Summary: It's been twenty years since Maximum Ride was fourteen and hardly more than a child; but she accomplished more than any child has ever done in history. The flock grew from protecting the world against global warming to becoming the Guardians, elite soldiers charged with protecting VIP government persons and entering high-danger level war areas, where no one else dared to go. Now married to Fang and in her thirties, Max has tried to put the brakes on her fast life and settle down for once, quitting her Guardian life to finally be there for her troubled sixteen-year-old daughter. Despite the good life Max has tried to give her daughter, Arianna is still determined to undermine everything in her life that Max never had the chance to have. Max has never felt like a failure before, until she became a mother—but everything changes when Arianna is abducted, and time begins to tick.

A/N: Full summary up there, in that other paragraph, and on my profile. Why I have it written in two places is a mystery, but then, I am a very mysterious person :) This was some random inspiration that hit me like freakin' lightning. Needed to write it down before it drove me crazy. I'm not sure how original this is, but I'm trying to mold it into something that is uniquely mine :) I'm trying my hardest to make Max sound like Max—let me know if she seems OOC? Then again, she is thirty in this... THIS IS IMPORTANT, because I may or may not mention this in the story. Max is living under the false last name of "Reid"—an anagram of "Ride," quite obviously—for security reasons. Just thought I'd mention that, just so no one asks. I'm currently listening to "Human" by the Killers…I dunno, I feel like it kind of fits this chapter. I like listening to certain songs while working on certain things.

DISCLAIMER: any of the original characters & other things from Maximum Ride don't belong to me. Not a one. Tragic, really.

Sell Your Soul -1- Distress

MAX

I was in a full-blown panic-attack.

"You're positive you haven't seen her?" I confirmed with Michelle, one of Arianna's close friends.

"I'm positive, Ms. Reid. I have no idea where Ari is." Her voice sounded terrified, like she thought I was going to come hunt her down and force the truth out of her. "If I did, I would tell you right away. I swear."

"She isn't answering her cell phone," I said.

"The only thing she told me is that she needed to breathe," Michelle squeaked.

"I don't know what that means," I barked at her.

The poor girl was probably quivering to pieces on the other end of the line. "She told me she was feeling suffocated."

"Suffocated?" I repeated dumbly.

I felt like ripping my hair out.

I tried to calm down. "Thank you," I said, trying to sound a little mentally stable. I just hung up and went outside.

The sun had set a long time ago, and Arianna's curfew was eleven. It was ten past twelve.

I tried her cell phone again, but the only thing I got was her voicemail.

"This is Arianna! Sing your song, and I'll sing it back later." BEEP.

"Arianna Valencia Ride," I growled in the phone. "You'd better call me back right now, before I get a freaking aneurysm from being so worried about you. The only excuse you have for getting out of this one is if you were the victim of some sick crime. Because the second you get home—"

The phone beeped, signaling there was a call waiting. I glanced at the caller ID and saw it was Fang.

I finished up the message.

"Just get home right away when you get this message, okay? Call me." I picked up the other call. "What?" I snapped.

"I was about to ask if she'd come home yet, but that was my answer."

The panic-attack was coming back. "I have no idea where she is," I almost sobbed. "I'm so worried I can't even breathe, and she isn't answering her phone, and her friends don't know where she is, and you're on the other side of the world, and I can't do this." I covered my face with my hands, wishing motherhood hadn't made me a hormonal freak.

"I'm sure she's fine," Fang soothed. "You know how Arianna is."

Self-centered brat is what she is.

"Her friend said she needed to breathe because she felt suffocated." Was I whimpering? If I was whimpering, I was honestly going to slap myself. "Am I suffocating our daughter?"

"Well, your maternal instincts can be a bit smothering at times."

"Thank you for contradicting me," I snapped. "That makes me feel so much more like this isn't my fault."

He sighed, and I knew if we were fourteen, he would have probably said, "Well, it kind of is."

But just because we were thirty and married didn't change much.

"I can try calling her," he suggested.

