“You’re right,” he said, standing. “He’s dead. What’d you do to him?”
“Nothing. I was whaling on him, but it didn’t do squat. Then he went down like a ton of bricks.”
The crowd thickened and moved a bit closer as the rest of the flock raced up. Angel leaped into my arms and burst into tears. I held her tight and shushed her, telling her it was all right, I was safe.
Fang flipped the Eraser’s collar back, just for a second. We both saw the tattoo on the back of his neck: 11-00-07.
Just then, a cop car pulled up, lights flashing, siren wailing.
We started to fade into the background, edging away through the crowd.
“Crazy drug addict!” Fang said loudly.
Then we strode quickly, turning the first corner we came to. I put Angel down and she trotted next to me, keeping up, sniffling. I held her hand tight and gave her a reassuring smile, but actually I was shaking inside. That had been so freaking close.
We had to find the Institute and get the heck out of here—back to the desert. Somewhere they couldn’t ever find us. It was late, though. We were almost to the park, where we planned to sleep. In the street beside us, cars and taxis passed, unaware of the high drama that had just taken place.
“So he was five years old,” Fang said quietly.
I nodded. “Made in November, year 2000, number seven of a batch. They’re not lasting too long, are they?” How much longer would we last? All of us? Any of us?
I took a deep breath and looked around. My eye was caught by a taxi with one of those flashing-red-dot signs on top that advertise Joe’s Famous Pizza, or a cleaning service, or a restaurant. This one had the words racing across its face: “Every journey begins with one step.”
It was like a taxi-fortune cookie. Every journey, one step. One step. I blinked.
I stopped where I was and looked down, where my feet were taking one step at a time on this long, bizarre journey.
Then I noticed a stunted, depressed tree set into a hole in the sidewalk. A metal grate protected its roots from being trampled. Barely visible between the bars of the grate was a plastic card. I picked it up, hoping I wouldn’t see a burning fuse attached to it.
It wa
s a bank card, the kind you can use at an ATM. It had my name on it: Maximum Ride. I tugged on Fang’s sleeve, wordlessly showed him the card. His eyes widened a tiny bit, so I knew he was astonished.
And voilà, my ol’ pal the Voice popped up just then: You can use it if you can figure out the password.
I looked up, but the mystic taxi was long gone.
“I can use it if I can figure out the password,” I told Fang.
He nodded. “Okay.”
Swallowing, I tucked the card into my pocket.
“Let’s just get into the park,” I said. “Nice, safe Central Park.”
95
“How can the Voice know where I am and what I can see?” I whispered to Fang. All six of us had settled onto the wide, welcoming branches of an enormous oak tree in Central Park. Almost forty feet in the air, we could talk softly with no one hearing us.
Unless the tree was wired.
Believe me, I had lost my ability to be surprised by stuff like that.
“It’s inside you,” Fang answered, settling back against the tree’s trunk. “It’s wherever you are. If it’s tapped into any of your senses, it knows where you are and what you’re doing.”
Oh, no, I thought, my spirits sinking. I hadn’t considered that. Did that mean nothing I did was ever private anymore?
“Even in the bathroom?” The Gasman’s eyes widened with surprise and amusement. Nudge suppressed a grin as I gave Gazzy a narrow-eyed glare. Angel was smoothing Celeste’s gown and neatening the bear’s fur.