Hello, my loyal readers! And hi to anyone who's just dropping in to see what I'm all about. :P Welcome to my latest fanfiction: The Cutoff Chronicles: An Icy Blaze. And just in case anyone's wondering, no, it's not as intense/disturbing as my last story. I swear. Unlike my last work, Invidia: The Unwind Experiment, there will be no brains in boxes, sociopathic doctors, hallucinatory drugs, disturbing surgical scenes, or full body transplants.
Instead, our story begins in the near future, say three or so years after FANG. The Flock kept the world from falling apart, Max and Fang got back together, and everything turned out pretty good. That is, until one fateful night on the streets of Seattle tears them apart and the world as we know it is changed forever. And now over sixteen years later, with an entire continent cut off from the rest of the planet and a revolution hanging in the balance, it might be up to Lex Hardly, the world's only remnant of the Flock's mysterious legacy, to finish the job her parents started.
Obviously I don't own anything (well, the OCs I suppose, but I doubt anyone cares about them except for me), and I hope you enjoy my story. :)
NOTE: As of January 30, 2012, I've uploaded edited copies of each chapter to try and clear up the errors I left in the first time around. Hopefully I've ironed out most of the blips this time.
1 – An Unexpected Patient
Dr. James Hardly rubbed his temples exhaustedly as he closed down his medical clinic for the day. It wasn't a late night for him today, as was often the case with his overcrowded, understaffed establishment, but he'd had a full schedule filled with one tedious ailment after another—indigestion, ear infections, skin rashes (some in places that no human beings, even doctors, should have to go), and even a kid who had shoved eleven Skittles candies up his nose and then couldn't get them out. That last one had been slightly amusing, but overall it had been just another monotonous day in Dr. Hardly's life.
Once he was sure all the doors were locked and the lights were turned off, Dr. Hardly strolled into the lobby and towards the front door. It was raining heavily outside, as was common in the Seattle area, and he dreaded what the ride home was going to be like.
It took him a few moments to realize that there was someone taking shelter in the doorway of his building. When he did, Dr. Hardly thought to himself, it must be another vagrant looking for shelter from the rain. Can't say I blame them on a night like this. As he got closer to the glass doors, he saw it was a young lady, no older than twenty, wearing a denim jacket and jeans and Walmart sneakers. Her hair was drenched and tangled and it clung to her face, which was contorted into a pained, sort of exhausted expression. She looked ill.
Preparing himself for a potential confrontation or a medical emergency, Dr. Hardly stepped outside of the clinic into the sheltered area between the doors and the sidewalk. "Hello, miss?" he asked the girl, "I couldn't help but notice that you were sitting here and I wondered…" he trailed off when he saw the puddle of blood and rainwater mingling at his feet. He hadn't been able to see it from inside because of the shadows and the stiff denim jacket, but up close Dr. Hardly could see that the girl's breathing was pained and erratic, and that her clothes were streaked with red stains.
Suddenly her eyes opened, and she turned her head so that she was gazing directly at the doctor. "Please," she rasped, "I…I think I'm dying, all this blood…" she didn't say anything else, and she closed her eyes again to reserve what little strength she had left.
Immediately Dr. Hardly went into medical mode. After propping open the clinic door with a doorjamb, he scooped the girl up—it wasn't difficult, she was ridiculously skinny—and carried her into the clinic, moving her into one of the many examination rooms. He took off her jacket and gave her a quick look over; she had several abdominal wounds that were bleeding heavily, she'd suffered several blows to the head and torso, and her left arm appeared to be broken. Dr. Hardly found the supplies he needed and then got down to business, cutting through the girl's shirt so he could get to the wounds. As he'd expected, he found several knife wounds, which were messy but appeared to have missed the vital organs.
What he didn't expect, however, was to notice a set of wings protruding from the young lady's back.
Being the wife of a doctor, Emma Hardly was used to all kinds of sporadic behaviour from her husband—unannounced late nights, emergency calls, odd mannerisms when in the presence of raw meat. Still, she was a bit surprised when he came home carrying an injured girl in his arms, draped in a bed sheet and looking pale as death.
"James!" she exclaimed, looking to him for some sort of explanation.
"She showed up at the door of the clinic," he explained, "suffering stab wounds and a broken arm. I think she might have a concussion too, but I didn't check." He carried the girl down the hall and placed her on the bed in the guest room. "I couldn't very well leave her at the clinic door, now could I?"
"I suppose," Emma eyed the unconscious girl warily. "But did you have to bring her here? Aren't there shelters for girls like her?"
James frowned at his wife. "Firstly," he told her, "I think I should keep her for observation, at least overnight. Then we can contact friends, family, or whoever she needs to get in touch with."
"But couldn't you just take her to the hospital and—"
"That's where my second point comes in: I don't think we should take this girl to the hospital." Gently he rolled the girl onto her stomach, and then pulled back the sheet so that Emma could see the wings.
Emma gasped. "It's just like those kids from a few years back, the ones that were always on the news…"
"Exactly." James looked at his wife excitedly. "Honey, I think this is Maximum Ride."
