Waterwings

by James Patterson

  I slanted my gaze up to him, and Fang was… smiling. He was lying on his back, holding me against him, and he was looking up at the night sky, with the katrillion stars that you see only when you’re in the middle of nowhere. Then you see stars that you never even knew existed. He was smiling, and his face looked softer and less closed.

  I was instantly full of sharp, witty jibes, and it took every ounce of Maximum self-control not to say them. To just lie there and feel vulnerable, and think about everything that had just happened between us, and wonder how it had changed things, and wonder when I had started to love him so much, so painfully, and feel how terrified I was and how elated, and how every cell of my body felt so alive.

  It was pretty much the worst thing that could ever happen to a girl.

  I highly recommend it.

  When Fang asked if it was time to get back, I thought hazily, Back to what?

  This is my brain: O

  This is my brain after making out with Fang: •

  It’s very sad.

  Then a couple neurons fired in unison, and I remembered. Oh, back to the entire rest of my family, including Nudge who wants to get her wings cut off.

  We hit the sky, and I flew powerfully, wincing only a little at the recently patched section. It was good, it was solid, but it needed a few more days.

  “Whoa,” said Fang, and I saw it too. I checked the stars — it was about 2 a.m.

  Our newest safe house, alone in the desert, was ablaze with lights. Every window, every doorway.

  Never a good sign.

  20

  IN AN INSTANT, all my warm fuzzies were replaced by stomach-churning fear and guilt. I hadn’t been there. Something had happened, and I’d been locking lips with Fang out in the desert. How stupid could I get? This was exactly why I shouldn’t do stuff like that!

  We came down fast, hitting the ground hard in a running stop that kicked up dust. The front door flew open; Gazzy ran out.

  I grabbed his arms. “What happened?”

  “Max! Fang!” Gazzy yelled. He swallowed. “I thought you were gone! I thought they had gotten you!”

  “No, no, sweetie. Just a little nighttime spin,” I said quickly. “What’s going on? Why’s everyone up?”

  Nudge and Iggy came out next — where was Angel? My heart seized just as she appeared, with Total behind her. Thank God.

  Suddenly it was quiet, the kind of quiet you have out in the desert in the middle of the night when everyone around you goes silent at the same time. Nudge, Iggy, Gazzy, Angel, and Total focused on me and Fang, their faces upset.

  I looked from one to the next. They were really freaked, but they weren’t trying to escape anything. They weren’t bloody. They hadn’t been in battle in the past twenty minutes.

  “What. Is. Going. On?” I asked very deliberately, searching their eyes.

  “It’s, uh…” Nudge began, then cleared her throat. She glanced at the others, then tried again, meeting my gaze bravely. “It’s your mom, Max. Dr. Martinez. She’s been kidnapped. She’s gone.”

  21

  I’M THE FLOCK LEADER. I’m fast, I’m tough, and I can think on my feet or in flight. My hair-trigger responses have saved our hides more times than I can count. So my brain kicked in to high gear right away as I cut to the heart of the matter.

  “Huh?” I managed. I felt like I’d just taken a karate chop to the chest.

  “Phone call,” Iggy said.

  “Ella called,” Nudge clarified. “She’s hysterical — your mom disappeared from the airport this afternoon while they were between flights. Dr. Martinez just went to the restroom and never came back. Right now Ella’s at her aunt’s house. I don’t think Jeb knows. Ella was going to call him after she talked to us.” She took a deep breath. For once I didn’t mind her wordiness — the more info I had, the better.

  “Did they call the police or the FBI?” I asked, already calculating how long it would take me to fly to my half sister.

  “We don’t know,” Nudge said. Then we heard the phone ringing inside. I raced in and grabbed it.

  “Max?” It was Dr. John Abate, one of my mom’s colleagues at the CSM. “Max, are you all okay?”

  “Yes,” I said tensely. I motioned to the others to get inside and lock the door, turn off the lights. We could be the next targets. “What’s going on?” I punched the button to put him on speakerphone.

