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I unclipped my cell phone from my belt and handed it to her so she could place a rescue call to her colleagues.
Nudge and Iggy were still bleeding as we waited for help from my mom’s office to arrive. I pushed Nudge’s hair back from her dusty, scraped face, still shaky from how close to the end we had all come. Gazzy was exhausted, with pulled muscles and banged-up hands and knees. My chest and back muscles ached, and that sliced tip of my wing was sore—but just a little bit. I’d gotten off easy.
“So… no one saw what happened to the good doctor?” I asked.
Everyone shook their heads no. I turned to Dylan.
“And where were you, newbie? Why didn’t you jump out of the plane right after Jeb? Was Dr. Hans still in the plane when you jumped?”
Dylan grimaced and nodded. He walked stiffly as if in pain, but everything seemed to be functioning. His face and lip were already scabbing up, since he’d been engineered with the ability to heal himself. “The plane spiraled back and headed into the wires again. If I’d jumped out, I’d have been sliced into deli strips. I yelled at Dr. Hans to jump, but he pushed me out first. Last I knew, he was right behind me, but then he never jumped. I banged my face on the way out.”
“Klutz.” I snickered, then felt a tiny bit guilty. Dylan had helped everyone else out of the doomed plane, at his own peril. I had to give him props, but how annoying of him to be a hero when I was trying so hard to dislike him. It was downright selfish.
“I want to make sure you don’t have a concussion, Dylan,” my mom said wanly.
Dylan shook his head. “Sorry—I’m not going back with you. I’ve gotta find what’s left of Hans and the plane. Thought I would do some recon after you guys head off.”
“I’d feel better if you had an x-ray,” my mom protested.
“Later,” Dylan promised. “There’s no way I can let this go. I have to find Hans, if only so we can send his body back to Germany.”
I understood where he was coming from. There were so many ifs, buts, and maybes in our topsy-turvy world, it was comforting to nail down as many details as possible. Even if that meant finding his unquestionably evil creator in pieces.
“Max, you’ll come with us, won’t you?” my mom said, her face drawn with pain.
I wanted to say, “Yeah, of course,” but the words got stuck in my throat. I paused for a moment, thinking, then had a stunning realization—and this is just between you, me, and this cactus here. I didn’t want to let Dylan go off on his own.
And it wasn’t even for a good reason, like I didn’t trust him and wanted to make sure he wasn’t in league with Hans.
It was just that I didn’t want to leave him. Something in me wanted to stay with him.
I had two follow-up thoughts: Why??? And Ew!!!
Dylan had said that he’d been programmed to want to be with me. Was it possible that I’d somehow been programmed for him? Nah, there was no way, not after what Fang and I had meant to each other.
My face must have shown my confusion, because my mom said, “What is it? Are you hurt?”
“I think I’ll go with… Dylan,” I heard myself say. I felt like a traitor, leaving my injured flock. But they had my mom—and even Jeb, as long as he didn’t turn into a backstabbing weasel.
When I looked at Dylan, I saw surprise on his face and then a rush of pleasure, and I felt… good.
19
“WE’LL BE OKAY,” Angel said to me, as my mom’s office manager climbed back into the front seat of the van. “You do what you need to do.” I got the embarrassing feeling that Angel wasn’t just talking about finding Hansy. Then my injured flock was driving across the bare land, and it was Dylan and me, alone, as the trail of dust kicked up by their departure gradually settled and the van disappeared from view.
Now that we were alone, I was self-conscious and cranky again. Why had I wanted to stay? If I had been programmed to want to be with Dylan and only Dylan, heads were gonna roll, I promise you that.
“So,” Dylan said calmly. “I’m thinking the plane probably went down a mile or so to the southwest of here. At least, that was the direction it was heading when I left it.”
“That makes sense.” I nodded, relieved he wasn’t trying to convince me to run off with him to find a cozy little nest for two.
“So let’s do this thing,” he said, and made a running takeoff that was beautiful to see. I taught him how to do that only weeks ago. It was amazing how far his skills had advanced since then. Taller and more sturdily built than Fang, Dylan soared powerfully into the sky. The sunlight glinted off his hair, and his feathers shimmered. His wings were a little shorter than Fang’s but broader—more like a hawk’s—wings built for pow
er and lift. The rest of us had wings that were narrower and more angled, designed for speed. For the first time, it occurred to me that the mad scientists who created us might have used different avian DNA to make each of us.
I had never thought of that before. I had sort of assumed that they’d had one vial of avian DNA and had gone around with an eyedropper, plopping it into our test tubes. The idea that they might have paired us with birds having different characteristics amazed me. So far, none of us seemed to have flamingo as part of our makeup, or penguin. There’s always something to be thankful for.
“Are you coming or what?” Dylan shouted to me. He’d been circling, waiting for me while I took a quick ride on my train of thought.
