Again.
She was too exhausted to struggle. What was the point? They would find a way to make her cooperate. She had no more tears left, so she lay dry-eyed as her arms and legs were clamped to the sides of the table.
“This is for your own good,” someone told her—a whitecoat whose voice she didn’t recognize. “We need to make sure there’s no way you can escape these tests.”
Angel’s heart clenched. More tests. What could they possibly do now? Hadn’t they already taken samples of skin, bone, blood, and feathers? How could they not know every square inch of her, down to the cellular level?
Another pair of cold metal forceps moved along her shoulder blades. They reached under her back, then forcibly unfurled her wings, pulling them out from beneath her. Her wings, too, were clamped to the operating table.
She tried to fight the nausea, but felt bile rising in her throat.
They’d never done this before. Never.
A whole new level of fear streaked through Angel’s body. She realized what was coming right before it actually happened.
Small snipping noises filtered into her brain, followed by a pinching sensation at her primary feathers.
“Done,” the whitecoat said. “Good little mutant.” He left the lab, his footsteps fading away as the door closed, leaving Angel clamped to the operating table. She remained silent the entire time, mute with shock and horror.
They’d clipped her wings.
41
EVERYTHING IS ABOUT to change, the Voice said. Prepare yourselves.
Every single member of the flock heard it.
Your task is to record what happens.
Nudge yelped and dropped the bottle of glue, leaving a glittery blue stain on her scrapbook.
“What—” she began, but was interrupted by the Voice.
Write, blog, take videos on a cell phone—it doesn’t matter. Just make sure you record everything, down to the last detail. Everything. You have to record it all—for the future.
A Voice in her head. Another huge clue that she was a freak. Nudge wanted to cry, wanted to scream at the Voice to leave her alone, to let her at least pretend to be kind of normal! Nudge clenched her jaw and determinedly went back to making her scrapbook of normal, wingless girls.
Nudge, this is about the future. In the future, you will be normal. In the future, you mi
ght even get sick of feeling average. But right now, the world needs you. The Voice sounded unusually gentle. This task is the most important thing you will ever do for humankind. So get up, grab your phone, and start keeping a log—for the future.
Nudge hesitated. This felt really urgent. She didn’t want any part of this. But she knew one thing: Max never went against the Voice. Nudge sighed, her shoulders slumping. There would be no normalcy today. “Okay,” Nudge said, defeated. “Okay.”
Don’t let Max out of your sight.
Iggy and the Gasman, in separate rooms, both sat up, listening. The Voice. They’d heard it only once or twice before. They were hearing it now. Like before, it seemed important, vital, that they do what it said.
You must protect Max at any cost—even your own lives, the Voice said. She must survive to lead. The calm is over. The storm is on the way, and the skies will break open with its force. Do you understand?
Not really, Gazzy thought, peering outside at the blameless blue sky. No menacing dark clouds, no swarms of locusts, no angry mobs. But he knew the Voice was right about one thing—he needed Max as a leader, and if her life was in danger, he was absolutely willing to protect her from weather or whitecoats or whatever else came along.
Gazzy stood up, ready to go find her, then hesitated. Don’t let Max out of your sight. Did the Voice really mean never ever let her out of his sight, no matter what? Surely Max would need bathroom breaks? What had the Voice said? Protect her with his own life! Well, of course, and that sounded like they would definitely need explosives before too long. But…
In the kitchen, Iggy was holding a mixer blade as cake batter dripped, unnoticed, onto his shirt. He had to protect Max? Even at the cost of his own life? He cocked his head, listening intently. He could hear nothing out of the ordinary—no vehicles or choppers on their way, no one shouting alarms. Total wasn’t even barking, not that he usually did. But for some reason the Voice needed his help. Right in the middle of this cake.
“Okay. She’ll survive without my help—she’s too stubborn to die,” Iggy muttered. “But I’ll protect her anyway.”
Good.