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1
I KNOW HE’LL come for me. He has to come for me. Fang wouldn’t let me die here.
I’d been in the cage for days. I couldn’t remember eating. I couldn’t remember sleeping. I was disoriented from all the tests and the needles and the acrid disinfectant smell that had permeated my entire childhood… growing up in a lab, as an experiment. And here I was again, disoriented but still capable of a blinding rage.
Fang hadn’t come for me. I would have to save myself this time.
“You! Get back!” The lab assistant’s wooden billy club smashed against the door of the Great Dane–sized dog crate I was being held in every time I peered out through the front. With each strike, the door’s hinges sustained more damage. Right according to plan.
Steeling my nerves, I again carefully pushed my fingers out through the bars of the crate and pressed my face against it. Timing was key: if I didn’t pull back fast enough, the gorilla-like lab tech could easily crush my fingers or break my nose.
“I said, get back!” he repeated. Smash! A split-second after the club hit the weakened hinges, I kicked the door with every ounce of strength I had left.
“Hey!” The lab tech’s startled yell was cut short as I shot out of the crate, a rush of seriously ticked-off mutant freak, and launched a roundhouse kick to his head. I spun again, leaping onto a table to assess my adversary.
Already a piercing klaxon was splitting the air. Shouts and pounding footsteps from the hallway added to the chaos.
I grabbed on to a pipe on a low section of the ceiling, swung forward, and slammed my feet into a white-lab-coated chest. The bully sank to his knees, unable to draw breath. This was the perfect time for me to run to the end of the table, jump off, and spread my wings.
That’s where the “mutant freak” part comes in.
As hands reached for my bare feet, I shot upward, flying toward a small window high in the wall, then veered off path when a familiar dark shadow suddenly loomed.
Fang!
He was on the roof outside, watching through the window. My right-wing man! I knew he’d come. He had my back, like a thousand times before. He would always have my back, and I would always have his. With relief, I readied myself to crash through the glass.
The room below me was now filled with shouting people. So long, suckers, I thought, as I aimed and got a flying start. I’d burst through quite a few windows in my fifteen-year life, and I knew it would hurt, but I also knew pain didn’t matter. Escaping mattered.
Wham! My right shoulder smashed against the glass, but it didn’t break. I bounced off it and dropped hard, like a brick. Time slowed. I heard the pop of a tranquilizer gun and felt a dart pinch my leg as I crashed to the ground.
Above me, Fang watched, expressionless.
In disbelief, I realized that he wasn’t here to help me after all; he wasn’t going to break through the window to save me. I writhed on the shiny linoleum floor, losing consciousness.
Fang didn’t have my back. Not this time.
I felt like I was I falling again. Instinct made me scramble to grab on to something, anything.
My fingers latched on to a small, hard branch. As I gasped for air, my eyes popped open, and I realized I was near the top of a tall pine tree—not in a dog crate, not back at the School. The late-morning sun bathed the Arizona mountains in rosy light. It had been a nightmare. Or, rather, a daymare.
I inhaled deeply, feeling the icy claws of adrenaline still in my veins. Cold sweat tickled my forehead and back as I tried to calm down.
It had just been a bad dream. I was free. I was safe.
Except for the worst part of the dream, the one thing that had made everything else a thousand times worse, the one thing that truly terrified and paralyzed me…
Fang really was gone. He didn’t have my back. Not in the dream, not now, never again.
2
I HAD BEEN in Arizona a week. A week of being with my mom and my half sister, Ella. A week of having everyone in my flock of winged kids injury free, all at the same time. We had plenty of food, nice beds, and Gazzy had managed to win almost forty dollars from my mom in poker before she wised up. Even now, the tantalizing aroma of chocolate chip cookies (homemade, from scratch, not slice ’n’ bake wannabes) wafted out an open window and drifted up to me, perched here atop a huge Apache pine, some ninety feet off the ground.
Everyone was happy and healthy—except me. I mean, I was healthy. No bullet wounds, black eyes, or cracked ribs, for once. But happy? Not in this lifetime, baby.
A mere eight days ago, I’d been about as happy as a fifteen-year-old girl with wings could be. And then Fang, my best friend, my soul mate, my first love—I mean, my only love—took off without a word. He left me a freaking note. Might as well have cut off my wings while he was at it.
I mean, he decided we’d be better apart, you know? It wasn’t a joint decision. Like, if you’re gonna make a decision about me and my life for my own good without consulting me, I’d better be dying and unconscious, and you’d better be following carefully written instructions.
Anyway. After I had been lying in a fetal position on my bed for twenty-four hours, Nudge called my mom. So embarrassing. I’ve been shot and needed less help than I did now. So the flock I’ve taken care of since forever—Iggy (also fifteen), Nudge (twelve), Gazzy (nine, also called the Gasman, for unfortunate reasons I won’t go into here), and seven-year-old Angel—and I (my name is Maximum Ride, aka Max) had flown out here to Arizona. And now they were chillaxing—playing Cranium and baking cookies—and I was up a tree by myself, in too much pain to even cry.
Sorry to dump all this on you. You probably popped open this tome hoping to find some kick-butt battles, some pithy wisecracks, some unlikely but oh-so-possible end-of-the-world scenario, only to find me up a tree, wallowing in self-pity. I’m not good at self-pity. I have not done a lot of it. It’s not pretty, I know.
You gotta believe I wouldn’t be doing this if I could help it. The truth is, I’m hardly even myself anymore. Who is Max, if not part of “Max and Fang”? Every once in a while, I glanced down at the beautiful, old-fashioned promise ring that Fang had given me not long ago. I threw it away after Fang left, then pawed frantically through the trash until I found it again. Gazzy, watching me, had said, “Good thing you didn’t flush it.”
This week should have been one of the best weeks of my life. Instead, I would always remember it as a time of bleakne—
With no warning, a voice came from close behind me. “Boo!”
Oh, thank you, I thought, as I jumped and stifled a scream. Someone to hit.
3
I WHIRLED AROUND on my branch, muscles coiled to launch myself at my att
acker. That’s what I’m good at: Fighting. Evading capture. Outwitting bad guys ’n’ gals. I am not good at being heartbroken. But then you already knew that.
And what saw I, upon whirling? The Bane of My Existence, Part Deux. (Fang is Part Un.) Part Deux’s name is Dylan.
Instantly my eyes narrowed and my fists clenched. The hot, dry Arizona wind lifted my hair and rustled the pine needles all around us.
Dylan, on a branch not two feet from mine, gave me a mischievous grin. He’d sneaked up on me, and my hearing is exceptionally good. The only other person who could do that was Fa—