  “A fax just came in to the CSM office,” Dr. Abate said. “Usually no one would be here at this hour, but a couple of us were putting together a press report. Anyway — this fax came, and it says that Valencia has been kidnapped.”

  “Yeah, Ella called.” I was pacing, trying not to bite my nails. “Who was the fax from?”

  “We don’t know,” said Dr. Abate. “It looks like the origination number got cut off somehow during transmission. But it says that Valencia has been kidnapped and will be held until the CSM quits its efforts to put pressure on big businesses.”

  My head whirled. I remembered Mr. Chu telling me that he’d come up with a way to convince me to quit working with the CSM. Maybe he’d just found it.

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Anything else?”

  “Yes,” John said. “Just a minute ago, we received another fax. It showed Valencia being held hostage. She was alive when the picture was taken, but we don’t know how long ago that was. We enlarged the photo, and the weird thing is, the background looks like she’s being held on a boat.”

  “Boat?” That didn’t add up to anything. Oh, wait. Yes it did. When Mr. Chu’s M-Geeks had grabbed me, they’d taken me to a boat. I remembered the rocking sensation. Crap.

  “We’ve called the FBI, of course,” said John. “They’re going over everything now. Someone’s flying to Arizona to meet with Ella, see if she remembers anything helpful. But I wanted to make sure you guys were okay.”

  “Yeah, we’re okay.” If “okay” was broadened to include the feeling of having your heart ripped out and stomped on.

  Life was easier when it was just the six of us. I’d had five other bird kids to worry about, protect, keep in line, care about. Now I had Total — who had somehow glommed on to us, I don’t even know how — and my mom, and my half sister. My circle was still expanding, and it was too hard for me to keep track of everyone, keep everyone safe. I’d certainly failed here. Not telling anyone about Mr. Chu and his threats had put my mom in danger. Maybe cost her her life.

  “Max, you there?” Dr. Abate asked.

  “Yes.” One-word answers seemed all I was capable of.

  “Listen — I’ve got to go talk to the FBI. They’ll probably want to talk to you too. You were among the last people to see her. I want you guys to sit tight for a couple hours, okay?”

  “Hm,” I said, unwilling to promise that.

  “Hole up there, protect yourselves, but stay put,” he said again. “Let me get some answers before you go charging off.”

  “I do not ‘go charging off!’ ” I said, offended.

  “Yes, you do,” John said, exactly when everyone else in the flock said it.

  “Your middle name is ‘Charging Off,’ ” Total muttered, fortunately out of kicking range.

  “Okay, gotta go,” said John. “We’re going to try to figure out if we can tell where the boat was by what we can see in the picture. I’ll call you as soon as I can. Stay by the phone.”

  “Okay.” I hung up, just as Fang turned toward me from the window.

  “In other news,” he said, “the house is surrounded. It looks like those things from Mexico City.”

  22

  SITTING TIGHT? Holing up? Waiting for answers?

  Those are all things I’m not good at.

  Planning a massive attack against mechanical geeky-like things when I was already furious and itching to kill something?

  Piece o’ cake.

  I took a break from my plotting, clenching and unclenching my hands, to find five pairs of eyes locked on to mine. Iggy’s gaze was locked to a point about two i
nches above my eyebrows. He’s good, but he’s not perfect.

  “What?” I said.

  “Dr. Abate said to sit tight,” Nudge said.

  “Dr. Abate didn’t know about the combat robots sent to kill us,” I pointed out.

  “They haven’t attacked yet,” Iggy said.

  “Oh, gosh, I guess they won’t, then,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I just rolled my eyes, Ig. Anyway, how many of them are there?”

  “Looks like, about… eighty.” Fang calculated the odds in his head. He nodded once: we could do it.

  I began to come up with an attack plan.

  “Maximum Ride.”

  My eyebrows raised. The voice from outside had been loud, mechanical, and had mispronounced my name. Max-HIH-mum Ride. What a doofus.

  Gazzy had been kneeling at a window, curtain raised just enough for him to see. “These guys have… it looks like Uzis attached to their arms. Uzis. The automatic ones.”

