“And how come all we’re getting is chicks?” Ratchet asked Fang. “Not that I’m complaining.” He lifted his sunglasses to peer at Kate.
“Nobody says ‘chick’ anymore.” Kate rolled her eyes.
Ratchet grinned at her, his bright smile lighting his face. “Okay, I hear you.” He turned back to Fang. “How come all we’re getting is babes?”
“She’s just someone I know from a while ago,” Fang said in a controlled voice from behind his computer. “And there’s another guy on the way too, Ratchet. He’s the last one. They both should be here soon. For now, I guess we just chill.”
Not five minutes later, Star’s angry voice made Fang look up. She was standing over Ratchet, who was sprawled across one of the double beds. “I was watching that! You can’t just change the channel!”
“There’s a game on,” Ratchet said. “You watch your little show in the other room.”
“The TV’s broken in there,” Star snapped. “How can you even see it with those stupid sunglasses on or hear it through those headphones, anyway? Give me the remote.”
Ratchet shrugged, looking bored, and turned the volume down even lower.
“Listen, street punk,” Star snarled, her angry face close to his. “You’re a guy, and you’re a couple inches taller, and maybe forty pounds heavier, and ooh, you’re in a gang. But I’ve survived ten years of Catholic school, and I will cut you off at the knees without a blink. Do you understand?” She snatched the remote from his hand and in a millisecond was halfway down the hall.
“Your daddy pay for that attitude?” Ratchet called after her.
Everything happened fast after that. Before Fang could even ask what was going on, Star had zipped back into the room like a bullet, but Ratchet’s hypersenses had tipped him off, and he was ready for her. But before either of them could make contact, Kate had both of Star’s hands clamped in one of hers and her left knee firmly on Ratchet’s chest, pinning him hard to the floor.
“I said I don’t like violence,” she said quietly. “Maybe you two should cool off.”
Ratchet grinned up at her goofily. “Kate the Great.” He wheezed. “I think I’m in love.”
“Guys, guys,” Fang said, raising his voice until they all looked at him. “Kate’s right. Maybe you should check your egos. We’re all really different. Don’t you realize that that’s exactly why I picked you, out of everyone who applied on the blog? For example, what might defeat Ratchet might not defeat Star.”
Star smirked, and Fang cleared his throat. He hated talking so much—he’d never known that all the talking Max did was necessary, as a leader. He’d been realizing a lot of things about Max lately.
“That means that it’ll be tough for us to work together as a group, but you need to suck it up, try to get along, and treat each other with respect. If you don’t feel like you can do that, then leave now, no hard feelings.” Fang felt their surprise. He looked into each of their faces, but no one stepped forward.
“Fang’s gang,” Ratchet said from the floor. “Got it, bro.” The girls nodded in agreement.
“Okay, then. I guess we’re all straight on that,” Fang said.
“Straight on what?” Max said from behind him.
Fang’s heart almost stopped.
23
FANG SPUN AROUND and saw Max standing there, giving him the sardonic smile he knew so well.
“Straight on the fact that we need to work together as a team,” Fang managed to say. His heart contracted painfully inside his chest, then started beating again. “Where’d you come from?”
Max smirked and pointed at the sky, then wriggled a bit, adjusting her wings under her oversized windbreaker. “This was where we were supposed to meet, right?” She scanned the rest of Fang’s gang.
“Yeah,” Fang said, taking a deep breath. God help him, she even smelled familiar. “It’s been a long time.”
“Has it?” Max cocked her head and looked him up and down. “It feels like we just saw each other.”
Fang sighed. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. He’d underestimated how he’d react to her. Way underestimated.
Max flipped her light brown hair over one shoulder, and Fang noticed that she’d dyed a big magenta streak in part of it. Other than that, she looked exactly the same.
Exactly the same as the Max he’d left barely more than a week ago, back in Colorado. He wondered what she was doing now, what she’d think about his joining forces with… her. The other her, that is. Max the Clone. Max II.
“Hi, I’m Kate,” Kate said, extending her hand.
