we're not alone

8/14/2019 We're Not Alone

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WE’RE NOT ALONEBy Channing Kimble-Brown

This story will mostly be in Max’s Perspective and is the sequel to Operation:

Rescue Max and starts about a month after Operation: Rescue Max ends.

PROLOGUE

Hey, Max here. This last month has been pretty low key and very vacation-like.

We spent most of it going on picnics, eating cookies, flying, pretty much doing all

the things we love. It was almost like being at our old house except we’re now

surrounded by humans. I loved it, but it feels like something big is about to happen.

I’m not if it’s good big or bad big but it’s going to be life altering.

At the moment, I was laying on the roof of the house with Fang watching the

rest of the flock fly around above us. His hand was in mine and I was just absorbing

the heat of the sun. It was pretty much just another perfect moment until somethingsuddenly hurtled across the sky and landed in a nearby tree. Fang and I jumped off

the roof and ran over to the strange creature’s landing sight. It was too big to be a

bird and didn’t appear to be hostile so we walked over to it to see what it was.

When we reached the woods she got up and brushed herself off. She then

walked up to us with a huge grin on her face. It appeared to be a child around 10

years old. She had straight, dark brown hair and seemed to be of the Hispanic

persuasion. She looked like she hadn’t bathed in weeks and had piercing green eyes

and was tall and thin. She seemed like your average everyday kid, except for the

fact that she also had wings.

CHAPTER 1

“Hi! My name is Kathleen but you can call me Kathy,” she said cheerily.

Me and Fang were still in shock but Fang recovered first and said “Hi Kathy, I’m

Fang and this is Max,” the rest of the flock walked over looking just as shocked as

we were “this is Iggy, Gasman, Angel, and Nudge.”

“I’m so glad I found you guys! I had heard of you, but I wasn’t sure if it was

true. I’m a human-avian hybrid like you.” Yeah, we kind of got that from the wings

on her back.

“Where did you come from? What are you doing here?” I asked finally

recovering from shock.“It’s a long story…”

“We’ve got time,” Then I realized that she looked tired and hungry “but first,

how about we get you some food and a shower?”

She looked at me like I was some sort of goddess and tackled me in a hug

almost knocking me down. After that we lead her back to the house and gave her

some food. Then while she took a shower I called a flock meeting.



2

“Angel, did you pick up any evil vibes from her?” I asked.

“No, she actually seemed really nice, I like her,” Angel said.

“I can’t believe there’s another mutant bird kid like us! Max, do you think

there’s more out there?” Nudge asked.

“I dunno sweety. It’s certainly possible.”

“What do you think she’s here for?” Gazzy asked.“No clue, won’t find out until she comes out and tells us,” I said.

So we waited for another 10 minutes and she came out of the bathroom with a

big smile on her face.

“Thank you so much, I’ve been flying for hours without a break,” Kathy said

with a yawn.

“So why exactly are you here Kathy?” I questioned.

“Well, the first thing you need to know is that there were actually 2 Schools, in

case something happened to one, the other one live on in secret. I was created in

the second Schoollocated in Washington State. They created us the same time they

created you, but when you escaped, they upped the security a bit. The experiments

were terrible and scientists just treated us like test subjects, existing only so they

could dissect us and inject stuff into us,” I know the feeling “they told us we would

never escape. About 3 months ago they started making clones of us. We had no

idea what was going on. They were extracting out DNA during their tests and are

trying to create an army of us, but the clones aren’t living very long. There are 4 of

us including me but I was the only one who managed to escape. We had heard

about other bird kids who had gotten to freedom but we weren’t sure if it was a

myth or not. I was the only one who believed you really existed. I came here to ask

you to help me free my friends and take down my School. I’m not sure what they’re

planning but it’s definitely not going to be good.”

There’s really another School? I thought we took down the whole operation! Iguess I shouldn’t be surprised that there was something hiding somewhere. Looks

like my vacation’s over.

“Sure we’ll help. We’re gonna need to know what we’re up against. Before we

start on any of that though, we’re all gonna need to get a good night’s sleep. You

can stay in Nudge’s room, she has two beds.”

“Thank you so much, you’re the best!” Kathy said as she hugged me again and

then followed Nudge to her bedroom. Iggy, Gazzy, and Angel followed suit and went

to their rooms to get ready for bed.

“So what do you think about Kathy?” Fang asked me.

“Well, I think she’s telling the truth, but we better keep an eye on her.”“Angel seems to trust her so I think we’re safe for now. Sounds like it’s time to

save the world again.”

“Yeah, it’s a never ending job. I just can’t believe there’s more out there.”

“Why not? Remember the mutants we met in New York?”

“Yeah. Good night.”

“Night.”



3

I went back to my bedroom thinking about everything Kathy told us. Could

there really be another School? Could I trust Kathy? And if so, would I be able to

bring myself to willingly go into another School? Well I guess I was going to find out

in the morning.

CHAPTER 2

I woke up this morning to the smell of pancakes and sausage. Mmmm, my

favorite. It was still pretty early so everyone was asleep except for me and my mom

so I decided to go down stairs and fill her in on our new visitor.

“Hey mom, we’ve got company,” I said.

“What kind?” she asked.

“Another bird kid.Her name is Kathy and she seems like a sweet kid.

Apparently there are 3 more out there being held captive at a second School and

we’re going to have to go save them. The whitecoats also seem to be scheming

again and plan on using mutant bird kid clones to do something diabolical so we’ll

also have to save the world again,” I said casually.

“Honey, couldn’t you call the government or something?” Mom said trying not

to look like she was scared.

“No, the higher ups just tend to make things worse. Besides, I already

promised Kathy we’d help.”

“I know, it just seems like a bit much to take on all by yourselves.”

“Mom, everything we’ve done seemed like “a bit much” but we’ve always been

able to handle it in the past.”

“Ok, but I’m still going to be worried about you and your friends. I also forgot totell you that the veterinarian company is expanding and they gave me a promotion.

I’m going to get a huge raise and I was thinking that I should buy a bigger house

because you kids need more space.”

Before I could respond Kathy and Nudge came into the kitchen. Kathy sat down

at the kitchen table and seemed to relax like she’d lived here her whole life. She

also appeared to be Nudge’s new best friend.

“So how old are you Kathy?” I asked.

“Somewhere around 10 or 11. I’m not really sure.”

“How old are your friends?” Nudge asked.

“Robby and I are both twins, Kelly is around 7 and Jim is about 4. He’s the oneI’m most worried about. Jim is barely more than a baby and the whitecoats don’t

really take care of us that well…”

Yeah, they really fell down in the child care department.

“Don’t worry we’ll save the rest of your flock.” I said trying to cheer her up.

The Nudge chimed in “We have to save people all the time. We’re real good at

it now. In fact, we spend most of our time recuing others. Like once we saved Angel

from the School, and once we…”



4

Man, once that girl gets started there’s no turning it off.

Soon Ella, Angel and the boys woke up and came down for breakfast. Kathy

seemed to fit right in and she was really starting to grow on me, even though I

wasn’t completely positive I could trust her.

Apparently Kathy had never had pancakes before and wolfed those things

down like nobody’s business. It kind of reminded me of how we were when we wentto our first fast food restaurant.

“Hey Kathy, if you like pancakes, wait till you taste them with maple syrup.”

Gazzy said while he drowned her pancakes with the syrup.

If I thought she devoured her food before, then this took it to a whole other

level. It was almost scary.

“Honey, why don’t you slow down, you don’t want to hurt yourself,” my mom

said.

“It’s just I’ve never had anything like them before, they’re so delicious!” Kathy

said.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door. Ella opened the door “Hey Jeb.”

“Hello Ella, what’s going on?” Jeb asked.

Right before I could say nothing Ella replied “There’s another bird kid! Her

name is Kathy and she came from a second School.”

Jeb looked very surprised. “I’d heard about a second School, but I didn’t think it

was actually true.”

“Yeah, we’re planning to bust my friends out and save the world!” Kathy said

enthusiastically.

“If it’s anything like what I heard, it’s not going to be that easy.”

Now curious I asked “What did you hear?”

“I heard that they’ve got new and improved flyboys crawling all over the place.

They have them standing guard around the entire perimeter. They also have trapsthat are triggered if you step in the wrong places to capture the test subjects if they

try to escape.”

Well that could definitely alter our plans of just barging in a little bit.

“Ok, right after breakfast we’re going to go to Washington so get ready. Kathy,

Nudge can share some stuff with you because you look about the same size. Gazzy,

Iggy, fill up on whatever explosives you can get your hands on.”

“Never leave home without them,” Iggy said.

“Angel, Fang, and Kathy go prepare backpacks with everything we need,” I

ordered.

“I have a spare backpack you can use for Kathy,” my mom said.“Thank you!” Kathy said.

“Nudge you come with me to the library and we can do a bit of research before

we start off. We’ll all meet here in an hour.”

“Ok, bye Kathy,” Nudge said.

“Bye Nudge,” Kathy said back.

And with that, everyone went off to complete the task I had assigned them.



5

-~-~-~-~-~-~-

As Nudge and I walked back to the house about an hour later we were trying to

figure out how to get more information.

“I can’t believe there’s nothing on the internet about them,” I said frustrated.

“Well, the first School didn’t have anything either so it makes sense,” Nudgesaid.

“But still! You should be able to find something. A map at the very least.”

“I really doubt that if they wanted to remain a secret they wouldn’t put a map

of their building on the internet for everyone to see.”

Before I could say something we reached the house. There were guns and

robot parts laying all over the yard. The side of the house had been shot through

with lasers and bullets. I looked around desperate to find my family.

“Report!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

“Here,” said Iggy, covered in bruises and cuts while getting up from the

ground.

“Here,” Angel said looking a lot like Iggy.

“Here” said Fang who was lying right next to Angel.

“Gazzy and I are here,” Kathy said from behind the house.

I went over to see what she was doing and found saw Gasman’s leg.

His leg looked like it was infected and was all red and puffy and a lot of blood

was running from it. The muscle seemed to have been ripped and covered in dirt. I

think he had passed out from the pain. It was the type of wound that you would

need to go to the hospital for and we didn’t have that kind of time. But if we didn’t

go, Gazzy would die.

CHAPTER 3

Kathy had some sort of glowing thing going on with her hands and the blood

stopped flowing, and the swelling went right down. She even seemed to be able to

fix the broken bone.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“It’s just an ability I have. I can heal any physical wound. I’ve been able to do it

ever since I could remember,” Kathy said.

This could be very useful.

“What else can you do Kathy?” Nudge asked.

“I can create force fields. I can also control fire. But I’m not very good atcontrolling it so I try to do that as little as possible. There has to already be fire in

the room.”

“That is so cool!” Gazzy said as he finally came into consciousness.

“Can you fight?” I asked.

“No,” She said.

“Looks like we’re gonna have to teach you then. But not right now, we’ll worry

about that on the way there.”



6

“Ok!”

“Good, now where are my mom and Ella?”

“Ella went to work with your mom,” Fang said.

“I’ll call them when we get there then. Gazzy, how do you feel?”

“I feel great!” Gazzy said.

“Ok, let’s head out,” I said.We took off one at a time. First Fang, then Iggy, then Angel, then Gazzy, then

Nudge, and then Kathy right before me so I could keep an eye on her.

A few hours later we flew across the border of Arizona and California. We were

pretty close to the ocean so we decided to go to the beach. I had mixed feelings

about this because I had some good memories and some bad memories at the

beach but it did provide a nice break from all the stress.

Fang and I sat in the sand with a picnic basket full of food that we bought at a

Wal-Mart we had passed on the way here. We were watching the kids play around in

the water when I saw Kathy just standing there, staring at the water.

“Sweety what’s wrong? Don’t you wanna swim with the others?”

“Uh, no thanks. I’m good standing right here.”

“Why?” Fang asked.

“Well, this is kinda embarrassing, but I can’t swim,” Kathy said with an abashed

look on her face.

“Hmm, how about Nudge teaches you how to swim? You’ll be swimming like

Michael Phelps in no time.”

Her entire face lit up as she nodded her head. She had this sort of natural glow

and she was just so adorable. I decided I really wanted to trust her. Why? Maybe

because she was just like the flock in so many ways, I don’t know. I just wasn’t sure

if the whitecoats were tracking her or using her to lure us into another trap, you can

never be too careful.I called Nudge over and asked her if she could teach Kathy to swim. Nudge

took Kathy into a more shallow area in the water and started her lessons.

I was thinking about Kathy whether I could trust Kathy, and whether we could

save her friends, and if we could take down the school.

It must have shown on my face because Fang suddenly asked “Thinking about

Kathy?”

“Yeah, that and our new mission. Nudge and I couldn’t find anything on the

computer. It’s also been a two months since I was in a real fight. What if I’ve lost my

touch?”

Fang thought this over the way he always does and naturally cut right to theheart of the matter.

“So you’re worried we’ll fail? Max, you have pretty much gotten through

everything they’ve thrown at you. Even death. After all that, this shouldn’t be too

hard. Besides, you’ve got help,” he said gesturing to the flock and Kathy.

“I’m still at a dilemma. I don’t know what to do about Kathy. Angel said she’s

telling the truth but what if the whitecoats are tracking her or something. I just don’t

have the heart to abandon her. I really think I’m becoming attached.”



7

Fang of course didn’t say so because he just wasn’t the emotional type but I

knew he felt the same way about Kathy from that look on his face.

“Easy, we go save her friends whether it’s a trap or not. If we ending up saving

the world, then, bonus.”

It’s amazing how just a few words could make my entire day. That was just one

of the many things I loved about Fang.Right then Angel, Kathy, and Nudge ran up to me with big goofy smiles on their

faces.

“Kathy has gills too!” Nudge said barely containing her excitement.

“And I can swim now!” Kathy said which surprised me because she had only

gotten in the water 20 minutes ago.

“And I’m hungry,” Angel said.

I called Gazzy and Iggy out of the water and we all sat down on the beach and

had our picnic lunch of roast beef sandwiches. After everyone had their fill we took

off flying north toward Oregon.

I decided we should take a moment and stop in Portland to get rested up since

it was practically on the border of Oregon and Washington. I also stopped because I

was secretly dreading having to go to a place where it rained almost every day. I’ve

seen enough water for one life time.

We found a nice park with some trees to sleep in. I had first watch because the

others seemed extremely tired after flying all day and also because just wanted to

enjoy the peace of just listening to the sound of the flock’s even breaths feeling at

one with nature.

Suddenly, while I was feeling at one with nature and all that I smelled smoke. I

was positive that we didn’t make a fire so I looked around. Everything seemed ok

until I looked over to see that the tree Kathy and Nudge were sleeping in was

aflame.CHAPTER 4

They had both woken up by now. Nudge had been in enough sensitive

situations to know not to scream because it would wake nearby people up but Kathy

had no such training and was screaming like a banshee.

Now the whole flock was awake and trying to figure out what to do when I just

jumped into the tree, grabbed both of them by the arm and flew them to a safe

distance where the rest of the flock was standing.

Nudge looked really scared but Kathy was sobbing.

“I’m so, so, so sorry! I didn’t mean to do it! It was an accident!” Kathy cried.“Kathy, calm down, now tell me, did you do that with your pyrokenisis?”

“This has never happened before!” she said through her tears.

“Honey, it’s ok, I think your powers are getting stronger but you’re safe now.

We’ll take care of you.” And you know what? I meant it too. I still wasn’t sure if we

were completely safe around her but when are we ever completely safe? She felt

like part of the flock now and I knew I would never forgive myself if I let anything

happen to her.



8

She gave me that angelic smile (from now I’d call the Kathy look) and I just had

to give her a hug.

I then said jokingly “Well, at least youcan set fires to the enemy in a fight if

they grabbed you or something. But on the other hand, you could burn to death in

your sleep.”

“You win some, you lose some,” she replied.After that Fang and I went to go see if our backpacks were still ok and turns out

we were lucky because we left them at the trunk of the tree so they didn’t get

damaged. As for the tree on the other hand, well, let me just say it has seen better

days.

We packed up our stuff and high-tailed it out of there before someone saw us.

It was about dawn as we flew into Washington State when I heard Kathy’s blood

curdling scream. I looked over and I saw her losing altitude really fast.

Without saying a word Fang and I shot down as fast as we could to try and

catch her before she resembled a pizza on the ground and the rest of the flock soon

got the memo and followed us down. I was close enough to see that she had been

shot in the back and had a look of absolute horror on her face.

I sped up and just when I was about to reach her a helicopter came out of

freaking nowhere and someone pulled her into it.

“KATHY!” I yelled.

She set the person on fire but they threw water on him and then doused her in

it.

Damn helicopters, nothing good ever comes of them, you never see nice old

ladies with fresh baked cookies in a helicopter.

Then Fang said, obviously sharing my mood said “Why can’t it ever just be a

simple rescue mission where everything goes according to plan?”

The rest of the flock caught up. We didn’t have to say anything because theyalready knew that Kathy was taken, I could see it on their faces.

Instead of wallowing in my sorrow I decided to continue with the plan and

rescue Kathy along with all her friends and the world.

“Ok everybody, we just need to revise the plan a little. Kathy’ll be ok.

Remember when Angel was kidnapped? Well this is just like that except the security

is better and I don’t plan on getting caught this time.”

Their faces all changed from gloomy to determined. My natural ability to cheer

them up in pretty much any situation was one of the reasons I was leader.

“Ok, the school must be somewhere in the area for them to have found us so

fast. We’re gonna have to search for it on the ground though because we don’t wantto get caught in the air.”

“If we steal another car, can I drive?” Iggy said.

“Sure, right after I become the queen of England. Then you can drive whenever

you want,” I said, “and we aren’t going to ‘steal’ the car, we’re going to ‘borrow’ it.”

“You mean ‘borrow’ as in take without permission or the intention of giving it

back?” Angel said reading my mind.



9

“Yeah, something like that,” I said not really paying attention while I tried to

figure out how to find the School. Then I had a brilliant I idea. I said “Let’s go to the

library, it’s been helpful so far and I haven’t had any horrible memories in a library

so let’s go.”

We found the nearest library and got on the first computer we saw. Nudge

immediately got to work looking for information on the school. We were there forabout an hour and right when I was about to say “I don’t think we’re gonna find

anything” Nudge said “I got something!”

“Really? What?” Gazzy asked.

“It says there’s a lab about 10 miles north of here. It researches ways to

enhance humans.”

“Sounds like the school,” I said. Well enhancing was one way to put it I guess.

“Print out the address Nudge, then map quest it, there isn’t a moment to lose!”

I said.

“On it,” Nudge replied.

After Nudge did that we left the library. We decided it wouldn’t be so bad to

borrow one more car so we found a minivan that didn’t seem to have anyone inside

so I hotwired the car and we were soon on our merry way.

Unlike last time we were in a car, we didn’t get pulled over by a cop although

Fang’s driving wasn’t any better than last time though. You know, I’m starting to

appreciate those underage driving laws a lot more.

Once we were 2 miles away from the place we got out of the car and decided

to walk from there. I didn’t want to take any chances because I was so over losing

members of my flock.

We had been walking for about 20 minutes and were less than a mile away

from our destination when I realized that we were surrounded by flyboys.

CHAPTER 5

There were about 50 of them and these flyboys seemed to be a lot stronger

than the last batch though, and more nimble. They also had wings that were

attached better and more like ours so this was going to be a pretty close fight.

Angel tried using her telepathy but it didn’t appear to be working so she

resorted to just fighting them the old fashioned way. Iggy and Gazzy either ran out

of bombs or didn’t think they should waste them on these guys. I really hoped that

the latter was true. Fang was lifting them up and slamming them into each other

while he was fighting them in hand-to-hand combat at the same time. Nudge triedto tear them apart like the robots they fought in South America but these guys were

put together really well and Nudge wasn’t that strong yet so she just settled on a

series of well placed punches and Kicks. Meanwhile I was busy trying to find a weak

spot on the new flyboys. We were outnumbered and couldn’t use any of our abilities

to help us so this fight was pretty much decided. But did I let that stop me from

fighting? No! That just made me fight harder.



10

Unfortunately that wasn’t enough because they eventually overpowered us

and soon we were all tied up and thrown into the back of a truck. Same-old, same-

old, I was used to it by now although I was extremely pissed that I hadn’t noticed

them before. I couldn’t believe that Iggy hadn’t heard them so they must have just

appeared out of thin air or something.

We’ve been through the whole kidnap procedure: capture, transport, contain,torture and escape, about 50 thousand times so it was nothing new.

It’s really sad how unimaginative bad guys could be when it came to food. Well,

everyone except for the director, the guy who fell apart in that hurricane. I wonder

what they’d give us this time.

I looked around the truck and I saw the rest of the flock also bound in ropes

with collars around their necks. Man, why is it that everyone seemed to have these

stupid collars! It’s not like they sell them at the dollar store.

They all looked annoyed but not scared exactly. It’s really sad how many times

we’ve been in this type of situation.

Then I said “Come one guys, cheer up. At least we have our health.” For the

moment.

“Yeah, wouldn’t wanna be sick during our first torture session. You always

wanna leave a good impression on your first day,” Iggy said sarcastically.

After that the truck stopped moving and we were all quiet, waiting for the

flyboys to usher us into our newly furnished dog crates. I’m almost positive that

they would be upgraded from uncomfortable to agonizing.

Instead, the doors opened and we were carried to a conference room. Honestly,

being tied to a chair in a conference room was wasn’t much better than being tied

up in the back of the truck. Nothing good has ever has ever happened in a

conference room and I doubted that that was about to change.

There was an oblong table in the room and some roley chairs. After a fewminutes of sitting in the chairs the tension soon became tedium. I mean, they take

the time to kidnap us, tie us up and then they make us wait for them? Talk about

rude.

Finally, after what seemed like forever , a tall, red-headed white lady in serious

need of a tan walked in wearing a gray business suit and sat at the opposite end of

the table. Following her was six of the new-and-improved flyboys. They were

carrying a small crate which brought me back to those wonderful days at the

School.

