Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports (Maximum Ride 3)

And your point is...? I thought.

You need the rest of the flock. You need more fighters on your side. Get them back.

I groaned to myself. Oh, just heck.

86

“We would be amazing spies,” Nudge whispered into my ear, “don’t you think so?”

The five of us were crawling silently through a ventilation duct, in search of a computer. So far we had passed another barracks, a cafeteria, bathrooms—I guess even perfect people have to “go” sometimes—and a couple of offices with workers in them.

We needed an empty room with a computer. And then, like, a bunch of hot food! And comfy beds! After what felt like miles of crawling on hard metal, we looked down into a room that was dimly lit by a computer screen saver.

As quietly as possible, we unscrewed the grate, then dropped one at a time down into the room, waiting for the blare of motion detectors. But it remained quiet.

“Okay, make this fast,” I told Nudge. “There might be silent alarms, hidden infrared cameras, whatever. We probably have about a minute.”

Nudge nodded and sat down in front of the computer. She put her hands on the keyboard and closed her eyes. Seconds ticked by, with me getting more and more nervous and twitchy.

Suddenly she opened her eyes, looked at the computer keyboard, and started to type.

In seconds she had cleared the computer screen and pulled up an e-mail program.

“I have no idea how she does that,” I whispered, and Total nodded.

“Okay,” said Nudge. “I’m connected.”

“Great job,” I said, my heart hammering, and not only because I was expecting to be caught any second. “Tell Fang to come to Lendeheim right away, with everybody. Tell him things are really, really bad.”

Nudge typed quickly.

“Tell him that the really evil stuff has started and that we have days, maybe hours, to throw a wrench in it.”

“Wrench starts with w,” said Total, reading over her shoulder.

“It doesn’t matter,” I hissed. “Just tell Fang to get his butt here, now!”

Nudge nodded and typed, then hit the Send button. And our message was off, hopefully to make its way to Fang’s e-mail account.

True, he got a katrillion messages a day, but I hoped his eye would be caught by the all-cap THIS IS FROM MAX. READ IT NOW!!!! in the subject line.

“Well,” I said, “that’s all we can do. We just have to hope it gets through.”

The computer screen blinked, and then the whitecoat we’d seen on TV earlier popped up, looking straight at us.

“Very good, Max,” she said, sending chills down my spine. “You got further than I thought you would. I should have given you more credit.”

Behind my back I made motions with my hands that meant, Up and out of here, now

!

“No, there’s no point in that,” said the woman. “Look up.”

So of course I looked up. The ceiling was absolutely covered with hovering, silent Flyboys, clinging like hairy bugs, their red eyes glowing.

“Oh, crap,” I said.

“How eloquent,” said the woman. And then, “Attack them!”