"Anne Walker. FBI." Standing on the doorstep, Anne flashed her badge. She was hoping she could get this over with quickly. She hoped it didn't turn bad, like so many other meetings she'd been to.

The woman clung tighter to the door, and her eyes opened wide. She looked painfully similar to Iggy—same facial features, same hair.

"You're here about James," she said.

James. Jeff. Iggy.

All of the kids had given false names. Painfully obvious false names, like the utter silliness of Captain Teror and the switch weeks later to Zephyr.

All except Max.

Anne couldn't decide whether it was foolhardiness or bravery.

Her name was Anne Walker.

Nick was fast asleep in his hospital bed, and the kids were crashed on yoga mats all around the room. Anne padded in, treading the maze of sleeping children's bodies.

She paused by Max, bending towards the backpack by her arm. Max's eyes twitched and Anne nearly jumped out of her skin. She was ready to make excuses, say she was just checking on them, when she realized that the girl was asleep. Sleeping uneasily, muttering to herself. Anne caught the word "Eraser," but not much else.

She eased open the backpack, holding the zipper tightly in an attempt to keep it quiet. None of the kids jumped up yelling, "What are you doing?" So she proceeded.

There. Reams of paper, almost spilling out, many of them crumpled and crushed. She paged through them quickly. Most of them were just lines of code. But here was a page with names on it. She yanked it out and scanned it in the dim light from the window.

Hmm. The information was misleading. Nick's mother had given him up for adoption? Jeff's father was dead?

A decoy page. Information with a touch of truth in it, but falsified so that it would lead to a dead end. It was stuck in among the codes so that people would glance over the pages of unreadable truth, and instead pick out the lies. An Itex employee would know what it was immediately, but a spy or a thief would be left with a handful of nothing.

Still, it wasn't just lies, but a code that could be used to decipher the pages of numbers and gibberish. She folded the page down to a tiny lump and pocketed it.

The rest, she stuffed back into the backpack. The kids might never notice it was missing.

She lived in a farmhouse in Virginia.

It was a school night, and Max wasn't in bed. Neither was Nick.

First Anne panicked. She checked the other kids' rooms, then combed the house from top to bottom. They were nowhere to be found.

They had to be out flying again. Just after midnight. She wound up pacing in her office, wishing she could just go out to a shooting range and blow a few targets to smithereens.

She'd just grounded them that afternoon, but you'd think they didn't even know. What kinds of kids set off explosives in school twice?

And what were Nick and Max doing? Making out in the trees?

She'd made a chore chart. She'd bought a cookbook. She'd attempted (in what was apparently a fit of temporary insanity) to make casserole. She'd given them the normal life they'd never had. She was even giving them an opportunity to prove themselves. If this worked, she could convince the higher-ups not to exterminate them.

But Max didn't listen to her. Max didn't trust her. Maybe Max would never trust her.

She collapsed into her desk chair and put her head in her arms.

She didn't know how to be a mom. She wasn't cut out for this. She'd be better off alone again, back in her house—her real house, not this huge, extravagant farm—eating microwaved meals.

It would be dead silent in her house. There would be no one waiting for her. No reason to look forward to the hour school let out.

She fell asleep with her head on the desk. In the morning, Max and Nick were back. Neither of them said a word.

She did a little snooping after they went back to school. She already half-knew what she would find – a rumpled Bible, some papers with copied numbers, and the map from her car under a dresser, covered in scribbles. They'd been trying to decode the files. So Max and Nick weren't making out—probably.

Out of curiosity, she tracked down one of the addresses they'd come up with. It turned out to be a pizza parlor. She had to laugh.

She never worked for Itex.

Anne entered the Griffiths' simple, comfortable living room. It was almost painfully perfect, like an illustration of an average family's All-American home.

"Good to meet you," said a tall, lean man, holding out a hand to Anne. "I'm Tom Griffiths."

"Oh, and I'm Debbie." The woman giggled nervously. "I forgot to say my name, didn't I? Oh, I'm so glad someone's here. Please, have a seat. Do you want anything to drink?"

"No, thanks," said Anne. Sitting on the couch felt like sinking into marshmallow. She braced her feet against the floor and straightened her back before opening her briefcase. "We should get started."

"Oh yes," said Debbie, and sat down on the opposite couch. Her long pale hands flexed and tensed on her knees. Her gaze had a strange, almost eerie intensity. Anne disliked her on principle. "You can find James?"

"We'll give it our best effort," Anne said. She looked around subtly and noticed a book on alien encounters on the end table, on top of a magazine about conspiracies. Interesting. Not so perfect-All-American after all.