But instead of the crate I’m used to which had metal bars on it this new crate

was completely enclosed with metal all over it except for a small slit on the side. There was also a keypad for inputting the password I imagine.

“Can we move this along, we have an appointment later and we don’t want to

be late. You really shouldn’t keep your guests waiting, it’s extremely rude,” I said.

The lady looked at me surprised like a piece of furniture had just spoken to her.

“Well you’re just going to have to cancel. I don’t think you’ll be able to make

it,” The lady said coldly.



11

“Now the reason we brought you here is to use your DNA. We are creating an

army of human-avian hybrid clones. Unfortunately, none of them have become

quite as strong as the originals. We also can only extract a certain amount of DNA

from a subject before they die and we wouldn’t want to kill our most successful

hybrid species. Since we have extracted as much as we could from our current

subjects we needed more to expand our army. After our army is complete we shallsend some to every country all over the world and eliminate any who we believe

inadequate. The intelligent and the strong will be required to assist us in building up

our empire.”

So they were basically planning a holocaust with some slavery thrown in. In

school when the teacher asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?” she

must have said “I wanna be an evil dictator who either enslaves or kills everyone on

the face of the planet.”

“You are aware of the fact that people may not be too happy about having a

crazy person taking over the world,” I said.

“Are you aware of the fact that you have no right to insult me? You fate rests in

my hands and no one can help you now,” she said starting to turn red in the face.

“That may be true, but there are so many therapists out there that could help

you. They even have buildings dedicated to people like you called ‘mental asylums.’

” I countered.

The lady must have just given up on me because she turned around and

pushed some buttons on the crate behind her. Inside of it was Kathy! She looked

really pale and had bruises all over her. She looked at us with a really dazed

expression on her face, like the lights were on but nobody was home. It took all I

had not to try and jump up and yell out her name. Besides, even if I tried I wouldn’t

be able to because I was tied down. Instead I remained in my seat, acting like the

sight of Kathy in that state didn’t bother me at all. Then the lady said “Max, this is the future for you and your flock.”

CHAPTER 6

I was really scared, but not because the lady threatened us, I get threatened all

the time and think nothing of it. I was scared because they had Kathy but I was

going to act calm and cool so they wouldn’t know that.

Do you think Kathy’ll be ok? Angel asked in my mind.

Of course she will sweety. We’ll save her, just like we always do. I thought

back.“I’d love to take all the credit for capturing all of you but I must say Kathy did

some fabulous work. We told her that if she got you to come here that we’d set her

and her little friends free. We erased her memory of making the bargain because we

know about your little telepath. Made her think she actually escaped by herself to

get help from you.”

I swear, if she wasn’t so dignified and business –like she would have laughed

maniacally.



12

“No! Kathy would never do that!” I yelled. Well so much for calm and cool.

“How would you know? You’ve only known her for a few days,” the lady said.

Now that I think about it, I wouldn’t put it past them to manipulate her like this.

I was too broken hearted to respond so they just took us to our prison cells. You

know, we should collect tee-shirts from everywhere we’re captured that say “I was

held captive in ____ and all I got was this lousy tee-shirt.” We could probably set aworld record.

Our prison cell pretty much looked like every other cell I’ve been in. It had

concrete walls, steel doors, lack of furniture, the whole she-bang. They really went

all out.

Once we were inside they took the collars and ropes off of us.

“If you try to use your powers in here, they won’t work. This wall neutralizes

any exertion of power so there’s no hope of escape,” said henchman #1.

Well that was new.

“We will come to check on you in an hour,” henchman #2 said.

They left the room. Fang shot me a look that said “How the hell are we gonna

get out now?”

And I responded with a look that said “I haven’t the slightest idea but we’ll

figure out something.”

Fang didn’t look very reassured. He may have looked cool and collected to

everyone else but I could see that slight tightening around his eyes that said he was

worried.

We spent about an hour just sitting in the room waiting for something to

happen. I mean, it was just so boring! I almost would have wanted to take my

chances with the DNA removal to break the monotony. I’m just not very good at

sitting still and waiting for things to happen.

Just when I thought I would scream just to make something happen I heardsomething at the door. Suddenly, it seemed like something was slicing through the

door, like a laser.

The flock and I all tensed up to get ready for a fight but when the door fell

down, I saw Kathy, a boy who liked like a male version of Kathy, a little Asian girl

with short really dark brown hair, and a boy around the age of 4 who had shocking

red hair.

“Are you guys ok?” Kathy asked.

“We are now!” Nudge cried as she ran over to hug her.

Quickly recovering from shock I asked “How did you do that?”

“I discovered if I concentrate on one specific spot I can create a laser with myfinger. I haven’t quite got the hang of it yet, but I'm good enough to saw through

doors, that’s how I got us out of our crates. Then we found our way here to bust you

out,” Kathy replied with a mischievous smile on her face. I was kind of surprised

that she was even capable of plotting like that.

He must have read my expression because her twin said “You may think that

she’s all rainbows and sunshine but she’s the real troublemaker of the group.”



13

“I forgot to introduce you! This is Robby,” Kathy said gesturing to her twin,

“this is Kelly,” she said gesturing to the young girl, “and this is Jim,” she said

pointing to the little boy.

“How did you sneak out?” I asked curious.

“I have the ability dull all the senses so I just made everyone blind and deaf on

our way here. You should have seen their faces. It won’t stay for very long though sowe’ve got to get out of here soon,” Robby said. Don’t have to ask me twice.

“So do you guys know how to get out of this place?” I asked them.

“Yeah, we’ve been planning our escape for weeks,” Kelly said.

“Good, let’s blow this joint,” I said, and with that, we left. There was some sort

of alarm going off that sounded like the siren on a fire truck. We ran as fast as we

could and bolted to the front door. I wasn’t sure how I felt about not being the one

leading this escape but I’d think about that when we were free. We got to the front

door and there were about 5 henchmen standing in our way. Luckily, there was no

power damper in the hallway so Fang just lifted them up and threw them to the side

like trash.

Once we were out the door we ran to the trees as fast as we could. As we ran

away I heard the lady from earlier yell “We will find you! There is no place for you to

hide!”

Like that would stop us.

CHAPTER 7

As we flew away I heard a series of loud explosions come from various parts of

the school. I looked over at Gazzy and Iggy. They both looked as confused as I was.

“Uh, I did that. I kind of took some of your bombs and planted them around the

school as we looked for you.” Kathy said looking kind of embarrassed.Wow, insidious and cute, a very dangerous combination. I liked her even more

than I did before. She seemed more, I don’t know, human. Ok, not human exactly,

but more like us. Too bad the destruction of their building isn’t going to stop them

from coming after us again. We’ve really come full circle. We went from kidnappings

and rescues to lives of luxury, to kidnappings and rescues again. It’s kind of sad.

“Do you have any abilities Kelly?” asked Angel.

“I can alter small objects. Like, if I had baseball bat, I could turn it into a

crowbar. So far it’s only a temporary change though. I can also phase through solid

objects. Sometimes I can even bring things with me if they’re small enough,” Kelly

replied.“Sweet! Robby can you do anything else?” Gazzy asked.

“I can control water. Basically the opposite of what Kathy can do. I can freeze

it, heat it up, and move it. It’s pretty cool, although I can’t do it very well. My sense

dulling power only works as long as the person is unaware of what I’m doing with

them. None of us really know much more about our powers than the fact that we

have them. Jim here hasn’t developed any powers yet, or at least not that we’ve

seen,” Robby said.



14

“That makes sense. Angel didn’t have any powers until she was 4 either. But

then again, she couldn’t talk that well before so it’s not like she could have told us

she heard our thoughts,” I said.

Jim was in the center of our formation and wasn’t a very strong flyer yet so

Kathy and Robby were holding his hands so he wouldn’t fall.

“So where’re we headed Max?” Iggy asked.“Well we can’t go to Mom’s house. I don’t want to put her and Ella in danger. I

was thinking we should go to Chicago. There’re lots of people there so we won’t be

found as easily,” I said.

“Wow, that’s a really good idea,” Kelly said.

“That’s way they put me in charge ‘round here,” I replied.

“I’m hungry,” Nudge moaned.

“Ok, let’s head down and look for some food and a safe place to sleep.”

We were flying over Montana and we found a nice little open area surrounded

by trees. I didn’t want to sleep in the trees that night because Kathy + trees = really

bad idea so we set up camp in the middle of the clearing. Fang and I went off to find

food because Angel refused to talk a rabbit or something into being our dinner so

we left Iggy in charge.

Fang and I were walking through the forest looking for a couple of rabbits. We

couldn’t talk or we’d scare any nearby prey away so I just enjoyed companionable

silence. Now that I thought about it, I hadn’t had any time alone with Fang for a

while now. I really wanted to talk to him but I had to focus on the task at hand.

We had been walking around for about half an hour and I was just about to give

up when I heard small feet. I looked at Fang and he shot me a look that said “I heard

it too.”

I looked around and saw two healthy looking rabbits, about 12 feet in front of

us. I looked at Fang and he nodded. He moved his hand slowly and lifted them in theair. As soon as he had them immobile I ran over and shoved them in a bag I

brought. Once Fang let go of them they started moving around in the bag.

After they were in the bag I grabbed one and had to break its neck. I felt really

bad for doing it but if I had to choose between letting these rabbits live and eating

I’d choose eating every time. Then Fang did the other rabbit and we started walking

back to the camp we set up.

I was thinking about what we’d do once we got to Chicago and what to do with

Kathy and her friends when Fang suddenly stopped. He turned around and looked at

me.

“Is there something wrong?” I asked.“Have you decided yet?” Fang asked sensing I was troubled.

“Decided what?” I said pretending I didn’t know what he was talking about

even though I knew very well he was asking whether I decided to let them stay with

us or not.

“You know what I mean,” Fang said. I hate it that he knows me so well. It was

all I could do not to punch really hard him in the shoulder and walk away.



15

“I don’t know Fang, I’m in a dilemma. I can’t abandon them, but I don’t know if

I can stand having to protect more people. I just adjusted to having Mom and Ella,

now I’ve got 4 more. I just don’t know what to do,” I spilled.

“Max, you know whatever you decide I’ll back you up 100%. Personally, I think

that we should ask them whether they want to stay with us or not, let them decide.

But until that happens, let’s just see how it plays out.” This made me feel loads better.

“Fang, I love you,” I said out of the blue.

Hit eyes lit up and he grinned. It lit up the immediate area like it always does

and he swooped down to kiss me. This was one of those rare moments in my life

where I felt safe, loved, and like everything was right. I guess that’s just what

happens when you’re kissing your soul mate.

After we finally broke apart we headed off to the camp. We had been gone for

about an hour and we got back to the camp they had retrieved fire wood and Kathy

was practicing making small fires.

“Ok, we’re back,” I said.

“What took you so long?” Nudge asked.

“Those rabbits were pretty fast, took a while to catch them,” I lied.

Liar. Angel thought.

Shut up, if you say a word I will kill you. I thought back.

She didn’t say anything so I figured she got the message.

Iggy roasted the rabbits for lunch and we all had our shares. It was delicious,

but then again, we hadn’t eaten anything in the last 12 hours so a cardboard box

would look appetizing.

I thought that we deserved to have some fun and relieve some stress so we

found a place that had paint ball.

When we got inside I went up to the desk where some guy who worked therewas sitting.

“Can I have a game for 10?” I asked.

“Sure, where’s your parent?” the guy asked.

“Oh, we don’t need parents, and you’re going to give us a free game, you’re

having a special for groups of 10,” Angel said in a way that told me she was, uh,

persuading him to give us a free game.

“Lucky for you we’re having a special for groups of 10 so you get to play for a

whole hour free,” the guy said.

After they got us suited up and ready to play we were split into teams of 5 boys

against girls. It was me, Kathy, Kelly, Nudge and Angel against Fang, Iggy, Gazzy,Robby, and Jim. Luckily, the people who were in charge of supervising us weren’t

paying any attention or we wouldn’t have been able to use our powers.

The girls and I decided to divide and conquer. Kathy, Angel and I went after

Robby while Nudge and Kelly went off to go take down Gazzy. Fang would be a lot

harder because he could blend in with pretty much anything and Iggy could hear us

way before we even saw him so we saved them for last. Even Jim was kind of

playing. He was basically running around holding a little gun, it was just so cute.



16

Since we had Angel we didn’t need to say anything out loud and I just shot

thoughts to her or told her to tell Kathy stuff. We saw Robby crouching behind a

bush.

Ok, let’s surround him. On my mark, you guys charge him, guns pointed at him

so he doesn’t realize I’m behind him. Then I’ll come in from behind and finish him

off. Tell Kathy. I thought to Angel.Yes sir. Angel thought.

Kathy looked over at me and nodded her head, we then got into position.

Go. I thought to Angel and about 2 seconds later they came out from hiding

and pointed their guns at him just like planned. I jumped up and looked like he was

about to bolt when I stepped from behind him and shot him with bright red paint 3

times.

Robby dramatically dropped down saying “I can’t believe it! My own flesh and

blood has betrayed me! Oh woe is me, how will I go on? I feel as if I could die!”

“Oh shut up Robby, it’s just paint for crying out loud, you’re so overdramatic,”

Kathy said.

Right after she said that I heard Kelly yell “HELP!”

We ran as fast as we could to where we heard her voice but there was nothing

there.

We looked around and I realized a second too late that Gazzy could imitate any

voice perfectly.

“Crap,” I said as we were pelted with blue paint balls by Gazzy, Iggy, And Fang.

After we were covered in blue paint they started cracking up. They seemed to

have forgotten that there were 2 more of us and were very surprised when their

weapons flew out of their hands and saw Nudge and Kelly were standing there with

triumphant expressions on their faces.

“Come on, we were just playing around guys,” Gazzy said weakly. They took no pity on them and barraged them with red paint. They even

smeared some red paint on Jim with their hands so they wouldn’t hurt him.

It was a glorious victory for us girls and everyone left feeling 10 times better.

You know, it’s days like this that make life worth living.

CHAPTER 8

Once we got back to our camp situation we were all exhausted and went to

sleep. I had first watch so I sat in the middle of the camp just listening to my

surroundings. I was actually kind of enjoying myself despite my sleep deprivation.So I was just sitting there being at peace with the world and one with nature

and all that when suddenly, I got a colossal headache. It felt like my head was going

to shatter into a billion pieces in a couple seconds.

I tried to hold in my shrieking so I wouldn’t wake everyone up but it came out

as a high pitched squeal. Of course, everyone woke up and looked at me but I was

too busy trying to keep the insides of my brain from shattering my skull.

“Max! Is it the headaches again?” Fang asked sounding really worried.



17

I couldn’t even nod my head yes.

“What’s happening to her?” Kathy asked sounding really scared.

“She used to get these massive headaches a while ago. I guess they’ve come

back,” Nudge answered her question.

After she said that the pain subsided and left just as quickly as it came. I

opened my eyes and looked around. I was surrounded by 9 pairs of anxious eyesand it made me feel kind of uncomfortable.

“I’m feeling better now, go about your business,” I said.

Everyone lingered for a few seconds more to make sure I was alright and then

went back to sleep. All except Fang.

After everyone was asleep he dragged me into some nearby trees.

“Are you ok?” he asked.

“Yeah, I feel fine. The last time I had these headaches was right… before… I

heard… the voice…” I said finally realizing what this means.

Hello Max. It’s been a while since I last talked to you.

Oh god the voice was back.

Fang seemed to realize this too because he looked kind of surprised.

“Why haven’t we heard from the voice before now?” he asked.

Well voice, why haven’t we heard from you? Did you go on vacation or

something?

Actually Max, after you saved your mom I didn’t need to say anything, you

were doing perfectly fine on your own. When you died and came back to life I had

to reset myself. Reinsert myself into your brain again, that’s why you’re having

headaches again.

“The voice says that when I came back to life it had to get back into my head,

which is what causes the migraines,” I told Fang.

Unfortunately you’re going to continue having headaches for a while.“I’m going to have more headaches for a while,” I said. Well that was

depressing.

“Oh yay,” Fang said very unenthusiastically. We went back to the camp to find

they had gathered more firewood and Kathy practiced creating and controlling her

fire.

“Max! Fang! Look what I can do!” Kathy said.

The flame turned blue, then red, then orange, then a deep indigo.

“Wow, that’s awesome Kathy,” I said.

After that Nudge, Kelly and I went to the supermarket and bought about 10

packs of bacon. We went back to the camp and Iggy cooked all of it and we ateevery last piece.

Once we were done we I decided it was time to teach Kathy, Robby, and Kelly

how to fight.

“Ok, lesson one in hand to hand combat, never be surprised by pain. If you get

too cocky the enemy will almost definitely win,” I said.

“Lesson two; don’t be afraid to fight dirty because the enemy definitely will be.

Use everything you have to your advantage. That means powers, physical strength,



18

the enemy’s weaknesses, etc. Now we are going to start with some basic self

defense moves.”

We spent half the day going over this and they seemed to catch on pretty

quickly.

“I must say, if you were in a real fight with flyboys, you just may survive,” I

said proudly.Right after I said that, as if right on cue, flyboys ambushed us and created utter

chaos.

Gazzy and Iggy had made more bombs so they flinging them wherever they

saw fit. Nudge and Kathy were side by side. Nudge was punching and kicking them

while Kathy set them on fire. I don’t know why but once a flyboy catches flame it

just sort of stands there. Fang was throwing them against each other with his

telekinesis. Robby used the stuff I taught him and he was doing pretty well for a

beginner. Angel was helping fight with Kelly and Kelly had turned a piece of wood

into a crowbar. Jim was sitting in a little force field Kathy made for him while flyboys

attempted get him but Kelly got them with her crowbar.

Meanwhile I was busy trying to find weak spot. I tried the stomach, spine, neck,

and face. Nothing seemed to work so I just kicked the flyboy in the shin. This

rendered his leg useless and he toppled over from loss of balance. Before he could

get back up Kathy must have noticed I was fighting him and he burst into flames.

I did this to many more flyboys until they realized this fight was pointless and

retreated.

“Report!” I yelled when the flyboys all left.

“We’re fine,” Fang said for Iggy, Gazzy, and himself.

“We’re fine too,” Robby said while holding Jim’s hand.

“I’m ok,” Angel said.

“Me too,” Kelly said.“I’m alright, and Kelly will be in a minute,” Kathy said while healing the gash in

Kelly’s arm.

“Ok, so everyone’s good. I can’t believe they’re desperate enough to try and

take us after we were well rested and well fed, they usually try to catch off guard at

the worst possible moment,” I said.

Then the voice said Max, they weren’t trying to take all of you. They just

wanted Jim.

CHAPTER 9

Oh no, Kathy is going to freak.

“Kathy, the voice just told me that they’re after Jim,” I said.

“What? Why? He’s practically a baby! He hasn’t done anything to anybody!”

Kathy said while having nervous breakdown.

“I don’t know why, does he have any really special abilities? They took Angel

once because of that,” Iggy said.



19

“Well, we haven’t…” Robby started when a flower plucked itself out of the

ground, grew little arms and legs, walked over to Jim, and started dancing.

We all just stared at him speechless. I have a pretty long list of freaky things

I’ve seen and this is definitely way up there.

“Kathy! Robby! Kelly! I made a plant man!” Jim cried with joy.

I just realized that I had never heard him talk before.Kathy must have realized the same thing and said “Jim doesn’t really like to

talk around strangers. The whitecoats all thought he was mute.”

“The whitecoats must have known he could do this and that must be why they

were after him,” I said.

“How come we didn’t know about this?” asked Robby.

“Well were you around any plants at the school?” I asked.

“No…” Robby said.

“Well then, there’s no way you could’ve known. Now let’s go before more

flyboys show up. Up and away guys,” I said.

We packed up and took off.

While we were flying it occurred to me that Kelly, Robby and Jim didn’t have

backpacks.

“Guys let’s land, we’re going to Wal-Mart,” I said over the wind.

“Why?” asked Robby.

“Because you guys need backpacks, if you’re going to be coming with us,”I

said kind of just sneaking in the second part real quietly. Fortunately and

unfortunately he didn’t hear me. It was fortunate because I decided I wanted them

to stay. To me, they felt like they had become part of the flock. It was unfortunate

because I was going to have to man up and face them eventually.

We landed near a Wal-Mart. Kathy and I went inside and looked for some

backpacks and supplies. I was in the grocery section by myself because Kathy wasgetting backpacks when a store clerk who looked about 16 came up to me. He was

about my height and had zits all over his face. He also had dark brown hair.

“Hello, can I help you?” he asked with a weird look on his face.

“Uh, no, I’m good thank you,” I replied trying to get him to leave me alone.

“Can I show you to the cosmetics department? Well, not that you need any

makeup, you just glow with inner and outer beauty,” he said.

It just hit me. This guy was trying to flirt with me. Oh my god how do I get him

to leave me alone?

“Thank you but I really need to finish shopping and go,” I said.

“Why in such a hurry? I’m sure you’re not going to be that late,” he said.He put his hand on my back trying to guide me away from the grocery section.

Oh god, if he didn’t stop I was going to have to deck this guy.

Right when I was getting ready to punch him Kathy came around the corner

holding three backpacks and the creepy store clerk removed his hand from my back

and walked away.



20

“Oh Kathy! Thank you so much! You’ve just saved me from having to punch a

creepy teenage boy,” I said. Not that I would have minded much but it probably

wouldn’t sit well with the rest of the people in the store.

“Um, you’re welcome?” Kathy said.

“Ok, let’s go buy this stuff and get the heck out of this place,” I said.

“Alright, what happened exactly?” she asked me.“That creep you saw when you found me was attempting to flirt,” I told her

somewhat irritated.

Kathy looked at me and started cracking up. I started glaring at her and after a

few giggles escaped from her mouth she finally contained her laughter. Barely.

