The Final Warning

60

HOLDING US OFF the ground inside a tightly woven metal net was about as effective as locking us in dog crates. Not infallible, but pretty dang close. Sure, we could move the net by shifting our weight around, but we were too far away from anything to hit.

After a while we stopped shivering and got sleepy again- welcome back, hypothermia! Just as I was groggily debating the merits of freezing to death before anyone could do something awful to us versus actually living, the thing carrying us began to roll up a snow-covered ramp. My eyes were burning, and my lashes were frozen with chunks of ice, but I blinked and squinted. We were going into… a building? A large, round, white building?

Inside I saw that it was a really big jet, designed to move troops or cars or something. So we were going somewhere.

“Max?” That voice…

The net released us, hard, onto the floor. Angel gasped slightly, but fortunately she was so out of it by now that the new pain barely registered.

In an instant I staggered to my feet, willing myself back to full consciousness. The ramp closed, and my eyes couldn’t see well in the dim light. I’d lost my sunglasses in the skirmish and was now practically snow-blind.

“Max!”

My heart sank, and I peered into the half-light. “Gazzy?”

61

HALF AN HOUR LATER, we were thawed, reunited with the rest of the flock, able to see, and becoming very, veryp.o.’d about being captivesagain. Yeah, pretty much business as usual for us.

“Where are we going?”Iggy asked. “Any clues?”

“No,” I said. This rear area of the plane, intended for cargo, had not been graced with windows, sinceboxes usually don’t give a crap about where they’re going. We were lucky it was slightly heated.

“Who was the big thug?” Nudge wrapped her arms around her knees, resting her head on them. They’d been grabbed one by one, back at the station. Some of the scientists had tried to fight and had a bunch of serious injuries to show for it. I felt sorry for them, but if you lie down with dogs… (No, Total, don’t get offended. The flock were the “dogs” in that metaphor. See, they hung out with- You know what? To heck with it.)

“Don’t know,” I said. Adrenaline had been keeping me alert when we first got here, but now it was gone, leaving me wallowing in the wallow of the deeply bummed. “He’s a bigFrankenberry jerk, though.”

“Those things are so weird,” saidGazzy.

“You’re not kidding,” I agreed.

All the short soldiers that had captured us, plus a bunch more, were here in the cargo area with us. When the ramp had locked into place, the big guy had given a command. The soldiers had lined up against the wall, three rows deep, and then just stood there. I couldn’t tell if they were powered down or what.

ThenGazzy had tried to touch one and got a nasty electric shock that knocked him backward about a foot and a half.

Several of the soldiers around that one had seemed to power up then, shifting their positions and aiming their sensors at us. A couple of them had inched forward, and we all froze.

“Back away very slowly,Gazzy,” I said quietly. “To the wall, and sit down, very, very slowly.”

Still rubbing his shocked hand,Gazzy began to back up, then he jumped when a laser beam shot out and burned a hole right through the toe of his boot.

“Yow!” he said, hopping on the other foot.

“Did it get you?” I asked anxiously, keeping my eyes on the soldiers.

“No- just burned a hole through my boot. Missed my toes.”

“Okay, everyone, let’s just stay still,” I ordered. “No sudden moves. These things are clearly hair-trigger, and I don’t want any holes burned through more important stuff, like our heads.”

Fifteen minutes later, we were all ready to be diagnosed with ADD, and the sitting-still thing was not working for us. Gradually we found out that we could move, as long as we didn’t do anything suddenly and didn’t go near the soldiers.

“Fine, they can have me if they want, but why dragAkila into this?” Total said for the nineteenth time. “She didn’t do anything!”

“I’m sorry,” I said, trying for the nineteenth time not to choke him to death. “On the other hand, if they’d left her, she might be dead by now.”

“Hmph!” Total said.Akila, I was glad to see, was looking relatively undamaged- though haughty, as if all this being captured was okay for ordinary mutants, but not for a purebred Malamute whose mother had once won the Iditarod dog sled race.

But I was relieved she seemed all right. I might feel murderous toward any number of enemies, but I always had a soft spot in my heart for animals. Especially non-genetically engineered ones.

I inched over to sit next to Fang, and had to look around, startled, for a couple moments before I saw him, almost invisible against the dark wall. I wondered if he was missing Dr. Amazing, then felt bad for still being jealous of her. Nudge had told me how hardBrigid and the others had fought against theGoBots.

I was glad Angel was finally sleeping, her head in Fang’s lap. We’d made her a lame sling out of a scarf, but I hoped someone would set her arm soon. Someone like my mom.

The metal door at the front of the cargo area opened, and the big thug came back in. His footsteps made him sound like he weighed about three hundred pounds, and now I could gauge his height at almost seven feet.

I allowed myself a quick fantasy of making him swallow one ofGazzy’s bombs, then forced myself to full-alert mode, looking for a way out of this mess. As soon as we’d been locked in, we’d tried unsuccessfully to open the back ramp- everything would have been sucked out of the plane if we’d opened it, which was fine for us, since we could fly. Theminibots would all have gone crunch on the ground, of course, but hey, you win some, you lose some.

“Who are you?” Nudge asked bravely.

“I amGozen,” the big thing said.

Nudge’s brow wrinkled. “Like Japanese dumplings?”

62

“THAT WOULD BEGYOZA, ” Fang murmured at Nudge.

“Where do you come from,Gozen?” I said, feeling fresh rage wash over me at what he’d done to Angel. “Whose henchman are you?”

Gozenturned his big head to look down at me- looked down with his nonhuman eyes that glowed blue. “I amGozen. I am the leader. You will be quiet.”

