Chapter 1: tough stuff
"Aarrrrggghhhhh! Back at another stupid School with stupid scientists with stupid guns in a stupid cell chained by stupid chains to a stupid wall!" cried Nudge.
That pretty much sums up our predicament. I'm Maximum Ride, called Max for short, and well, I'm just going to jump right in and tell you. Me and the Flock, we have wings, forced to grow them by sick scientists while we were still in our mom's stomachs. Totally gross, right?
The Flock pretty much consists of me, Fang, Iggy, all at the ancient age of fourteen, Nudge, eleven, Gasman, eight, and Angel, my baby, at six. Fang recently kissed me on the lips, but he hasn't been too flirty since and I don't really know what's up with him. He's the dark, mysterious type. Iggy happens to be blind, but he gets on all right as long we don't chop off our hair and he can't tell who's who. Nudge is our little motor mouth. That girl can go on for hours at a time! Gasman, aka Gazzy, man, you don't want to be around when he blows. What can I say; he's always had a really bad digestive system. Angel is my baby and she can read/change minds. Creepy, huh? Oh, and she's also Gazzy's little sister.
The whole thing about us being caught in another damn underground School is, unfortunately, very true. It's somewhere up in Canada, which we found out from Angel while she was overhearing white coats think.
"At least we're hooked up to these walls and not in dog crates," Iggy commented with a smirk.
Yeah, you heard right: dog crates. That, my dear friends, is what we grew up in. Trust me, it does something to a girl. Possibly makes her witty, sarcastic, and clever. Not to mention a very good liar. Then again, that may come from being the leader of The Flock.
Ok, so a couple of days passed and we started having weird tests done on us. Angel had to run through mazes, Gasman had wires hooked up to him for hours, Iggy had strange test with his eyes, Fang had to kick some Flyboy butt, and I had to fly around a room. It was killer! And the whole time they were experimenting on one of us, those scientists wouls have the rest of The Flock lined up against a wall with guns to our heads. It was completely sick.
On the third day, The Flock and I were sitting in our cell when the door swung open. This is where it gets really interesting; so don't put this book down. There I was, sitting with Angel, Nudge, and Gazzy, lying my guts out about how I'm going to get us out of this. Aww, the sweet joys of being the leader of on-the-run bird kids.
First thing we noticed was the screams of strong and very colorful language coming from the middle of the large group of white coats that had come through the iron door. Those sick, evil, mad scientists threw a girl around my age onto the floor. Seeing their faces and arms, we all cracked up. It seemed that this girl was tough stuff, according to the bloody lips, black eyes and bruised arms of the scientists. She didn't go without a fight.
Nudge crawled over to the girl, who had long brown hair, part of it hacked off to make messy side swepped bangs, which were probably cut by accident. Her face was totally covered in bruises and blood and she was short and skinny, probably from living in a freaking dog crate.
Through all the tangles and mess I might not have even recognized her.