"Her phone is off—that's the problem." It had better not be off. If I found out her phone was off, I was going to kill that girl. I hoped her battery died and she was speedily making her way home with some elaborate surreal story that I somehow believed was true. But I knew that wasn't going to happen. Arianna didn't bother with excuses; she was honest. And that wasn't a good thing. "Nobody can reach her, and I'm getting worried. Should I call the police?"

"And blow this out of proportion? Yeah, Arianna will definitely forgive you for that."

"Will you please say something helpful?"

The phone beeped again since someone else was calling me. I looked at the screen and could have screamed.

"It's Arianna," I exclaimed. Without waiting for a response from Fang, I took her call. "Ari?"

There was a moment of silence, and then she said, "You're going to yell at me, aren't you." She didn't even have to ask, because she already knew.

She reminded me how angry I was. "I am, actually. What the hell were you thinking?!" I snapped at her. "Do you know how worried I've been? How worried your father's been? Actually, he wasn't that worried because he thinks he knows you better—but do you realize how worried I've been? Where are you?"

"Downtown," she replied simply. "By the way, I got your messages. All thirty-two of them." I knew she was rolling her eyes.

"Get your ass home, right now," I ordered.

"Well, that's kind of why I'm calling. I'm sorta stuck."

That didn't sound good; my angry expression was wiped off my face for a moment. "Stuck? How are you stuck?"

"I went out to eat with Spencer, and he'd told me he was going to pay, so I didn't bring my wallet. And then he realized he forgot his, so we've been stuck here for three hours."

"And you didn't call me three hours ago?" I half-screeched at her.

"I'm shrugging, Mom," she said. "We were a little too busy getting harassed by the restaurant manager."

Times like this I needed a stress ball, or an Eraser to beat senseless. Man, sometimes I missed those things.

"I cannot believe you, Arianna."

"Can you just come get us?" she said in an exasperated voice.

It would serve her right if I didn't, but I was her mom. And like Fang said, my maternal instincts are "smothering."

"What restaurant?" I sighed. I was beginning to realize I was one of those mothers who let her kids walk all over her.

And that did not sound like Maximum Ride.

"Are you mad at me?"

I'd walked into the restaurant, and just followed the shouting. Arianna hadn't been exaggerating—the manager was harassing her. After diffusing the situation a bit, I paid the check, told Spencer to get home, and herded Arianna into my car.

I shot her an infuriated look. "Am I mad? Am I mad? Of course I'm mad! Arianna, I started thinking maybe you'd been abducted and murdered! Why didn't you call me?"

Arianna acted like she didn't hear me for a couple seconds. She was playing with her big white sunglasses in her lap, then checked her cell phone for text messages.

"I dunno. It just didn't occur to me then. I just thought it would be a bit embarrassing."

"So you sat in a restaurant for three hours because you didn't want to be embarrassed for calling your mom? You are a freakishly self-conscious child." I had no idea where she got that from.

"You have the freakish part right," Arianna muttered. She slid her sunglasses on over her dark, exotic eyes.

"No, do not shut me out, Arianna. I am talking to you."

"You're not talking to me; you're yelling at me," she argued. "There's a difference. Talking is conversing, and yelling is just yelling. I didn't call you to come get me so you could yell at me."

"Then what am I supposed to do?"

She didn't answer.

I swung into the driveway and parked the car. Arianna went to open the door, but I clicked the button that locked all of the doors before she could even touch the door handle.

"We have tried," I said, softly to make her listen, "to give you a life that we never had."

"Oh, don't give me this stupid speech again, Mom—"

"We grew up in dog crates, Arianna," I interrupted. "You have no idea what that's like. I never got to sleep in a king-sized bed. I never got decent food. I never got to go to a real school. I never had a normal life, Arianna. You have no idea how much that means."

"In case you haven't noticed, we aren't normal." There was a slight movement on Arianna's back, under her jacket, as she moved her wings.

"You're special, Arianna," I corrected quietly. "You're unique."

"Well, maybe I don't want to be unique. I never asked to be a bird kid. I never wanted any of this."