“Good luck with that,” I heardIggy mutter.

“We will be landing in fourteen hours, thirty-nine minutes,” saidGozen.

Okay, what was fifteen hours away from Antarctica? Well, actually, most of the world. Not Canada or northern Europe, not the Arctic. But we could be headed most other places. Good thing I had narrowed that down.

“Where are we going?” I tried.

“That is not your concern.”

“Au contraire, YourTrollness,” I said, standing up. “We’re very concerned. We haveappointments. Places to go, people to see. Now tell us where the hell we’re going!”

Faster than my eyes (with raptor vision) could track, one thick leg shot out and whipped my feet out from under me. I caught myself on my hands just in time for him to kick my side hard enough to make my breath fly out of my lungs and give me that so-attractive fish-gasping expression.

The flock, except for Angel, was on their feet in a second, but I made a “Don’t attack” gesture- just in time, because the soldiers had once again shifted forward. With iron control, I slowly sucked in my breath, hoping they wouldn’t startlasering everything in sight. I took inventory: legs okay; ribs really, really bruised, maybe cracked. It hurt a surprising amount, which made me realize that it had been a while since I’d had broken bones. Clearly I needed to review my street-fighting skills.

“You do not give orders,”Gozen said in his weird almost-human-but-not-quite voice. “You follow orders.”

I bit my lip so I wouldn’t tell him to go stuff his orders. Apparently he picked up on things like that.Gozen was unlike anything we’d come up against before. He was bigger, faster, human enough to be subtle but machine enough to have no conscience. I did think he was probably too heavy to fly, soyay for that.

I gathered my feet under me, refusing to wince. Keeping a sharp eye onGozen, I stood up cautiously, motioning the others behind my back to stay out of his range. Unless he could shoot bullets from his eyes, which I wasn’t putting past him.

“We are against global warming,”Gozen intoned.

Was that a statement or a question? Were we part of the “we”?

“Uh-huh,” I said carefully, backing away slowly. “That’s good.”

“Therefore we are violently opposed to your kind,”Gozen went on.

Not so good.

I quickly decided I believed in global warming. “But we’re against it too!” I said, keeping one wary eye on the Transformer-bots. “We were in Antarctica helping to stop global warming!”

“No. Humans created the problem. Humans are destroying the earth. You are destroying life.”

“Okay, now, see, you’re wrong here on a bunch of levels,” I said quickly. “First, we’re not even completely human! Did you miss the wings? I mean, jeez. Plus, as I just pointed out, we were trying to stop global warming! We’re totally against it!”

“Yeah!” saidGazzy. “We’re trying to save the world! It’s our mission!”

Gozenturned slowly, and my heart sped up when his gaze stopped onGazzy. I moved to put myself between them.

“You are part of the problem,”Gozen said with a machine’s horrible, inflexible logic that always turns out to be wrong because there’s something crucial missing from the formula. “I will enjoy your death.” With that, he turned and exited through the door at the front of the cargo area. I wished one of us- okay, me- had thought of trying to escape through that door whileGozen wasn’t looking.

Once the door was shut behind him and we heard the ominous click of the lock, Fang said, “That guy has no sense of humor.”

“No,” I agreed, sitting down gingerly to avoid hurting my ribs even more. “And I’ve thought of something else, much worse.”

“What?” asked Nudge.

“We have fourteen hours to go,” I said. “And I doubt we’re getting meal service or in-flight entertainment.”

63

OKAY, SO THEY KIDNAPPED us from Antarctica. Let’s review: extremely freezing, much ice, snow, wind, et cetera. Very little fresh fruit. No swimsuit season. No cable TV. No coffee shops.

Where did they bring usto?

Miami.

You’d think it would work the other way- snatchedaway from Miami, sentto Antarctica, which is like Siberia but with more penguins.

But no.

Just another example of the whimsy of the fantastically wealthy, powerful, and deluded. For us, it was like, Oh, please don’t snatch us away from Antarctica and send us to the playground of the rich and famous! Not that briar patch!

On the other hand: In Antarctica we were relatively free and doing actual meaningful work that we felt good about. In Miami we were prisoners. It was an ironic situation all around, no doubt about it.

I won’t bore you with the usual duct-taped hands and feet, bound wings, stuck into black body bags,yadayadayada, that we always go through in these ho-hum random abductions. It was like, same old, same old, and I could hardly work up the energy to fight hard enough to get more than a black eye and a sprained wrist out of it.

I guess I’m just getting jaded.

When they unzipped our bags and started ripping off the tape (tip: Don’t try that at home), we found we were high up in a tall, tall building. There were tons of other tall buildings around us. Below us was one of Florida’s white-sugar beaches, edged by water that I was dying to sink into. Or at least I’d want to after it stopped pouring. The sky was full of dark gray clouds. It was raining so hard I could hear the drops pelting the window glass likeBBs.

I was amazed they had let us loose in a room with windows, given our annoying habit of leaping through them, but oleGozen answered that question.

“These windows have been rated for hurricane-force winds of up to one hundred twenty miles per hour,” he intoned. “They do not open from the inside.” He stepped closer, then heaved himself sideways, shoulder first, into one of the big plate glass windows. We all winced, expecting him to go bye-bye with a huge crash, but instead he practically bounced off, the glass not even cracking, and I thought,Holy crap. Or, actually, much worse than holy crap, but let’s just say I thought holy crap.

“The auction will begin in one hour,”Gozen said. “Food will be provided.”

“You know, he’s really a people person,” I said when he’d left.

“What auction was he talking about?”Gazzy asked, and I shrugged.

