Maximum Ride Forever (Maximum Ride 9)

I cut him off. “Your legacy is dead. Jeb is dead. He’ll never make another Horseman.”

“Dylan is my legacy,” the doctor countered. “A truly evolved specimen, despite some remaining glitches. He and the female mate I created for him will help repopulate the earth with a genetically ideal species. You were never worthy of him.”

The thing was… that last part was completely true.

My expression must have faltered, because the doctor smiled. “You’re really very ordinary, you know, Maximum Ride,” he said sympathetically. “Weak. And soon, you and your kind will die out, just like your boyfriend did.”

He tapped the screen on his wrist. I couldn’t see the image, but I could hear that it was the video Dylan had shown me. Even above the howling wind, I heard Fang’s screams.

Too. Far.

“Nothing’s dying out, you disgusting supremacist,” I snapped. My arms quivered with rage as I held him in front of me. I felt the heat rushing to my cheeks as I said the words:

“I’m pregnant.”

89

THE CONFESSION HUNG in the air between us, and I instantly wished I could snatch it back. I hadn’t told anyone—until that moment, I hadn’t fully admitted it to myself. But I couldn’t hide from it now. Saying it aloud made it real.

More than that—from the doctor’s expression, I knew it had power.

“It can’t be,” the doctor whispered, his face twisting in horror. “Fang is dead.”

I remembered when the doctor had kidnapped Fang. He’d told Dylan that Fang had to die because his invincible DNA posed too high a risk. I’d wondered why they didn’t kill him that day, and realized the doctor was too power-hungry to destroy the key to immortality.

Wordlessly, I switched my grip to one hand and unzipped my hoodie with the other. The wind whipped open the fabric, and Gunther-Hagen’s gaze traveled down to where the T-shirt underneath pulled taut against my stomach, revealing the smallest hint of a curve.

“It’s over,” he murmured.

“Oh, it’s just beginning,” I said.

And that’s when he pressed the screen on his arm again. “Reactor, engage,” he commanded.

I inhaled sharply, wincing as I waited for the explosion in the distance, praying that Dylan had managed to save as many kids as he could.

But there was no explosion, no far-off mushroom cloud that spelled death and destruction.

There was no beeping, either, or suggestion of a countdown, and I saw from Dr. G-H’s fury that it hadn’t worked. There was something wrong with the signal.

I didn’t know what had happened any more than Gunther-Hagen did, but I thought of Nudge’s hacking abilities, and Angel’s mind-reading, and Gazzy’s bomb knowledge, and I knew my flock had probably just saved my life for the thousandth time.

“What’s the matter, Hans? Is your final plan not working? I guess it doesn’t matter if you die now, after all.” My tone was biting, but my brain was flooded with such a surge of relief I felt like I was about to pass out.

I guess that’s why I was so unprepared for what happened next.

The old man lunged forward, gouging at my stomach with a silver pen. “That child is the virus that will plague the whole world!” Gunther-Hagen shrieked. “And I am the Remedy!”

“You’ve killed enough people already,” I snarled at him. “You don’t get to kill Fang’s child.”

Then, with all my strength, I flung him away from me, into the empty sky.

For a fraction of a second, he hung in the air, his white coat billowing around him, his eyes snapped open in surprise, his mouth frozen in a perfect O.

Then he fell.

I fluttered my wings, watching as the Remedy, the supreme terrorist of the world, plunged to the ground. I thought of Fang, how he must have grabbed at the air in the same panicked way.

Just before the body hit, I crossed my arms over my stomach and turned away.