School's Out- Forever (Maximum Ride 2)

Ari made another muffled sound against his sleeve, and then it all became too much. He felt himself morph full out into an Eraser, and his powerful jaws opened. Feeling his tears streaking through his fur, Ari stifled a sob and clamped his teeth down into his arm. He closed his eyes and hung on tight, making sure no sound escaped. He felt his teeth pierce his jacket, felt them scissor into his skin and muscle. He tasted blood, but he hung on.

Because actually, this felt better.

75

“I think that’s it. I am freaking amazing. We found it.” I peeped out from behind the yew shrub and looked across the street again. “No wonder you worship me.”

Clearly I had snapped out of my malaise of the previous night. Let’s keep those fourteen-year-old mutant-bird-kid hormone swings coming, eh?

Fang gave me a long-suffering and not very worshipful glance, then looked past me at the modest suburban brick house. It was dinky, old-fashioned, but, given how close it was to DC, probably worth almost half a million dollars. Note to self: Invest in DC real estate. Save up your allowance.

“Really? And that’s the church in the background?”

I nodded. “Yep. So what now?”

He looked at me. “You’re the leader.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, then grabbed his shoulder and marched him across the street with me. I rang the bell before my annoying common sense could kick in.

We waited, and I heard footsteps coming to the door. Then it opened, and Fang and I were staring at the woman who may or may not but really looked like she could have been Iggy’s mother.

“Yes?” she said, and she was—get this—drying her hands on a kitchen towel just like a mom. She was tall and slender, with very pale strawberry-blond hair, fair skin, and freckles. Her eyes were a light sky blue, like Iggy’s, except of course hers actually worked because they hadn’t been experimented on by mad scientists. Mad as in crazy, not as in anger-management classes.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Ma’am, we’re selling subscriptions to the Wall Street Journal,” Fang said with a straight face.

Her expression cleared. “Oh, no thanks. We already get the Post.”

“Okay then,” said Fang, and we turned and skedaddled right out of there.

She absolutely, positively, definitely might have been Iggy’s mom. So what now?

76

“Still smells kind of like explosives,” Iggy muttered to the Gasman.

The Gasman sniffed. “Yeah. I like that smell. Smells like excitement.”

“God knows we could use more of that,” Iggy said.

Gazzy’s footsteps were almost silent on the hard concrete floor, but Iggy could follow him with no effort. Even without Gazzy, Iggy could have found his way to the file room by memory. He bet he could even find his way back to the Institute if you dropped him into a subway tunnel in New York. It almost made up for being completely without any kind of freaking sight at all.

Yeah, right.

“Here we go.” Gazzy soundlessly opened the file room door, and Iggy heard the flick of the light switch. Now he got to stand around like a coatrack while Gazzy did all the work.

“She put those files someplace toward the front of the room,” he reminded the Gasman. “On the right side. Is there a metal cabinet?”

“They’re all metal,” said Gazzy, moving over. He opened one, riffled some pages, then closed it. “I don’t even know what I’m looking for. All the files look alike.”

“None of ’em are marked Top Secret in big black letters?”

“No.”

Iggy waited while the Gasman opened and riffled through and closed several more file drawers.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Gazzy said. “Huh. This is something. It’s a bunch of files lumped together with a rubber band. They’re a different color, and they look older, beat-up.”