“No clue,” I answered, starting to walk around. The double doors to the room were metal, windowless, and had several locking bolts. Our captors definitely thought we were hot stuff, and I felt kind of proud of our bad reputation. Proud but really trapped.

“Now what?” Angel was still wan and pale, with dark circles under her eyes. There were chairs around a table, and I helped her sit in one.

“Iggy?” I said. He came closer, and with his incredibly delicate touch, he skimmed his fingers over her arm. “Is there anything you can do?”

“It’s really swollen,” he said, and I used every bit of my self-control to not say, “No duh!”

“It feels like a clean break,”Iggy went on. “Let me see… So to speak.” Very tenderly, he manipulated her broken arm.

Though Angel’s face got a little green around the edges, she made hardly a sound. I held her shoulders and sent her comforting thoughts, and then we all heard a tiny scrape and a clicking sound, and Angel relaxed a bit.

“Oh, that feels better,” she said. “Still really bad, but less bad. Thanks,Iggy.”

Iggysmiled, proud that he could contribute to the flock this way. I ripped up the lining of my jacket- wouldn’t be needing that here!- and made a stiff bandage to hold her arm in place.

“Now what?”Gazzy repeated Angel’s question.

“Fan out, check the perimeter,” I ordered.

Which took less than five minutes.

Everyone reported that the room seemed rock solid. The vents were too small for a house cat, there was only the one set of doors, and we had all seen the window demonstration.

“Maybe I can…” Nudge murmured, and she crouched next to one of the doors. She moved her fingers close to the locks and closed her eyes. “If I could make the bolts all line up…”

“Oh, so smart, Nudge,” I breathed, coming to crouch next to her. “Can you feel them?”

“I think so,” she said. “If my magnetism could-ow!”

There was a harsh crackle, and Nudge was jolted backward almost a foot. The residual electricity practically made my hair stand on end. Nudge was on her back, rubbing her hands.

“The locks are booby-trapped,” she announced glumly, in case we hadn’t picked up on it. “So much for my new skill.”

“My new skill was no help either,” said Angel.

“And since we’re not surrounded by snow, I’m still blind.”Iggy sounded bitter, but then he perked up. “On the other hand, this carpet is a tasteful ecru, with a thin cinnamon stripe close to the wall.”

I glanced at Fang, who was totally visible against the walnut paneling of the room. He shrugged.

“So now I guess we wait,” I said. Which, you know, I’mso good at.

64

BEING IN THIS TALL BUILDING was interesting for us, because we were up high but not flying. Outside, it was really storming- huge crashes of thunder and lightning that I remembered from the last time we were here in the wishfully named Sunshine State. Gusts of wind buffeted the building, and it was so tall it actually swayed.

“Good thing this building’s rated for hurricane-force winds,” Nudge said, looking out the window nervously. “It’s really blowing out there.”

They fed us. I was hoping they’d send in actual humans with our food, because they’re easy to jump and pretty fragile. No problem getting past them, unless they have guns.

Instead we got Transformer-bots with trays, underGozen’s watchful laser eyes.

They gave us a variety of food, apparently never having fed mutant bird kids before. We had oatmeal, sandwiches, fruit, bread, a bowl of dog kibble, which Total pushed towardAkila, and…

“Oh, my God!” Nudge squealed, removing the cover on a tray. “Oh, my God!”

“What? What?” I hurried over, hoping for chocolate.

Instead I was confronted with a large bowl of… well, birdseed.

“It’s just seeds!” Nudge said. “Not even like a granola bar. It’sbirdseed! ”

For a couple seconds we all just stared at one another, and then we cracked up, really howling with laughter.

“Oh, God, no!” I said, holding my bruised ribs. “Don’t make me laugh!”

“Nummy!”Gazzy said, poking the seeds with his finger. “Could I get some worms with this?”

“Stop! Stop!” I begged.

Even Fang, who as you know is Mr. Personality, was actually laughing out loud, bent over, his hands on his knees.

“What? Seeds?”Iggy asked, feeling the contents of the bowl. “Is this really birdseed? ’Cause we’rebirds? ”

I nodded, tears running down my cheeks. I gasped for air, saying “Ouch” with each breath. “I’m nodding,Ig.”

“This is too much,” Fang wheezed. “Too much! Birdseed! Oh, God.”

“What’s for dessert?Caterpillars? ” I said, barely intelligibly. This set off a new round of shrieking laughter.

“This sandwich isn’t half bad,” Total said, his paws up on the table.

“Did they bring us a bunch of nesting material?”Gazzy asked. “’Cause I’m beat.”

More laughter. Angel almost fell onto her hurt arm.

The door opened, and we tried to whip ourselves into fighting form but failed miserably. This was one way they’d never tried to subdue us- with laughter.Akila immediately got to her feet, ears back, head lowered. She looked pretty scary, but all I could do was try to swallow my giggles.

Gozenstood in the doorway, watching us with his glowing blue eyes. “You will not find the rest of the day amusing,” he said. “Follow me. The auction is about to begin. As is the hurricane.”

Fang and I looked at each other with “huh?” faces.What hurricane?

“Question,” I said, raising a finger. “What auction are we talking about? And did you just sayhurricane? ”

Gozenhad turned toward the door, and now he turned back. “TheUber -Director is auctioning you off to the highest bidder. He expects you to bring a great deal of money.”

“I’m flattered,” I said. “What are we being sold for?”

“Whatever they want.”

Okay, that wouldn’t end well.

“And the hurricane?” I asked. Wasn’t the end of hurricane season, like, November? How could there be a hurricane now?

“There is a Category four hurricane about to make a direct hit on Miami,”Gozen intoned. I wondered if worry had been programmed into him, and decided probably not. It would just get in the way.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Does anyone seem, um, concerned about that? Category four is one of the big ones, right?”

