You might ask what the big picture is.
Rebecca Cohen Batchelder died in the hospital of postpartum bleeding, after delivering a healthy baby boy.
Jeb Batchelder held his son in his arms and did nothing, said nothing, even when the baby began to cry.
He went back to work afterwards. Most of his coworkers were surprised to learn, weeks later, that his wife had died that day.
Rebecca's parents took the baby home. They raised him for the next two years.
Little picture.
Jeb woke the children in the night and they walked through the silent building. Little Max's eyes were huge; she took everything in and gripped Iggy's hand tightly.
They left Ari behind. He was not needed.
When Jeb returned to the School, Ari was different. Expected, and yet a shock. There was nothing he remembered of the sweet, quiet little boy.
But there were other things to worry about.
Surgery.
Testing.
The new implant in his head connected him to a vast network. Computers. TVs.
Minds.
The headaches were debilitating at first, but slowly he gained practice. Some of the experiments had implants already in their skulls; he could connect to them. See into their thoughts. Speak words into their minds. Alter the signals coming into their brains, so that they saw what he wanted them to see.
Exhausting. But also a triumph. The look of confusion on Angel's face. She must have tried to read his mind.
He had learned to guard his thoughts somewhat, even before, but now his mind would be a blank wall of static to her.
He wanted to explain. This was all a test. Just a way to see if his training had worked. The Flock would come for her. Soon all would be made clear to them.
But not just yet.
They flew away in the midst of a cloud of hawks, until they were so far away they looked like birds themselves. They did not stop no matter what he shouted after them.
Now they really had escaped. And the higher-ups wanted them recovered. Now.
His daughter snapped his son's neck and left him to die in a sewer.
They had twenty-four hours to bring him back to life. "Improved," with wings. And then send him back into the fray.
"Do you remember what happened?" Jeb asked as soon as Ari awoke from surgery.
"I . . . no." He started to move, only to find the new wings attached to his shoulders. He looked at Jeb without understanding.
An hour ago he had been clinically dead.
His new superior – she called herself Anne Walker – implemented her own plan. She was pampering the Flock, treating them like lapdogs or dolls. Jeb seethed. This wasn't the time for her to play house. She was letting her own neuroses control the experiment.
It failed, as he had always known it would.
Ari died a second time on a battlefield in Germany. This time there was no murderer at fault. He simply fell. His own body had betrayed him.
No.
Jeb had betrayed him.
Casket.
Speeches.
Tears.
Flowers.
Little picture.
"Jeb, why did you lie to Max?"
"Hmm?"
A wrinkle marred Angel's smooth forehead. "You told her you weren't the Voice."
"I'm not the Voice, sweetie."
She gave him a skeptical look.
He sighed and set his book aside. "There are some truths Max doesn't need to know. Things that would distract her from what she should be doing right now. She's just not ready."
He expected her to argue and defend Max. A younger Angel would have. But today's Angel just looked thoughtful, and said nothing more about it.
He was offered amnesty for giving information on Itex. He lived under surveillance. There were cameras hidden in the lights and behind the mirrors in his room.
But it was better to be in the witness' chair than behind bars.
Sometimes he heard his children whisper to him without knowing that they were whispering. A strange feeling, spying through a window into their minds. Max dreamed of fleeing and fighting. Dark dreams that shouldn't have belonged to a child.
Sometimes he felt the absence of Ari's thoughts more keenly than anything.
He focused on Max. He could be a father to her as he should have been from the beginning. He would not fail both of his children.
"I'd like you to introduce Dylan to the Flock," said Hans Gunther-Hagen. Suave and put-together like a magazine cover; not like the awkward tech Jeb remembered from the early days of Itex.
Jeb just raised an eyebrow.
"They should spend time together," said Gunther-Hagen with a shrug. "The Flock could teach him. . . . You know that Dylan is a clone."
"I'm well aware of that." Ignoring the splendid meal laid out on the table, Jeb turned towards the door. "I remember the clones of the Flock. You heard how well Max II succeeded, didn't you?"
Ignoring the dig, Gunther-Hagen stepped after him. "Batchelder—Jeb. Please. I think we can help each other."
"I don't think we can." His hand landed on the doorhandle.
"We're working on a way to recreate the mind as well as the body."
His grip on the handle loosened just slightly. He stood there before the door. The hall was outside, leading away from all this.
"Ari could live again," Gunther-Hagen whispered. "Not just as a copy. You could bring him back."
Jeb's fingers slipped from the handle, letting go of the cold metal one by one.
"Let me show you," said the voice behind him.
There was something wrong with the implant. He'd been warned about this. He'd known the risks when he had the surgery. His body was rejecting it. He couldn't reach Max as easily as he once had. Instead he got confusing flashes of information from the Flock—nothing he could use.
Little picture.
It was like the early days – practically living in the lab, surviving on old coffee. The technology was different now, greater and more terrible. But still so many failures.
He watched two Aris die on the operating table. He watched a third die in the field, through a camera. There were others, the not-Aris, soulless copies.
He had Martinez by his side again – almost like the early days, when they'd had dreams of saving the world. Martinez still had those dreams. Her eyes were fiery with them. It was her idea to increase Angel's powers of precognition.
Angel was blind when he saw her next.
He couldn't stop shaking. He had never been like this before. He had been calm and collected.
And he was babbling, trying to explain it to her. "After Ari died, I just . . . I had to try again. I had to give myself another chance at being a father, at caring for a son . . ."
She didn't understand. She was still caught up in the little picture, even when he tried to explain about Fang, the anomaly in his DNA, and the crux of the matter—Fang had to die for the world to live.
He couldn't explain it like Dr. Gunther-Hagen could. But there was an odd thread in his thoughts—Fang couldn't be captured, he had to die. Jeb wouldn't let him be tortured.
He had to be a good father.
There was another presence blocking him from Max's mind now, protecting her. Almost like another person with his powers. The same phenomenon with the other members of the Flock. Unnerving.
But its connection with Dylan was weakest. Jeb reached through the crack.
You must fully win Max's heart. The survival of the world depends on it.
You know what your job is. You know what you have to do.
He'd made Max see things once. An Ouija board moving to spell out her quest. Her reflection as an Eraser. Now he reached deep into Dylan's mind. So fragile, already so twisted and broken, filled with self-loathing and bitterness, desiring death. So easy to inflame into rage.
Kill Fang.
Max didn't save the world in the end. No one did. Where she was, he didn't know. Whether she fought it or lay down and waited, whether she lived or died, there was no way to be sure. He could not reach her mind anymore. After all of these years, she was truly beyond his reach.
He kept hard at work while the sky turned inside out and the old world died. He could not stop working. He had been going in the wrong direction for too many years, trying to save the world, while the one person he needed to save was lost.
"It is perfect," said Gunther-Hagen as the screens played scenes from all over the world. His work had aged him. His hair was white and sparse; he seemed shriveled, yet still manic and buzzing with energy.
Jeb Batchelder ignored him. He had doomed Rebecca and Ari both. And now he held his son in his arms and the new Ari did nothing, said nothing, as the world ended in flames.