“I swear, if you ever tell anyone I will kill you in your sleep,” I threatened.

“I promise,” Kathy said breaking down in another laughing fit.

“Fine, go ahead and laugh, I’m leaving you here,” I said as I started walking

away.

“Ok, I’ll stop laughing,” she said running to catch up.

We went over to the cashiers and bought the stuff. Then, right as we were

about to walk through the doors we ran into Brigid. Dr. Amazing herself, in the flesh,

I was already starting to get nauseous.

I don’t think she saw us so I grabbed Kathy and starting walking toward the

other exit when Kathy said “Max! What are you doing? The exit is right here. Why

are we going the long way?” Kathy asked a lot loud than she needed to.

“Max is that you? It’s me, Brigid! I haven’t seen you in so long! Where’s Fang?

Who’s your friend?” Brigid asked. She was lucky I had a stomach of steel or she

would have been covered in what I had for breakfast this morning.

CHAPTER 10

“Max, who’s this?” Kathy asked me.

“Kathy, Brigid. Brigid, Kathy,” I said introducing them briefly “sorry Brigid but

we have to run, see ya,” wouldn’t wanna be ya I added in my head while quickly

dragging Kathy away.

“Wait! Where’s Fang and the rest of the flock?” she asked. God, why did she

have to be so persistent?

“They’re, uh, away at the moment but I’ll tell them I saw you,” I said hoping

that would make her go away but, as if right on cue, Fang and the rest of the flock

came into the store right at that very second.

Fang must not have noticed Dr. Amazing standing right there because he said“Max, we were wondering what was taking you guys so long. We thought you were

kidnapped again or something.”

Once he was about 5 feet away from me he realized that Brigid was here. No

one else might have seen it but he was really surprised. I could tell by the way his

eyes got a fraction of an inch bigger.

“Brigid,” Fang said.



21

“Fang! I missed you so much!” She said grabbing him in a bear hug. I wasn’t

sure if my stomach of steel could take much more of this.

She must have realized there 9 more of us standing there watching when she

said “Oh I missed all of you guys too!” and gave us all hugs. Then Robby and Kelly

introduced themselves.

“I’m Robby, and this is Kelly,” said Robby.“Nice to meet you. Oh my god! Who’s this cute little guy!” she squealed and

picked Jim up.

Jim must not have liked her because he started bawling and screaming. I know

how he feels. The scary part was that it started raining and thundering outside in

our immediate area. Coincidence? I think not. If we had let it go on much longer

there would have been a flash flood in a couple minutes.

Kathy yanked Jim from Brigid’s hands and tried to calm him down. Once he

stopped crying the rain cleared up and I even saw a rainbow.

“Looks like Jim has a new skill,” Fang said all calm, cool, and collected, like a 4

year old child didn’t just cause a thunderstorm because he was upset. We could not

let the whitecoats take him.

“I’m sorry, did I do something wrong?” Brigid asked. Yeah, exist.

“Jim just doesn’t like new people,” Kathy said still trying to keep Jim calm.

I think it was a little more than a dislike of new people.

“We should probably go, bye,” I said trying to end this as soon as possible.

“Yeah, I think Jim needs a nap,” Kelly said.

“You can’t go! I, uh, was asked by, uh, Dr. Martinez to tell you to go to this

location,” Brigid said.

She handed me a piece of paper.

“Thanks,” I said not really meaning it.

Brigid then walked out of the store and disappeared from our sight.“Well, maybe it’s just me, but I think that got a perfect 10 on the odd behavior

meter,” I said quietly to Fang as we walked out the store.

“No arguments here,” Fang agreed.

After that strange encounter went to a nearby park to sat next to a small lake

to figure out what to do. Why a park, you ask, why because we needed to keep Jim

occupied while we discussed our next move.

Angel, Kelly, and Gazzy were playing with Jim. Meanwhile Fang, Kathy, Iggy,

Robby, Nudge, and I were trying to decipher the note.

The note said:

Go back to Virginia.We have some information that you need.

We’ll find you once you get there.

- Dr. Martinez

Maybe it’s just because I’m paranoid but this note seemed a bit suspicious.



22

“This doesn’t look like anything my mom would write. There’s also no possible

way for her to know that we would run into Brigid. Brigid’s up to something,

although I’m not quite sure what it is,” I said.

“She seemed perfectly fine until she gave us the note. I wonder what’s up,”

Robby said thoughtfully.

“Oh god Max! What if she’s an evil clone? I’ve seen enough clones for alifetime!” Nudge said anxiously.

As if waiting for a verbal command a whole bunch of Robby, Kelly, and Kathy

clones ambushed us.

Speak of the devil. I thought to myself.

Careful Max, these clones can fly and fight just as well as you can. They even

share Robby, Kelly, and Kathy’s powers. The voice told me.

Oh crap.

“Guys these clones can fly, fight, and they have all of Robby, Kathy, and Kelly’s

powers, watch out!” I yelled over the turmoil.

Robby was fighting himself, Kelly was fighting herself, and Kathy was fighting

herself.

Angel, Gazzy, and Iggy were busy protecting Jim. Fang and I were having a mid-

air showdown with 5 of the clones. We had taken them all down but more kept

coming. It was looking pretty hopeless until one of the robots kicked Jim and he

burst into tears and we were all astounded.

I know, you’re probably thinking “why? You’ve already seen him create

thunderstorms” but this was nothing we’ve ever seen. This time it was different.

There was a storm, but I bet you weren’t expecting a freaking tree to get out of the

ground and step on the robot that kicked Jim.

CHAPTER 11

Holy crap I can’t believe he just did that. That was one powerful 4 year old, I’d

hate to see what he’ll be able to do once he’s older, but no time to worry about that

now.

It was currently the flock and a giant tree against a bunch of clones. The odds

seemed to be in our favor. The tree appeared to have a mind of its own and was

taking down clones like nobody’s business. Unfortunately Jim must have calmed

down or got tired because the tree got a lot slower and just sort of planted itself in

the ground where it was standing. Meanwhile the rest of the flock and I were still

fighting the clones. Just as I was about to punch one in the face it stopped, backed up, and flew

away.

I looked at Fang and said “We’ll that was bizarre.”

Then Fang replied “I’m not complaining.”

“Report!” I yelled.



23

“We’re all ok, although Jim seems to be taking a nap. That tree stunt must

have taken a lot out of him,” Kathy said speaking for herself, Robby, Angel, Kelly,

Gazzy, and Nudge.

“I’m alright,” said Iggy.

“How did they keep finding us?” asked Kelly.

“I don’t know. What I do know is that we have to keep moving. Gang, we’regoing to Virginia,” I said making one of my famous snap decisions.

With that we collected our belongings and flew off towards Virginia.

We flew for a couple days only stopping to sleep and eat. The night we crossed

over the border into Virginia we stopped and stayed at a motel. It wasn’t very strict

about their ‘no children under the age of 18 may rent a room’ policy so we got the

biggest room they had. You’re probably wondering how I can afford all this. Well, the

bank card I found a few months ago in New York still has money in it. I’m not sure

why or who put the money there but it works so I’m using it.

Anyway, the room had one bathroom and two king sized beds. Robby and

Kathy shared one bed while Angel and Gazzy shared the other one. The rest of us

just slept on the floor away from Nudge because she tends to kick in her sleep. A

lot.

I was reluctant to fall asleep because last time I fell asleep in a motel I woke up

in an isolation tank. Not a pleasant experience. Instead I just stayed up and watched

the flock sleep. I included Kathy, Robby, Kelly, and Jim in the flock because I couldn’t

imagine them leaving us. I wasn’t sure how to ask them whether they wanted to

stay or not because I was afraid they’d say they wanted to leave.

Maybe I’ll ask them tomorrow. I finally fell asleep thinking all the possible ways

they would reject me and leave.

Sometime later I woke up to a knock on the door. This, of course, ended up

waking everyone up so we were all just staring at the door wondering who it was.I looked at Fang and Fang looked at me. My look said “should I get the door?”

and his said “I don’t know, what if it’s a trap?”

While I was busy trying to decide which would be a better choice the person

outside yelled “Room service!” through the door.

Oh, maybe it wasn’t a trap, but I wasn’t taking any chances so I said “No thank

you!” in high pitched voice hoping that she would leave.

Everyone waited a few more seconds to see if she was still there and let out a

breath of relief.

“Ok, I’m ready to get out of here, anyone else?” I asked.

They all nodded in agreement and we packed up our stuff and walked out thefront door. To parking lot was empty except a big red van that had the motel’s logo

on it. Now why a motel would need a logo, I have no idea. I took a running start and

just as a leaped off the ground and started to extend my wings something hit me.

Hard. I was tangled up in what felt like a net but I couldn’t see it.

Max watch out behind you! the voice yelled inside my head.

I looked behind me to see that in about 2 seconds the rest of the flock was

going to collide with me and the invisible net.



24

Kathy was out front and didn’t realize I was stuck until a split second too late

and the rest just basically went downhill from there.

Once we were all good and tangled in the net someone walked over to us

looking very pleased. It was the lady from the school!

“Hello, it’s nice to see you again,” she said sounding genuinely pleased.

“I wish I could say the same for you,” I said.“You did a naughty thing blowing up the school like that,” she said sternly

wagging her finger at us like we were unruly children who had stolen a cookie from

the cookie jar.

“Please, we were doing the world a favor getting rid of you. But we obviously

didn’t do a good enough job,” I countered.

“Do you like our net? It’s brand new technology. We call it a web. It’s invisible

to the naked eye but it’s strong enough to hold on to pretty much anything. One of

our finest inventions,” she said completely ignoring what I had just said.

“I’d also like to introduce you to our newest member, Brigid.”

Brigid walked out looking at with a look of triumph on her face.

Then Brigid said “So we meet again Max.”

CHAPTER 12

“I knew we couldn’t trust you!” I screamed at her.

“Well, it’s too late for that now. You’re all going down Max, and there’s nothing

you can do about it,” Brigid said matter-of-factly.

“Brigid why?” Fang said looking truly surprised for once in his life. I knew this

was a bad time to say ‘I told you so’ but as soon as we were out of this situation I

was going to totally rub it in his face.

“Fang, you of all people should understand. Everyone called me a freak, justbecause I was smarter than everyone else. Then you guys came along and you

made me feel normal in comparison. I thought if I could be part of your group

people would see differently. Fang, I think I was even starting to fall for you. Yeah,

there was the age difference, but we could have made it work. Then Max excluded

me from your little flock and forced me out of your life. My life sucked until I met Ms.

Jones,” she said gesturing to the lady who captured us, “she made me feel normal. I

finally found a place where I wasn’t a freak for being smart. I can also get back at

Max for taking Fang away from me,” Brigid finished practically frothing at the

mouth.

Ok, she has got to be trippin’. I looked at Fang and he had a mixture of horrorand astonishment on his face.

“She has become a vital member of our organization. Already she’s been

promoted to supervisor of your confinement,” Ms. Jones said.

“God! What is it with you people? What do you want from us?” I demanded.

“We want Jim. I have let Brigid decide what to do with the rest of you. Who

knows? Maybe she’ll decide you can be useful to us in some way,” Ms. Jones said

with a smirk, “We’ll be taking the boy now.”



25

“Over my dead body!” Kathy screamed.

“That can be arranged. Now take the boy. Don’t forget to drug him before he

gets upset. We don’t need to start a hurricane in Virginia, it will raise suspicion.”

One of the flyboys pried Jim out of Kathy’s arms and injected something clear

and thick looking into his arm.

“Nooooo!!!” Kathy cried and pointed at the flyboy. Nothing happened. No laser,no fire, nothing.

“Oh I forgot to mention, the web disables your powers so you’ll be rendered

helpless for the time being,” Ms. Jones said.

“I designed it myself,” Brigid said proudly as I glared at her, “Ok, put them in

the truck.”

More flyboys walked up to the web wearing weird looking gloves. I figured it

was so they wouldn’t get stuck. They took out small hand held lasers and started

slicing through the web separating each of us so we were trapped on our little piece

of web.

Then they picked us up and tossed us into the back of the truck I mentioned

earlier. And I mean they literally tossed us like hacky sacks. It was a very painful

experience and I hope none of you ever have to go through it. The worst part was

that since there was nine of us, it was a tight fit. We also ended up landing on each

other and couldn’t move so it was a very uncomfortable ride. Kathy was lying over

my stomach and Iggy’s feet were pinned under Angel. Gazzy and Robby’s webs got

tangled together and Fang was underneath Kelly. Nudge just sort of landed in a

corner and got wedged inside.

“Well this sucks,” Iggy said.

“No kidding,” Gazzy said.

“That’s an understatement,” said Kathy still in tears.

“Let’s think of the positives,” Nudge said sounding like she was on the verge of tears herself.

“Well, now we have a valid reason to kick Brigid’s butt,” I said. Maybe it was

only a positive to me and me alone but hey, it was still a positive.

“Way to think on the bright side Max,” said Robby rolling his eyes at me.

“At least we’re well rested and fed for the moment. We should be good for

another couple hours,” Kelly chimed in with a sad attempt at sounding cheery.

“This is so boring Max, I wish we could just get there already,” Angel said.

“There’s always 99 bottles of beer on the wall,” Fang said.

This got him a mixture of eye rolls, looks of horror, and a glare from me.

After what seemed like hours but in fact was only a matter of minutes, thedoors opened. Flyboys picked us up one or two at a time threw us over their

shoulders. It was kind of embarrassing but it beat riding in the back to that truck.

They took us to a wagon and placed us inside so we were all sitting up. How

courteous of them.

I looked around trying to get my bearings. We were surrounded by a beautiful

lake, a field, and I could see a huge house at the end of the road. That’s when it hit

me. This was Anne’s house.



27

“I swear if you touch a single hair on his head I will kill you!” Robby yelled

sounding a lot less threatening than he intended due to the fact that he was sitting

in a wagon wrapped up in web.

“I’d like to see you try, but not right now. Save your anger and hatred for the

virtual reality dome. You’re going to need it. You never know what we might put you

up against,” Ms. Jones said.“Well, we’d love to stay and chat but we’ve got work to do. Toodles!” Anne said

as all 3 of them walked away.

The flyboy driving our wagon then drove us further into the dome. Once we

stopped moving more flyboys came out of a door in the wall that I had not seen a

few seconds ago. There were 9 of them and they each threw one of us over their

shoulder and started walking in several directions.

“No! You better bring everyone back here buddy before I kick your ass from

here to next Tuesday!” I screamed as I tried to kick my flyboy and failed miserably.

“Max!!!” Gazzy, Nudge, and Angel were screaming.

“Let go of my brother and my friends you souped up piece of trash!” Kathy

yelled sounding extremely pissed.

I’m not even going to tell you what Fang said because it involves a long series

of curse words that I would rather not say. Let’s just say he has a very colorful

vocabulary.

Robby and Iggy resorted to attacking their flyboys and didn’t fare any better

than I did.

Kelly was just screaming her head off.

My flyboy finally reached a door and we went inside. It was a small lab with a

table in it. It was one of those tables you strap people down for surgery in.

Oh god, what’s going to happen to my flock? What’s going to happen to me?

I decided that even though I was aware of the fact that I couldn’t do anything Iwould continue to try and kick the flyboy anyway.

He laid me down on the table and strapped me down. Not that that was

necessary due to the web I was trapped in but I guess they didn’t want to take any

chances.

“Good night bird child,” the flyboy said in a robotic tone. That was the last

thing I heard before I felt a syringe pierce my skin and everything went black.

CHAPTER 14

When I woke up I was in the middle of the gigantic arena. A few yards away

from me was another person sitting on the ground with their back facing me. Iwasn’t sure who it was but they looked familiar. I walked closer and the person

became more and more familiar but I just couldn’t quite pin point exactly who it

was.

Once I was right in from of I realized who it was. It was Kathy! I grabbed her

arms and turned her to face me. She appeared to be sleeping. I started shaking her

really hard desperate to make her wake up.

“Kathy!” I screamed still trying to wake her up.



28

After shaking her for a few more moments Kathy’s eyes shot open. She looked

at me. Her eyes looked like Kathy’s eyes but they didn’t seem to have a soul.

“Kathy?” I said starting to get scared.

She suddenly jumped up and punched me hard in the face.

Oh no, how do I know if it’s Kathy or a clone. If it’s really Kathy I might hurt her!

Well you can’t just sit here and wait for her to attack. Defend yourself until youhave a plan. The voice said.

Thanks for the helpful advice. I thought back sarcastically.

I blocked every attack she threw at me. Good thing I taught her everything she

knows and that she isn’t as experienced as I am or I would have actually had to hurt

her. Unfortunately, I couldn’t keep this up much longer so I resorted to asking her

questions to either prove she was the real Kathy or confuse her if she was a clone.

“Kathy, how did we meet?” I asked desperately.

“Now… is not… the time… or talking!” Kathy said in between lunges but she

hesitated for a half second before coming at me again.

Just then a rack of weapons appeared out of nowhere. It had 2 swords on it. We

both reached for them at the same time and I blocked her just in time or she would

have sliced me in half.

Why would they do that?

Think Max, why would they want the battle to end quickly all of the sudden?

the voice asked me.

She must be the real Kathy! Otherwise, they wouldn’t send these weapons,

they’re afraid I’ll break through to her! I have to keep trying.

I wasn’t a very experienced sword fighter but I got the gist of it and managed

to remain unharmed for the time being.

“Kathy, what did we do at the beach when we came to rescue Kelly, Jim and

you brother?” I pressed on.“Shut up! You are an abomination! You must be eliminated!” she screamed at

me while hesitating and then attempting to skewer me with the sword but she

wasn’t as fast as before.

I parried and thrust until she seemed to get sort of tired.

“What did you learn at the beach? Who taught it to you?”

She hesitated even longer this time. This time, instead of telling me to be quiet

she screamed in frustration. I think I almost broke through to her.

Right as I was about ask her another question our swords disappeared and in

their place were guns.

Kathy pointed the gun at me with her hand on the trigger, but I could tell shewasn’t as sure of herself as before because her hand was trembling.

“I do not know you, ok? I was sent here to kill you!” she said slowly as if she

were having second thoughts.

“Really Kathy? Do you really not remember the day we found you and took you

in? Do you really not remember learning to swim at the beach with Nudge? And the

picnic we had that same day? Don’t you remember Jim being yanked from your



29

arms just hours ago? Don’t you remember your family Kathy?” I said really driving it

home.

Kathy looked like she had just had an epiphany. Her face brightened with

realization and recognition.

“Max?” Kathy said in tears.

I just nodded, relieved that she was alright and that I wouldn’t have to die orkill her. She ran towards me in tears for a hug and I squatted down with arms

opened wide but just before I could wrap my arms around her, the lights went off

and I was unconscious again.

I woke up again feeling exhausted. I was back in the lab again and Brigid, Anne

and Ms. Jones were there.

“I take it I was late for the ‘Haters of Max’ club meeting,” I said.

“No, you’re right on time actually. We are going change you a little bit.

Something like what we did to Kathy except more permanent,” Brigid said

malevolently.

Oh god, why me?

“No! You can’t do this! We will stop you one way or another!”

“No you won’t Max, it’s finally time for you to lose,” Anne said.

Last thing I remember thinking was ‘what if they make me hurt the flock? What

if they make me hurt Fang?’

CHAPTER 15

Kathy’s Perspective

I woke up in a dark room. I don’t think I was supposed to wake up because the

room was dark and no one was in here. I tried to move and discovered that my webwas removed but I was strapped to a table. All I remembered was seeing Max,

running to her, and sudden darkness.

I couldn’t move my hand but it turns out I could still use my laser. The only

problem was I was working in the dark, I didn’t know when the whitecoats would

show up again, and I couldn’t move my hand to cut of the metal cuffs on my hands

and feet so I was pretty much stuck.

I decided to wait until the whitecoats or flyboys or whoever came in to take me

back to the arena. Luckily, I only had to wait a couple minutes.

I shut my eyes closed as I heard someone unlock the door. I tried to keep my

breathing shallow and my body relaxed as if I was still unconscious.“Is she out?” someone said.

“Yeah, the monitor says she’s still knocked out,” another person said.

“Ok, you get her arms and I’ll get her legs,” the first person said.

“Fine.”

They removed my cuffs and lifted me onto what felt like a stretcher. Right

before they could strap me in I jumped up and punched one of them in the face.

Fortunately, the other one was still in shock so I had time to kick him in the ribs



30

before he called for help. They both seemed to be out cold but I didn’t want to take

any chances so I searched the room.

I found some web and some cloth to keep their mouths shut. I also stole a few

syringes filled with the stuff they injected us with in case of emergencies, which I

seemed to be having a lot of lately.

I tied the whitecoats together and gagged them so they couldn’t make anynoise when they woke up.

I peered through the door and saw that to enormous dome was empty. They

must be preparing for the next challenge.

I snuck out the door all stealthy and quiet trying not to attract attention

because I was positive that this place would have cameras all over. I walked further

down the wall looking for doors that would lead me to the rooms where my friends

were being held.

I came to what seemed like a door except it had no door handle. Instead there

was a key pad for a password. No problem, I’ll just slice through the door and hope

there aren’t any whitecoats or flyboys on the other side.

I slice through the door and it thudded on the floor, making a louder noise than

I hoped it would. I stood absolutely still hoping no one would come. Today must

have been my lucky day because no one came. Ok, probably the opposite of a lucky

day but right at that second, I was very lucky.

I peered inside the room and the lights were off. Fortunately my raptor vision

allowed me to see in the dark.

I walked in once I was sure there were no flyboys creeping on the sides waiting

to ambush me. The room was identical to mine. I saw someone strapped to a bed

and I walked over to see who it was. It was Robby. I had never been so happy to see

my brother in my entire life.

I started shaking him somewhat violently desperate to wake him up. He didn’tmove.

“Robby!” I whisper-yelled. Nothing.