Max II looked at the hand, then shook it, a smile lifting one side of her mouth. Max’s mouth. The mouth Fang had kissed so many times. Blood was rushing through his head, and he needed to clear it, to take control of this situation again. Worse, he had the feeling that this Max knew exactly what he was thinking, could read his mind, and was somehow laughing at him.
“And this is Star,” Kate said, pointing. “And that’s… Ratchet.”
“Yo.” Ratchet had gotten up off the floor, but his hands were buried in the pockets of his hoodie. “Cool hair. Is it dyed in blood or something? ’Cause that would be hard-core.”
Max II snickered, unphased by his comment.
“And what’s your name?” Star asked politely, but in the twenty-four hours Fang had known her, he’d learned to recognize the tone of warning beneath her politeness.
“Her name is—” Fang began, but Max II interrupted him.
“Maya. They call me Maya.” She shoved her hands into her pockets and sat down on one of the beds, daring him to contradict her.
Fang blinked. So she had changed her name. He couldn’t blame her.
“You okay, dude?” Rachet elbowed Fang in the ribs. “You’re looking a little green around the gills.”
Fang nodded his head, avoiding Maya’s eyes. “I’m fine. We just—go back a long time.”
Ratchet eyed the tips of Maya’s wings sticking out of her coat and gave a low whistle. “Say no more, man. I get you. You guys were all Swan Lake, doing the lovebird dance, and now it’s a little Emotions on Ice.” He looked at Kate. “I go for the Wonder Woman type myself.”
Kate’s smooth Asian face flushed bright red, and Star looked disgusted. “Maybe he could use another knee to the jugular,” she suggested.
Maya laughed. “Fun little group you got here.”
Fang forced a smile and nodded. This had been a huge mistake.
BOOK TWO
WHAT’S SO FUNNY ’BOUT PEACE, LOVE, AND WORLD DESTRUCTION?
24
“DO YOU SEE any guards?” I asked Dylan. Of course, I was still quietly freaking out about the second “coincidence,” but he didn’t need to know that…
“Not yet,” he said. “But they must be there. Are we thinking drop down onto the roof? Or land in the desert, then sneak up?”
“Roof,” I said, and he nodded. I hated it when he was agreeable.
Naturally, they weren’t going to let us just drop down onto the roof. My life could never be that easy. After all, this was a top-secret facility where new life-forms were being created. You think they’d let strangers plunk right down onto the roof?
No.
As soon as we were within three hundred feet, a door on the roof swung open, and figures all in black complete with ninja hoods, leaped out. They popped rifles up on their shoulders and took aim.
“Evasive maneuvers!” I yelled, but Dylan was already matching me zig for zag as we poured on the speed, blazing into the sky.
A bullet whistled past my ear. They were using long-distance sniper’s rifles.
“Watch it, Max!” Dylan grabbed my hand and yanked me to the left, just as another bullet streaked by, right where my head had been. I gaped at him, and he dropped my hand sheepishly. He shrugged. “I saw the guy aim.”
The people on the roof were little stick figures by now. Another hundred feet up and they’d disappear from my view.
“Freak
ing whitecoats!” I screamed, even though they’d been dressed in black. “So, what? You think if you can create life, you can destroy it too?”
Dylan looked down again, squinting. “Wait. They’re not whitecoats,” he said. “They’re not even grown-ups. They’re… I think they’re kids.”
“Oh, come on,” I protested. “They might have been a little short, but—”
“I could see them,” Dylan insisted, sounding agitated. “Inside their masks. They were kids, Max. I’m positive. And it gets worse. They didn’t, they didn’t have—eyes.”
“What?” I gasped. We’d reached a good cruising altitude, well out of range of fire. From this height, the land below looked like a crazy quilt stitched together.
“They didn’t have eyes,” he repeated, genuinely troubled.
“Great, give the blind kids guns,” I said, trying to lessen his horror. “I don’t even let Iggy have a gun. Usually.” I glanced over at Dylan, but he wasn’t smiling.