"And you think we did?"

Arianna glared at me from behind the shelter of her sunglasses, then pulled up the lock with her fingers and got out.

She slammed the door behind her and stormed up to the house.

I sat still in the car for a moment, holding the steering wheel between my hands so tightly I was surprised I didn't break it. I took deep breaths, repeating the same silent mantra over and over in my head.

I am not a bad mother.

ARIANNA

My mother thought that my life was great. That I was lucky.

Lucky? Nothing was lucky when you're not even human—at least not completely.

I went right up to my room and shut my door. I hesitated by it, then decided to lock it. I didn't want to see my mom any more tonight.

I peeled off my black leather jacket—it wasn't even mine, it was Spencer's—and dropped it on my bed before I pulled off my blouse to stretch out my wings.

They were always sore from being pulled in so tightly all the time. If I had things my way, I wouldn't need to hide them. It was actually a government order that I had to remain under the radar. All of us had to. Very few people even knew about our existence. That's why my family lived under fake names—why my mom wasn't Maximum Ride anymore. She was just the unassuming, inconspicuous Melanie Reid.

Once upon a time, when my parents were about my age, they didn't have to hide who they were at one point. Everyone knew what they were, and no one hated them. They'd been heroes. They still were, they just didn't have all that publicity anymore. As far as the rest of the world knew, the avian-hybrids had gone into hiding when, in fact, they were out in plain view.

My parents and their flock—my uncles and aunts, technically—were Guardians. All that "surviving" they had to do when they were younger had trained them to be fighters, protectors. Now they protected big-shots in the government and the like, and went in where no other soldiers could go in war-zones. I figured the only reason they did it was because there really wasn't anything else they could do to earn a living in this world. Upside: it paid well. Really well.

Mom used to be a Guardian, but then she quit. She thought I needed her more. She thought I needed to have some sort of parental figure in my life.

Sometimes I wished she'd stayed out on the field, because I definitely don't need her anymore. I was not a child.

My phone jingled out my ringtone, and I was afraid of who it was. The caller ID read that it was my aunt Angel. She wasn't really my aunt, but she was family.

I just screened it. I was too pissed off to talk anyway, even to someone as sweet as Angel.

She called two more times before she stopped, and then I called Spencer.

"Dude, my parents just gave me so much shit right now," he complained.

I had been staring absently at my schoolbag, remembering I'd had homework this weekend, and then I answered slowly, "Think you can sneak out?"

"Uh, no."

"Why not?" I whined. "I need to get out of this house, Spence, and you're the only person I know who'll come with me."

"I'm being watched like a hawk," he said. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Boo."

"Are you just determined to get into more trouble?" he said darkly.

I just blinked and smiled to myself. "I'll see you tomorrow, Spencer."

"Arianna, please don't—"

I snapped my phone shut then went to open the French doors that led out onto the balcony. I glanced around to make sure Mom was nowhere around outside, then hopped off the balcony and went for a fly.

N/A

The man adjusted the setting on his binoculars, improving the clarity of the lenses so that he could see the sharp outline of every house in the wealthy neighborhood he was watching. He was perched uncomfortably in a tree outside the gated community, though he was willing to put up with the discomfort.

He suddenly noticed the fluttery movement of a bird, leaping from a rooftop to find another nighttime roost. He almost dismissed it.

The man suddenly realized that the bird was much too big to be an owl—too big to be any kind of bird. The more he studied it, the more his lips curled in a smile. He watched the winged girl fly away from a large house, ebony wings spread to their full extent and moving in powerful, sweeping movements. As the girl swooped and dived and circled like a hawk, the euphoria of flying was very evident on her face.

The man watched her for an entire two hours, until the girl swept back towards earth, gliding over the tops of the houses before landing on the roof of a Spanish-styled house, sliding across the roof tiles for friction. Her wings folded back in against her back, and she climbed down onto a balcony and returned inside the house.

The man grinned to himself and pressed 1 on his speed dial. By way of greeting, he said, "I know where they've been hiding."