the interference, and it’s comin‘ from you. So I’m tellin’ you to knock it off-or else!”

I drew in a deep, shuddering breath, totally mortified that a stranger was seeing me like this.

“And what’s wrong with her? She trippin‘?”

“She’s fine,” Fang snapped. “We don’t know anything about your computer. If you’re not brain-dead, you’ll get out of here.” No one sounds colder or meaner than Fang when he wants to.

The other guy said flatly, “I’m not going nowhere till you quit messing with my Mac. Why don’t you get your girlfriend to a hospital?”

Girlfriend? Oh, God, was I going to catch it later about that. It was enough to make me lever up on one arm, then pull myself to a sitting position.

“Who the hell are you?” I snarled, the effect totally ruined by the weak, weepy sound of my voice. Blinking rapidly, finding even the dim tunnel light painful, I struggled to focus on the intruder.

I got a hazy impression of someone about my age; a ragged-looking kid wearing old army fatigues. He had a dingy PowerBook attached to straps around his shoulders like a xylophone or something.

“None of your beeswax!” he shot back. “Just quit screwing up my motherboard.”

I was still clammy and nauseated, still had a shocking headache and felt trembly, but I thought I could string a complete sentence together. “What are you talking about?”

“This!” The kid turned his Mac toward us, and when I saw the screen I actually gasped.

It was a mishmash of flashing images, drawings, maps, streams of code, silent film clips of people talking.

It was exactly the stuff that had flooded my brain during my attack.