The Final Warning (Maximum Ride 4)

Gozen’s eyes met mine as I got close, blue lasers into brown. “Help me,” he rumbled.

“I don’t think so,” I said, kicking at his arm. That was all it took — me kicking his arm in retaliation for his breaking Angel’s — and his hold on the UD collapsed and Gozen spun away, falling heavily downward, his face assuming the only expression he was capable of: horror.

I held on to the UD’s wheelchair. Fluid was leaking from his boxes; his human eyes in his human face were terrified.

“I control more than you could ever realize,” he gasped. “I can make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. I can protect you for the rest of your life. Just save me now.”

If he’d been a real person, I would have hesitated. I’m not a killer. I mean, not on purpose, anyway. But he was a machine, someone’s consciousness hooked up to a bio-mechanical body.

Plus, he was a complete and total jerk.

“You need to not be in this world,” I told him, and let go.

I didn’t watch, but I’m sure the boxes snapped grotesquely apart in the next instants, and that he whirled around in the storm in pieces for a while. I never saw any part of him again.

I negotiated my way out of the eye wall, glad to be free of the rain and hail again, and flew downward until I saw the flock a mile or so away. We needed to escape this hurricane before the next eye wall hit us. As I came to a landing, I could see them huddled around Total, who had collapsed, sobbing, on the ground. Angel had tears in her eyes as she stroked him with her good arm. Hi

s small black wings, still unusable but getting bigger every day, were fluttering pathetically.

I stood nearby, breathing hard, barely able to take in the fact that Gozen and the Uber-Director were no more. Poor Akila. Poor Total. I shook my head, feeling terrible for him.

Angel looked up. “Akila,” she said, frowning.

I nodded. “I know, sweetie. I’m so sorry.”

“No — Akila,” said Angel, pointing at the sky.

“Huh?” was all I had time to say before an eighty-pound Malamute plummeted out of the sky, smashing right into me and knocking me onto my not-nearly-padded-enough butt.

“Oh, God,” I wheezed, Akila’s body lying heavily on top of me. For the second or third time that day — it was hard to keep track — I had to slowly suck in breath, looking like a largemouth bass. “Akila!”

The others rushed over, and Fang pried open Akila’s eyelids and put his head on her side to listen for a heartbeat.

“She’s alive,” he said, just as the mud-spattered dog blinked weakly.

“Uh, can you get her off me?” I said, my voice muffled. I felt as though I’d been hit with a warm, sopping-wet, furry sack of cement.

“Akila!” Total cried, now that the shock was wearing off. “Akila! I thought we had lost you forever!” Eagerly he licked her face. I was thinking bleah, but Akila seemed to like it, turning her head so Total could get her other side.

And there we were. Together again.

71

WE MANAGED TO STAY inside the eye of the hurricane, moving with it until the storm had weakened enough for us to fly out. As we flew over the devastation, I realized at last the full implications of what global warming could mean for our world.

“You were right,” I said quietly to Fang as we flew. “Global warming is something we have to help stop.”

“What was that?” Fang said loudly, cupping one hand around his ear. “What did you say? Could you repeat that?”

I looked at him sourly. “So what now, hot stuff? I have to tell you, I’m not loving the idea of going back to Antarctica. That place was like living inside a big fridge.”

“I was thinking we’d get something to eat, then call Dr. Martinez,” he suggested.

I smiled at him, my first real smile in . . . I didn’t know how long. “An excellent notion.”

72

Washington DC