Nevermore: The Final Maximum Ride Adventure (Maximum Ride 8)

“I can’t, sweetie,” I said to Angel. “I’m tired of running from the unknown. If this threat is real, I’m going to face it, whatever it is, with the rest of the world.” I looked at Fang, standing next to her. I’m sorry, I mouthed, my heart breaking.

But Fang walked out to the limb and took my hand. He brought it to his lips and, without taking his smoldering, coal-black eyes from my face, said, “I’m with Max.”

“Fang, no, you can’t,” I said. If this really was it, the end of the world, I couldn’t ask this of him.

“Yes, I can. We’ll fly back to face 99%,” he said, nodding at me.

r /> I stared at Fang for a long moment. It felt like we were one person.

“I’m with you,” he repeated solemnly.

“But it’s not them!” Angel shrieked from the ledge. “Aren’t you listening? All the preparation Dr. Martinez and Pierpont and Jeb and all the other whitecoats did, poking and prodding and testing us, shooting us up with God knows what to make us immune—it was all totally pointless! It’s not coming from 99%. It’s coming from the sky.”

Fang shrugged. “Then we’ll face the thing in the sky. Whatever it is, we’ll face it together.” He gave my hand a squeeze, and tears streamed down my face.

“You’ll die here!” Angel cried. “You’ll both die, falling, just like what I saw.”

I looked down at her, not sure how to explain myself. “Angel, I was supposed to save the world,” I said quietly. I paused for a moment, realizing the gravity of that statement, and then stood up straighter, suddenly more sure of myself than I’d ever been. “I was supposed to save the whole world—not just the ‘special’ ones, not just the ones who have the protection of some multibillionaire. So if the rest of the world has to die, I have to go down with them.”

I looked out across the row of abandoned tree houses with the pristine beaches in the background.

So long, paradise. It was nice knowing you.

Fang and I snapped out our wings and prepared for takeoff.

“Max!” Angel shouted. “Listen to me. You have to. I’m your Voice!”

83

I COULDN’T HELP but gasp. Then I quickly regrouped. I retracted my wings and shot her a supremely annoyed look. “You’re not serious,” I managed to say.

“You always listen to your Voice, right?” Angel said, hovering in front of us, her white wings outspread. “So please, please, listen this time.”

“Are you really going to do this right now?” I growled. “Come on. I think we’ve all grown out of playing games at this point, Angel. You especially.”

“I’m not playing games. It’s me. It always has been.”

“Let’s just go, Max,” Fang said, his fingers brushing mine. “You know what she’s doing.”

“I’ve always been your Voice,” Angel insisted. I’m sure my face positively dripped with skepticism—I’m not exactly good at hiding such things—but she started counting on her fingers. “Before you found your mom, way back when we were looking for the Institute, your Voice guided you into the sewers with a riddle, right? Something about rainbows?” She cocked an eyebrow.

There’s a pot of gold under every rainbow, Max.

Angel laughed, and it sounded creepy, almost disembodied. “I definitely had more fun with it, in the beginning, being inside your head.” Her eyes darkened, and I looked at Fang uneasily. “Then it got more serious. When you first killed Ari, the Voice told you that you had to do it, didn’t it?”

I winced, thinking of the day I’d murdered my half brother. The first time, when he had really felt like family. I was speechless. We didn’t talk about that day.

Why was she doing this?

“That was me, too. I could feel your anguish, Max. And I knew he’d come back anyway, again and again, worse every time.”

“Angel.” Fang’s voice was hard, protective. “That’s enough.”

But she went on.

“I was the one who told you that you had a greater mission in the first place. This is that mission: leading the new society after the apocalypse.”

The Voice had said all of those things, true. And, true, no one knew about them but me. But Angel could read minds. Of course she could know everything the Voice had ever said to me. She was manipulating me.