“Robby!” I whispered a little louder. The corner of his mouth twitched.

Ok, looks like I’m going to have to get serious.

“I’m sorry,” I said right before I slapped him in the face. His eyes shot opened.

He took in a breath to scream but I clamped my hand over his mouth before he

could make a sound.

Then he bit me.

“Ow! You unthankful lummox! It’s me, Kathy!” I told him.

“Kathy? Is that you?” Robby asked.“God you can be so dim-witted sometimes,” I said impatiently “Yes it is me,

now I have come to save you but you have to be quiet. Understand?” I continued

slowly as if I were speaking to a small child.

“Fine, but hurry up, these cuffs are hurting my wrists and ankles,” Robby said.

I sliced open his cuffs and he got up.

Once he was free he got off the table and looked at me expectantly.

“So what’s the plan?” he asked.



31

“We go find and free the rest of the flock,” I replied.

“And then?”

“I haven’t planned that far ahead. We’ll figure that out once we get there.”

“If we get there,” I heard Robby say under his breath.

“Ok, let’s go.”

We left tip-toeing quietly into the hallway towards the next door. When we gotthere I sliced the door open again.

We went inside and the lights were off again. I saw Angel laying there, looking

a lot like Robby did when I found him.

We went over to her and I started shaking her.

“It’s not working,” Robby said.

“Thank you captain obvious,” I said back.

I slapped her and like last time, she woke up about to scream before I covered

her mouth.

When I removed my hand from her mouth she said “Boy am I glad to see you

guys! How did you get in here?”

I showed her my finger and blew it off like smoke from a gun.

Suddenly her face had a look of complete horror on her face.

“What is – “ I started saying before in the door walked Brigid and Anne.

“Well, look what we have here,” Anne said.

“Someone’s been very naughty cutting down all our doors like that,” Brigid

said looking directly at me.

“What shall we do with such badly behaved children?” Anne asked knowing

very well what they were going to do.

“I think I know what to do with them,” Brigid said malevolently.

What have I gotten us into?

CHAPTER 16


Brigid took out this walkie talkie looking thing and was about to press the

button on it. I assumed that she was going to call for help and that just wasn’t going

to work for me so I shot it out of her hands. There happened to be a glass of water

sitting on a nearby counter and Robby did his thing and the water flew at Anne and

froze the walkie talkie that Anne had taken out rendering it utterly useless.

“Looks like you’re on your own ladies,” I said.“Whatever shall we do with such badly behaved grownups brother dear?” I

asked Robby.

“Oh sister dear, I know exactly what to do with them,” Robby said trying to look

threatening and quite frankly, he wasn’t doing a very good job. It was all I could do

to not to breakdown in a laughing fit.

“Well, before we do that, let’s make sure they can’t get away,” I said trying to

pull it together.



32

They tried to run for the door but Robby started to dull their sight so they

couldn’t see and ended up running into a wall.

“Nuh, uh, uh,” I said as I grabbed them by the arms.

“We’re not done with you yet,” Robby said.

Brigid and Anne had looks of pure hatred on their faces which was funny

because they were facing a wall at the time.“Ok Robby, tie ‘em up, There’s probably some web around here somewhere. I’ll

take care of Angel.”

Robby searched for and found some web in one of the cabinets. Meanwhile I

was busy freeing Angel from the table.

Angel got up once I was done and rubbed her wrists and ankles. She then

turned around and gave me a hug that nearly knocked me down.

“I’m so glad you found me. They made me go through an obstacle course! And

not a fun obstacle course, but the kind you have to dodge lasers and bullets, and

you have to jump over boiling pits of god knows what. It was horrible!” Angel said as

she cried in my arms.

“It’s ok Angel, we’re here to save you, everything will be ok. Alright Robby,

that’s one down, 7 more to go.”

Robby had just finished taking care of Brigid and Anne and walked over to us.

“So, what’s next?” he asked.

“We go to the next room, bust them out, and continue from there. But first, I

believe we should return their hospitality with a little good bye gift,” I said.

“I’m way ahead of you,” Robby said as he walked over to Brigid and Anne and

through them in a nearby closet.

“I’d like to see them get out of there,” Angel said.

The rest of the rescues pretty much went like this except to evil women didn’t

barge in on us in the middle each time so it went pretty smoothly.Let’s see, so I had just rescued Robby, Angel, Iggy, Gazzy, Nudge, and Kelly. 6

down, 3 to go. Now all we needed was Max, Fang, and Jim.

“Ok, to the next room,” I said expecting it to be easy but of course, nothing

ever seems to go according to plan in the real world, why start now?

When we got in the next room and the door was open, no one was there. It was

completely empty.

“Oh god, where is Max and Fang?” I said nervously.

“Maybe they went out for some coffee?” Kelly suggested

“For some reason, I highly doubt that,” Nudge said sounding as nervous as I

was.“Maybe they’ll be in the next room,” I said with false hope because I just knew

they wouldn’t be in there. But we went anyway.

Once we got into the room the door was locked again. Was Max or Fang inside?

Maybe even Jim? Who knows, but I had to find out.

“WAIT!” Angel screamed as I opened the door. But it was too late. The door fell

in and out flooded about 10 flyboys.

We instinctively got into our fighting stances and promptly started kicking butt.



33

The fight didn’t last very long because Angel made about half of them kill each

other and the rest of us were perfectly capable of taking out a flyboy by ourselves

so it was a pretty even fight.

Once the fight was over I said “Ok, they’re not in here and there’re no more

rooms. Search the perimeter for secret passageways, hidden exits, anything.”

Just as we were about to look around the dome we heard a voice over theintercom.

“Children, we know where you are. Why don’t you come to the center of the

dome? We have what you’re looking for,” Ms. Jones said.

“Should we go? It could be a trap.” I said.

“It’s always a trap Kathy. But they definitely have Max, Fang, and Jim. We’re

just gonna have to go with it,” Iggy replied

“Well, ok.” I said unsure.

We walked, well, we flew because the place was huge and it would have taken

us a while to walk to the middle.

Once we were in the middle a whole in the floor opened up. It was gigantic! A

platform rose up with two people standing on it.

Are they Flyboys? If there’re only two of them this should be a piece of cake.

Then they looked up at us and I recognized them immediately.

“Max! Fang! It’s us! We’ve come to save you!” I screamed. I then tried to run to

them but Nudge and Gazzy held me back.

“Kathy, I think it’s them but they’re not themselves. They’re almost… robot

like.”

Max and Fang took a step and jumped off the platform. The platform then went

back into the ground.

Then Max said “We are here to eliminate you. Prepare to die.”

CHAPTER 17


Well this is definitely not good. Maybe they’re just lost like I was when I was

fighting Max. I tried talking to them.

“We’re your friends, you raised Iggy, Nudge, and Angel and you saved me,

Robby, Kelly and Jim’s lives! Don’t you remember us?” I asked desperately.

They didn’t look like they heard a single word I said.

“Guys, I think this is going to be harder than I thought,” I said.“Really? ‘Cause I thought it would be a piece of cake,” Robby replied

sarcastically.

“Angel, can you control them? Put thoughts into their minds? Anything?” Iggy

asked.

“I’m trying! I can read their thoughts I just can’t put anything into their heads.

And it’s not like their thoughts are that much help, they’re basically just thinking

‘get them’ and nothing else,” Angel said sounding frustrated.



34

They hadn’t started coming toward us so I took the opportunity to make a plan.

“OK, I we’re going to split up into groups and try to wake them up. Think of

anything that would make them remember us. Angel, Kelly, Nudge and I will take

Max. Robby, Iggy and Gasman will take Fang,” I told them.

We split up and my group went straight for Max.

“Remember when you met your mom and Ella? You didn’t know they were yourfamily then but you loved them anyway! What did you bake while you were at her

house?” Angel asked.

Max just started walking toward us.

“Remember when we were in Hawaii and we had that water fight?” Nudge

asked.

Max didn’t even flinch.

“Um, guys, I don’t think it’s working,” I said nervously.

“She’s right, it’s like Max doesn’t hear a word we say,” Angel said.

Suddenly our surroundings changed. We were in an intricate maze. It was just

me, Angel, Kelly, and Nudge. I didn’t see Max or the boys.

“This is definitely not good,” I said.

“No kidding,” Kelly said.

“Well, the walls are too high to fly over so the only thing we can do is walk

through the maze and see if we can find Max or an exit,” Nudge said.

And with that, we started walking.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Robby’s Perspective

One second we were in the dome with Max, Fang, and the girls and the nextsecond we were in what looked like a video game. It was a circular platform

surrounded by darkness. We all had different weapons. Iggy had a spear, Gazzy had

a sword, and I had a staff. We had armor too. Sort of a Tron meets gladiator type of

look. We had head to toe attire. It was actually pretty cool.

“Where are we?” Iggy asked.

“Dude, it looks like we’re in a video game!” Gazzy said completely oblivious to

the dire situation.

“It also looks like we’re in for one hell of a fight. Look!” I said.

A door opened up and a bridge to our platform came out of nowhere. There

were more clones of me, but this time they had some for Gasman and Iggy too. There were like 60 of them and they had the same armor too. They walked across

the bridge and just started attacking us. Pretty soon we were all in our separate

fights and I couldn’t tell which ones were clones and which were real.

This was really bad because I wasn’t sure if had just punched Iggy or an Iggy

clone in the face and I was pretty sure the real Iggy and Gazzy weren’t faring much

better than I was.



35

Since there wasn’t much I could do, I tried to just knock them out instead of

actually killing them. I hit one that looked like Gazzy in the back with my staff and

he crumpled into a heap on the ground. Oh crap I really hope that wasn’t the

Gasman. This would be so much easier if I knew who the real ones were. Then I had

an idea.

“Gazzy! Iggy! Fight the ones that look like you!” I yelled. Then I realized thatIggy couldn’t see. Oddly enough, Iggy seemed to be able to figure it out. Pretty soon

I was fighting with my clones, which was actually really weird.

I gave a roundhouse kick to one of them and struck another in the leg with my

staff at the same time. Right after that two of them rushed at me from opposite

directions and I jumped up in the air so I could hover over them and let them collide

into each other. I’ve always wanted to do that. While I was in the air I realized a split

second too late that the clones could fly. One of them flew up and kicked me in the

ribs with a painful crunch. I’m going to feel that one in the morning.

Fortunately, it wasn’t bad enough that I couldn’t ignore the pain so I landed a

solid punch on his nose and he dropped out of the air like a rock taking out 3 more

that were still standing on the ground.

I took the moment to see what Gazzy and Iggy were doing and they seemed to

be doing all right. I saw Iggy run his spear through one of his clones and Gazzy slice

one of his clones in half. It would have been pretty awesome if I wasn’t busy fighting

for my life.

I went back to the ground and continued fighting the remaining clones on foot.

There were only 2 of me left so I just kicked one in the legs, hit the other in the

temple and slammed their heads together.

Once I was done them I looked over and saw that Gazzy and Iggy were finished

with their clone and waiting on me. I walked over to them.

“Great idea Robby! I thought I was a goner for a minute,” Gazzy said.“Yeah, but why don’t we mark ourselves in some way so we know who the real

one’s are?” Iggy asked.

We were all covered in blood so I smeared some on all our foreheads. Yes, I

know that’s disgusting but it’s not like we were carrying any sharpies with us.

“Ok there, now we’ll know who’s who. Speaking of which, Iggy, how did you

know who to fight?” I asked.

“It was strange, like I could feel the vibrations of everything around me like

bats. It was amazing! I could tell which ones were my clones since I’m taller than

both of you,” Iggy said trying to act like he wasn’t excited.

“Wow! That’s so awesome! What do we do now?” Gazzy asked.I noticed the bridge the clones crossed on was still there and the door was

opened.

“How about we start in there?” I suggested, and we walked across the bridge to

see what our next challenge was going to be.

CHAPTER 18



36


We had been walking for what seemed like hours on end. It felt like we were

walking through a labyrinth and we were going to find an angry Minotaur in the

middle. The only question is what will the Minotaur be?

“What do you think is gonna be in the middle?” asked Kelly anxiously.“I dunno Kelly, we’re just gonna have to wait and see,” I replied.

All the walls looked the same so there was no way of knowing whether we were

walking in circles or not. It was very frustrating.

“Ugh! How are we supposed to find our way through this thing?” I screamed to

the heavens.

“Kathy, screaming isn’t going to help anything,” Angel said knowingly.

Well at least it would make me feel better.

“Angel, do you sense anybody around here?” I asked.

“Nope, sorry.”

“What if we never find the center? What if we can’t find our way out? What if

we’re trapped in here forever?” Nudge rambled.

“Chill Nudge, it’s going to be ok,” I said cutting her off.

I’ve known her long enough to know that if you don’t stop her, she’ll probably

go on forever.

We continued walking and suddenly I heard footsteps from behind us. I turned

around.

“Uh, did anyone else hear that?” I said feeling scared.

“No, I didn’t hear anything,” Nudge said.

“Me neither,” Angel said.

“Nope,” Kelly said.

I’m not going insane, I’m just jumpy, that’s all. Now if I just kept telling myself that, I might start believing it.

“Angel can you do a quick recon to see if there’s anything else here?” I asked

feeling really agitated.

“Ok,” Angel said as she paused and concentrated, “I don’t feel anything. Relax

Kathy. We’re fine for the moment.”

I still wasn’t quite convinced but I stayed quiet anyway.

We walked until we found a place that was completely dark. Absolutely no light

reached this area, I mean, we couldn’t even see with our raptor vision. Of course,

that was the place we had to go.

“Um, it’s really, really dark in there Kathy. I don’t wanna go,” Kelly said.“We have to. Now, grab someone’s hand so we don’t get separated and let’s

go. We’re gonna get through this,” I said to them as well as to myself.

We joined hands and started walking. I was first, then Angel, the Kelly, then

Nudge.

“AAAH!” Nudge screamed. We stopped.

“What happened?” I asked urgently.



37

“I think something touched my foot,” Nudge said one hop, skip and a jump

away from having a total meltdown.

“I’m sure it was nothing. Just keep holding Angel’s hand and you’ll be alright,” I

said attempting to be reassuring.

“Ok,” Nudge said not sounding very reassured at all.

We walked on in silence trying not to attract the attention of anything that maybe lurking nearby in the dark. Suddenly I heard the shuffling of feet and a muffled

cry.

Then Kelly shrieked “NUDGE!”

“What happened?” I asked afraid of what her answer would be.

“I was holding her hand as we were walking and something pulled her away

and now she’s gone!” Kelly said through her constant sobs, “What if I’m next? What

if one of you is next? We’re all gonna die!”

“No we’re not, we’re gonna find the guys, Max, and Nudge, and everything is

going to be alright!” I said on the verge of tears.

We all got deadly quiet and continued walking going a lot faster than we were

before.

Pretty soon I heard the same shuffling of feet and I turned around to see Angel

and Kelly ripped out of my hands and pulled into the darkness behind us. I was now

completely alone.

“Angel? Nudge? Kelly? Is this some sort of game? This isn’t funny!” I said

knowing very well that this was no game but trying to convince myself otherwise.

I continued walking in the dark and finally came to a door. Or at least it felt like

a door because when I ran into it I felt a doorknob jam into my ribs. I was walking

pretty fast. I got up and felt around for the knob and opened the door. When I went

in I saw 2 metal cages with big red buttons in front of them. They were sitting on

what seemed to be a big floating platform with a bridge leading to the door I wasstanding in. They were basically bigger versions of what I was kept in at the school.

Inside each cage I saw a Kelly, a Nudge, and an Angel.

I walked onto the platform and suddenly a voice came over the intercom.

“Choose a cage. One cage has Nudge, Angel, and Kelly and one cage is full of

clones. You have one hour to decide. Choose wisely,” the voice said. I think it was

Brigid.

“Choose us! We’re the real ones! Please!” Nudge in cage number 1 said.

“No they’re not! Can’t you tell?” Kelly in cage number 2 said.

This is so confusing! How am I supposed to decide?

CHAPTER 19


Kathy! I’m so glad to see you! The clones don’t have our powers but these

cages stop our powers from working. Although, I think they only disable powers that

deal with physical things because I can still use my telepathy, Angel thought to me.



38

Oh thank god I had no idea how I would figure this out by myself. Now which

cage are you in? Wait a second… how do I know that the fake Angel isn’t telling me

what to do? You have the same powers. I said.

The people who made this thought that it neutralized all powers so they don’t

know that I can do this. Anyway, I’m in cage 1 but it’s not that simple, they put me

with clone versions of Nudge and Kelly and the real ones are in the other cage witha clone me, Angel thought.

Well that could complicate things. I’m not surprised they would stoop to

something this low.

You can’t let Brigid know that I can use my powers. Ask us some questions and

pretend you figured it out that way, Angel thought.

A timer appeared floating over the cages. It said I had half an hour left.

“This is a question for the Nudges. What happened to the tree we were

sleeping in on the way to my school?” I asked.

“You, uh… it…” Nudge 1 answered.

“You burned it down accidentally in your sleep,” the real Nudge said knowingly

as she cut off Nudge 1.

“This is a question for the Kellys. What did we do the day we escaped from the

school,” I asked.

“We were attacked,” Kelly 1 said hesitantly. I’m starting to think these clones

were not very prepared for the pop quiz.

“We had a paintball fight!” the real Kelly said.

“OK, this is a question for the Angels. What happened when Robby and I came

into your room to save you earlier?” I asked.

“You sliced down the door and cut my cuffs off,” Angel 2 said proudly thinking

that she fooled me.

“Yeah, you did all that, and we also hid Brigid and Anne in a closet.Unfortunately, they must have found them because I think that was Brigid on the

intercom,” the real Angel said.

“Brigid! You mixed them up in the cages so no matter which one I chose at

least one of my friends would die!” I said to the ceiling.

“Yes we did. Your Point?” Brigid said.

“Free my friends and get rid of these creepy clones. Now!” I said.

“Fine,” Brigid said with a sigh.

The clones disappeared and my friends ran out of the cages and hugged me.

“You saved us!” Kelly said.

“Actually, Angel did. She’s the one who told me how to save you guys,” I said.We remained in our little group hug for a few more seconds and then we broke

apart. Soon after that another door opened and a bridge formed. We walked into the

next room.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-




39

We went into the next room and it was completely dark. No platform, nothing.

We still had our armor and our weapons so that was cool.

We started walking out and it seemed like we were walking on something solid

but we couldn’t see it. Very freaky.

“Uh, guys? Where’s the floor?” Gazzy asked nervously.“It’s ok, see, solid,” Iggy said jumping up and down. Good thing he couldn’t

see.

“Maybe it’s glass,” I said.

“I dunno… I don’t trust it,” Gazzy said.

We reluctantly walked onto the invisible floor. This was one of those rare

occasions when I envied Iggy’s blindness.

As soon as we were all standing in what seemed like the middle of the floor I

felt a punch in the face that came out of nowhere.

Next thing I knew I was on the floor looking up at Iggy and Gazzy who had

matching looks of concern on their faces.

“Dude, what was that? You just fell, hard,” Gazzy said.

“It felt like somebody punched…” I said being cut off by Gazzy suddenly

collapsing on top of me and knocking the air out of my lungs and air sacs.

“Someone kicked me!” Gazzy exclaimed starting to get really scared.

“There’s someone else in here… it feels like Fang!” Iggy said feeling the

vibrations of the mystery attacker’s footsteps. Oh great, now we have to fight an

invisible Fang.

“Fang, it’s us! We’re your friends! We’re all on the same side here,” I said trying

to convince him to stop attacking us. Iggy was the only person who knew where he

was. I also realized that he was remaining invisible even when he moved. Maybe his

powers were getter stronger. Just our luck.“WATCH OUT ROBBY!” Iggy yelled as I felt a powerful kick to my ribs and heard

a crunch. Now I have to fight an invisible Fang with broken ribs. It just keeps getting

better and better.

As I was lying on the floor in excruciating pain Iggy started kicking and

punching. It was actually kind of funny because it looked like he was attacking the

air but I was in too much pain to be amused.

Gazzy come over to my side.

“Are you ok?” Gazzy asked.

“Yeah, I’m just lying clutching my broken rib cage while lying on the floor

because I’m perfectly fine! No I’m not ok! You wouldn’t happen to have any aspirinson you?” I asked trying to take my mind off the agonizing pain.

I turned my attention to Iggy and saw that he was still fighting. Fang must have

lost his concentration because he was visible now.

Fang looked like he was winning because he had just tripped Iggy and started

kicking him repeatedly. Just as I was about to try and stand up when Gazzy jumped

up and tackled Fang from behind catching him completely off guard.



40

Fang turned around at the very least second so Gazzy knocked him backwards.

We heard a loud crack as his skull met the ground and after that there was dead

silence.

Gazzy jumped off of him and backed away slowly.

Iggy got off the floor and went over to Fang to see if he was still alive. Gazzy

and I watched silence.Iggy felt the back of his head and said “He’s still breathing but he’s out cold.”

“What should we do with him?” I said trying not to move my ribcage too much

as I talked.

“We should take him with us,” Iggy said.

“What? He just tried to kill us!” Gazzy shouted.

“Yeah, but we were going to need to rescue him eventually anyway so we

might as well take him now. He’s not any danger to us now and he’s going to be out

for a while. We’ll worry about it when he wakes up,” Iggy said. We saw a door in the

distance open up in the distance. Gazzy practically had to pick me up while tried not

to cry. Iggy picked up Fang and threw him over his shoulder.

After that we walked towards the door and I put most of my weight on Gazzy’s

shoulder while Iggy carried Fang. I wasn’t really sure how I would survive whatever

he next challenge would be and face it whether we were ready or not.

CHAPTER 20


When we walked through the door we walked into what seemed like a coliseum

except there was a roof.

“Please tell me we don’t have to compete in a chariot race or something,”Nudge said.

