Please be okay, Angel. We’re coming.
51
IT WAS THE beginning of the end, but not the end that Angel expected.
When she awoke, her lungs were screaming. She thought she saw a blurry flash, and then the image of a giant, belching fireball exploding behind her damaged eyes, and she cried out in terror.
Another vision of the apocalypse. It had to be. There was nothing else that sent hot panic surging through her like that. The very essence of chaos, fire and brimstone. The violent sound of the earth being savagely reclaimed for nature.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this, Angel thought. When the end comes, I’m supposed to be with Max. With my flock. When we die, we will be together.
She had just sucked in a ragged, hot breath of stinking smoke when she realized she was still in the lab, clamped to the table, her limbs splayed out as if she were a butterfly on display. For a fleeting second the surrounding madness was drowned out by the deafeningly quiet memory of the whisper-sound of her feathers drifting to the lab floor, the endless flow of tears running down her face. After that, she’d passed out.
Now she coughed weakly into her shoulder, but she couldn’t seem to take in enough oxygen as she choked on the smoke that was forcing itself under the door and into the room where she lay, alone.
Outside the door she heard muffled shouts and frantic footsteps.
“It’s time!” Angel was able to make out a woman’s voice yelling. “It’s really happening!”
Somewhere an alarm was triggered, and the high, plaintive cry drowned out much of the chaos. The door of the lab burst open then, and someone was banging through cupboards while someone else rifled through papers and clanged metal objects around.
They were ignoring Angel completely.
“Help,” she croaked. “Dr. Martinez?”
“Take everything!” a voice Angel didn’t recognize commanded to someone else. “The 99% Plan is in effect!”
For the first time since the operation, Angel became dimly aware of being able to see movement, but she didn’t have time to wonder about what was happening to her eyesight. She was wired to survive, and focused on trying to decipher who was in the room with her, and what they were doing. She fumbled wildly, trying to figure out how she might unlock her clamps, anything to free herself. But Angel could only make out blurred fractions of light, movements masked in smoke.
“Help,” she said again, coughing.
But no one answered, and the footsteps were already fading away. And then, over the wail of the alarm, she couldn’t hear any more voices. Beyond the wall of smoke, she couldn’t breathe.
No! her brain shouted, rebelling against the inevitable. No, I will not die like this, alone in smoky darkness. Not after the hell I have been through.
She began to fight then, really fight, even though every single muscle and bone in her body ached.
“You can’t leave me here!” Angel screeched with fury and despair to the empty walls around her. “I’m human, do you hear me? It hurts!”
She sobbed as she thrashed against the clamps and felt the cords digging into her flesh. But no matter how hard she struggled, she was trapped.
Smoke filled Angel’s lungs and she hacked wildly, gasping. The sound of the alarm seemed to ricochet around her brain.
It’s over, she thought with a sense of crushing defeat. Images of a giant, unstoppable wave gathering speed tormented her as she started to lose consciousness. For once, the freaks were right: It’s the end.
Book Three
THE END
52
“HOW MUCH LONGER?” Gazzy asked breathlessly, catching a small updraft and banking left till he was flying next to me. He was grinning, but his face was lined with strain, and he looked more determined than I’d ever seen him.
“Just a little bit more,” I said. Less than five hours after leaving Oregon, we had begun to near the facility, which, according to our source, was in Death Valley—so close to the School that Jeb had taken us from that I almost had a memory-induced panic attack.
“Days? Hours? Minutes?” Gazzy pressed.
“In fifteen minutes we should be within a mile radius. Then we find the place, touch down, do some recon.”