Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

64

Flying west without Max was like flying with one wing missing, Fang thought. He kept seeing her face, furious, confused, and, even though she would never admit it, scared. He'd seen that face just about every day of his entire life. He'd seen it filthy with caked-on dirt, bruised and bloodied, snarling, laughing, sleeping, telling complicated lies with total sincerity...looking down at him with that light in her eyes, that communication between them...

But she had his back against a wall. What did she expect him to do? Just lie back and take Ari? Like, oh, sure, he'd just forget how many times Ari'd tried to kill them, how likely it was that he was wired and tracking them, how dangerous he was to have around. He was a disaster of patched-together body parts, upgrades, twisted emotions, psychological torture. A walking, flying time bomb about to explode.

Fang looked at it this way: If you knew you were checking out in a couple days no matter what, well, what did it matter what the heck you did? You could do crazy stuff, dangerous stuff, break any law, kill anybody. None of it would matter because you'd be cold and stiff in a couple days. Friends didn't matter, loyalty didn't matter. You could burn any bridge.

That was who Max was choosing to spend time with. Who she was letting hang around the younger kids.

Fang would have followed Max to the end of the world, wherever and whenever that was. If she'd dropped into the cone of an active volcano, he would have backed her up, no matter what.

But he couldn't go along with Ari.

"Fang?" The Gasman's voice was subdued. None of them liked being split up. If they felt as though half of them were missing, it was because they were.

Fang looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

"Where are we going?"

"West Coast," Fang said. The opposite of wherever Max was going.

"What's there?" Iggy asked.

Funny you should ask. "The biggest information-dissemination system in the world," Fang said. "A place to get out news fast."

The Gasman frowned. "What, like, some computer place? Some kind of tower?"

Fang shook his head. "People magazine."

"Is this part of the 'lie low and be inconspicuous' plan?" Iggy asked pointedly.

"No," Fang said, angling his wing tips just a hair to lead them into a twenty-three-degree turn. "This is part of the 'blow the story open, post the blog, tell the world' plan."

"Oh."

Yep. Always pretend there was a plan. A lesson he'd learned so very well from Max.