Max (Maximum Ride 5)

Right. We'd be back to me telling everyone no.

And Fang. I didn't know what he was doing, kissing me and then flirting with Dr. Stupendous and then making hot, dark eyes at me.

It was enough to make a girl nuts or more nuts—

Pssshh!

It took several seconds for the pain neurons to fire all the way from my right wing to my befuddled brain. And since I was conditioned to try not to scream out in surprise or pain—it's a survival thing—I was still staring stupidly at the weirdly big hole even as I started to spiral awkwardly down to earth, way too fast.

I'd been shot. I was plummeting to the ground. And I couldn't stop.

12

FOR THOSE of you studying animal physiology, I'll confirm that there's a very good reason flying creatures always have two wings. One wing doesn't cut it.

By the time I'd processed what had happened, I was about ten seconds from a flat, crunchy death. I sent all available power into my unharmed wing and desperately tried to get some lift, managing to look like a dying loon, rising awkwardly a few feet, then sinking, all the while spiraling down like one of those copter toys.

This was it. After everything I'd ever been through, I was going to die suddenly, with no warning, and alone. I'm a tough kid, but I'll admit, I closed my eyes when I was about thirty feet from the asphalt of some parking lot.

I felt sorry for whoever would find me. I hoped the flock would know I was dead and not just missing, so they wouldn't have to look for me. I thought about everything I had left unsaid to virtually everyone in my life, and wondered whether that had been a good—

Boing!

"Aiiiieee!!!!"

Interestingly, though I'm silent as the grave when shot or snuck up on, I discovered that I squeal like a little girl when I'm facing imminent death and then find myself bouncing hard on a trampoline.

The impact jolted my hurt wing, making me wince and suck in a breath, and then I was bouncing again, not so high, and again. I pulled my injured wing in tight, feeling warm, sticky blood clotting my feathers.

A couple more bounces and I managed to stand up, looking around me wildly. There were about a hundred of the New Threat guys, standing around the trampoline, watching me bounce, as if I were a mouse and they were all cats, honing in on me with bright eyes.

"Mr. Chu wants to see you," one of them intoned in a telephone operator's static voice.

They tipped me off the trampoline and immediately surrounded me, eight deep, not taking any chances. I couldn't fly. There were too many of them for me to realistically break free. This is probably how most humans feel all the time.

It sucks.

13

I WAS PUSHED into the back of a truck, fenced in by so many armed guards that I couldn't see anything.

My family had no idea where I was.

My right wing had a big hole in it, and one of its bones was probably broken.

I was completely outnumbered, going who knew where, to meet my mysterious new enemy, "Mr. Chu."

I decided to take a nap.

"Excuse me, pardon me," I murmured, sinking to my knees. Many of the guards immediately hunched down next to me, waiting for the daring escape I'd make by, what, slithering out between their legs?

Instead, I pushed and shouldered and kneed these things away and curled up on my left side, keeping my injured wing carefully on top. It hurt like heck, a throbbing, burning pain that reminded me with every beat of my heart that I couldn't fly.

The guards didn't know what to make of this. I guessed they hadn't been programmed to shrug their shoulders or make a "Whatever" face.

They weren't Erasers. They weren't Flyboys. They weren't the increasingly advanced robot soldiers that the diabolical brains-on-a-stick criminal known as the Uber-Director had created.

Heck, I didn't know what they were. Just—killing machines with delicate heads and ankles. Kind of geeky. Machine geeks. Hey! M-Geeks.