Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

119

I was having a really bad day. These tests were a waste of time. I was expecting to get jolted with a lightning bolt of electricity at any moment. I was losing to a boy. Still remaining in this contest was a fight to the death.

And Fang still wasn't here.

I knew he hadn't had enough time to get here. There was a reasonable hope that he could be here within the next six hours or so. But he wasn't here now, and I was reaching my breaking point.

I looked at Nudge and Angel. Nudge seemed very tense, and her fingers were curling at her sides. Angel had that scary intent expression she got right before she convinced a stranger to do something. All of a sudden, I remembered that Dr. Martinez was my real mom. Probably. I'd been lied to so many times that it was hard for me to accept anything as fact. But she might have been my real mom.

I wanted to see her. And my sister, Ella.

I needed to get out of here.

Next to Angel, one of the mutants frowned, looking confused. She blinked. I saw Angel stare at her, concentrating. Uh-oh. Then the mutant leaned to the one next to her and whispered something so softly I couldn't hear it.

Angel looked pleased, and my stomach knotted up.

"What's going on, sweetie?" I whispered through clenched teeth.

"Things are going to get exciting," Angel said with satisfaction.

"Define 'exciting,'" I said cautiously.

Angel thought. "Everyone freaking out?" she offered.

"Uh...in a good way?"

"In an exciting way," she said, watching the crowd.

"Now we come to the definitive battle," the Director said into the loudspeaker.

Right then, all heck broke loose. The best way to describe it would be to say that suddenly everyone drank crazy juice and went haywire. Mutants spontaneously began fighting with one another. Some of them had clearly been trained to be soldiers, but there was quite a bit of catfight face-slapping and shoving going on too.

"People!" the Director yelled into her loudspeaker. "People! What is going on?"

"They don't want to be here anymore," Angel said, watching them.

"We don't want to be here anymore!" the crowd yelled.

"They're tired of being treated like numbers and experiments," Angel explained.

"We're not numbers!" I heard angry voices cry. "We're not experiments!"

"Hmm," I said, scanning the area, looking for ways to escape.

"They feel like pawns," Angel went on.

"We're not just pawns!" the mutants yelled.

"They're people too, even if they were just cloned and created," Angel said, stepping closer to me and taking my hand.

"We're people too!" voices shouted. "We're people too!"

"O-kaaay," I said, and quickly gathered Nudge, Angel, Ari, and Total. "Let's get out of here. We'll make our way to the wall and go along it till we see a way to break out." They nodded and we began to move through the crowd, dodging flying fists and angry shoving.

"Robots!" yelled the Director, and everywhere, the robots stood at attention and armed their weapons. "Get this crowd under control!"