“The city has been evacuated,”Gozen told us.

“But not us?”

“No.” He opened the door and gestured to it.

Fang went first, the others falling into line behind him, me bringing up the rear. I was almost out the door when my gaze fell on the bowl of freakingbirdseed, and I cracked up all over again.

65

CONSIDERING I’M NOT the world’s youngest executive, I sure have been in a lot of corporate conference rooms. They’re all pretty much the same: big plate glass windows; huge table, usually rectangular or oblong; large potted plants; thick carpet;rolley chairs.

This one had a wall of flat TV screens, and something that I’d never seen before: a transparentperson, with his organs and stuff in clear Plexiglas boxes, and his head attached to one by an almost-bare spinal cord. He was sitting- or stacked, more accurately- in a customized wheelchair.

He saw all of us staring at him, and wheeled silently over the carpet toward us.

“I am theUber -Director,” he said, his voice a lot likeGozen’s: with human but slightly odd inflections, and also a barely detectable mechanical quality. Looking closer, I saw that his guts and stuff were surrounded by and connected to machine parts- hoses, pumps, electronic things. And yes, it wastotally as gross as it sounds. If I hadn’t already seen a million incredibly gross things in my life, I would have barfed right there.

His voice had enough expression to convince me that he had a colossal ego jam-packed into hisHabitrail body. Great. Ithought this day had been a little lacking in megalomaniacs.

None of us said anything- no leaping forward with outstretched hands and big smiles. I guess we just weren’t raised right.

“I’ve been concerned with you for quite some time,” he went on.

“That makes… almost one of us,” I said.

UnlikeGozen, the UD could smile. Or frown. “I find you very… interesting. From a scientific viewpoint, of course.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, staring at him in fascination. “I have a bit of scientific curiosity myself. Listen, how do they keep your boxes clean? Like, with an aquarium vacuum, or what?”

TheUber -Director had been gifted with the blush response to anger, and now his waxy cheeks mottled with a yucky purple color that would put me off plum pudding for the rest of my life.

He glared atGozen.Gozen took several quick steps toward me, raising his oversize arm. I leaped onto the table, wings out, ready to fly around like a bat out of hell just to freak them out. Outside, strong winds pummeled the windows, and heavy rain all but obliterated from view the tall buildings around us. The thunder and lightning were constant. Yep, looked like a hurricane, all right.

Gozenfroze.

I looked down at theUber -Director. He was staring at me with a mixture of outrage… and hunger.

“Uh, you okay, UD?” I asked. “Is it okay if I call you UD?” I looked atGozen. “Is he okay? Does he need a feed bag hooked up or something?”

Gozenlunged for me, but I jumped backward. His powerful fist, the size of a ham, crashed down on the table, bouncing me slightly. The table splintered, and I skittered to the other end. I knew my flock was on alert, and I took a second to glance atBoxBoy. His head was leaning to one side, as if he was tired, and I got the impression that if he had hands, he would have been rubbing his brow.

“Enough,Gozen,” he said softly, and just like that,Gozen straightened and backed up until he stood stiffly against one wall. If only I could getGazzy andIggy to obey orders like that.

“Get off the table,” the UD said to me. “The auction is about to begin. Once the monitors are on, you will all be silent.”

I heardGazzy stifle a laugh.

TheUD’s eyes met mine. “Do you have anything to say before the monitors are activated?”

“Yes.” I kept a straight face. “A hamster called. He wants his home back.”

66

I HAD TO hand it to whoever was running things: They’d learned to take regular humans out of the equation. We’d always beaten them, confused them, gotten through them somehow. Which was why we were left withBoxBoy, the Incredible Humorless Hulk, and a bunch of Transformer-bots.

With a slight electronic crackle, the wall of TV screens came to life. One by one, their screen snow was replaced by a person. There were both men and women, in all kinds of settings. The one thing they had in common was that they all oozed power like radiation. Clearly they were looking at screens of their own- I saw their eyes dart around, linger for just a second on the UD with a hint of distaste, then fasten on us.

I looked at the UD. “What, eBay isn’t good enough for us?”

If anyone had been familiar with the evil smile onIggy’s face, they would have questioned the decision to put us on camera. But oh well. Live and learn, is what I say.

“Here are the objects available for auction.” TheUD’s voice was surprisingly strong and commanding. “They are in decent shape, though one is damaged.”

That would be Angel’s broken arm. I got mad all over again.

“Do they have any… liabilities?” A woman with dark hair and eyes, wearing a severe navy suit, spoke first.

“Besides our woeful fashion sense?” I asked before the UD could respond.

Every face on the screens looked surprised. No one was expecting us to talk.

“Our lack of commitment to personal hygiene?”

“You will be silent!” the UD hissed at me. But sinceGozen stayed where he was, I didn’t take him seriously.

I raised my eyebrows, looking directly at the faces on the screens. “I guess it depends on whether you consider a complete inability to follow orders aliability. ”

“Silence!” the UD said again as the people on the screens began to murmur to their unseen partners. He spoke to them: “As you can see, they are functional, with a limited, though useful, intelligence.”

“Limited intelligence?” I broke in, outraged. “Bite me! You’re kind of the last person to talk aboutlimitations! At least I can… swim! And fly! And digest by myself!”

“Yeah, or how about this?” the Gasman said, and then he erupted… his new skill. I’d been wondering if he would develop one, and what form it would take. Maybe he’d be able to read minds, like Angel? Flysuperfast, like me? Feel colors, likeIggy? It could have been anything.

But of course it wasn’t.