“That is the least of our problems. We still have to find the guys, save Max,

save Jim, and take down this horrible place,” I said trying to sound confident.

“The sooner the better. This place really creeps me out,” Kelly said.

“No kidding,” Angel said.

We walked to the middle of the coliseum and looked around.

“Maybe we’re just supposed to…” I started saying until I was rudely interrupted

by the violent vibration of the floor.

“What’s… happening… to… the floor…?” Kelly screamed while trying to keep

her balance.Right after she said that the ceiling started collapsing. Then a large door

opened up to what looked like a dark and ominous cave. Great.

“What… are we… supposed… to do…?” Angel yelled over the noisy destruction

of the ceiling.

“RUN!” I shouted at the top of my lungs and we all ran as fast as we towards to

the cave. We jumped, dodged and ducked through all the descending debris until

we reached the cave.



41

Once we were inside the cave was completely closed in by the pieces of what

used to be a ceiling. There was light in the cave but how it got inside I have no idea.

“Well that was scary,” Angel said once our heart rates lowered to a normal

pace.

Well that was an understatement.

“So what now? Do we just wait here?” Nudge asked.“Yep,” I said “so you better make yourselves comfortable. We may be here a

while.”

It was about 10 minutes later that I became bored out of my mind. I almost

wished we were back out with the falling ceiling.

“Do you think we’re gonna die here?” Kelly asked.

“Nah, we’ve been in plenty of situations like this before. We’ll be alright,”

Nudge said nonchalantly. For our sakes, I really hope she’s right.

Just as I was about to say something a huge hole opened up in the floor and a

platform rose out of it with someone standing on it. I’ve never had a good

experience with platforms so I assumed we were in trouble.

Luckily the rest of the girls caught on and got into they’re fighting stances.

The thing on the platform looked really familiar but I couldn’t quite tell who it

was.

Once the platform rose all the way up I realized who it was. Max.

“MAX!” Nudge cried struggling against the urge to run up and hug her. We

weren’t sure if she was still under their control or not, and judging by the blank

stare on her face, I believe it was safe to assume she was.

“Nudge, stay right where you are, I don’t think Max is quite herself at the

moment,” I said cautiously.

“Yeah, she doesn’t have any thoughts at all,” Angel said fearfully.

“Max, it’s us. Don’t you remember? We’re your friends. You can trust us,” Kellysaid gently.

She just continued staring blankly. After a few seconds she started walking

towards us very slowly. It was very zombie-like.

We backed away slowly until we met the back of the cave which didn’t take

very long considering how small the cave was so we weren’t very far away from

Max at all.

She suddenly stopped about 2 feet in front of me. It completely silent and the

tension in the air was really thick. It felt like one sudden move would set her off.

Just when I thought I wouldn’t be able to stand still any longer Max hit me with

a round house kick to the face. It was so fast it barely registered that I was on theground. Just as she was about to attack me again Angel kicked one of her shins. It

must have really hurt because Max collapsed. That didn’t stop her long though, a

few seconds later she got back up and karate chopped the back of Angel’s neck and

broke her collar bone.

Angel screamed in anguish and fell to the ground so now two of us were left.

Nudge flew up in the air and Max flew up after her. It must have been a

distraction because Kelly had just broken off a piece of a stalagmite and turned it



42

into a dagger. Nudge didn’t look like she could hold out much longer so Angel and I

started yelling to distract her.

“Max! Over here! Leave Nudge alone! Don’t you remember us?” I yelled.

“You can’t let them win Max! We’ve come too far for it to end like this,” Angel

yelled.

Max didn’t even glance at us. She was completely absorbed in her fight withNudge. They had been going at it for a couple minutes when Nudge just flew at her

trying to knock her off balance when Max dodged her and let her slam head first

into a wall and fall onto the floor unconscious.

I was well enough to stand up and I thought I’d be able to hold her off until

Kelly could do something but as soon as I got up she turned around, grabbed Kelly

and her dagger, and held it to Kelly’s neck.

“If you make another move, the girl dies,” Anne’s voice said over the intercom.

Looks like we were at an impasse.

CHAPTER 21


We walked through door and ended up inside a very long hallway. The walls

were completely white and gave me a very odd but strong urge to find some

crayons and draw on the walls. We started walking down the hallway with me

leaning on Gazzy and Iggy carrying Fang when I suddenly stopped walking.

“Dude, why’d you stop? The exit is that way,” Iggy said pointing down the

hallway.

“I just realized if we keep going through these stupid challenges we’re never

going to get out. I’m also in no condition to fight and Fang can’t defend himself sowe need to get out. Now,” I said.

“That would be a great idea if we could actually escape,” Gazzy said.

“Well, I was thinking we could blow the wall in and see where we can go from

there. Do you guys have any explosives on you?” I asked knowing for a fact that

they did.

“I’m hurt that you even have to ask,” Iggy said.

He took out a tiny little square and stuck it to the wall.

“I’ve been working on this little baby since before we rescued you guys from

the school. I haven’t decided what to call it yet so for now it’s just called ‘tiny

square bomb.’ We better back up,” Iggy said backing away quickly.Me and Gazzy followed suit.

Once we were about 20 feet away from the bomb (it was a very long hallway)

we crouched down and covered our heads. Then Iggy pulled out a detonator and

pressed the big red button.

BOOM! When I looked up I saw a huge gaping hole in the wall. It reminded me

of those Kaboom commercials where the guys is like “KABOOM and the stain is



43

gone!” I could see it now. Iggy would say ‘it blows through plaster, wood, and steel

and more! Just stick it on, back up, press the button and KABOOM the wall is gone!’

“Nice job Ig, let’s go,” I said.

We walked through the hole into complete darkness wondering if Brigid, Ms.

Jones, and Anne knew where we were and what they were going to do about it.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-


I stared at Max for what seemed like an eternity. She still didn’t move.

“Let go of Kelly please,” I said gently.

“I’m sorry she can’t do that. She has strict orders to take the child hostage and

keep her that way until further notice,” Brigid said condescendingly.

“Please don’t hurt her Max! Let her go! They’re using you!” I cried.

Max just stared blankly.

Just as I was about to try and run towards her there was a huge BOOM!

I jumped behind a rock and brought Angel with me for cover. Nudge was still

unconscious but she fell far enough away that she wouldn’t be harmed.

Once the smoke cleared I got up and looked around.

“Nudge?” I asked through my coughs and gags.

I was about to start freaking out when I saw her arm behind a large rock. I went

over to her and she was still breathing so she was ok.

“Kelly?” I asked still coughing and gagging.

I saw her. Her leg was pinned underneath a huge rock and she had tears

streaming down her face as she tried to free herself. I ran over and helped lift the

rock of her leg. Her leg was bent at an extremely awkward angle but she didn’t losethat much blood so it wasn’t life threatening.

I to the moment to heal her because we weren’t in immediate danger at the

moment and if I didn’t it Kelly wouldn’t be able to run at a moment’s notice if we

had to which, let’s face it, is very likely to happen.

I kneeled down next to her and put my hands over her leg. They started

glowing like they always do and I started pushing energy into her wounded leg.

A couple minutes later her leg was as good as new but I was feeling somewhat

drained. Unfortunately, I still had to fix Angel’s collarbone and figure out what was

wrong with Nudge so I went over to Angel and healed her too.

“Thanks Kathy! I feel much better!” Angel said as she hugged me.“You’re welcome,” I said feeling sort of out of it.

By that point I was feeling kind of light headed but did I let that stop me? No! I

walked over to Nudge and checked to see if she was ok. Along with my healing

ability, I can sense what’s wrong and where I need to concentrate on. I sensed that

she had a slight concussion so I healed that to. Head injuries take a lot more out of

me than say, broken bones.



44

When I was done I started seeing spots. I tried to stand up. Bad idea. As soon

as I stood up my legs gave way.

Last thing I remember was feeling the painful impact of my face on the ground.

Right before I fell completely unconscious though, I heard someone scream.

“KATHY!”

CHAPTER 22


Oh no, Kathy! What happened? I ran over to where she collapsed despite my

broken rib. Or well, tried to run anyway.

“What’s wrong?” I asked urgently.

“She passed out after healing us,” Nudge said in tears.

I kneeled down and held her to me.

“Kathy, wake up. You’re going to be fine. Kathy?” I said starting to get kind of

scared. Then I checked her pulse. Still beating. I checked to see if she was

breathing. Ok, she’s breathing. I think she’ll be ok. Unfortunately, now we have to

carry two people.

I looked over to see that Iggy, Gazzy, and Fang were still alright. Then I

remembered seeing Max right before the explosion.

“Where’s Max?” I asked fearfully.

Everyone suddenly looked panic-stricken and started looking around frantically.

I turned around to see Max standing at the top of a pile of rocks looking down

at us with her blank stare.

“There is no way to beat her. You all love her too much to kill her. Luckily, Max

has no problem with that now,” Anne said. I would bet a lot of money that they wereup in their little office right now laughing manically at our predicament.

After Anne stopped talking Max jumped off the pile of rocks and landed right

next to me. Thanks to my broken rib I couldn’t get away fast enough so she

punched me in the stomach. I really don’t recommend it. It was a very painful

experience.

After I was on the ground writhing in pain for like the 5th time today Max turned

around and went for Gazzy. Gazzy didn’t have a broken rib so he was able to dodge

her blows. How long he’d be able to keep that up, I have no idea.

Nudge, Kelly, and Angel tried to help Gazzy but Max was moving fast enough to

fight all of them. They must have boosted her reflexes and strength with somethingnew they created. I wouldn’t be surprised.

I turned away to see Iggy was joining the fight. Right after he ran off though, I

saw Fang’s hand twitch. Then it twitched again. After a few more seconds he raised

his hand and pressed it to the back of his head. While groaning, he sat up and

looked around. He seemed really disoriented and confused.

Wait a second. If he were still under their control he wouldn’t look disoriented

and confused! He was back to normal! He looked at me and saw everyone fighting



45

Max. This seemed to come as a big surprise to him. He got up slowly and walked

over to where I was laying on the ground.

“Dude, what’s going on? What happened?” He asked, wincing as the words

came out of his mouth.

“Long story short, you were under Anne, Brigid, and Ms. Jones’ control, you

fought us, almost busted your head open and passed out, we carried you here withus, and you woke up,” I told him.

Hold on, why was he normal now? Right before he was knocked out, he was

trying to kill us. That must be it!

“Fang, you have to sneak up behind Max while she’s distracted and hit her in

the back of the head with something really hard. It’s the only way to make her

normal again, can you use your telekinesis,” I said.

“No, I feel like crap and my head hurts like hell. I’m not strong enough to use

my powers yet. I can fight though,” he said as he shook his head.

“Ok, you do that. Don’t hit her too hard though, we don’t want to kill her,” I

said.

He seemed reluctant to do so but he nodded, got up and looked around for

something to hit Max with.

Fang’s awake? And normal? How did that happen? Angel thought to me.

Well, the back of his head landed on the floor very hard earlier today, I thought

back, all you have to do is hit Max in the back of the head really hard. She’ll go out

like a light and a little while later she’ll wake up normal again. I hope… Fang is

going to sneak up on her so keep Max distracted. Also, let everyone else know or

they might start attacking Fang before he gets the chance.

On it, Angel thought.

Fang snuck up behind her silently with a rather large rock he found. He raised

his hand steadily, poising himself to strike the back of Max’s head when suddenlyshe turned around and kicked him in the arm.

Being caught off guard, Fang dropped the rock and staggered backwards. The

rock rolled over to where Kathy lied unconscious. Right before Max could punch him

in the face he regained his balance and blocked her punch. Max seemed to be very

engaged in her fight with Fang so I took the opportunity to shoot Angel a thought.

Tell someone to hit Max now! I thought.

We can’t, Max will know, her senses are on hyper alert right now, nothing can

get past her. Angel thought.

Looks like we’re doomed then.

Yep.I continued watching Max and Fang battle it out. They seemed to be pretty

evenly matched because they probably injected the same stuff into Fang.

Unfortunately, Fang couldn’t keep it up very long and ended up being cornered

in the cave. We all thought that Fang was about to get it when a rock came out of

nowhere and collided smack-dab in the middle of the back of her head.

I looked in the direction the rock had come from and saw Kathy sitting up with

her hand against her forehead.



47

Well, I guess it was better than no plan at all. The only thing I’m worried about

is what they’ll do to us after they take us out of the dome.

“We know you’re up to something. We’re watching you, and you cannot escape

until you either beat all our challenges or die. Whatever it is you’re planning, it is

not going to work,” Brigid said over the intercom sounding a bit tense.

After she said that we got up and walked through the big hole we had blown inthe wall during our grand entrance.

Once we were outside there was another dark room much like the one we

fought Fang in. As we walked further in the room I looked down.

“G-guys?” I said trying not to shriek like a little girl and jump into someone’s

arms.

“What is it?” Kathy asked looking back at me with a concerned look on her

face. Then she followed my line of sight and saw what I was fixated on.

We didn’t appear to be standing on any floor just like before but this time I saw

water beneath us. The water itself wasn’t the problem though. The problem wasn’t

that it seemed to be about 100 feet below us because I’m not afraid of heights

(duh). The problem was that it appeared to be bubbling and steaming which is

never a good sign. Not to mention that I have never swam before.

“No biggy, we’ll just fly out if the floor disappears,” Nudge said remembering

that we had wings.

This gave us all a small amount of relief until we saw something very large

swimming around below us in the boiling water. It left us all dumbstruck. Even Fang

had a look of surprise on his face.

Well there goes that little bit of relief we had a few seconds ago.

Iggy was the only one who wasn’t silently panicking. Another one of those rare

moments when I wished I was blind.

Before anyone was coherent enough to say anything about it the floordisappeared and we started falling. I was pretty surprised Kelly wasn’t screaming.

She must be getting used to the feeling of being in constant danger.

We all snapped our wings out immediately which resulted in a chorus of

groans. All except Fang of course, but you could see that he was in a lot of pain and

having to carry Max wasn’t making the situation much better.

We all hovered for a minute waiting to see what would happen next. We were

all terrified. Iggy seemed a bit freaked but at least he didn’t have to see the dark,

ominous boiling water floating below us harboring a large powerful looking creature.

Suddenly the creature poked its head out of the water and stared straight at

me. The others shot up to the top but I just stared back at the creature in the waterlocked in his gaze. My wings seemed to have a mind of their own and wouldn’t let

me fly up to safety with the others.

“Robby?” I heard Kathy call.

I tried to tell her that I couldn’t move but my mouth didn’t seem to be working

either. By this point I was really freaking out.

No matter how hard I tried I just hovered there as the monster in the water

below looked at me with this menacing stare.



48

“Robby?” Kathy called again sounding more concerned than before.

“Come on! Get out of there!” Kelly yelled down at me. You know, if I was

capable of leaving we wouldn’t have been having this conversation.

After I didn’t respond I heard someone flying down to help me. Before they

could get to me the monster opened his gaping mouth into what seemed to be a

smile. A creepy, disturbing smile that only comes from people, or things, that takegreat pleasure in harming others. You could see gigantic teeth in its mouth made

just for devouring flesh. You could even see the remnants of its latest meal. Yuck.

While I was busy being truly disgusted I could hear the sound of someone

flying towards me getting louder. I started to feel somewhat relieved when without

warning, the creature’s tongue shot out of its mouth and wrapped around my waste.

It was like a thick, sticky, pink rope.

Fortunately I still couldn’t speak so no one had to hear the girly scream that

would have erupted from my vocal chords just then. I may get eaten by a monster

but at least I’d still have my dignity.

As I was pulled toward the creature I just closed my eyes, my eyelids being the

only things I could move, hoping it would be over quickly and painlessly.

My last thought before being consumed by the beast was “I hope the flock’ll be

ok without me.”

CHAPTER 24


I was just about to grab him when that thing’s thick ropy tongue flew out of its

mouth and yanked Robby away from me.

“ROBBY! NOO!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.I was just about to go after him when someone, Nudge, grabbed my arm and

pulled up to the top. I fought against her the whole way.

Once we reached the top where the floor used to be I continued trying to free

myself from Nudge’s grasp and save my brother. I pulled and pulled until she finally

let go. Unfortunately Gazzy and Kelly grabbed me before I could get away.

“GET THE HELL OFF ME! I HAVE TO SAVE HIM!” I shouted desperately.

Pretty soon everyone was holding me back except Fang who still had Max in his

arms.

“Kathy, there’s nothing we can do,” Nudge said with tears in her eyes.

By now I was pretty much a nervous wreck easily capable of being set off atthe slightest thing. I continued trying to pull away and as I finally broke free I flew as

fast as I could towards the hole. I was going down so fast I was practically falling.

Just as I reached the top of the hole in the floor closed up and I hit the floor at

top speed. It was a lot like falling face first onto cement. Not a pleasant experience.

After a few seconds I sat up, ignoring the pain, and started pounding on the

ground. It was still invisible so I could see the creature lowering its ugly head back

into the boiling water.



49

I pounding and punched and kicked the floor to the point where my knuckles

were bloody and bruised. Eventually I just gave up and curled into a ball. I had

officially snapped.

I heard footsteps walking up to me as I sobbed convulsively. It was Angel. She

put her arms around me and I just cried.

Next thing I knew Nudge, Gazzy, and Kelly joined the hug too. It seemed likeforever before I finally stopped crying. I looked up at everyone somewhat

embarrassed that they had to see that little emotional display.

Once I was in a rational state of mind I stood up.

“Ok, now we have to save Jim and Robby. We need a plan. Fang, any ideas?” I

asked trying to pretend I hadn’t just snapped. Maybe they’d all stop looking at me

with concern if I acted like I was ok.

Fang kind of looked at me with a forlorn expression on his face. He had put Max

on the ground, probably tired after carrying her all this time.

“Kathy, I don’t know how to break this to you, but Robby’s gone. There is no

way to save him,” he said gently like one wrong word would make me lose it.

“No, he’s not. I know he’s ok. Maybe it’s a twin thing, maybe it’s a power. I

don’t know. All I know is that he is alive and we have got to save him before it’s too

late,” I said. I just knew that if something happened to Robby I would feel it.

Whether they believed me or not was up to them.

We just sort of sat there in silence for a while, not knowing what to say. They

were all looking at me more concerned than before probably thinking I was crazy.

It got so unbearably awkward that I was about to scream just to make

something else happen.

Instead, I heard a groan. It seemed deafening compared to the dead silence

only a few seconds before.

We all turned our attention to where that noise was coming from and saw Max.She was trying to sit up slowly and had her hand rubbing the back of her head. Her

eyes were closed and she looked like she was in a lot of pain.

Fang went over to Max and helped her sit up as the rest of us surrounded her

trying to see if she was back to normal. We weren’t sure whether to hug her or

prepare for battle so we just waited.

She opened her eyes and looked around at all of us. She seemed confused.

“Um, why are you all staring at me? What happened? I have a killer headache,”

Max said.

No one answered her questions. We all just hugged her simultaneously.

“Max! You’re ok!” Angel squealed.“Max! Max! Max!” Nudge cried.

Kelly and Gazzy just hugged her, thankful that she woke up back to normal.

I was really happy and all but I couldn’t get past the fact that my brother had

just been taken. I refuse to believe he was killed.

After Gazzy, Angel, Nudge, and Kelly were done I hugged her with noticeably

less enthusiasm. She looked at me with a ‘what’s wrong’ look in her eyes. The half

hearted hug must have tipped her off.



50

-~-~-~-~-~-~-

Max’s Perspective

I looked at Kathy and immediately knew something was upsetting her. She

must have known that I knew when she stopped hugging me because she began toexplain.

“Robby… was taken… by this creature…” Kathy started, sounding like she was

one the verge of tears. She said creature with such disgust you could practically see

the hatred and pain rolling off of her.

“Its tongue shot out… and swallowed him! They all think he’s dead, but I know

isn’t. He’s still alive! I can feel it!” Kathy said as tears started rolling down her

cheeks. I took her in my arms and rubbed her back trying to console her and she

clung to me looking for a shoulder to cry on.

I told her “Sweety, it’s going to be fine. We will save your brother. And we’ll

save Jim while we’re at it, so stop crying, everything’s going to be alright.” Or at

least it will be as soon as my killer migraine stopped.

I tried to stand up but my legs didn’t seem to want to cooperate so I just

remained on the ground. Fang appeared to be the only one who noticed I couldn’t

get up without assistance.

“Ok, Max is fine, now we need to figure out how to save Robby and Jim and get

out of here,” Fang said as he helped me up.

“How are we supposed to figure out where they are? We’re still stuck inside this

stupid dome,” Iggy said sounding frustrated.

We sat there in silence for a minute when a plan suddenly came to me.

“I have an idea.”

CHAPTER 25

Max’s Perspective

“We need to just wait here.”

I know what you’re thinking. THE Maximum Ride? Waiting patiently? What hasthis world come to? Well, it was the only way. See, if we kept going, they were just

going to keep throwing stuff at us and picking us off one by one.

“Are you serious? We’re just supposed to wait here?” Iggy said incredulously.

“That’s what I said didn’t I? They’re probably going to try and make us move

pretty soon,” I replied and right on cue the intercom started speaking.

“You can’t just sit there! You all need to complete the challenges or you are no

use to us!” said a voice that sounded like Brigid.



51

“Oh is that so? Then why did you take my brother?” Kathy shouted out in

anger.

“We needed to run some tests and there was no other way to take him. It’s not

like we could ask you to hand him over. We needed to take him by force. Now get up

and go through the door.”

I guess Kathy was right. Thank god Robby is alive… for now.“Please, like we’d ever listen to you,” I said.

“Not without a little encouragement,” Brigid said. I was positive that she

smiling when she said that.

As she said that a cage appeared. It had someone in it. Kathy recognized him

first.

“JIM!” she yelled and started running toward the cage.

“Kathy stop!” Angel cried and grabbed her before she could get too far.

