Angel (Maximum Ride 7)

Fang sighed. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. He’d underestimated how he’d react to her. Way underestimated.

Max flipped her light brown hair over one shoulder, and Fang noticed that she’d dyed a big magenta streak in part of it. Other than that, she looked exactly the same.

Exactly the same as the Max he’d left barely more than a week ago, back in Colorado. He wondered what she was doing now, what she’d think about his joining forces with… her. The other her, that is. Max the Clone. Max II.

“Hi, I’m Kate,” Kate said, extending her hand.

Max II looked at the hand, then shook it, a smile lifting one side of her mouth. Max’s mouth. The mouth Fang had kissed so many times. Blood was rushing through his head, and he needed to clear it, to take control of this situation again. Worse, he had the feeling that this Max knew exactly what he was thinking, could read his mind, and was somehow laughing at him.

“And this is Star,” Kate said, pointing. “And that’s… Ratchet.”

“Yo.” Ratchet had gotten up off the floor, but his hands were buried in the pockets of his hoodie. “Cool hair. Is it dyed in blood or something? ’Cause that would be hard-core.”

Max II snickered, unphased by his comment.

“And what’s your name?” Star asked politely, but in the twenty-four hours Fang had known her, he’d learned to recognize the tone of warning beneath her politeness.

“Her name is—” Fang began, but Max II interrupted him.

“Maya. They call me Maya.” She shoved her hands into her pockets and sat down on one of the beds, daring him to contradict her.

Fang blinked. So she had changed her name. He couldn’t blame her.

“You okay, dude?” Rachet elbowed Fang in the ribs. “You’re looking a little green around the gills.”

Fang nodded his head, avoiding Maya’s eyes. “I’m fine. We just—go back a long time.”

Ratchet eyed the tips of Maya’s wings sticking out of her coat and gave a low whistle. “Say no more, man. I get you. You guys were all Swan Lake, doing the lovebird dance, and now it’s a little Emotions on Ice.” He looked at Kate. “I go for the Wonder Woman type myself.”

Kate’s smooth Asian face flushed bright red, and Star looked disgusted. “Maybe he could use another knee to the jugular,” she suggested.

Maya laughed. “Fun little group you got here.”

Fang forced a smile and nodded. This had been a huge mistake.

BOOK TWO

WHAT’S SO FUNNY ’BOUT PEACE, LOVE, AND WORLD DESTRUCTION­?

24

“DO YOU SEE any guards?” I asked Dylan. Of course, I was still quietly freaking out about the second “coincidence,” but he didn’t need to know that…

“Not yet,” he said. “But they must be there. Are we thinking drop down onto the roof? Or land in the desert, then sneak up?”

“Roof,” I said, and he nodded. I hated it when he was agreeable.

Naturally, they weren’t going to let us just drop down onto the roof. My life could never be that easy. After all, this was a top-secret facility where new life-forms were being created. You think they’d let strangers plunk right down onto the roof?

No.

As soon as we were within three hundred feet, a door on the roof swung open, and figures all in black complete with ninja hoods, leaped out. They popped rifles up on their shoulders and took aim.

“Evasive maneuvers!” I yelled, but Dylan was already matching me zig for zag as we poured on the speed, blazing into the sky.

A bullet whistled past my ear. They were using long-distance sniper’s rifles.

“Watch it, Max!” Dylan grabbed my hand and yanked me to the left, just as another bullet streaked by, right where my head had been. I gaped at him, and he dropped my hand sheepishly. He shrugged. “I saw the guy aim.”