I swear to you, it was literally a green mushroom cloud. I mean, he’d always had a messed-up digestive system.Gazzy in a small room with you meant you’d soon have tears in your eyes. And I guess most boys hone their ability to let rip on command to a fine, subtle art.

This was in a completely different league.

I saw eyes widen onscreen. The UD turned to see the flock moving rapidly away fromGazzy, who looked as if he were being enveloped in, well, a cloud of noxious gas, colored a sulfurous yellow green. He was grinning. “Ah, that’s better. Better out than in!”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Total said hoarsely, and ran under the conference table.

“Whoa!” I said, gagging. “What have you beeneating? Kryptonite? Nuclear waste?”

“What is that? Who did that? What does this mean?” Voices from the screens mingled together. The UD was looking atGazzy with confusion and anger.

I pressed my hand over my mouth and nose and got as far fromGazzy as the room allowed. Close to the screens, I spoke through my hand, trying not to inhale.

“It really just depends on your definition ofliability, ” I said nasally.

“It’s a new skill!”Gazzy announced, sounding excited.

“Good God,” Nudge muttered, pressing herself against the farthest wall. “Why don’t these windowsopen? ”

“You are theman! ”Iggy said, and he andGazzy slapped high fives. It’s a guy thing.

And that pretty much set the tone for the rest of the auction.

Iggypicked his nose. Fang blended into a dark painting that consisted of paint splatters and drips. Nudge kept up a constant chatter- at one point going on about different colors of nail polish and whether something with glitter was really appropriate for day wear- though you could hardly hear it over the rising wind.

Okay, call me alarmist, but it sounded incredibly bad out there, and a Category 4 hurricane with mandatory evacuation did not seem like a good scene. I’d flown in some pretty intense storms, but if we’d been outside now, we would have been splattered against the building like gnats.

Sure, these windows weresuperstrong, but all the same, the wind was a tad concerning. I motioned to the others to move toward the inside walls, away from the glass.

“Attention!” TheUD’s face was that awful blotchy purple color again. Ugh. “Can we return to the business at hand? There’s a bid on the table of half a billion dollars. Can I hear three-quarters of a billion?”

You know, half a billion dollars just doesn’t go as far as it used to.

“One more thing,” I said to the screens, raising my voice to be heard. “We all have expiration dates. If you buy us, you should know that it’s a limited-time offer. We’re probably single-use mutants, pretty much.”

“A single use might be all that’s required of you,” theUber -Director said silkily, then went back to the bidding.

And that was when thesuperstrong, hurricane-rated,Gozen -bounced-against fancy windows all imploded.

67

IN CASE YOU DON’T KNOW, safety glass can still shatter. They call it safety glass because it tends to shatter into somewhat-less-sharp cubes, rather thansaberlike shards. Little bit of info forya there. See? I’m funand educational!

In the next second, we were all slammed against the back wall, as the wind blasted in through the broken windows, seeming as if it wanted to snatch us out into the storm.

“Gozen!” the UD screamed. I wondered if he had volume buttons for “scream” or could just raise his voice. Anyway,Gozen heard him and lumbered awkwardly over to the wheelchair, putting himself between the window and the UD.

“Flock!” I bellowed. “Get down! Under the table!”

Immediately Fang, Angel, Nudge,Iggy, Total, andGazzy rolled under the table. I grabbedAkila’s collar and dragged her under with me. Around us, chairs were whipping around, smashing against the walls, getting sucked out the windows.

“Can we fly out?”Gazzy asked, almost shouting.

Fang and I both shook our heads. “The wind is too strong. We should get out into the hallway,” Fang said, and I nodded.

Angel was watching something out in the room. The remote control for one of the big-screen TVs must have whizzed around and smacked up against something that caused it to flip channels.

“What is it,Ange?” I said.

“There’s a hurricane report on TV,” she said. “It says it’s almost a Category five, and they think it was caused by global warming.”

There was that global warming again!

“There have always been hurricanes,” I pointed out.

“Not at this time of year. Plus, there are many, many more of them now, and they tend to be stronger and more destructive,” Fang told me.

I looked at him. “Okay, maybe global warming is bad,” I admitted.

He made a no-freaking-duh face, and then said, “Category fives have winds more than a hundred fifty-five miles an hour. In other words, enough to rip most things apart. Including us. There’s no way we can fly in it.”

“Okay, hallway it is,” I said. “We’ll get out there and see if there’s any place we can wait out the storm. Fang, you’re in charge ofAkila.”

“We arenot leaving her!” Total stated.

“I know,” I said. “Gazzy, Nudge, and Angel, stick as close to me as possible. Everyone ready?”

Five pairs of determined bird kid eyes met mine.

“Okay. Let’s do this thing.”

68

OUR PLAN WAS TO ROLL out from under the table and crawl fast to the double doors, avoidingGozen and the UD if at all possible. While I had been bantering with the buyers, Fang andIggy had been very productive: They’d shredded a couple of our Antarctica coats and knotted them into several long lengths of rope. Now Fang tied one toAkila’s collar, andIggy tied one around Total’s middle.

“It’s not a leash!” I snapped as he protested. “It’s so we don’t lose you!”

The electricity was off in the conference room now. The wall of TVs had been shattered. Lots of stuff had been sucked out the windows, and other things were hurtling around.

“Gozen!” theUber -Director shouted. “Don’t let them escape!”

Gozenbegan to move toward us, his bulk and weight helping to keep him steady. TheUD’s wheelchair was being knocked about, and if I were him, I would have been freaking out, waiting to break apart into messy building blocks.

“Kids! Go!” I yelled, and we began to crawl fast toward the doors. I had no idea how we’d get them open.

