The Final Warning (Maximum Ride 4)

“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 drag Akila 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 hard Brigid and the others had fought against the GoBots.

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 of Gazzy’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. The minibots 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 am Gozen,” the big thing said.

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

62

“THAT WOULD BE GYOZA,” 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?”

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

“Good luck with that,” I heard Iggy mutter.

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

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, Your Trollness,” I said, standing up. “We’re very concerned. We have appointments. 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 start lasering 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, so yay for that.