It was several hours before Max came to, and by the time she did Dr. Hardly had already returned to the clinic. He and Emma had decided it would be for the best if they kept Max at the house for the time being—her condition was stable, and, considering her background, the thing she probably needed most right now was to stay hidden. After all, as far as the doctor could tell, she had narrowly escaped an attempt on her life.
Emma had been sitting by Max's bedside that morning, reading a magazine to pass the time. James had insisted that she be kept under constant observation for at least the first twenty-four hours, so when he had to leave for work she had taken up watching her. It was slightly startling, though, when Max suddenly opened her eyes and spoke, "Please tell me I'm not in a hospital."
"What? Um, no, no you're not… Max?" Emma replied, trying her best to explain, "We, uh, we, recognized you from the news reports a few years back—you don't look much older now actually—and decided you might want to lay low for a while."
Max's tense body relaxed a little bit. "Good," she muttered, calming down. However, the concern returned to her face a second later when she asked, "Wait, how bad am I? I mean, I got knifed a couple of times, but I couldn't tell what was blood and what was rainwater—"
"You're fine," Emma explained, "Your arm's broken, and you were bleeding pretty badly, but my husband was able to patch you up. No organs were seriously damaged, and even though your head was pretty banged up, James doesn't think you don't have a concussion."
"And he's certain that's all that was wrong?" Max asked anxiously. Emma nodded, and Max sighed a breath of relief. "I practically ran to that building, the one where he found me. At first I was looking for somewhere to hide, but then my adrenaline cut out and I remembered I was bleeding…"
"It could have been a lot worse if James hadn't found you when he did," Emma told her.
"Well, you can tell him thank you for me then," Max said, trying to get out of bed.
"Wait a minute," Emma interjected, gently pressing Max down into bed again, "I have strict orders to keep you on bed rest. No getting out of bed except to use the bathroom, and even then, we do have a bed pan if you need it."
"But I'm fine!" Max insisted.
"No, you're not," asserted Emma, using a firmer tone of voice. "You're going to live, but you can't put extra strain on your body right now. If there's anybody you need to call, then—"
"No, there's nobody."
Emma raised her eyebrows. "Are you sure? There must be somebody—"
"It's better for everyone if I just disappear off the radar for a while," Max told her, "At least until I'm well enough to get back to my mission."
"Your mission?" Emma asked.
"It's not safe to talk about it."
Of course Max would be the secretive type, Emma thought; her life probably depended on it. "Well, will you at least tell me how you got hurt?"
Max grimaced. "Well I was out with Fang, talking about what we should do next, when—oh man, Fang!" Her expression changed from one of reluctance to one of confusion and panic. She grabbed her head with her un-injured hand. "I can't believe this!"
"What happened?" Emma asked again.
"I-I don't think I remember," Max explained, "it's all kind of a blur. We were out walking, and then…" Max gave a frustrated groan. "I don't know! My head got beaten so bad that the details are slipping!"
"Honey, who is this Fang person?" Emma asked quietly, "Did he do this to you?"
"What? No!" Max stated emphatically, "Fang would never do this to me. You guys saw the news reports and stuff—Fang's my right-hand man, helped me with all the world-saving stuff. We got married last year! You must have seen it; Nudge snuck a camera into the ceremony and posted the video online, and it went viral. Made it onto the evening reports."
Emma noticed the silver wedding band that was hanging on a leather string around Max's neck. "Oh, you're right, I remember now. He was the dark-haired one." Max nodded in confirmation. "You just look kind of young to be married, I suppose."
A grim smile crossed Max's face. "I'm a big girl, Mrs…?"
"Call me Emma."
"I'm a big girl, Emma. I must be eighteen by now. When you've been through what I have, that's plenty old enough." Again Max groaned in frustration, banging her un-splinted arm against the bed sheets. "I just wish I could remember what happened to Fang! I know I was running away from something… wait! I remember!" she exclaimed, "We were in a park, I think, and these guys pulled up in a van came at us... really strong guys, who looked like clones or something. We tried to fight them, but they were too strong." Max squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated, trying to call up the memories. "I ran away, but Fang didn't make it." She cursed under her breath, and then said, "I guess they have him now, if they didn't kill him. Maybe they have rest of the Flock too."
"Oh." Emma wasn't sure what else to say. "Should I call the police, or…?"
Max snorted. "This is way bigger than the police, Emma. This plan's been in the working for years, and now they're trying to make sure the Flock doesn't get in the way. And I," Max yawned, "do not want to cause a stir and draw attention to myself. I was hoping to take care of this right away, but this injury's going to set me back for a while, and then there's…" she trailed off, not wanting to say any more. "Anyways, I'm not going to be in action anytime soon."
Emma shook her head, not understanding a word Max was saying. "You're tired—try to get some more sleep. That is, if you're not hungry."
"Surprisingly, no," Max remarked, "but I should probably eat something anyways."
"I'll get you some soup, then," Emma declared, standing from her chair. "Do you want half a can, or a whole one?"
Max frowned thoughtfully. "Better make it at least three or four—human-avians need a lot of calories." Then she added, "Also, do you have any oranges?"
"Oranges? I think so," Emma nodded and then left the bedroom, thinking, if James plans on keeping this girl long-term, I might have to get a job just to pay the food bill!