"Do you want to see his room?" Debbie asked. "I haven't touched a thing since he was a baby. It's exactly like it was. That's important for evidence, isn't it?"

Anne stayed professional and cool, but couldn't help asking, "You didn't make him sleep in a crib, did you?"

"No, we moved a bed in."

Right. They'd moved a bed in. While she'd been going crazy with panic and fear—not because her experiment was going awry, but because this was her kid and he was missing and his siblings were all tight-lipped and stony-faced and seemed totally unaffected—these two had been tucking Jeff into bed in a shrine of a baby nursery.

"But he's missing," Tom said quickly. "He snuck out a few days ago and we haven't seen him since."

"What do you think happened?" Anne asked.

"Those awful School people took him away again," Debbie said.

"Right, just like before . . . Now, was James taken from the hospital, or from your home?"

"The reporter on TV made a mistake," Debbie said quickly. "He was kidnapped from our house when he was four months old."

"Did you notice anything odd about him?"

They shared a glance.

"There was something up at that hospital." Tom lowered his voice. "James was born in the taxi on the way there. They took him to the NICU unit and then they wouldn't let him go. They said there was something wrong with his lungs."

"His lungs," Anne repeated. "Was he . . . premature?"

"By a few days," Tom said bitterly.

"They wouldn't let me hold him." Debbie fumbled for a tissue and dabbed at her nose. "It felt like they hated us."

Itex relied on three types of parents.

There were the loyal employees who donated genetic material.

There were people hungry for money. Wombs for rent. Children on sale.

And there were the innocent people who made the mistake of walking into an Itex-owned clinic, the people who made a Rumpelstiltskin deal without realizing it and were told their babies had been stillborn.

But James Griffiths wasn't stillborn. So Itex had to figure out how to extract their creation.

"There was nothing wrong with his lungs," Tom rambled on. "So they said he was failing to thrive and he didn't weigh enough. It was always something. They were acting like he was this fragile thing, but he was a healthy baby. We started to ask questions. We talked to other doctors. And then, out of nowhere, when he was four months old, they said he was better and we could take him home."

"We were so happy," Debbie said, her voice breaking.

Neither of them continued.

"So he was taken from your house," Anne said.

Tom nodded.

"Police found no leads?"

"Nothing. Not even fingerprints. They even suggested we did something to him. We started talking to reporters . . ."

Anne had to wonder why they weren't dead yet. Itex tended to 'take care' of people who made too much noise.

But then, this couple was kind of weird. Conspiracy theory, "the lunar landing was faked," weird. Not people anyone would take seriously. And they'd just been crying about their son to anyone who would listen—they weren't digging, the way a few people did and soon regretted.

"And then he turned up on your doorstep," Anne said.

They nodded.

"You can't think of any reason why he would have, maybe, run away?" She couldn't help her voice sounding a little sharper.

They just looked bewildered. Debbie shook her head.

"Really," said Anne, and took a list from her folder. "Let's see . . . The Washington Post. USA Today. Paranormal Magazine. Fox News. Journal of Scientific Exploration. Those names ring any bells?"

They stared at her, fear creeping into their faces.

"How did you . . ." Tom began.

"Let's not worry about how I know," Anne said. "I'm more curious about what you were trying to accomplish. A little money on the side, maybe?"

"We were trying to help our son," Tom Griffiths said, the muscles taut in his jaw. "These people took him and experimented on him. They blinded him and put these . . . these wings on him. They have to be exposed."

Anne stared at them both for a moment, seeing them in a different light. They were still weirdos, but . . .

"We tried to explain," Debbie said, twisting her hands together. Her voice creaked with tears. "He was afraid of us. Please, you have to help us find him. They can't get him again. Not again."

Anne blinked. Then, carefully, she reached into her pocket and turned the recorder off. She stood.

"Listen," she said. "You're not going to find your son."

"What?"

"He's long gone by now. Back on the run. But if you try to follow him, if you try to find out more, if you go to the media, then you die. Your bodies will be dredged out of some river somewhere or found buried in the woods."

"What is this?" Tom demanded as his wife clutched at his hand. He started to stand. "Are you threatening us?"

"I'm giving you a little friendly advice," said Anne. "Don't be so quick to assume everyone has your best interests at heart, huh?"

"Who are you?" Debbie said, and then she leaped up, looking ready to claw Anne's face off. "Where's my son?"

Anne put her hand on her gun so they could both see it.

"I don't know where he is," she said. "But I do know that you're walking a dangerous line."

"What do you want from us?" Tom said.