“We have to save him! He’s right there! We can get him out!” Kathy said trying

to free herself from Angel’s grasp. Then the rest of us went over to help Angel keep

her restrained.

“Kathy, that’s not Jim,” Angel said “he’s a clone. It’s a trap! They would never

put Jim close enough for us to save him.” It’s times like these when her creepy little

mind reading powers really came in handy.

Kathy finally calmed down and we all just stared at the cage. Clone Jim was

staring back at us.

Max, what are we going to do? Angel thought.

Instead of doing something, I put my plan into action and sat down. For the

first time in my life, the solution to our problem was to do nothing and wait. I wasn’t

very happy about it, but it was all we could do.

Just wait, I thought back.

The rest of the flock saw me sit down and followed suit. We just sort of staredat the cage. After about 10 minutes we all were pretty restless. I wasn’t sure how

much longer we could keep this up.

I started to fear that my plan wouldn’t work when suddenly Anne’s voice came

over the intercom.

“We are willing to bargain with you. What will make you continue the

challenges?”

“We need food, water, and sleep in a real room, with real food. Not some

virtual crap you’re probably creating to make us think we’re being fed,” I

demanded.

“Fine, but you’re going to be guarded at all times and as soon as you’re doneyou’re going straight back to the challenges.”

Wow, I can’t believe they agreed to that. They must really want us to finish

these challenges.

After Anne was done talking some flyboys came through a door that opened up

from behind us.

Should we rush them? Angel asked.

No, wait until we’re in the room.



52

They came over and threw that web stuff over us. Angel must have relayed it

on to the others because they didn’t put up a fight like they normally would.

There were about 4 of them and they just picked us up and carried us through

the door into a room just like the ones we had been held prisoner in earlier except

slightly bigger.

Once we were in the room they sat us down and removed the web. Then theyput those annoying collars on us and left the room. Instead of being the usual silver

and black, this time they were bright orange. Must have gotten a new manufacturer

“Ugh, not these things again,” I said feeling miffed.

“I know right? They totally clash with my outfit. Orange is so not my color,”

Nudge complained.

Of course she would be concerned about her clothes in a situation like this.

Typical.

Pretty soon after that some white coats came in and gave us food. There were

8 bowls and they seemed to have grayish greenish sludge inside. They placed each

bowl in front of us and started to walk out the door.

“Uh, I wanted food, not something you scraped out of the inside of a sewer

pipe,” I said to one of the whitecoats.

“Eat it, it’s delicious,” he said to me.

“Delicious? How can I eat this? It doesn’t even look edible! Last time I checked

sludge was not part of the food pyramid. Why don’t you try it and tell us how it

tastes?” I asked.

The whitecoat seemed surprised that I asked and totally grossed out at the

thought of even touching that stuff.

“That’s what I thought. Now I want you to go back to wherever you came from

and get me some real food!” I said firmly. He looked at the whitecoats who had

come into the room with him and they shrugged. Then they walked out the door,closing it behind them.

“Do you think they’re coming back?” Kelly asked.

“I dunno, but in the mean time, what is this crap?” Gazzy asked.

“What does it look like?” Iggy asked about to put his hand in it to feel it.

“Stop Iggy! Don’t put your hand in there! For all we know it might jump out of

the bowl and try to bite your finger off. It’s a grayish greenish color and looks really

thick,” I said.

Gazzy leaned down to sniff it and immediately started coughing and gagging.

“Smells worse than it looks too,” he said.

Fang was just staring at his with a grimace on his face.Nudge had hers sitting on the floor in front of her.

“Oh my god I think mine is moving!” she cried in horror as she back away from

it quickly.

We went over to look and saw that it was indeed moving. After a few seconds a

fly flew out of it. It flew for a few seconds then it suddenly stopped and fell to the

floor.



53

After that w just put our bowls in a corner and sat on the opposite side of the

small room as far away from that stuff as possible.

“How are we supposed to get out of here?” Iggy asked.

I hadn’t really thought that far ahead because I didn’t think we’d get this far.

Luckily, I didn’t have to because Kathy started speaking.

“I’ve been saving these bad boys just in case of an emergency. Found ‘em inthe room I was trapped in before,” she said mischievously as she pulled out a bunch

of little syringes out of her pocket.

“It looks like the stuff they injected us with to put us to sleep. I say we give ‘em

a taste of their own medicine and go after Robby and Jim.”

“I still think we need to get outside and regroup. Once we have a better plan

we’ll come back for Jim and Robby,” Fang said

Kathy seemed kind of disappointed and annoyed at the fact that Fang was right

and that we couldn’t go after them right that second.

“Kathy sweety, I’m sorry. I wanna go after them too but we need to get out of

here first. Ok?” I said.

Kathy nodded her head glumly.

“Ok, I say knock out the next group to walk in the door and get the heck out of

here. Sound like a plan?” I said.

Every nodded with determined looks on their faces and Kathy handed out a

syringe to each of us.

A few minutes later 6 whitecoats walked in with trays. This time they had

cookies and they didn’t look totally disgusting either. Too bad we couldn’t stay and

enjoy them.

“Attack!” I yelled. Everyone lunged at a whitecoat. Whatever was in the

syringes worked like a charm because as soon as we injected the liquid they

dropped like rocks.I looked around the room satisfied to see 6 unconscious whitecoats lying about.

“Ok guys, I think it’s about time we got outta here.”

CHAPTER 26

We were about to leave the room.

“Wait! Hold on,” I said.

I went back in the room and grabbed the cookies. Then I found a sac in one of

the closets and stuffed them inside.

They stared at me questioningly so I said “For the road.”After that we left the room and ran down the hallway to our right.

“Soo… what now?” Fang asked me.

“Hey, you’re the one with all the bright ideas, why don’t you come up with

something?” I snapped back as we were running.

“I’ve had my turn, now it’s yours.”

“I always come up with the ideas! I’ve also just recovered from getting hit in

the back of my head with a rock! Cut me some slack!”



54

“Maybe I would if our life didn’t depend on coming up with a plan to escape.”

“Stop arguing! You sound like an old married couple! Why don’t we just find a

room, blast through the wall, and see how it goes from there?” Iggy said sounding a

bit annoyed.

Hmmm… not a bad idea. I’ll get him for the old married couple comment later

but right now we had to escape.“Ok, that sounds good. Let’s go into that room and the end of the hallway,” I

instructed.

We went through the door and ended up in what looked like a storage closet.

The strange thing was that nothing was stored in it. It was completely empty. It was

relatively large but barely big enough to hold eight bird kids so we couldn’t move

around a lot.

We all went back outside the closet except Iggy and Gazzy who were putting

the bomb onto the wall.

They came back outside and Gazzy said “You guys might wanna back up a little

bit.”

After we were a safe distance away Iggy pulled out a detonator and pressed a

big blue button which led to an ensuing BOOM!

We checked the closet to see that it lead to a much larger room behind it.

There were a lot of high tech looking computers but no one was inside. They

probably held all sorts of secrets and plans that they didn’t want us to know about.

Should I respect their wishes and not hack into their computers or should I

hack into them now regardless of their wishes and blow them up after I was done.

It was a hard decision but I was going to have to go with the second one.

“Ok Nudge, see what you can find about any plans they have. Fang, you and

the girls stand watch. Iggy and Gazzy, I need you to set up some explosives for a

fast getaway in case we have any unexpected visitors,” I said.Everyone started doing their jobs. Meanwhile, I realized my stomach was

growling so I reached in the sac and very discreetly pulled out a cookie. It actually

smelled really good. I mean, they weren’t anything like my mom’s but they were

pretty decent and I was hungry.

I found out it was the crunchy kind because when I took a bite it was way

louder than I thought it would be and everyone in the room heard it. So much for

discretion.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at me. Once they saw the

cookie they ran at me and stole my sac.

“Hey!” I said indignantly. They completely ignored me and devoured the cookies I had in my bag.

“I was saving those for later,” I continued.

“But… we’re hungry now,… so deal with it,” Iggy said between bites.

Once they were done the bag was completely empty.

“Thanks for saving some for me. I really appreciate it,” I said sarcastically.

“You’re welcome,” Gazzy said.

“Get back to work,” I said.



55

Nudge went back to the computer and suddenly pulled something up. I went

over to see what it was.

“What is… this…?” I said as I realized what I was looking at. It was an elaborate

blueprint for some sort of super robot. It seemed to be big, strong, and scary. Not a

very good combination.

“Uh, we need to get out of here, I hear footsteps,” Iggy said.“Ok, Nudge print that,” I said. She printed the blueprints and we all went to the

other side of the room.

Once we were there Iggy pressed the blue button again and the wall blew up. I

waited a few seconds of the dust and debris to clear up a bit and then I opened my

eyes.

Sunlight! Oh my god I could see grass and trees and plants. Oh it was so

beautiful I almost cried. We were finally free!

“Come on guys, I do believe we’ve overstayed our welcome. Let’s go,” I said.

And with that we went through the gaping hole in the wall and ran.

We ran and ran and ran some more. We finally stopped once we reached a

wooded area that could hide us pretty well.

“Hello sky! Hello tree! Hello dirt! Hello flowers!” Gazzy said as he hugged

pretty much everything he saw while the rest of us sat down and rested.

“I hate to break up your little reunion Gazzy, but we have to get farther away.

They’ll easily find us here,” I said.

“Let’s walk until we find a flat place to take off on,” Fang said.

We walked a little while until we found a flat open meadow.

“Perfect. Up and away,” I said almost giggling with the anticipation of flying

again.

We took off in twos. Kelly and Angel, Kathy and Nudge, Gazzy and Iggy, then

Fang and me.I missed the feeling of stretching out my wings and the fresh air under the sun.

I felt like I was invincible when I was up in the air. It’s a wonderful feeling. You

should really try it sometime.

Unfortunately, it didn’t last. I soon realized that we didn’t have any supplies,

clothes, or food. We landed next to the Potomac River. We set up a bonfire to keep

us warm.

It was somewhat dark outside so I wasn’t sure if any of the local grocery stores

would be open. Me and Kathy to a nearby town to see if they had any. None of them

were open but there was a convenience store so we went in there.

I walked in and we split up. Kathy went to go see if they had any sodas or juices and I went straight for the candy and chips. Once I got there was a boy who

seemed about my age in the aisle. I couldn’t see his face but he looked kind of

familiar. I quickly turned around and started walking out of the aisle hoping he

didn’t notice me.

I had just about made it when the boy said “Max?”

Oh god I know that voice. Sam.



56

CHAPTER 27

What was I supposed to say? I hadn’t seen the guy in months and last time I

did he seemed a bit eraserish.

I slowly turned around to face him. I even tried to smile but I had a feeling it

looked more like a grimace than anything.He said “Max it is you! I can’t believe it!” Neither could I.

“So what are you doing in this neck of the woods?” he asked. I was about to

ask him the same question.

“Well, just traveling with my, uh, parents. Yeah, they came back from their…

mission. What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Well, after what happened at school my parents thought that I should go

somewhere that wasn’t run by nut jobs. The principal said you were ‘human avian

hybrids that needed to be destroyed’ or something like that. If that isn’t crazy, then

I don’t know what is. How long are you in town?”

“Not sure, not very long. Well, it was nice running into you… bye!” I said as I

quickly started walking away.

“Wait! Max! I was wondering if you wanna do something tonight, since you’re

in town?” he asked pleadingly.

What was I supposed to say “No, I’m already in a relationship with Fang”? Sam

still thought he was my brother! Oh god, this could only go downhill from here.

“Um… well, I’m busy tonight… with family stuff.”

“Tomorrow then?”

“Sorry, no, I’m busy for the rest of the week,” I said starting to get nervous.

“Come one Max, there has to be some time of the day that you’re available.

You have to eat sometime, right? How about lunch tomorrow. My treat.” Man, he

was persistent.“I have to eat with my siblings, you know, babysit while my parents are…

working.” Is that something normal people would do?

“Well, why don’t you leave them for a while? You can have your brother, what’s

his name, tooth?”

“It’s FANG and no, he can’t watch them all by himself. I would never do that to

him. I’ve gottago, but it really was nice seeing you again. I’m sorry it isn’t going to

work out. Bye!” I said trying to end this conversation, get some snacks and go as

quickly as possible.

“Ok, bye then. Maybe I’ll run into you again sometime, you’re sure you can’t go

out for ice cream or something?” he said sounding dejected.I shook my head no and started to turn around and grab some snacks but Sam

grabbed my shoulder. I had to use a lot of self control to not flip him over my

shoulder and cause a scene.

“Max, wait. Is this because we haven’t seen each other in so long? You think we

won’t connect anymore? I think it’s worth a shot. We should see where it takes us. I

can’t bear to let you leave without even trying,” he said. I swear, if I didn’t say

something he was going to get on his knees and beg.



57

“I haven’t stopped thinking about you since I last saw you at school. Please

Max, I’m begging you! What’s stopping you?”

Ok, first, it was only one date. We technically weren’t even really ‘a couple’ and

you cannot determine your soul mate by having ice cream and dinner with

someone. Second, I already found my soul mate! Only I couldn’t tell him that

because saying you’re in love with your supposed brother is not a very good way toend a conversation.

“I’m sorry. I’ve found someone else,” which is true enough “I have to go. My

family is waiting.”

Well that shut him up. I took the opportunity to grab a bunch of snacks and get

out of there before he regained his speech.

I checked out my snacks and found Kathy waiting at the front of the store. She

had her hands on her hips and her foot tapping with impatience. It was actually

really cute.

“Where have you been? I’ve been waiting here for like 10 minutes! What have

you got to say for yourself young lady?” she scolded.

“Sorry mother, I ran into someone I knew and he wouldn’t let me leave. It’s

taken care of though. I’ll tell you about it later. Just remind me never to go into any

type of food or beverage aisle by myself ever again.” I said.

Kathy looked somewhat confused but she shrugged her shoulders and we flew

back to our little camp site.

Once we reached the camp site I emptied all our bags on the ground.

“Ok, I’ve got chips, cookies, popcorn, candy, and cereal. Can’t take any

perishable items so there’s no milk. No bowls either,” I said.

“But I did find some juice pouches! Bon appétit!” Kathy said.

“Yes! I’m starving!” Nudge said.

“Me too,” Kelly said.We chowed down on all our junk food. It may not be the healthiest meal we’ve

ever had but hey! It was better than nothing.

Once we were done eating I realized that we were all filthy.

“We need to find a hotel or something and bathe,” I decided.

“Why? Don’t you love the lovely aroma formed by the combination of our

distinct odors?” Gazzy asked.

“I think I’ve had enough for a couple lifetimes. Besides, now that we have the

opportunity, why not? We can even sleep in actual beds and eat an actual cooked

meal,” I replied.

“I do need to wash my hair,” Nudge commented.“And a bed would be a nice change from sleeping on the ground or in trees,”

Iggy said.

“Well it’s decided then. Let’s go find a hotel,” I said.

We went into town once it was dark and found a nice little hotel that even

served breakfast. Ok, maybe not little. It was actually pretty big. I got us the biggest

room in the place and it had 2 king sized beds, and a kitchen! It also had a Murphy

bed and a sleeper sofa so everyone could sleep in a bed if we slept in pairs. I



58

opened the cabinet in the living room area to find that there was a huge flat screen

TV! It was a huge step for us considering our usual entertainment was beating up

bad guys.

The flock settled down in the living room and watched TV while I was in the

kitchen with Iggy checking out the equipment.

“Iggy, we have a microwave, an oven, a sink, and a little refrigerator! I couldget used to this,” I said. It was almost like a dream come true.

“Can you imagine the things I could make in here?” Iggy said half to me and

half to himself while he was lost in thought. I heard laughter in the other room so I

was about to see what everyone was watching on TV when someone knocked on

the door.

“Did anyone order room service?” I asked.

Everyone shook their heads no.

I went to the door preparing attack if necessary. I opened the door to find Sam

standing in the hallway with flowers. Oh no! How did he find me?

“Max! I’m sure your boyfriend will understand. You don’t even have to call it a

date. We can go as friends,” Sam said.

He’s stalking me now? Great. Just what I need, a stalker on top of all my other

problems.

“Who is it?” I heard Fang ask from the other room.

Crap, I can’t let anyone see him here, especially Fang!

“No one!” I shouted back as I pushed him backwards, went out into the hallway

with him and closed the door behind me.

“How did you find me here?” I asked.

“Well there’s only one hotel in this town and all I had to do was ask the front

desk what your room number was,” he said.

What happened to confidentiality?“I keep telling you, I can’t go out with you, ok?” I said firmly.

“Just one date. If you still don’t want to go out, then I’ll leave you alone

forever,” he said seriously.

I wasn’t going to get rid of him unless I did what he asked. This is definitely

going to end badly.

“Fine, but just one date. Tomorrow at lunch, ok?” I said reluctantly.

His whole face seemed to brighten with joy.

Good god what have I gotten myself into?

CHAPTER 28

I went back inside the room. As I looked around the room everyone was still

watching TV so I assumed no one noticed my absence. Well, no one noticed except

Fang of course. As soon as our eyes met I knew he was asking me “what were you

doing out there?” by the look on his face.

I sighed, knowing this wasn’t going to end well and I walked into the hallway

again with Fang following behind me.



59

“What was that all about?” Fang asked.

“Uh, it was someone we met a while ago. Oh my god! Is Iggy converting that

phone into a bomb!” I said trying to end this conversation.

“Nuh uh uh. Stop right there. One, you’ve never stopped Iggy from building

bombs. Second, what is it that you don’t want to tell me?” Fang said sternly.

“Sam is here,” I said really quietly hoping he didn’t hear me. Unfortunately, hehad super hearing so it didn’t make much of a difference.

“What?” Fang said. He was trying to be calm but I could tell that he was really

angry. His eyes were squinting at me and he jaw was tightening. This was how Fang

looked when he was really pissed off.

“Yeah… he asked me a question…” I said slowly inching my way towards to

door so I could hide if he lost his control.

“Elaborate,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Well… he asked me to go out for lunch tomorrow…” I said getting really

nervous.

“And you told him?”

“Uh, well… I told him… I would go with him.” He closed his eyes slowly as if to

keep himself from going off on me. If he was pissed off before this ought to put him

into a hissy fit.

After a minute he opened his eyes and looked at me. It was kind of scary.

“Have fun,” was all he said as he turned around and started opening the door.

“Wait, what do you mean have fun?” I asked completely thrown off. That’s

definitely not what I was expecting.

“Are you serious? I don’t even want to go on this date!” I said.

“Then why are you going?” he asked.

“If I don’t go he will not leave me alone! He tracked me down and brought me

flowers Fang! What am I supposed to do?” I said raising my voice.“It’s fine, go. I don’t mind at all. Like I said, have fun,” Fang said. He sounded

weird, like his voice was slightly higher in pitch than usual. Like anyone else would

have missed it entirely but I knew him well enough to know that something was

wrong.

“Are you sure?” I said becoming concerned.

“Yeah, go, really. When’s your date?” Fang said.

“Uh, tomorrow at lunch…” I said still a bit bewildered.

“Ok fine, I’ll take care of the flock until you’re done. Are there any future dates I

should know about?”

“No, he promised to stop harassing me if I don’t enjoy our date.”“Ok, now let’s go inside before the kids notice our absence.”

He opened the door and gestured for me to go inside. I went in thinking of all

the possible things that this could go horribly long. It was a pretty long list.

Once I got inside I heard laughter in the living room. I went in the room to see

what they were doing to find that they had pulled out the Murphy bed and the

sleeper sofa and were jumping on all the beds.

“Max! Fang! Jump with us! These beds are super bouncy!” Angel squealed.



60

“I think I’ll pass. You can tell me about it when you’re done though,” I said.

“Fang! Will you jump with us?” Angel asked.

“I’m gonna have to sit this one out,” he replied.

“Looks like we’re gonna have to do this the hard way,” Gazzy said.

I was about to say “Wait a minute, what do you mean the ‘hard’ way?” but I

was too busy being hit in the face with a pillow.I looked over at Fang to find that he had also been hit by a pillow. I looked back

at them to see Gazzy cracking up on one of the beds.

“Oh it’s on now!” I yelled as I grabbed a pillow and tackled Gazzy. I grabbed

him and started beating him with my pillow. Meanwhile Fang was left alone to be

pelted with pillows by the rest of the flock.

“Pillow fight!” Kelly yelled as she started attacking Fang with a pillow.

Fang had caught one of the pillows and started beating deflecting pillows.

Kathy accidentally hit Nudge and Nudge started hitting her with a pillow in each

hand. Gazzy was still in my grip until Iggy came out of nowhere and knocked me

upside the head but hitting Gazzy in the process. Me and Gazzy got up and attacked

him.

Fang and Kelly were having a one on one pillow fighting match. It went on and

on for I don’t know how long. Once we were done the whole room was covered in

feathers. We also had feathers all over us. It was a total mess but a lot of fun.

“Who wants to clean up?” I asked.

Silence.

“Gazzy, Kathy, Nudge, Angel, and Kelly! Thanks for volunteering!” I said.

“But we didn’t –“ Gazzy started but I cut him off.

“Start cleaning,” I said.

Fang and Iggy were snickering on the side of the room.

“Oh don’t think I forgot about you guys,” I said. They looked a bit startled.

Pretty much every pillow in the room had been destroyed and we needed

more.

“You and Iggy go down stairs and get some new pillows,” I instructed.

After they got our pillows and the kids cleaned up the room we all went to

sleep, exhausted.

The next day we went to the super market. This time we stayed in a group

because I really didn’t want to run into any more people I knew. We bought lunch

meat, breakfast stuff, pasta, fruits and vegetables, some cheese, and we even gotsome milk.

Once we got back to the hotel we put all the stuff we weren’t using in the

refrigerator. Iggy started making lasagna for dinner. It was around noon but it takes

a long time to make that stuff.

Oh crap, noon. I was supposed to meet Sam for lunch. Guess it was time to go.