As it turned out, Mother Nature helped us. Sort of. Sort of a half-helped / half-killed situation. When we were about seven feet from the doors, they blew open, their frames shattering around the massive locks. In an instant, we were airborne, without using our wings.

The wind coming through the windows and whipping out through the doors created a huge updraft that almost flattened us against the ceiling.Gozen hunkered down over the UD even as a large potted plant clocked him in the head, opening the skin to reveal tissue and wires. Yes. Gross.

There was only one thing to do.

“Go with the flow!” I shouted, remembering a long-ago lesson from the Voice. “Go with nature! Fang! GetAkila!” I grabbed Total and clutched him hard against my chest. I saw Fang grabAkila and knew she would be a struggle to hold.

Then, making sure that everyone was with me, I put my wings out just a bit, andwhoosh! The wind grabbed me, and I shot down the hall like a jet.

“Ouch! Ouch! God-” I couldn’t aim, so I was scraping against exit signs and light fixtures. I checked behind me to make sure everyone had gotten out, and they had, with no sign ofGozen or the UD.

“Go with the flow!” I yelled again. Then I saw where the hallway led: directly to a balcony with floor-to-ceiling windows. Of hurricane-proof glass. That we’d probably smash against like mosquitoes against a windshield.

“Wait! I take it back!Don’t go with the flow! ” I shrieked, trying desperately to backpedal.

But of course it was too late by then.

69

I HOPED THE UBER-DIRECTOR hadn’t paid his building contractor yet, because those so-called hurricane-proof windows were, in fact, not at all hurricane proof. Unless maybe for a baby hurricane. Awiddle one. With no big winds. I thought he should have got his money back.

Instead of smashing against the balcony windows, we sailedthrough them, because they’d blown out by the time we reached them. Wastebaskets, plants, chairs, and even some desks flew out around us. Then it was like we’d been put into God’s washing machine, on the spin cycle. I held on to Total as tight as I could, and we were sucked away into winds stronger than anything I’d ever experienced. My breath was actually pulled from my lungs. Within seconds, Total and I were soaked. In addition to the rain, hailstones as hard as diamonds pelted me, feeling like needles being driven into my skin. I pulled my wings in almost all the way, leaving them out a tiny bit in the hopes that this would allow me to steer. If I’d put them out fully, they would have been torn off.

When I looked back, I counted five bird kids behind me, all struggling. Fang andIggy were both holding on toAkila. Nudge,Gazzy, and Angel had tied themselves together, ropes looped around their waists, which was smart, but I bet it really hurt.

“This sucks!” Total yelled in my ear.

I didn’t think that needed a response. It was the understatement of the century. But come to think of it, I couldn’t believe we were still alive. We weren’t supposed to be able to survive this. No one could. Were we getting stronger? I started to wonder, then realized there was still time to be shredded to pieces.

Feeling almost half delirious from lack of breath, certain that my skin was being peeled slowly from my face and hands, I started expecting to see Dorothy’s house swirling by at any moment- and then suddenly it was much calmer, and I was being sucked downward, fast.

My ears rang with silence. My mouth dropped open in surprise. I looked up and saw… white clouds and blue sky. It wasn’t raining or hailing on me. I was still moving in a gigantic circle, but it was more like the fluff ’n’ dry cycle, not too bad.

“We’re falling,” Total told me.

Ah, yes, so we were. Cautiously I put my wings out more fully, feeling wind catch in them, expanding my feathers. I surged upward and saw my flock pop out of the wall of clouds one by one.

“We’re in the eye of the storm!” I shouted, and motioned downward. I didn’t know how big this eye was- maybe several miles across? But I wanted to take advantage of it. Controlling my descent, I headed earthward, landing on a broken section of highway overpass. At each end, the high-way dipped down into floodwaters- who knew how deep?

Shading my eyes, I looked up to see Nudge,Gazzy, and Angel, beat up and exhausted, land clumsily. Angel fell to her knees, trying to protect her broken arm.

I rushed over to them, untied their rope, and checked them all over.

Iggylanded, then Fang.

“Where’s-?” I began, then saw Fang’s face. I glanced atIggy; he had the same tragic expression.Akila had been too heavy for them. They hadn’t been able to hold on to her.

My heart squeezed painfully. What would we tell Total? Right now he was flopped on his side, panting, but any second he would realize the love of his life was missing… Oh, God.

“Gozen.”

My head whipped up and I looked where Fang was pointing. High, high above us,Gozen and, amazingly, theUber -Director were flailing wildly by, close to the edge of the eye. Suddenly my fury overwhelmed me- atAkila’s death, at Angel’s broken arm, at their trying to sell us, and at every other bad thing that anyone had ever done to us, which, believe me, was a pretty long list. In seconds I was streaking upward as fast as I could.

70

GOZEN WAS WRAPPED around theUber -Director, which was the only reason the UD hadn’t come apart by now. But even as I shot toward them, I could see thatGozen’s weight was working against him; they were both being dragged roughly around the eye wall of the storm.

I saw the UD shout, “Don’t let go!” though I couldn’t hear him. ButGozen’s enormous fingers were slipping, and his body and face bore signs of violent contact with a lot of debris.

Gozen’seyes met mine as I got close, blue lasers into brown. “Help me,” he rumbled.

“I don’t think so,” I said, kicking at his arm. That was all it took- me kicking his arm in retaliation for his breaking Angel’s- and his hold on the UD collapsed andGozen spun away, falling heavily downward, his face assuming the only expression he was capable of: horror.

I held on to theUD’s wheelchair. Fluid was leaking from his boxes; his human eyes in his human face were terrified.