“But… they could still aim. They still knew we were there, somehow,” he said.
“They must have some sort of alternate sensing system. I wonder if they have no eyes on purpose, or if it was a mistake? I mean, Iggy is blind because they operated on him, trying to give him better night vision.”
Dylan looked appalled. “You’re kidding.”
“Don’t you get it?” I couldn’t keep the bitterness out of my voice. “People like that—mad-scientist types—we aren’t human to them. We’re experiments. And those kids down there, kids who have been trained to kill, kids who have no eyes—they’re experiments too.”
“That’s all we’ll ever be, isn’t it?” Dylan shook his head sadly. “Lab rats. Just someone’s theory, someone’s pipe dream. And they’ve already replaced us with the next best thing.”
He looked so pitiful, so lost, that before I even knew what I was doing, I took his hand in mine. On purpose. It was warm and soft. Not battle hardened yet.
Then I said something that I’ve said very rarely in my life—even more rarely than “I love you.”
“I’m sorry,” I told him.
25
DYLAN GAVE MY hand a squeeze and smiled weakly. Out of nowhere, I had a vision of kissing those soft, perfect lips. Then Fang’s face flashed before my eyes. I fell into a sudden coughing fit and dropped Dylan’s hand like a dead fish.
“You okay?” Dylan asked, rubbing my back. When I glared at him, he, thankfully, had the decency to change the subject.
“It’s later than I thought,” he said. “I say we camp out in the desert tonight, spy on the school from a distance, and maybe find a way to sneak in tomorrow morning.”
“Huh,” I said. It was a plan that I might have come up with, probably would have come up with. But all I heard, all I focused on were the words, “camp out in the desert tonight.” The two of us. Alone. And my heart sped up.
About a mile from the Gen 77 school, there were canyons, striped with layers of red, peach, and cream-colored rock. We flew toward one of the higher buttes and found a natural cave with an excellent view of the school. Then it was Dylan and me, alone together.
If he tried anything, I’d knock his teeth out.
You’re meant to be together, the Voice said suddenly. I groaned so loud that Dylan looked startled.
“It’s nothing,” I muttered.
“Okayyy,” he said quizzically, and I was back to wanting to punch him. “Hungry?” Dylan reached into his pocket and pulled out a couple of protein bars. I took the chocolate chip one. It tasted like sawdust mixed with chocolate chips. I was glad to have it. I contributed a bottle of warm water. We shared it in silence.
“I hope the others aren’t too worried,” I said, trying to make conversation, my voice sounding weirdly loud in the still night.
“They have to know by now that you can take care of yourself,” said Dylan. I nodded in agreement.
For long moments, we lay on the ledge on our stomachs, watching the school. With Fang, silences were comfortable. With Dylan, they were awkward. After a while, Dylan leaned over my shoulder and pointed up.
“Ursa Major. And Pegasus, the winged horse. Kinda looks like us.” I followed as his finger traced the shapes. The stars were bright and so numerous that it looked like someone had taken a handful of diamonds and thrown them onto black velvet.
“Or, no, there’s you, Max. Cassiopeia, the queen.”
“Oh, come on!” I cuffed him on the shoulder, and he tucked his head down, laughing. Still, I felt my face getting warm.
“Where’d you learn all that stuff, anyway?” I asked seriously. He shrugged.
“Back at the house in Colorado. When you were—away.” He cleared his throat, and I gulped. He meant when I was away with Fang. “The rest of us watched the stars. They said Jeb had taught you guys about them back in the day. Don’t you remember?”
Now it was my turn to shrug. I’d blocked out most of my good memories of Jeb.
“I was interested, and I had a lot of time to myself over there. So I read up on it. I’m curious about stuff, I guess. I just sort of absorb information.”
I thought of our Max’s Home School sessions, about how the rest of the flock had resented me for wanting us to learn something. I kept my eyes focused on the school building below.
“Do you think you could, like, teach me some of that stuff sometime?” I asked, in a small voice that didn’t even sound like me. It sounded cheesy.
