Fang (Maximum Ride 6)

I’m supposed to be brave, right? Prove it, Max. I forced myself to ask: “Are you, um, going back?”

“Nah,” he said, brushing hair out of my face. “Figured I’d rather hang with you.”

I felt hope light my face, and I didn’t try to hide it.

“You know how I feel,” said Fang, and he bent down, holding on to his branch, and kissed me. I felt like we were suspended in air, and having Fang here, knowing that he, at least, had chosen me, everything seemed a smidgen less agonizingly painful.

“So what should we do now?” I asked breathlessly when we broke away from each other. I’d been the leader so long — I was always the one who decided where we were going, what we were going to do. It felt freeing to be asking him to decide.

“Actually, I’m thinking … Vega

s,” he said. “Let’s go to Las Vegas.”

“Las Vegas?” I repeated stupidly.

“Yeah,” he said, trailing one finger down my cheek. I felt a coolness there, as if he’d hit a stray tear. “I figure — not too far away, full of freaks so we’ll blend, plenty of weird stuff to do …”

I smiled and breathed easier for the first time in hours. “Sounds perfect.”

48

“HAVE YOU BACKED UP the data?” The head of information finished scanning the shift tech’s notes for Area 8 and leaned over her shoulder to look at her computer screen. “Subject Twenty-two appears to be … abnormal. Off program. Let’s take a closer look at the images.”

The tech clicked her mouse quickly through the static scenes. The image on the screen changed from an empty living area with one lamp burning to a darkened kitchen area. The kitchen was a mess, with dirty plates and pots and glasses stacked on every surface. Food containers had been left open, unrefrigerated. The next image was a long, empty hallway with large windows on one side. After that was a bedroom.

“This is Subject Twenty-two, sleeping in Subject One’s bed, since she isn’t there,” the tech said. “During the day he’s mostly been practicing flying, but at night he’s been restless, not sleeping deeply. It could be that his circadian rhythms haven’t stabilized yet. His physio readings suggest that he’s anxious or unhappy.”

“Yes. His prime focus went away.”

“I see. Before he went to sleep, he walked around the room, examining everything, touching everything, even smelling things.”

“He’s imprinting,” said the head of information. “That’s good. But the notes indicate he’s made no attempt to follow Subject One. Can you confirm?”

“His flying skills are improving, but at this stage wouldn’t enable long-distance —”

“Irrelevant,” the head jumped in dismissively. “His programming should compel him to use any means available. Possibly a minor malfunction,” she speculated, dropping the tech’s notes on the desk. “But possibly a major one. Keep an especially close eye on that one’s stats.” She swiveled on her heel and in a flash was gone.

The tech bit her lip. The heads — as intimately familiar with the details of their constructions as they were — somehow all seemed to forget that the subjects were not, in fact, robots.

There was no malfunction. It was simply that the soul could not be programmed.

49

I WAS WORKING through Italian spumoni on a cone as Fang and I threaded our way amid the streaming crowds on the sidewalk. Those of you who haven’t been to Vegas — well, it’s bizarre in sort of a “let’s gussy up this car wreck” kind of way. It’s Disney World meets the seedy underbelly of America. But with more liquor and people smoking. A grown-up amusement park.

“I’m dying to go to a casino,” I confessed to Fang.

“We’ll have to throw ourselves three more birthday parties first,” he said. “It’s illegal — we’re underage.”

“So when has that ever stopped us?” I stared at him. “That’s just a way to make sure crazy kids don’t spend all their parents’ money. We’re not crazy, and we don’t have any parents’ money. Just our own hard-earned cash from all those CSM air shows we did.”

“Which has gotta be running low about now. You really want to risk losing it?”

“Don’t get all grown-up on me. This is, like, our vacation from being the grown-ups of the flock. And I want to go… .” I looked around at the spectacularly campy scenery.

“There,” Fang declared, pointing to a building in the shape of a … horse? It definitely topped the Bizarre-o-Meter of novelty architecture. “The Trojan Horse.”

Suddenly I was having second thoughts. “Wasn’t that, like, a giant sculpture that was full of enemy soldiers or something? Back in the old days?”