“Uh, I need to go do something. I’ll be back in a little while. Bye guys!” I said

quickly as I walked out the door before questions could be asked.



62

As childish and immature as it was, I got angry. He was about to touch her

hand when a waiter walked by with a glass of soda on a tray. I used my telekinesis

and knocked it right over his head before he could touch her hand.

You should have seen the look on his face. It was all I could do not to falling

over laughing and blow my cover. Man would that be embarrassing.

“I’m so sorry sir!” the waiter said.“It’s fine. I’m gonna go to the bathroom and clean up. I’ll be right back,” Sam

said.

Max didn’t respond.

As I silently celebrated my small victory in my head I glanced out the window

to see Flyboys walking towards the entrance of the restaurant.

Uh oh.

CHAPTER 29

Max’s Perspective

Oh my god that was hilarious. I didn’t want to be rude so I contained my

laughter by not saying anything. Barely. It was weird because I could’ve sworn I

heard suppressed snickers behind me but maybe I was just imagining things.

While he was gone I figured, why let this delicious pizza go to waste? It was

practically begging me to scarf the whole thing down but I didn’t want to cause a

scene so I ate it slice by slice.

After about 10 minutes I became a little worried. I’m sure he would have come

back by now but it would be weird to go to the men’s room and check on him so I

decided to just wait.

As I started reaching for another slice I sensed someone walking towards mytable. Assuming it was Sam, I turned to look at them and realized that it was a

flyboy and I was about to get really hurt if I didn’t do something.

I put up my arms to block his punch but felt nothing. Feeling somewhat

confused I put my arms down a little just in time to see the flyboy fall to the ground.

Well, more like get tackled to the ground except, nothing was there. Ok now I was

even more confused.

I got up from the booth and saw that something was on top of the flyboy. It was

strange because one second it was there and the next it wasn’t. I wasn’t quite sure

what it was but it was doing a pretty good job of beating the crap out of that flyboy

so I decided not to interrupt. The thing started to become clearer and clearer until I realized that I knew who

it was.

“Fang! What are you doing here?” I asked. In a matter of seconds I went from

feeling scared, to feeling surprised that he was here, to feeling confused because he

was here, to feeling angry at the fact that he was here. It gave me a strange sort of

rush to experience so many emotions at once so when the other flyboy attacked me

I was more than ready.



63

He leaned over to pick me up and I brung my knee up so it met his chin with a

satisfying crunch. After that I used a round house kick and brought him to the

ground. I then karate chopped his collar bone.

I checked to make sure he was good and broken. Once I was done I saw Fang

had defeated the flyboy who tried to attack me. I was glad to see he was ok until I

remember I was mad at him.“Fang what are you doing here?” I asked.

“Well, I heard they have really good pizza here,” Fang lied.

“Uh huh. You just happened to be here when I was attacked. The question is

why? Hmm… maybe because someone doesn’t trust me?” I questioned.

“Of course I trust you. I trust you more than I trust anyone.”

“You don’t trust Sam then?”

“I think he’s up to something.” This was probably true but that wasn’t why he

was here. There was only one possible explanation for this. I was going to have so

much fun rubbing this in his face.

“Oh my god you’re jealous! I never thought I’d see the day!”

You should have seen the look on his face. It was a mixture of embarrassment

and horror. Priceless. Too bad I didn’t have a camera because I definitely wasn’t

going to see that face ever again.

“I am not,” he denied. I could see his eyes tightening with frustration and his

face starting to flush.

“Just face it Fang. You can’t help it. I can only imagine how hard it is to share

me with someone else.” He started glaring at me.

“Now is not the time to discuss this. We need to go, the flock could be in

danger,” Fang said probably trying to change the subject.

“Ok fine, but this is so not over.”

We turned toward the door to see the room had cleared out. It seemed likeeveryone was smart enough to get out while they could.

We walked through the front door and ran towards the hotel. I hope they’re ok.

I don’t think I would be able to handle having more of my flock kidnapped.

We reached the hotel and ran up the stairs. I pulled my hotel card out of my

pocket and swiped it through. Tried to open the door and it was still locked. I tried

again and nothing happened.

“Lemme try,” Fang said.

He tried and nothing happened. At this point I was seriously considering

knocking down the door. Fortunately Kathy opened the door before it came to that.

“What are you doing out here?” Kathy asked.“My card isn’t working,” I said feeling annoyed.

Kathy thought for a second and asked “You do know that you have to wait a

second before you can actually turn the handle right?” Oh yeah…

“Of course I did. Is everyone ok? We were just attacked by flyboys and I needed

to check on you guys,” I said urgently.

“Ok, but everything’s fine. In fact, this boy named Sam came to visit,” Kathy

said.



64

What?

CHAPTER 30

Fang’s Perspective

What the hell is HE doing here? First he tries to steal Max and now the flock? I

don’t think so. This is going to end here and now!

I burst into the room and saw him playing cards with Iggy and Gazzy. Angel was

sitting on the side watching. Max had banned her from all card games due to her

mindreading capabilities.

He looked up when he realized we had come into the room and looked truly

surprised that we were here. Startled actually.

“Sam, what are you doing here?” Max asked confused.

“I couldn’t find you at the restaurant so I came here looking for you,” Sam

replied smoothly.

“Yeah, we’ve been playing cards for the past hour, and I’ve been kicking his

butt,” Iggy said.

Wait, just left the restaurant 15 minutes ago, there’s no way we would’ve

missed him. Unless…

“You knew that the flyboys were coming so you used the soda I spilled on you

as an excuse to leave!” I exclaimed.

“You did that?” Max asked incredulously, “Man when you get jealous you get

JEALOUS,” she continued sounding very amused.

“Shut up Max, this is not the time! Sam is probably telling the flyboys where we

are right now!”

“Excuse me? What’s a flyboy? What are you talking about?” Sam askedinnocently.

“Oh don’t play innocent with me. You’ve put Max and the flock in danger and

for that, you’re going down,” I said with the most menacing voice I could muster,

which let’s face it, could probably frighten a young man. The last time I used this

voice was when I was trying to scare those guys Max and I had met in the

abandoned house we were searching and I told them I was an angel.

Sam had a look of horror on his face as I slowly walked toward him. Before I got

close enough he jumped up and ran to the door Kathy was still standing in and left.

The surprising part wasn’t that he had run away, but how fast he ran away. He ran

as fast as we could, which definitely wasn’t normal.Instead of staring at the door, dumbfounded like the rest of the flock, I ran after

him. I ran down the stairs and through the door and once I was outside I flew up to

him. Sam saw me and suddenly stopped. I stopped along with him.

Once I landed I was standing about 10 feet away facing me while we were in

the middle of a park. It reminded me of those western faceoff things with the

woodwind music. All we needed was tumbleweed.

I was glaring at him and Sam started glaring back.



65

“So, you figured it out huh? Too bad they have this town surrounded. There’s

no escape now. You’re trapped, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” Sam said.

“That may be true, but at least I’ll have the pleasure of kicking your sorry ass!”

I cried as I flew at him feet first at top speed. When we collided he got thrown back

but he was still standing which I wasn’t expecting.

“Surprised Fang? Yeah, I was a weak human when you first met me but when Isaw you all had wings I wanted power so badly. I was sick and tired of just being

another one of your average everyday kids. The day you were chased out of the

school the principal made a deal with me. He said if I joined them in bringing about

your demise he would make me that powerful. Of course I took him up on his offer

and now I couldn’t be happier,” Sam explained.

“You may be stronger, but that doesn’t mean you’re strong enough to beat

me!”

I turned invisible and started coming at him with a series of kicks and punches

that would have killed any normal human being. Somehow, Sam just kept blocking

all his blows.

“Guess what Fang? I can anticipate your next move. You’ll never lay a hand on

me!”

Hmm… that could put me at a disadvantage.

While I was in mid-punch Sam grabbed my hand and I became completely

visible. He then twisted my arm behind my back and started punching me in the gut

repeatedly. Turns out he’s super strong too.

“You… think… you’re so…. cool…. just because… you have… wings!” Sam

screamed in between punches.

He seemed to be getting really angry which I could probably use against him. I

looked up and saw we were standing under a tree. I could just barely concentrate

enough power into the tree to knock the branch down and hit Sam in the head.It was a rather large branch and it took Sam by surprise. I don’t care how good

he is at anticipating my moves, there was no way he could’ve saw that coming.

Sam just lied under the branch in shock. I walked over, pulled the branch off of

him and started punching him in the face before he could recover. I then threw him

on the ground, grabbed his legs and started swinging him around in circles. Kind of

like those hammer toss people in the Olympics. Once I built up enough speed I let

go and he slammed head first into the nice solid brick wall of a nearby building

creating a Sam sized hole in the wall. I wonder if there’re dentures made for

adolescents. He was certainly going to need some.

Once that was done I picked him up out of the rubble, held him up by his shirtand looked him straight in the eyes.

“You are going to leave me, Max, and the rest of the flock ALONE. I don’t ever

want to see you ever again. If I do, you are going to be very sorry,” I threatened. It

sounded pretty convincing too. I could’ve sworn he almost wet himself. I was very

pleased. I even grinned at him.



66

I then dropped him back in the rubble and turned around. I was about to take

off and fly to the hotel when I realized that Max and the flock were standing there

watching me.

“How long have you been watching?” I asked Max once I reached them.

“Long enough to see that you totally kicked Sam’s butt,” Max said as she

glanced over at where Sam lied on the ground.“Well, we have to go pack and get out of here. They have this place

surrounded,” I said as I looked around to see helicopters and tanks were indeed

surrounding the town.

“Way ahead of you. We’re all packed up and ready to go. I think I’ve had

enough of the easy life for the moment,” Max said as she handed me my backpack.

I was relieved to see that we were all safe for the moment but there was one

very important question that still needed to get answered. How do we get out of

here?

CHAPTER 31

Max’s Perspective

Fang tried to act like he wasn’t happy, but he really was. I could see the way

the sides of his mouth curled up the tiniest bit.

“I see someone’s in a good mood,” I commented.

“I’m never in a good mood,” Fang said.

“Please, you cannot look me in the eye and tell me that you did not enjoy

beating Sam.”

He said nothing but I could see the satisfaction in his face.

I looked around to make sure we were all there.“Ok everyone, up and away. I’m sure we can handle whatever it is that they

throw at us. Let’s go!”

With that we all took off one by one and flew towards the outskirts of the town.

I took off first so I could see what was coming.

Once we were in the air I saw that some tanks were waiting for us up ahead

along with helicopters for air support.

“Ok, this is going to be tricky but I think we can do this guys! Disperse!” I

commanded as we split into pairs to confuse the enemy.

They started shooting at us. Ah the familiar sound of gunshot. I cried

“Disperse!” again and we then split up individually and flew in different directions tofurther confuse them. It seemed to work because they’re shots became more

sporadic and badly aimed.

Soon we encountered the helicopters and flew in zigzags to make it harder to

follow us. As soon as we shook the copters we flew up as high as we could and were

soon out of range for the tanks and too high for helicopters to fly.

Don’t let out that breath of relief yet, a few minutes later flyboys flew up after

us and World War III broke out in the sky.



67

I couldn’t even guess how many they sent after us so let’s just say it was a lot.

While I was busy fighting my own group of flyboys I saw that Fang turned

invisible and started using his telekinesis to fling the flyboys at each other. Kathy

was setting them on fire and Nudge was just taking them out the old fashioned way.

Angel pretty much just told hers to drop out of the sky. Kelly had broken off one their

arms (don’t worry, they’re robots) and she turned it into a crowbar. She wielded thatthing with fury and determination and took out a whole bunch of them fairly quickly.

Once she learned how to make weapons other than crowbars she was going to be

pretty deadly. Gazzy had this thing that looked like a taser gun. The only difference

was that when it hit the flyboys they exploded.

I looked over at Iggy and saw that he was completely surrounded. He was

perfectly capable of taking on 6 or so at one time but 15 was just ridiculous. He was

fighting as one came up behind him about to kick him.

“IGGY!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I flew down towards him knowing

I couldn’t reach him in time and trying anyway. Iggy must have realized that this

flyboy was behind him because he suddenly turned around and reached out his

arm. I thought he was going to punch him but something else happened.

Iggy held out his hand as if telling him to stop and the flyboy started slowing

down, as if moving against a strong gust of wind. Iggy then put his other hand out

towards the other flyboys and they seemed to be getting blown away. It was truly

phenomenal.

Once the flyboys Iggy was fighting were pretty far away Iggy put his arms

down and looked at his hands in awe. Well, I guess he couldn’t really see them but

he was facing them. I guess Iggy developed a new skill.

Once I remember that there were still flyboys in the air I started fighting

another group. We fought long and hard but there were just too many of them.

Just when I thought we were about to be overpowered there was a bright flash.I was blinded and had to close my eyes. The last thing I remember seeing was all

the flyboys spazzing and falling to the ground.

You’d think I’d be happy that they all just died but I was too busy being worried

about what had done this.

After a few minutes I regained my sight and opened my eyes slowly. Then I

looked around letting my eyes adjust and saw that everyone else was doing the

same. All except Iggy of course.

I rubbed my eyes and yelled “Report!”

“We’re fine!” Nudge yelled speaking for Kathy, Kelly, Angel and herself.

“I’m ok,” Fang said was he rubbed his eyes.“I’m good,” Iggy said still marveling over his newfound skill.

“I’m alright too!” Gazzy said cheerfully.

We all flew closer together.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Oh, that was my taser! I turned it into an electrical bomb that reacted with

anything that had metal or used electricity. Kind of like a smaller version of what we

used at that safe house when your mom was kidnapped,” Gazzy said proudly.



68

Good thing we didn’t carry around cell phones.

“Ok, how about we leave before they send up more flyboys?” Nudge said.

We all agreed and we flew until we reached Maryland.

We found a wooded area and set up camp there. Kathy practiced making fire

and Iggy kept blowing it out.

“Stop that!” Kathy yelled.“Stop what?” Iggy said innocently.

“Stop blowing it out!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m just sitting here minding my own

business. Maybe you’re just not as good at making fires as you think you are.”

This seemed to set Kathy off because she got up, walked over to him and

kicked him really hard.

“Ow! That hurt!” Iggy cried.

“Ok, break it up. Iggy, stop blowing out her fires and Kathy, don’t hit Iggy,” I

said knowing that if I let this go any further it would become an all out fist fight.

“Fine…” Iggy mumbled under his breath.

Kathy just let out a little huff and continued making the fire.

Angel, Gazzy, Nudge, and Kelly were busy looking for firewood so that just left

me and Fang.

I was sitting next to him and holding his hand discreetly so no one noticed. It

wasn’t really that hard because Kathy was concentrating on the fire, the kids were

in the woods, and Iggy was blind.

I had just realized that it had been what seemed like forever since Fang and I

had any alone time. I looked at him and he looked at me obviously thinking the

same thing. Without saying a word I walked over tapped Iggy’s hand to let him know

he was in charge and took off into the sky with Fang following closely behind.

We flew until we found a nice little park. It had a water fountain in the middleand benches around the perimeter. It was relatively dark outside. It was beautiful

because we could see all the stars.

I stepped up on the rim of the fountain and Fang stepped on it with me. It was

a pretty thick rim. We walked around it hand in hand in silence for a while content to

just be together.

Suddenly I remembered that I had to continue making fun of him for being

jealous.

“Fang, why won’t you just admit that you were jealous,” I asked.

“Because I wasn’t. I was concerned about your safety,” Fang replied smoothly.

“Oh really? Then why did you spill that soda on Sam’s head.”Fang thought about this for a minute and then answered me.

“Ok fine, I was a little bit jealous. But who wouldn’t be? How would you feel if I

went out with Lissa, whether I was forced into it or not?”

Hmmm… I was gonna have to think about that one.

We continued walking in silence when I realized that we were walking on the

rim of a fountain filled with water.



69

I looked at Fang apologetically knowing that he was not going to be happy

about what I was going to do. He looked back with confusion and I pushed him in

the fountain.

“AAAH!” Fang screamed.

There was a huge splash and I started cracking up. He lifted his head up out of

the water and glared at me through his dripping black strands of hair. He appearedto be soaked all the way through which only made me laugh harder.

As I was dying of laughter Fang suddenly started smiling evilly at me. He stood

up and started walking towards me.

“Wait no!” I yelled when I realized what he was doing. But alas, it was too late.

He grabbed my arm and pulled me into the water with him. I ended up landing on

my butt and drenched from head to toe. I looked up at him with the same evil smile

and pulled him down. He end up landing on top of me and we started rolling around

in the water and laughing.

Once we finally stopped I was laying right next to him my arms in his. When I

realized how close I was to him I laid my head on his chest and looked up into his

eyes. He smiled back at me and I saw those beautiful glints of gold that only

seemed to appear in his eyes when he’s really happy.

He looked at me for a while and suddenly said “I love you.”

I was about to say “I love you too,” but the intensity of Fang’s expression made

me completely forget what I was about to say. Instead I lifter my head up closed my

eyes, and put my mouth on his.

I felt so alive, more alive than I had felt in a very long time. It was like my heart

beat was in tune with his and I soon forgot about the freezing cold water.

I had forgotten what it felt like to experience pure bliss. I felt complete, like I

didn’t want to ever leave the secure warm feeling of his arms again.

Once I stopped kissing him I just laid my head on his chest again and looked atthe stars content with just being next to him.

It would have lasted a lot longer if I hadn’t realized that we had left the kids

back at the camp site.

“Fang! We have to get back! What if something happened?” I worried.

“Max, I’m sure they’re fine. We can go back but what about our clothes?” Fang

said gesturing to our soaked clothes.

“We’ll dry off on the way. We need to go back before something bad happens.

You know that every time we leave all heck tends to break loose.”

Fang nodded in agreement and we flew as fast as we could back to our camp

site.We landed in the trees nearby and walked the rest of the way. I heard them all

talking and I saw the glow of the campfire so I assumed they were alright.

Once we reached the camp site everyone looked up at us.

“What’d you do? Jump in a lake?” Kelly asked.

I thought about what we were doing and Angel started grinning as she read my

mind.



70

Stay out of my head. Would it kill you to give me a little privacy? I swear, if you

tell them what happened I will kill you. I threatened.

Angel just looked at me angelically but she didn’t say anything so I guess she

got the message.

Fang and I went and sat around the fire where they were roasting some of the

lunch meat I had bought. The warmth of the campfire felt nice as it dried me and Fang off. We all sat in

companionable silence until we heard a sudden rustling sound.

I looked around at everyone else to make sure I wasn’t the only who heard it.

Then Kelly said “What was that?”

CHAPTER 32

I looked towards where the sound came from. I looked at Fang to let him know

that we needed to go over and check it out and he immediately understood and

stood up. I tapped Iggy’s hand to let him know he was in charge and he nodded.

Fang and I got up and slowly made our way over to the strange noise. I heard it

again and signaled Fang to stop. Right in front of us there was this bush that

seemed to be moving.

I crept a little closer to the bush. More rustling. At this point I was really close

so I pounced on whatever was behind the bush.

I couldn’t really see what it was but I tackled something and ended up rolling

around with it because it started to resist me. It was hard and felt cold like metal.

Once I finally got it to stop moving I looked down to see that I was holding a little

robot. Its head was little camera with a blinking red light on top. It had wheels that it

used to move around. It actually reminded me of that little robot I saw in a

commercial once named WALL-E except it was a little smaller.I seemed to have damaged its neck because there were little wires sticking out

of it. I looked up at Fang who had walked over to see what I was doing.

“What is it?” Fang asked.

“Whatever it is, it was definitely sent here to spy on us,” I replied.

I carried the robot back to the camp site to show the others.

“That is so awesome! Can we keep it?” Gazzy asked as if it were some stray

dog and not an evil robot sent to spy on us so it could help them bring about our

downfall.

“Think of all the bombs I could build by using the technology in this robot!”

Iggy said mostly to himself.“What if it’s armed? What if they’re tracking us right now? What if they find us

in our sleep and take us back to that horrible dome again? What if –” Nudge

panicked but I cut her off.

“Nudge, you need to learn to cut it short. Besides, there’s no need to worry. It’s

not armed and I’m almost positive they’re tracking us, but when has that ever

stopped us before?”

This seemed to give her some reassurance.



71

“What should we do with it?” Kathy asked as she started poking it with a stick

she had just found.

“Hmm… stop poking it like that! It could be of some use to us,” I said as the

gears in my mind started working and producing a wonderful idea.

“Iggy! Do you think you could use the robot’s tracking signal figure out where

they’re tracking us from? Jim and Robby are probably with them and I think it’sabout time we break ‘em out of there,” I said.

“That actually could work! It may take a while though,” Iggy said.

“That’s fine, just make sure that they don’t realize what we’re doing.”

Iggy nodded his head and got to work. Everyone spread out and went about

their business. Fang sat down and just leaned his head back on a tree so he could

sleep. Gazzy, Kelly, Angel, and Nudge started playing duck, duck, goose.

Meanwhile I looked over to Kathy. She had gotten pretty good at working with

fire by now and was making the fire move in all sorts of different ways. She even

changed the colors sometimes. It was almost like it was dancing.

She had this sad look on her face. I could tell that she was thinking about

Robby and Jim.

I knew how she felt. First, because I’ve lost members of my flock, in some

cases the whole flock, before. Second because I missed them too and loved them

almost as much as she did. I walked over to talk to her and see if I could take her

mind off of them.

“Hey Kathy, have you worked on making larger force fields at all? It would be

really useful in a fight,” I told her.

“I tried a few times but I couldn’t make them very big,” Kathy said sadly.

“Come one, why don’t I help you. Let’s go practice in the trees.”

She nodded as she got up of the ground and we walked over to the trees.

Once we were a good distance away from the camp site we stopped walked.“OK, let’s see how hard your force field really is,” I said as I picked up a rock.