“I control more than you could ever realize,” he gasped. “I can make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. I can protect you for the rest of your life. Just save me now.”

If he’d been a real person, I would have hesitated. I’m not a killer. I mean, not on purpose, anyway. But he was a machine, someone’s consciousness hooked up to a bio-mechanical body.

Plus, he was a complete and total jerk.

“You need to not be in this world,” I told him, and let go.

I didn’t watch, but I’m sure the boxes snapped grotesquely apart in the next instants, and that he whirled around in the storm in pieces for a while. I never saw any part of him again.

I negotiated my way out of the eye wall, glad to be free of the rain and hail again, and flew downward until I saw the flock a mile or so away. We needed to escape this hurricane before the next eye wall hit us. As I came to a landing, I could see them huddled around Total, who had collapsed, sobbing, on the ground. Angel had tears in her eyes as she stroked him with her good arm. His small black wings, still unusable but getting bigger every day, were fluttering pathetically.

I stood nearby, breathing hard, barely able to take in the fact thatGozen and theUber -Director were no more. PoorAkila. Poor Total. I shook my head, feeling terrible for him.

Angel looked up. “Akila,” she said, frowning.

I nodded. “I know, sweetie. I’m so sorry.”

“No-Akila, ” said Angel, pointing at the sky.

“Huh?” was all I had time to say before an eighty-pound Malamute plummeted out of the sky, smashing right into me and knocking me onto my not-nearly-padded-enough butt.

“Oh, God,” I wheezed,Akila’s body lying heavily on top of me. For the second or third time that day- it was hard to keep track- I had to slowly suck in breath, looking like a largemouth bass. “Akila!”

The others rushed over, and Fang pried openAkila’s eyelids and put his head on her side to listen for a heartbeat.

“She’s alive,” he said, just as the mud-spattered dog blinked weakly.

“Uh, can you get her off me?” I said, my voice muffled. I felt as though I’d been hit with a warm, sopping-wet, furry sack of cement.

“Akila!” Total cried, now that the shock was wearing off. “Akila! I thought we had lost you forever!” Eagerly he licked her face. I was thinkingbleah, butAkila seemed to like it, turning her head so Total could get her other side.

And there we were. Together again.

71

WE MANAGED TO STAY inside the eye of the hurricane, moving with it until the storm had weakened enough for us to fly out. As we flew over the devastation, I realized at last the full implications of what global warming could mean for our world.

“You were right,” I said quietly to Fang as we flew. “Global warming is something we have to help stop.”

“What was that?” Fang said loudly, cupping one hand around his ear. “What did you say? Could you repeat that?”

I looked at him sourly. “So what now, hot stuff? I have to tell you, I’m not loving the idea of going back to Antarctica. That place was like living inside a big fridge.”

“I was thinking we’d get something to eat, then call Dr. Martinez,” he suggested.

I smiled at him, my first real smile in… I didn’t know how long. “An excellent notion.”

72

Washington DC

“I’mgonna barf,” I whispered to Fang, wiping my sweaty hands on my jeans.

“You’ll be fine,” he whispered back. “You always are.”

“I’mgonna die,” I moaned.

“You can’t die,” he said, a hint of a smile in his voice. “You’re the indestructible Max.”

“I’ve never faced anything this hard before.” Yes, I sounded like a pathetic weenie. I prefer to think of it as showing my softer side.

“Max?” My mom stood at the door, smiling at me. She was all dressed up and looked fabulous. I would be lucky if I grew up to look like her. Which I guess would be hindered by my refusal togirlify myself. I looked down at my clean T-shirt and jeans. Mom had thoughtfully supplied me with a nice actual dress, but when I’d tried it on, I felt- I don’t know. Vulnerable? Like I couldn’t move, couldn’t fight.

Well, we all have issues.

At least my clothes were totally clean, though my T-shirt advertisedGьero’s Taco Bar in Austin, Texas. On top of that I wore my traditional oversize, loose Windbreaker, because why would I want Congress staring at my wings?

Yes. Congress. There, in a nutshell, was mywhoopsy -daisy life: Many evil people wanted to kill me, or sell me, or use me for evil purposes, and on the other hand, there I was, testifying about global warming to the Congress of the United States. Sometimes the lines got a little blurry.

“Okay, do you have your notes?”Brigid Dwyer came up and brushed some lint off my jacket, as if that would help.

“Yep.” I held up my sheaf of paper.Brigid, Michael, and the other scientists from theWendy K. had helped me come up with what to say. All except Brian. He’d turned out to be another mole for the UD. He was in jail. There’s always one- or in this case two- in every crowd.

“I think they’re ready for you,” my mom said, gesturing at the open door. I could hear the buzzing of voices inside and wished fervently that the Capitol Building had an open ceiling that I could escape through if necessary.

“This is your mission,” saidJeb, smiling at me. “You’re fulfilling your mission right now, right here.”

I nodded, took a deep breath, and gave one last look at my flock. They were lined up, scrubbed clean, looking awed and a little freaked. Angel waved at me, and I waved back.

Showtime, folks.

73

MY HANDS SHOOK. The microphone in front of me seemed too big, and I’d made it squeak by getting too close. I wished I could just beat someone up and get the heck out of here.

I cleared my throat and looked down at my speech.

“Thank you for inviting me here today,” I said, my voice sounding nothing like me. “I’m here to testify about things I’ve seen and experienced myself. I’m here because the human race has become more powerful than ever. We’ve gone to the moon. Our crops resist diseases and pests. We can stop and restart a human heart. And we’ve harvested vast amounts of energy for everything from night-lights to enormoussuperjets. We’ve even created new kinds of people, like me.