Dylan didn’t laugh. “Of course,” he said. I felt his deep turquoise eyes looking right into me. “Anytime you want, Max.”
“Thanks,” I whispered, then trained my eyes back on the facility. Lights were on in the building, but no vehicles came or went, and no one seemed to step foot outside. I tried not to notice the warmth coming from Dylan’s body, or how every once in a while one of his sneakers nudged mine.
“I’m luckier than you are,” Dylan said unexpectedly.
“How do you figure that?” I asked, looking at him in the dark.
“I know you’re torn up about Fang,” he said. I cringed. “I don’t blame you. And now I’m here, and everyone’s pushing me at you, including me.”
My cheeks burned. This was exactly the kind of horrible, embarrassing, emotional stuff that I try really hard to avoid. Maybe if I talked about how to skin a desert rat, it would kill the romantic mood…
“But for me, there’s only been you,” he continued, looking off into the distance. “I don’t have to make any decisions. I don’t have to figure things out. You’re the only choice I have, the only one I want. For me, it’s really simple.”
I swallowed, feeling like there was a large brick in my suddenly dry throat.
“You don’t know me,” Dylan said. “You and Fang—you kind of talk the same, figure things out the same, know a lot of the same stuff, have a lot of shared history. You and I are more… combustible,” he said softly.
I couldn’t look at him. I felt as if looking at him would somehow break down every barrier I’d put up between us. I knew without a doubt that I loved Fang. But Dylan had hit the nail on the head—he and I were combustible. If I were mad at Fang, it was more like stubborn opposition, irritation. If I were mad at Dylan, it was fury, white hot.
I’m a girl who has been tamping down her emotions and keeping them tightly guarded her whole life. And that works really well for me. But that approach didn’t seem possible with Dylan. He provoked me; he got under my skin. And now I felt like my shell had a dangerous crack in it. Without much more effort on his part, it would split wide open, and my enormous river of emotions would gush out—the bad and the good.
It was pretty much the scariest thing I’d ever thought of.
I rested my head on my arms and closed my eyes, unable to say a word. It had been a long, hard day. I tensed when I felt Dylan’s fingers smooth my hair, then slowly trace a line down my back. When I didn’t say anything, he lay next to me quietly and put his arm around my shoulders.
He didn’t speak agai
n, and gradually my muscles relaxed in his warmth. And I noticed how well my body curved into his… a perfect fit.
As if we were engineered that way.
I fell into a deep sleep tucked in that little cocoon, a deeper sleep than I might have had in years.
Right up until someone kicked me and said, “Gotcha!”
26
I JUMPED TO my feet and landed in a semicrouched position, fists at the ready.
Angel put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips. “Very fierce,” she said. “It would have been much fiercer if I hadn’t been able to sneak up on you while you were sleeping.”
She raised an eyebrow. I resisted looking at Dylan, who was now standing beside me, but I felt my ears get warm as I remembered the way we’d fallen asleep last night, his arm around me.
“Hi,” I said inadequately, and pushed my dusty hair out of my eyes.
“Yeah,” she said dryly. “Once everyone was back home and patched up, I wanted to come find you, to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m always okay,” I said. “How’s everyone else?”
“Pretty good. Your mom has a cast on her arm. Jeb has a cast on his leg. Iggy and Nudge are actually kind of a mess—Nudge needed eighty-seven stitches, and Iggy got a hundred and three. Gazzy has two cracked ribs.”
My eyes widened. I’d left them…
“But they’re okay, really,” Angel went on. “They’ll heal fast. So, what’s the deal down there, anyway?” I quickly caught her up on the eyeless kids guarding the school.
She sighed deeply and shook her head. “When will they learn? Poor kids.”
“Don’t feel too sorry for them. Even without eyes, their aim was still pretty accurate. Hey, can you pick up anything coming from there, thoughtwise?” I asked.
Angel sat very still and closed her eyes. Dylan and I sat down too, but I refused to look at him. After a couple minutes, Angel frowned and opened her eyes.
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