Max (Maximum Ride 5)

Captain Perry waited.

"Okay, fine," I said, heading toward the hatch. I hate it when a grown-up actually calls my bluff. Of course, this was pretty much the first time, so I don't have to deal with it too often.

"You know, we can get you some Valium or something," he offered, following me.

"No!" I gritted my teeth and began to climb down the ladder. "Why does everyone keep wanting to drug a child?"

Dr. Akana was waiting at the bottom of the ladder, and she clapped her hands as if organizing a party game. "Okay! We're going closer to where the attacks took place, then stop at about sixty meters deep. Then we'll go on a field trip. Let me put my stuff down, and I'll get ready." She headed off to the quarters she'd share with the female crew members.

I felt a surge of excitement. At last, we were on our way. I had to get into battle mode, make sure the others were ready for the traditional fight-to-the-death scenario. The navy wanted to make sure we could defend ourselves, but they'd never really seen us in action.

For the first time ever, I wondered if we had what it would take—Mr. Chu and his dumb-bots I was pretty sure we could handle. But sea monsters? Mountains that came out of the water to kill a hundred thousand fish? That was a completely different picture. I needed a plan B.

Frowning, I made my way into the belly of the ship to find Gazzy.

52

THERE'S ONLY ROOM for three," I told Angel, who was getting that mutinous look on her face.

"I should go, because I might hear something," she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

By "hear," I knew she meant telepathically pick up on something, like the fish thinking little bubbly fish thoughts ("Ooh! Plankton!") or whatever. "It's too dangerous," I said firmly, which was pretty much the lamest argument I could have come up with, given the sheer amount of completely death-defying stuff we did on a routine basis.

"Max." She looked at me, and I remembered that she could also put thoughts into people's heads.

"Don't make me wish I was wearing a foil hat," I warned her. "Look, the crewman has to go, because he knows how to drive the little sub, and Dr. Akana has to go because she knows what the heck we'll be looking at, and I have to go because (a) I'm the leader, right? And (b) it's my mom we're looking for, and (c) because I said so. You dig?"

I crossed my arms too and frowned down at her, something that's always worked in the past, but I doubted it would for much longer.

"Angel, dear, you're only six," Dr. Akana said kindly.

"Seven," Angel said obstinately.

"When did you turn seven? Oh, never mind," I said, getting exasperated. None of us knows when our actual birthdays are, so we each made up one for ourselves. Years ago I'd had to put my foot down about getting only one birthday a year, because Gazzy was trying to capitalize on presents. But, actually, we don't really keep track of them too well.

"I'm seven." Angel looked like a bulldozer wouldn't budge her.

"Fine, then, I'm—seventeen!" I said. "You're not going."

The little sub in question was a three-person thingy that looked kind of like a large pool float with a bubble on top. It could go down to one hundred meters (about three hundred feet—our Big Daddy sub could go down about one thousand meters), and I practically expected to see foot pedals sticking out the bottom.

The only reason I was willing to get in it was because of the Plexiglas dome on top that you could see out of. Our current sub had no windows. I repeat, no windows. Zero. Zip. Nada. That was because the space between the outer hull and the inner hull was full of water when the sub submerged and full of air when it surfaced. A window would have had to have been about a foot thick. Instead, the crew viewed the outside on little TV screens, from cameras located on the sub's exterior.

But now I had a chance to be in a big bubble and see what was going on. Anything would be better than being stuck in here.

I rubbed my hands together. "Let's do it."

Ten minutes later, a bottom hatch slowly opened, and we dropped down into the deep ocean. There wasn't much light, but because the water around Hawaii is so clear, it wasn't totally pitch dark, even at sixty meters deep.

Then the crewman turned on the headlights. It was amazing—our own underwater show. Above us was the enormous U.S.S. Minnesota. We were chugging out from under it, thank God. But the fish! There were fish everywhere, all sizes, moving slowly through the water.

"That's a yellowfin tuna," said Dr. Akana. "They can grow to more than seven feet long."

"What's that one?!" I said, pointing to a huge silver hubcap with orange fins.

"It's an opah," said the crewman. "They're good eatin.' "

"It's almost as big as me," I said.