“But everything mankind”- I frowned- “personkindhas accomplished has had a price. One that we’re allgonna have to pay.”

I heard coughing and shifting in the audience. I looked down at my notes, and all the little black words blurred together on the page. I just could not get through this.

I put the speech down, picked up the microphone, and came out from behind the podium.

“Look,” I said. “There’s a lot of official stuff I could quote and put up on the screen with PowerPoint. But what you need to know, what the world needs to know, is that we’re really destroying the earth in a bigger and more catastrophic way than anyone has ever imagined.

“I mean, I’ve seen a lot of the world, the only world we have. There are so many awesome, beautiful things in it. Waterfalls and mountains, thermal pools surrounded by ice and snow as far as you can see. Beautiful beaches with sand like white sugar. Fields and fields of wildflowers. Places where the ocean crashes up against a mountainside, like it’s done for hundreds of thousands of years.

“I’ve also seen concrete cities with hardly any green. And rivers whose pretty rainbow surfaces came from an oil leak upstream. Animals are becoming extinct right now, in my lifetime. Just recently, I went through one of the worst hurricanes ever recorded. It was a whole lot worse because of huge, worldwide climatic changes caused by… us. We, the people.”

I suddenly remembered a catchy (if annoying) song I’d heard over and over in a Saturday morning cartoon- the one that was supposed to teach kids about the Constitution. The words of the preamble, which were quoted in the song, came flooding back to me. “ ‘We the People of the United States,’ ” I began, “ ‘in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the commondefence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.’ ”

The room was silent. I looked around at all the faces. “A more perfect union? While huge corporations do whatever they want to whoever they want, and other people live in subway tunnels? Where’s the justice of that? Kids right here in America go to bed hungry every night, while other people get four-hundred-dollar haircuts. Promote the general welfare? Where’s the general welfare of strip-mining, toxic pesticides, industrial solvents being dumped into rivers, killing everything? Domestic tranquility? Ever sleep in a forest that’s being clear-cut? You’d be hearing chain saws in your head for weeks. The blessings of liberty? Yes. I’m using one of the blessings of liberty right now, my freedom of speech, to tell you guys, who make the laws, that the very ground you stand on, the house you live in, the children you tuck in at night, are all in immediate, catastrophic danger.”

I took a deep breath, really getting warmed up. The flock was standing all around me, and Mom andJeb were off to one side. I glanced at Mom, and she looked so proud. I hoped that Angel wasn’t turning into a bird of paradise, and that Nudge wasn’t making pens fly toward her. And if there was a God,Gazzy would not demonstrate his new skill right here in Congress.

“Every minute of every day, cars belch exhaust. Factories spew toxins into the air, land, and water. We’ve cleared millions of square miles of forests, rain forests, and plains, which means tons of topsoil is just washing away. Which means loss of animals and plants, and increased fires, floods, and coastal disintegration. Just by stuff people have made, created, we’re raising the overall temperature of the entire atmosphere. Well, we only have the one atmosphere! What do you plan to do when it’s destroyed? Can we all hold our breath until we get a new one?”

No one shouted out an answer.

“The problem is here,now, ” I went on. “Nine of the ten hottest years ever recorded have happened in my lifetime. I’m fourteen. More or less. There have been record-setting weather extremes across the globe- tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, droughts, wildfires, tsunamis. We’re warming up the planet, and the planet’s ice is melting. If onlyfifty percent of the world’s ice melts, countless rivers and streams will overflow and then dry up, killing hundreds of thousands of people from disease and starvation. The ocean water level will rise anywhere from four feet to maybe twenty feet. How many of your favorite vacation spots would be under water? Want to see the Eiffel Tower by canoe? Do any of you own beach houses? Kiss ’emgood-bye. And not two hundred years from now. Soon. Maybe within this lifetime.”

I swallowed and wished I had like anIcee or something. “We can’t reverse this disaster, even if we all pitched in now and did everything we could, which, face it, we’re not going to do. A small percentage of us will do stuff, and other people will ignore the problem and hope they’ll be dead before it gets really bad. But there are things we can do that would at least help. It would make a difference.

“The US could ratify the Kyoto treaty. Pretty much every country in the world, except us and Australia, has ratified it. How can we be so pigheaded? Wait- don’t answer that. I know our time here is limited.

“In general, we need to pay more attention to what we do, what we buy, who we buy it from. Use compact fluorescent bulbs. If every house in America replaced justone of its regularlightbulbs with a compact fluorescent, it would be like taking a million cars off the road. I mean, how hard is that? I can do the math, and I’ve never even gone to school!

“Look into other kinds of power. Windmills, water mills, solar power- every year corporations pay a jillion dollars in legal fees to avoid getting fined for pollution violations. What if they took a tiny percentage of that money and put it toward coming up with better energy sources?

“Right now America looks like a fatheaded, shortsighted, gas-guzzling, arrogant blowhard to the rest of the world. And Sweden looks all clean and tidy and progressive. I mean, where’s our sense of pride?

“Why can’twe be the progressive leaders, showing the rest of the world how to clean up its act? Why can’t we,the people, get more involved and push through legislation that will help clean up our air, land, and water? Why can’t we take government funds from stupid things like war and use them for programs that will develop better fuel sources?

“I’m just one kid, and not even a regular kid. But if I can come up with all this, why can’t you? Will you wait until the water is lapping at your feet?”

I stopped abruptly. To tell you the truth, I could have gone on and on. I could have kept them pinned in their chairs all day while I recited facts and figures. But I hoped that at least a little of what I had said would stick, and make them think.

That was all I could do to save the world.