"I don't want anything," said Anne, as she turned to leave. "Forget you ever had a son. Move. Change your names. And hope to God they never find you."

She never hurt anyone.

It was Saturday, and the school was empty. Anne suspected that it might not be filled again. As she walked past the stairs leading to the basement, she could see a light from below and hear loud clanking and shuffling.

Now Anne sat before the headmaster in his office, studying him. He was a squat toad of a man. He'd cost her an experiment. He'd cost her a family.

She crushed those thoughts down into a ball, and shifted in her chair. "You had a pretty cushy job here, Bill. Respected headmaster for a swanky private school. Everyone conveniently forgets pesky things like that criminal record."

He glared at her over his desk.

"And in exchange," she said, "you just let Itex keep a few of their experiments here for real-world training. You run a few experiments on the sly. Chemicals in the cafeteria food kind of thing. Taking biological samples during gym class. Just little things, data collection. But you couldn't handle it, could you? And now the North Adams School is over."

He began to turn purple. "You had those six freaks in your hands and you let one of them go! I was protecting my assets."

Anne stood up, leaning over the desk, and jabbed a finger at him. "You went to Itex behind my back."

He shrugged. "They made me a better offer."

"Good to know you did it for a noble cause," Anne said. "You think they'll really pay you? After the school-wide riot where teachers started tasering students in the halls? After a kid turned into a wolf monster and bit somebody in the girls' bathroom? After the headmaster was witnessed attempting to hit children with a car? How do you get that far out of control?"

He just sneered at her, but she knew it was a hollow front. He had nothing to throw back at her.

On Sunday, the local news read that Headmaster William Pruitt had had a psychotic break with reality and burned down his own school over the weekend. He died in the flames.

She had no children.

She would show no emotion. Even when she saw the five kids strapped down to tables. Heard Gazzy almost crying as he said, "Angel, how could you?"

"Hello, Max," she said coldly. She had to be wood, or stone, not a human being. Everything was recorded. She could show nothing.

She informed them without so much as a blink that everything they knew was a dream. They didn't have the technology to do that, of course—not to engineer memories. Even if they could, the cost would have been prohibitive.

Just one more test.

When had she gotten so attached?

"What was the memory of living with you supposed to test?" Max spat. "How I would react to a two-faced control freak who didn't have a maternal bone in her body?"

Anne remembered.

The vans peeling up the driveway. Jeb's insubordination, the shouting. Max's face flashing through confusion, anger, hatred—and, just for a moment, pain.

Maybe she really had gotten Max to trust her. Just a little bit. Enough to make it hurt. But now that was destroyed.

Anne stayed silent. She couldn't speak. Her face was hot.

"How do you get some chow in this joint?" Max said. Her eyes were shut tightly, a muscle in her cheek jumping, but her voice was overly casual. Faking.

"We'll get you something right now," said Jeb.

"Like, a last meal," Angel added.

All of the kids tensed, and Anne thought she'd better step in. "I'm sorry, Max. But as you've probably figured out, we're shutting down all of our recombinant-DNA experiments. All of the lupine-human blends have been retired, and it's time to retire you too."

"Retire as in kill?" Max cried. "Is that how you live with yourselves? By using euphemisms for death and murder?" She kept yelling. She wouldn't shut up. Every word was a bullet in Anne's chest.

"How's that working out for you? Able to look at yourselves in a mirror? Able to sleep at night?"

Anne couldn't do this.

"We'll get you something to eat," she said, and sped out. Behind her, she could still hear Max shouting. The other kids were silent.

She had a beautiful farmhouse out in the country.

Jeb found her in the lounge later.

"How are you?" he said.

"Don't talk to me. This is easy for you, isn't it? You've been doing this to them for years."

He shrugged.

"Do you even think of them as people?" Anne demanded. "You called Max a weapon. All you ever did was train those kids day in and day out. What kind of life is that for a child? And Ari, you let him be turned into an Eraser!"

Jeb said nothing, but turned his back as he opened the staff fridge. She couldn't see his face.

"Does everything have to be a test? Can't they just have a normal life? A house? Space to fly around? An education? Did you even try to homeschool them? They have their heads stuffed full of facts they'll never use, but the fourteen-year-olds barely knew second-grade math. You might have given them food and shelter, but they were on their own for two years."

"Anne . . ."

"You won. You've got free reign on the project. Now leave me alone."

She was here to help.

It was going to be a beautiful, dry, clean winter day in California. The kids stirred, slowly waking inside their cage.

Anne put down the binoculars. It was time to go.

Jeb was silent; Roland ter Borcht looked smug and insufferable as usual. Their faces blurred together.