Kathy formed a small one in front of her as big as the one she put over Jim

before by facing the palm of her hand towards it. I threw my rock at it as hard as I

could.

It bounced off.

“Hmm, ok let’s try something bigger,” I said as I started thinking.

“I know!” I said as I started running to the little force field.

“AAAH!” I screamed as I jumped on top of it and slid off landing face first in the

dirt.

Kathy burst out laughing as I got off the ground spitting dirt out of my mouth.“No Kathy, I’m fine, thanks for asking,” I said. I said it a little less coldly then I

usually would have because I was glad that she seemed to have cheered up.

I glared at her until she finally stopped laughing.

“Now that you’ve stopped laughing, try to make one as big as you are. Then

see if you can make it surround you completely,” I instructed.

“Yes Ma’am!” Kathy said with a smile as she saluted me.



73

CHAPTER 33

Gazzy was holding the compass. Why wasn’t Iggy leading you ask? Well

because he was blind. He was good, but he wasn’t that good.

We had just finished packing up so now we were in the air and I was flying off

to the right of everyone else. Kathy flew a bit closer so she could talk to me.“Max, are we really going to save Robby and Jim?” Kathy said hopefully.

“Yep, you didn’t think you were the only one who missed them did you? We’re

running on a ‘no bird-kid left behind’ system here. I would never let those people

have them without a fight,” I said confidently.

Kathy must have felt reassured because she smiled at me and flew back

towards the others. I flew towards them soon after she did.

I reached them just in time to hear Angel ask “How far do we have to go?”

“How should we know? It’s not like I installed a GPS into that thing! I’d need

more time for that,” Iggy replied sounding irritated.

“How do we know when we’re there anyway?” Nudge asked.

“When the compass starts spinning in circles instead of pointing in a specific

direction.”

We flew a couple more hours and ended up in this place called Poolesville

which was pretty much just made up of farms and lots of empty land.

As we flew over this large apple orchard the compass started spinning like

crazy.

“I think –” Gazzy started.

“We’re here!” Kathy cried cutting Gazzy off.

“Let’s land everyone!” I said.

We all landed in the outskirts of the orchard and walked in.

“So do we have a plan?” Nudge asked as we were walking.“Well first we need to figure out how to get ins–” I started but was interrupted

by was Kelly scream.

“AAAH!”

I looked over at her and saw her on the ground. I quickly made my way over to

her to make sure she wasn’t injured.

“Are you ok? How did you fall?” I asked concerned.

“I’m fine, and I didn’t really trip. It was like the ground gave way right under

my foot.”

As she said this, a hole about the size of a manhole opened in the ground next

to where she fell.“Well that’s convenient. Nice job Kelly,” I said.

“Uh… thanks?” Kelly said still a bit surprised.

“Who wants to go first?” Fang asked.

Surprisingly, no one volunteered to go into the dark, ominous hole in the

ground first so by default, I ended up doing it.

Instead of jumping head first into the hole without a second thought I threw a

rock down there to see how far it was to the bottom.



74

It wasn’t very long till I heard it hit the floor so I guessed it was about 5 feet.

“Ok, you all can come down when I say it’s safe,” I said trying to hide.

Everyone nodded thankful that they didn’t have to go first.

It reminded me of the sub that we had to ride to save my mom a few months

back and let me tell you, it was not a pleasant experience. I wasn’t expecting it to

be any better so I reluctantly leaned over the hole.“You want me to go down instead?” Fang offered.

“No, no. I’ll do it. Just gimme a minute,” I said mentally preparing myself for

the inevitable feeling of claustrophobia and the nausea that always follows.

After a minute I just jumped in. I learned that the floor was very solid. Solid

enough to support the graceless landing I had just made on my butt.

“Ow!” I said as I got up, brushed myself off and looked around.

“Are you ok?” Fang asked from up above.

“I’m fine!” I yelled back.

Fortunately, I had my raptor vision so I could see in the dark only there wasn’t

much to see. It was actually a relatively large room. Much bigger than what I

expected and very empty. The only thing down there was this door. The problem

was that it didn’t have a key hole, a thing to slide a card in, finger scan, nothing. It

didn’t even have a handle.

“You guys can come down. There’s a door but no way to get in. Kathy, I think

you can handle this.”

“But when it falls it’s gonna make a loud noise and might attract attention.”

Angel said as they all jumped in one by one.

“I can cushion it with some air,” Iggy suggested.

Once everyone was in the room Kathy and Iggy took down the door.

I walked through the door first to find that it lead into a large corridor. I looked

a lot like the hallways at the dome so assumed we had the right place and hadn’tstumbled upon some other super top secret evil organization bent on destroying us

and taking over the world.

I looked around as the rest of the flock came into the hallway. Once everyone

was inside we started walking down the hallway. I walked for a little while until we

came upon a door that was slightly opened. There were people inside talking. It

sounded like Ms. Jones, Brigid, and Anne.

“You think they can power the entire thing?” Brigid asked incredulously.

“You’ve seen what the young boy can do. He’s incredibly powerful. And the

older one isn’t too shabby either.” Ms. Jones said. They must be talking about Jim

and Robby!“What if they don’t survive long enough to complete the charge?” Anne asked.

“They will. Now what happens to them after that is a completely different

matter,” Ms. Jones said.

I took all the self control I could muster not to storm in there and punch her in

the face. Repeatedly.

Unfortunately, Kathy had not mastered her temper yet.



75

“No!” she cried out without thinking. She covered her mouth knowing that she

had just messed up big time.

“What was that?” Brigid said.

“I heard it too,” Ms. Jones said curiously.

“I think it was outside,” Anne said.

I heard footsteps walk towards the door and there was nowhere to hide.Crap.

CHAPTER 34

We ran towards the end of the hallway but we weren’t going to reach the door

we came in through in time. They were gonna be out of the room any minute.

As I stood there silently panicking and trying to figure out what to do Kathy had

something else in mind.

She made a little force field like the one we were practicing with. Then she

drew her hands apart and it started growing. It grew and grew until it covered all of

us. It was pretty amazing, but they could still see us if they came out.

“This is unbelievable! I’m glad you figured out how to do that but they can still

see us,” I whispered urgently.

Kathy looked at Fang. He looked confused for a second and then had a look of

realization on his face. He then touched the force field.

“What does that d–” I started but Fang put his hand over my mouth.

They walked out of the door and looked in the opposite direction of where we

were. Then they looked down the hallway where we were all standing.

Oh no we’re done for! Forget about rescuing Jim and Robby. Who’s going to

rescue us?

Fang still had his hand on my mouth so I tried to remove it. Unfortunately, Fangwouldn’t let go. Instead he looked at me and put his finger to his lips to make me be

quiet.

Who cares if we make noise? It doesn’t matter now that they know… we’re…

here… Wait, they weren’t calling back up, or running towards us. It was almost like

they were looking right through us.

Like we were invisible.

That explains why Fang touched the force field! Well this was an interesting

turn of events.

Wow do I feel dumb right now.

As we watched Anne, Ms. Jones, and Brigid they started talking.“I could’ve sworn I heard something…” Brigid said unsure of herself.

“It could have been nothing…” Anne said sounding about as sure as Brigid did.

“Well, I’m not taking any chances. Triple the security,” Ms. Jones said. She

seemed to be the one in charge.

She pulled out this walkie talkie and asked whoever was on the other end to

triple the security. That would definitely make things a bit harder.



76

Once they went back inside the room Fang removed his hand from my mouth

and I turned to ask Kathy a question.

“Can you move this thing?” I whispered.

“Hmm…” Kathy responded as she contemplated my question.

She thought about it for a minute and then she pushed forward. We could still

see the force field from the inside so we knew where the boundaries were.She pushed on until we were back at the door. Luckily the door was wide open

so if we just walked in very quietly and watched them.

Once we were inside we saw large computer screens that showed Jim and

Robby in these tanks. They had wires all over them and they were floating in this

greenish liquid.

Fortunately Kathy put a cap on her anger and concentrated on being quiet but I

could tell that this was difficult for her.

It was actually getting a bit difficult for me too. I mean, how would you feel if

the President, Vice President, and Secretary of your personal hate group were

standing right there just waiting for you to attack them?

“What should we do with their bodies after we’ve used them?” Brigid asked

obviously being new at this whole evil business.

“Why don’t you throw them back into the orchard? They can become fertilizer

for the trees,” Ms. Jones said having more experience than Brigid had in the art of

cruelty.

“So the so the extraction is going to take place half an hour from now. Let’s go

to the lab to make sure all the preparations have been made. There can be no

mistakes,” Anne said.

Looks like they weren’t anticipating our rescue. You’d think they’d learn after

the hundreds of times it happened before.

All three of them left the room and walked down the hallway.I waited a minute and decided it was safe to talk.

“Ok, let’s follow them. We can free Robby and Jim once we get there,” I said.

Everyone nodded in agreement and we followed Ms. Jones, Brigid, and Anne as

Kathy pushed the force field down the hallway. I noticed that it seemed to be getting

a lot easier for her. She’ll be able to make this force field as fast as she made the

small one pretty soon.

Once they reached the room they pressed their thumbs to a little scanner and

it let them enter. At this point we were close enough to follow them through the

door without having to open the door ourselves.

As we walked in we saw all sorts of contraptions and gadgets. Every single oneof them looked lethal and dangerous.

In the middle of the room there were two gigantic tanks full of that greenish

liquid we saw on the computer screens.

Robby and Jim were floating in each one unconscious and covered in needles

and tubes.

It broke my heart to see them floating there helpless and alone.



77

Brigid and Anne were checking each one as Ms. Jones supervised and basically

ordered them around.

Once they were done Brigid and Anne went over to Ms. Jones.

“Everything seems to be in order,” Anne said.

“Good, let the extraction commence,” Ms. Jones instructed as they walked into

this little area that was sealed off by really thick glass.We cannot let them start whatever it is that they’re doing so a make one of my

famous snap decisions.

“Attack!” I screamed and Kathy let down her force field and everyone ran in the

small room where the three women were.

They all looked at us in shock as we ran in the room.

“Where did you come from? How did you get in here?” Brigid asked thoroughly

confused.

“Didn’t you know? Magicians never reveal their secrets,” I said as I wiggled my

fingers to suggest we used magic.

Anne pulled out a walkie talkie and was about to push a button when Fang

used his telekinesis to take it out of her hand and put it in his and crushed it. He

then lifted them up so they were floating in the air and incapable of movement.

“Nuh, uh, uh. We’re not done with you yet. We’d prefer not to have any

uninvited visitors,” I said as I shook my finger at them.

They all nodded now showing more horror and hatred than shock on their

faces.

“First, how do we get Robby and Jim out of these things?” I asked urgently.

“You can’t let them out! We need their energy!” Anne cried.

“Oh well that changes everything! Why didn’t you just say so? We’ll just be on

our way,” I said sarcastically.

Brigid obviously hadn’t gotten any smarter than she was last I saw her and said“Really?”

“Hell no! Now tell us how to get them out!” I yelled at her.

I swear Ms. Jones and Anne would have smacked their heads in embarrassment

if they could move.

They looked at each other in silence and Anne finally broke and decided to tell

us.

“See that red button over there? Press it. It’s the emergency release button,”

Anne said reluctantly.

“See now was that so hard. Angel, is she lying?” I asked.

Angel concentrated on Anne for a second then turned to face me.“No,” Angel said.

I walked over and pressed the button and two things happened.

The first thing was that the tanks opened and the liquid all drained to this

whole in the floor leaving Jim and Robby lying on the floor with needles and tubes in

them. The second thing was that an alarm went off and there were red lights

flashing everywhere. I should have seen this coming.



79

She was moving the hair out of Jim’s face. Jim twitched and opened his eyes

seeing us all standing around and looking down at him. He moved his head away

from Kathy and started crying.

“It’s ok, you’re safe now. You don’t have to be afraid,” Kathy said soothingly as

she picked him and hugged him while patting his back.

“Ssh, don’t you remember me?” Kathy asked.“Kathy?” Jim said in a tiny voice.

Kathy smiled and hugged him harder. When she finally let him go the girls all

simultaneously hugged and kissed him saying how much they missed him. The guys

just stood there watching. Trying to be manly and not show their feelings I guess.

I picked Jim up after their little hug fest. He looked really tired.

“Come one big guy, I think someone’s ready for a nap,” I said. Then I kissed his

forehead and laid him back on the ground.

Meanwhile Kathy had gotten Robby to wake up. When he came to he seemed a

bit disoriented.

“Where am I? What happened?” he asked confused.

“We saved you!” Kathy said.

“Really? I thought you guys weren’t coming for me.”

“Please. You’re not getting rid of me that easily,” Kathy said. Suddenly she lost

her composure and burst into tears. Robby held her in his arms and she just cried.

She looked like she was actually a young girl as opposed to the way she usually is.

Resourceful, tough, smarter than your average 10 year old. She actually kind of

reminded me of me when I was her age.

I decided we should give them some privacy because everyone was just

staring.

“How about we go play on the playground guys? We haven’t done anything fun

in ages,” I suggested. The younger kids cheered and ran to the playground as me, Fang and Iggy

walked after them.

Nudge and Kelly were on the swings while Gazzy and Angel played on the

jungle gym.

“Iggy! Come play Gravel with us! It’s no fun with just two people!” Gazzy cried.

Iggy got up and joined them leaving me and Fang sitting on a bench

supervising.

“How are you feeling?” Fang asked.

“Relieved, happed, tired, lots of things. I’m just glad Jim and Robby were back

safely in one piece and that we’re all together,” I replied.“Speaking of being together, now that Jim and Robby are back safe and sound,

are you gonna ask them if they want to stay?” Fang asked. Of course he would ask

me the one question I had avoided thinking about for some time now. I’m not sure

why, I mean of course they’d want to stay… right?

“I will… soon… I think we should go back to my mom’s house first,” I said

trying to change the subject.



80

“You need to stop putting it off,” Fang said knowingly in that annoying way he

has.

I knew he was right. They might be a little tired of the constant danger, fighting

and running away.

“I’m not, I’m just…” I trailed off as I realized it was futile to lie to Fang. He knew

me to well.“Ok, I’m putting it off. I’m just afraid they’ll leave us because of all the danger

they’ve been in,” I said glumly.

“Max, whether they stay or not, they’re gonna be in danger.” Hmm he had a

point.

Before I could respond Kathy and Robby came up to us. They had identical

relieved smiles on their faces. It was actually kind of creepy how much they looked

alike…

“I’m hungry, and Robby hasn’t had real food since we last saw him. I’m sure

Jim hasn’t either,” Kathy said as she looked over at Jim.

As if on cue he woke up rubbed his eyes and looked around. He saw us and got

up on his feet. He then walked as fast as his little feet could take him and practically

stumbled the entire way over.

Once we reached us, instead of going to Kathy like I expected he came over to

me and pulled on my pant leg.

“Max, I hungry,” he said. He then proceeded to put his thumb in his mouth and

look up at me expectantly with his big blue eyes.

How could I say no to that little face? Great, the next thing we need is another

bird kid that has mastered the puppy dog eyes look.

“Fine, we’ll go get something to eat. But first I need to call my mom,” I said.

We left the playground and found a pay phone. Luckily I memorized my mom’s

home number. The phone rang a couple times which immediately set off my paranoia. Is she

ok? Was she kidnapped again? Is she still alive?

After a few more agonizing rings she picked up.

“Hello?” she said.

“Mom! It’s me, Max!” I said glad to hear her voice again. Something about it

made me feel more grounded.

“Oh honey I’ve been so worried about you! Why didn’t you call earlier? Did you

find Kathy’s friends?”

I realized that I hadn’t spoken to my mom since before we saved them and she

knew nothing about the following events that took place. Maybe it was better thatway.

“Yeah! They’re free. Can I bring them home with us?”

“Of course you can.”

As she said this I realized there wasn’t nearly enough space for all of us.

“Wait mom, where will they sleep?” I asked.



81

“Well, I was trying to tell you when you left home that I got a promotion. The

company is expanding and I need to move. It won’t be far away from where we were

before and I can afford a much larger house,” Mom replied.

“Seriously? Have you chosen a new house yet? Where is it?” I asked.

“We can discuss that when you get home. You are coming home now, right?”

Mom asked. It was more of an order than a question though.“Yep. Tell Ella, Total, and Akila that the flock and I said hi. Bye, I love you,” I

said.

“I love you too,” Mom said right before she hung up.

As I walked away from the phone I realized I had to ask them right now. I had to

make sure they wanted to stay before I brought them home with us.

I walked over to them thinking about the slight possibility of them leaving us.

“Kathy, Kelly, Robby, Jim, I need to ask you something. I’m sure I speak for all

of us when I say that you mean a lot to me and the flock. We’ve been through so

much together it’s almost like we’ve known you all our lives. I want you to come live

with us. It’s about as safe as it gets when you’re like us. I just need to know, do you

want to come?” I said.

Kathy, Kelly and Robby looked at each other as Jim just looked up at me while

holding Kathy and Robby’s hands.

“Talk about a stupid question. Max, why would we leave? It’s not like we have

anywhere to go. Besides, leaving you guys would just be too hard. Of course we’re

staying,” Kathy said as she smiled at me. Robby, Kelly, and Jim had matching smiles

on their faces and I felt as relieved as when we broke Robby and Jim out.

“Phew. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s go get something to eat,” I said.

We found a fast food place and ate to our hearts content. After we were done

we went outside and I looked at the wide open sky just waiting for us.

“Up and away guys,” I said.As we took off I thought about how happy I was right then. We were finally

going home.

Epilogue

We had finally made it Arizona and landed in the front yard. We walked up to

the front door. I rang the doorbell and waited.“Coming!” I heard someone yell through the door.

A couple seconds later the door opened to reveal Ella standing there with a

lavender t-shirt and a purple plaid skirt on.

“Max!” she yelled as she tackled me in a hug. Luckily the flock was behind me

to catch me if I fell.

“Hey Ella, what’s up?” I said casually.



83

I was rolling my eyes when the doorbell rang.

I was closest to the door so I answered it. There was some guy standing there

with a gigantic truck parked behind him.

“Hello, we’re the moving company. Is Dr. Martinez here?” he asked.

I nodded.

“MOM! THE MOVING PEOPLE ARE HERE!” I shouted.She came to the door.

“Hello, we have everything packed up and ready to go,” Mom said.

“Good, come on boys, let’s get the rest of this stuff loaded up so we can head

out,” he told his coworkers.

I went back to the living room and told everyone we were beginning to put

everything on the truck. We decided to help them out so it would go quicker.

A few hours later, everything was on the truck, and the flock and I were flying

towards our new home. Mom had given me the coordinates so we were flying there

instead of driving with Mom and Ella.

We had been flying for half an hour and starting to get a little anxious.

“Are we there yet?” Angel asked.

“Does it look like we’re there yet?” Robby said.

“I hungry!” Jim said.

“We’ll eat as soon as settle into the new house ok sweety?” I told him.

“I’m hungry too, maybe we can take a quick snack break,” Nudge said.

Before I could respond we reached our destination. I knew it was our house

without out even checking the coordinates.

I stopped so suddenly that everyone almost ran into me.

“Hey, give a girl some warning when you’re gonna stop like that!” Kathy said

before she looked down and saw what I was looking at.It was a house that looked exactly like the one we lived in with Jeb except twice

as big.

“Oh my god…” I said.

“What is it? Why did we stop? Are we here?” Iggy asked sounding annoyed that

no one was telling him anything.

“Iggy, it’s our house! It’s just like our old one except way bigger!” Gazzy said

with a huge grin on his face.

“Seriously? Then what are we waiting here for? Let’s check it out!” Iggy said

excitedly as he immediately flew down towards it.

We all followed. When we reached the ground we walked up the house. Momhad given me keys and we went in. I saw that most of the stuff had been moved in

before we showed up. We went up to the second floor where all the bedrooms were.

We found that each of our rooms had been furnished and decorated according

to our tastes except for 4. They had beds, dressers, and desks, all the usual stuff

but they were all the same. I assumed she left those for Jim, Kathy, Robby, and

Kelly.



84

Our rooms actually looked just like our old ones which was odd because Mom

had never been to our house.

“This is amazing…” Nudge said in awe. We went back into the hallway after

seeing all the rooms. Gazzy was nowhere to be seen.

“Gazzy?” I asked hoping he didn’t somehow get lost in this huge house.

“There’s like 4 bathrooms up here! And 3 downstairs! This is awesome!” Gazzyshouted sounding muffled through the walls.

I heard the door open and people walk in. I went downstairs to see guys

carrying in the rest of our stuff. Mom and Ella came in after them.

“Mom! How did you know that my room looked like that?” I asked.

“Oh Jeb helped me with that,” she replied.

“I love it! This place is amazing!” I told her.

“I knew you would. Now help us unpack.”

I got the rest of the flock and we helped unpack.

After a few hours it was around midnight and everyone had gone to bed except

me. I went up to the roof and just looked at the moon. It was actually really

peaceful.

Everything seemed perfect. My family was safe and sound, we weren’t in

immediate danger, and I had this beautiful view. Our house was right next to a lake

and the moonlight reflected in the water to giving it a dream-like quality.

I heard footsteps behind me and turned around knowing it could only be one

person.

“Hey Fang,” I said affectionately.

“Hey. Enjoying the view?” He asked.

“It’s beautiful,” I replied. He sat down next to me on the roof and put his arms

around me. I leaned into his shoulder to feel his strength and warmth. I looked up at

him to see he was looking at the stars smiling.It was the first time I had seen him openly smile in a really long time.

“You’re smiling,” I said teasingly.

“Why wouldn’t I be? I don’t think I’ve been this happy since you came back

from the dead.”

We sat there in companionable silence for a while. Suddenly I turned to him.

“I don’t want this moment to end. Everything is so perfect,” I said.

“I know what you mean, but all you can do is enjoy it while it lasts and cherish

the memory.”

we're not alone

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