  He glanced at me, willing me to understand that it wouldn’t be hand-to-wing combat. Eighty-plus submachine guns spewing countless rounds of bird-kid-piercing bullets would be significantly less fun than the rip-roarin’, head-breakin’, ankle-bustin’ jamboree I’d pictured.

  “Hm,” I said.

  “Max-HIH-mum Ride,” the voice intoned again.

  I let out a deep breath. “Everyone, get upstairs to the hall, where there aren’t any windows. Stay down, but be ready to do an up-and-away if you hear a bunch of breaking glass.” I looked at Fang. Our hot-and-heavy make-out session in the desert seemed like a lifetime ago. Two lifetimes. “Should I answer him?” I asked, only half joking.

  “I think you should look at him,” Fang said, and something in his voice made me frown.

  As the flock scuttled upstairs, I sank to my knees and crawled to a window. Despite Gazzy’s repeated pleas that we get a pair of night-vision goggles, we do see excellently in the dark. So it wasn’t hard for me to focus on the leader in front, the one calling my name.

  What I saw was like ice water being poured down my back.

  I looked at Fang, who was crouched in the living room’s darkness, waiting.

  “But he’s… dead,” I said, my voice hollow. “I mean, dead again.”

  Fang’s face was grim. “They just made it look like that to freak you out.”

  I nodded slowly. “They succeeded.”

  The head robot-soldier had been enhanced, its outer covering made to look more human. Made to look exactly like Ari, my half brother, who I’d killed once, saw killed once, and had buried not that long ago.

  23

  MY FIRST THOUGHT was Jeb. He’d created the first Ari — maybe he’d had enough DNA left to create another one. Then I thought about how distraught Jeb had seemed at Ari’s funeral.

  I took another look.

  There were slight differences. The curve of his eyebrows, the wave of his hair. Maybe it wasn’t really Ari’s genes. Just a similar thing made to freak me out, like Fang said.

  “So where are these guys from?” Fang asked quietly, crouching next to me on the floor. “They were in Mexico City. Now they’re here. What do they want?”

  “They want me — us — to quit working for the CSM,” I said. “Remember when I came back with my new, ventilated wing? They did it — they took me to a guy called Mr. Chu. Short, I think he’s Chinese, major bee up his butt. Mr. Chu told me he’d find a way to make me stop working for the CSM. He said he represented a bunch of super-powerful businessmen.”

  “And your response was…”

  “Unsatisfactory, I guess.” I peeped through the window again: The things had moved closer. They were about twenty yards from the house. The leader was still out front, and I sensed he was about to mispronounce my name again.

  “And you didn’t tell anyone because…” Fang had that too-patient tone in his voice that let me know that he knew that I knew that he knew that I’d screwed up.

  “I wanted to do some research,” I said too defensively, which let him know that I knew that he knew that I may have conceivably perhaps not chosen the best possible route in this particular instance. “Later I mentioned it to the Jebster, and he went pale like someone had sucked all the blood out of his head.” Okay, I guess that’s a gross image. But still. “And then he convincingly said, ‘Gee, no, haven’t heard of him.’ As if I’d had my brain removed and I might believe that.”

  Fang said nothing, which meant that he was thinking. He says nothing and thinks more than anyone I know.

  “Max-HIH-mum Ride,” said the Ari wannabe.

  “How hard would it be to program him to say my name correctly?” I fumed.

  “You must not leave the area,” said the voice.

  I peeked out through the curtain again. The Ari-thing was closer, standing directly in the moonlight. I peered at him, and something about him made my blood run cold — and it wasn’t just his Ari-ness.

  “Fang,” I whispered. “Look at him. He might not be a robot.”

  Fang rose slightly and took a look. “Hm.” There was a whole unspoken paragraph there. You had to read between the lines.

  I looked out again. The combat-bots were huddled together, forming an almost perfect circle that I assumed went around the whole house. Their knees were bent, their Uzi-arms raised and braced. Primed and ready for action.

  But it was the main guy who stuck out. Despite his jerky movements and mechanical voice, he seemed oddly — human.