As they crossed the field, she could see the kids putting their heads together, whispering. Iggy tested the bars. They were shaking. Max's hand was on Gazzy's, comforting him, like a mother. She was fourteen, so full of anger, and trying so hard to be a mother.

And they had each other. They would die together.

"Do you know what's really sad?" Anne said.

Max, as usual, took refuge in audacity. "That pin-striped pantsuit? Those sensible shoes?"

Anne wanted to scream. Are you ever serious? Do you ever let anyone in? Can't you just cooperate, give in a little bit, so you and your family can live? Do you realize you're dragging them down with you? What is wrong with you?!

But she already knew all too well what was wrong with Max.

"We gave you every chance," Anne said. A lie. They both knew it was a lie. These kids had been running on a treadmill since they were born.

Max kept yelling, demanding to be let out. She was braver than Anne was. She didn't fear speaking out. She didn't hide behind false names. Ter Borcht spoke over her—"Enough!"

Please, Anne thought. Please. Please.

That was when everything went to hell.

The kids fought their way out of the cage. Ari was working with them. Anne, still in the crowd of scientists, shot a glance at Jeb to see if he was surprised. But by this point there were guns firing.

Anne dropped to the ground, covering her head. Many of the others did, too. She saw Jeb turn towards one of the executioners, and then heard a thud and saw Jeb collapse to the ground.

She crawled towards him on her elbows. Trying to catch her breath. "Batchelder!"

I thought you were our friend, said a sweet, soft voice in her head.

"Angel?" Anne gasped.

I guess you tried to be. Goodbye, Anne.

A couple of minutes later the trucks started exploding in the parking lot. The Flock was gone.

She never spoke a lie.

Itex had fallen.

The Flock had done it. They had become great. Just like Anne and Jeb had always dreamed.

Anne sat in her old office, her tiny window overlooking the California desert. There were still protestors chanting and waving signs outside. And a news crew.

In front of her, files covered her desk. There were more in her file drawer, and more in the grey cabinet behind her. Records of experiments. Most of them were inherited, not hers at all. But she'd be blamed for them. She was responsible. There were falsified permission forms from parents. Records of children kept in cages, with coffee rings bleeding brown over their names. The files on her half-illicit climb through FBI ranks. A world's worth of evidence against her.

But it was over. It was finally over.

She'd go to jail. That was unfortunate. But maybe she could bring a few other people down with her.

She poured a little more vodka into the glass on the desk, and was about to drink when a footstep sounded in the hall.

When the intruder stepped into the doorway, Anne's pistol was trained on his head.

"Hans," Anne said. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Hans Gunther-Hagen left Itex behind years ago. Now, as it all fell to ruins, here he was.

He walked forward, slipping his gloves from his hands. "It's good to see you again too, Anne. I thought the whole place was deserted, except for that crowd out there."

"What do you want?"

"I understand that you have some experience with avian-human hybrids."

"I understand you'd better tell me what's going on. Itex is over. Did you come to gloat? The police should be here soon."

"No, to make you an offer. Unless you'd like to sit here and wait for the police to arrive." Quite casually, he put his hand on hers and pushed the gun down. "Do you remember the cloning project?"

Jeb's Max copy. Anne nodded slowly.

"Good. It turned out quite well and I've been working on something similar. He's only a few months old right now. But that's not the main thing I want to talk to you about."

"Then what is?"

He smiled. His eyes were cold. He held out his hand and said, "We're calling it the Doomsday Group. Let me show you."

Her name was Anne.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a companion piece to "To Create Life" and "Pio, Pio, Pio." I should come up with a series name for them.

There's a glaring inconsistency in the book, where a reporter says newborn Iggy was stolen from the hospital, but is contradicted chapters later by the parents saying Iggy was kidnapped from their home at four months old. If the reporter is right, then the parents are lying – and perhaps they're not Iggy's parents at all. If the parents are right, and the reporter is mistaken, then was Iggy born with wings? The first book said the kids were modified during amniocentesis and Angel had wings when she was a baby. Were Iggy's wings grafted or grown on later? How do you not notice if your kid has wings? Then I remembered that the kids have retractable wings. Bingo. I just had to give them a short enough timeframe that they wouldn't notice.

Another thing in the book that really bugs me is the section where the Flock tries to decode the files stolen from the School. Observe:

"When we'd found the files in the computer and printed them out, some of the information had been readable. Now those pages were gone, leaving us with lines of numerical code. What had happened to the readable pages? Dunno."

Dunno? Your stuff is missing and the best you've got is dunno?