PART 1
NO PARENTS, NO SCHOOL, NO RULES
1
Sweeping, swooping, soaring, air-current thrill rides—there’s nothing better. For miles around, we were the only things in the infinite, wide-open, clear blue sky. You want an adrenaline rush? Try tucking your wings in, dive-bombing for about a mile straight down, then whoosh! Wings out, grab an air current like a pit bull, and hang on for the ride of your life. God, nothing is better, more fun, more exciting.
Okay, we were mutant freaks, we were on the lam, but man, flying—well, there’s a reason people always dream about it.
“Oh, my gosh!” the Gasman said excitedly. He pointed. “A UFO!”
I silently counted to ten. There was nothing where the Gasman had pointed. As usual. “That was funny the first fifty times, Gazzy,” I said. “It’s getting old.”
He cackled, several wingspans away from me. There’s nothing like an eight-year-old’s sense of humor.
“Max? How long till we get to DC?” asked Nudge, pulling up closer to me. She looked tired—we’d had one long, ugly day. Well, another long, ugly day in a whole series of long, ugly days. If I ever actually had a good, easy day, I’d probably freak out.
“Another hour? Hour and a half?” I guessed.
Nudge didn’t say anything. I cast a quick glance at the rest of my flock. Fang, Iggy, and I were holding steady, but we had mucho de stamina. I mean, the younger set also had stamina, especially compared to dinky little nonmutant humans. But even they gave out eventually.
Here’s the deal—for anybody new on this trip. There are six of us: Angel, who’s six; Gasman, age eight; Iggy, who’s fourteen, and blind; Nudge, eleven; Fang and me (Max), we’re fourteen too. We escaped from the lab where we were raised, were given wings and other assorted powers. They want us back—badly. But we’re not going back. Ever.
I shifted Total to my other arm, glad he didn’t weigh more than twenty pounds. He roused slightly, then draped himself across my arm and went back to sleep, the wind whistling through his black fur. Did I want a dog? No. Did I need a dog? Also no. We were six kids running for our lives, not knowing where our next meal was coming from. Could we afford to feed a dog? Wait for it—no.
“You okay?” Fang cruised up alongside me. His wings were dark and almost silent, like Fang himself.
“In what way?” I asked. I mean, there was the headache issue, the ch
ip issue, the Voice-in-my-head-constantly issue, my healing bullet wound. . . . “Can you be more specific?”
“Killing Ari.”
My breath froze in my throat. Only Fang could cut right to the heart of the matter like that. Only Fang knew me that well, and went that far.
When we’d been escaping from the Institute, in New York, Erasers and whitecoats had shown up, of course. God forbid we should make a clean getaway. Erasers, if you don’t know already, are wolflike creatures who have been chasing us constantly since we escaped from the lab, or School as we call it. One of the Erasers had been Ari. We’d fought, as we’d fought before, and then suddenly, with no warning, I was sitting on his chest, staring at his lifeless eyes, his broken neck bent at an awkward angle.
That was twenty-four hours ago.
“It was you or him,” Fang said calmly. “I’m glad you picked you.”
I let out a deep breath. Erasers simpled everything up: They had no qualms about killing, so you had to lose your squeamishness about it too. But Ari had been different. I’d recognized him, remembered him as a little kid back at the School. I knew him.
Plus, there was that last, awful bellow from Ari’s father, Jeb, echoing after me again and again as I flew through the tunnels:
“You killed your own brother!”
2
Of course, Jeb was a lying, cheating manipulator, so he might have just been yanking my chain. But his anguish after he’d discovered his dead son had sounded real.
And even though I loathed and despised Jeb, I still felt as though I had an anvil on my chest.
You had to do it, Max. You’re still working toward the greater good. And nothing can interfere with that. Nothing can interfere with your mission to save the world.
I took another deep breath through clenched jaws. Geez, Voice. Next you’ll be telling me that to make an omelet, I have to break a few eggs.
I sighed. Yes, I have a Voice inside my head, I mean, another one besides my own. I’m pretty sure that if you look up the word nuts in the dictionary, you’ll find my picture. Just another fun feature of my mutant-bird-kid-freak package.
“Do you want me to take him?” Angel asked, gesturing toward the dog in my arms.
“No, that’s okay,” I said. Total weighed almost half of what Angel weighed—I didn’t know how she’d carried him as far as she had. “I know,” I said, brightening. “Fang will take him.”
I gave my wings an extra beat and surged up over Fang, our wings sweeping in rhythm. “Here,” I said, lowering Total. “Have a dog.” Vaguely Scottie-ish in size and looks, Total wiggled a bit, then quickly settled into Fang’s arms. He gave Fang a little lick, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from snickering at Fang’s expression.
I sped up a bit, flying out in front of the flock, feeling an excitement overshadowing my fatigue and the dark weight of what had happened. We were headed to new territory—and we might even find our parents this time. We had escaped the Erasers and the whitecoats—our former “keepers”—again. We were all together and no one was badly wounded. For this brief moment, I felt free and strong, as if I was starting fresh, all over again. We would find our parents—I could feel it.
I was feeling . . . I paused, trying to name this sensation.
I felt kind of optimistic. Despite everything.
Optimism is overrated, Max, said the Voice. It’s better to face reality head-on.
I wondered if the Voice could see me rolling my eyes, from the inside.
3
It had gotten dark hours ago. He should have heard by now. The fearsome Eraser paced around the small clearing, and then suddenly the static in his ear made him wince. He pressed the earpiece of his receiver and listened.
What he heard made him smile, despite feeling like crap, despite having a rage so fierce it felt as if it were going to burn him up from the inside out.
One of his men saw the expression on his face and motioned the others to be quiet. He nodded, said “Got it” into his mouthpiece, and tapped off his transmitter.
He looked over at his troop. “We got our coordinates,” he said. He tried to resist rubbing his hands together in glee but couldn’t. “They’re headed south-southwest and passed Philadelphia thirty minutes ago. The Director was right—they’re going to Washington DC.”
“How solid is this info?” one of his Erasers asked.
“From the horse’s mouth,” he said, starting to check his equipment. He rolled his shoulders, grimacing, then popped a pain pill.
“Which horse?” asked another Eraser, standing up and fastening a night-vision monocle over one eye.