  “Ew,” I whispered, struck by a thought. “You know how Itex stretched skin stuff over their ’bots to make ’em look like Erasers, or just more humanoid? This guy — it’s like they took a person and then built a robot inside of him. Going from the inside out instead of the outside in. You know? Gross.” My nose wrinkled as I pondered this.

  Fang looked at me silently for a few seconds. “Is it hard, being you?”

  “Yes, it is, actually,” I said snidely. “For the record. But are you saying that that’s impossible? That no one could possibly be twisted enough to take a person and then grow a cyborg inside it? Gosh, that couldn’t happen, not in today’s world!” I made my eyes big. “That’s almost as unbelievable as a bunch of scientists grafting avian DNA into human embryos! It’s the stuff of science fiction! It couldn’t possibly ever happen!”

  “Why are you shouting?” came Gazzy’s whispered voice from the stairs.

  “I’m not shouting!” I said, lowering my voice. “Just scoping out the enemy, as usual.”

  “Oh,” said Gazzy. “Well, keep scoping, ’cause they’re about to blow up.”

  24

  YOU COULD LOCK the Gasman in a padded cell with some dental floss and a bowl of Jell-O, and he’d find a way to make something explode.

  I immediately crawled away from the window and hunkered down behind the couch. “Blow up?” I repeated. With Gazzy, we take life-saving precautions first and ask questions later.

  “If you leave the area, you will be terminated with extreme prejudice,” said the voice outside.

  Gazzy cackled. “What a butthead. Wait till you see what’s gonna happen!”

  I glanced at Fang, who had moved under a table. “Did you leave the flamethrowers lying around again?”

  He shrugged. “I always forget.”

  Inside, the house suddenly seemed darker. I looked at the windows. There was no moonlight shining under the curtains. Then I heard the far-off rumble of thunder. We were in the middle of the desert — not a big rainstorm area.

  “God in heaven. He can’t manipulate the weather now, can he?” I asked Fang anxiously.

  Fang dropped his head into his hands and groaned.

  “Max-HIH-mum Ride.”

  “I AM a dumb-bot!” I couldn’t help snickering. Fang’s shoulders hunched.

  More rumbling thunder. Windowpanes rattling. I peeped over the top of the couch and could barely see the leader-guy through the inch of exposed window. He was looking up at the sky with Ari’s confused expression.

  “Okay, here it comes,”
I heard Gazzy say from upstairs.

  “Did you set the thing?” Iggy asked him.

  “Yup.”

  “Point it away from the house?”

  Oh, yes, please, point whatever it is away from the house, I wished fervently.

  “Duh, yeah,” said Gazzy. He chuckled. “Should be any second.”

  Suddenly the entire area was lit with a massive lightning bolt — despite the curtains and shades on the windows, the living room was as bright as day. At almost the exact same time, there was a horrible buzzing, crackling sound, and every bit of electricity in the house died — tiny status lights winking out, the AC halting abruptly. Then there was a huge boom of thunder that I felt deep in my stomach.

  With an ear-throbbing pop! it was over.

  Silence.

  “Oh, way, way awesome, dude!” Gazzy shouted, laughing maniacally. I heard many slappings of high fives.

  “Did it do it?” Iggy asked. “Never mind — I can smell it.”

  “It so did it, man!” Gazzy said excitedly. “This was the pinnacle of our pyromania!” I stood up cautiously as he raced downstairs. Fang crawled out from under the table.

  “Max!” Gazzy said, running to me. “We saw big thunderheads forming in the distance — the first time in years, I bet! Then — check it out! This house had a lightning rod on the roof! That’s a metal pole that sends any lightning bolts into the ground. We disconnected it, aimed it at the dumb-bots, and enhanced its powers a tad! Next thing you know, they’re extracrispy! And the best part? They were standing so close together that they helped fry each other!” He hugged himself, jumping up and down. “I’m brilliant! I’m a genius! I can blow up the world!”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Not that I would want to, of course,” Gazzy said, and gave a little cough.

  “Should we look outside?” Total asked.

  Fang was already standing at a window, using one finger to move a curtain aside. “They’re fried, all right. There’s barely enough parts left to make a can opener.”