Chapter One: Wake Up

In my dreams I'm still the same. No pinfeathers on the nape of my neck or my arms, no scaly, rough skin on my legs; no changing hearing or loosening teeth: just Maximum Ride, the same as always.

Mostly when I dream I'm still in the School, trapped in a cage. Sometimes I'm little, and all alone in a white room. Sometimes I'm the same age I am now, and my flock are with me, caged just out of arm's length. And sometimes I'm dying, somehow I know I'm dying, and Fang is there as my organs fail and I lie alone in a cage; he's telling me it's all right to give up, that everyone eventually loses, that he'll take care of what remains of the flock.

That dream is the worst, because I can't afford to give up. I'm mankind's last hope, maybe the world's last hope: I am the last thing standing between us and the end of the world.

Or so I have been told.


I woke up with a pounding headache and the reek of alcohol in my nose. I pressed my hands to my temples, trying to shut down the pain - pain is only a message, pain is only a message - but the pain throbbed on, like someone was driving nails into my head.

"Where is this?"

I probably didn't want to know, but it couldn't hurt to ask.

"The headache will pass," a voice said. Not an answer to my question. Fine. My eyelids felt like they were glued together, but my hearing was fine, and the voice was faintly familiar. It was cool and accented, like Dr. Hans's had been, but not as heavily accented... hmm. "Other than that, how are you feeling?"

"Like I got run over by a truck," I croaked. I felt like I was covered in a million bruises, and all of my muscles burned as if I'd strained them. I shifted around to alleviate some of the pressure, and something occurred to me. I patted around with my hands, brushing against cool metal and smooth leather. "What's with the wheelchair?"

"The wheelchair is standard procedure." I heard no disdain in the voice; it was silky and calm, and I still couldn't identify it. "May we have a civil discussion?"

I couldn't see whoever was speaking well enough to stare, although my vision was beginning to clear up, but I could hear that his voice was coming from directly in front of me, within about six feet, and I shot him the best glare I could muster. "I'm Maximum Ride. I don't do civil."

There was an amused chuckle, and I blinked, straining to make out the form in front of me. I could make out a dark suit and blond hair, but not much else - he was Caucasian, that much I could see, and pale enough that he almost blended in with the creamy-colored wallpaper. Probably European of some sort from the accent. "You may have to be civil, at least for the moment." He cleared his throat. "You are familiar with Jeb Batchelder?"

"Never heard of him in my life," I said, putting all my snark and sarcasm into the lie.

I heard a sigh. "Dr. Batchelder is a colleague of mine." My opponent - and anyone who puts me in a wheelchair is an opponent - leaned back in his chair. "Yesterday he contacted me; he believes you are in need of my help."

"Why would I need your help?"

"I'm not the one in a wheelchair, Max," the silky voice said gently, and I made out little round glasses, wire-framed like Jeb's, and a pair of water-blue eyes set above prominent cheekbones in a thin face.

"I don't even know your name!"

My vision continued to clear, and I saw a mischievous sparkle in those all-too-familiar blue eyes. "We've met before." He stood and came around the front of his desk, extending a hand for me to shake. I stared at it pointedly until he dropped the issue and retreated to stand behind his desk.

Max, +1.

"I am Doctor Roland ter Borcht, genetic engineer," said my new - or maybe not-so-new, if he was telling the truth - foe, "formerly of Itexicon Worldwide." He indicated me with one outstretched hand. "You are Maximum Ride, terrorist and rebel, anti-establishment to her bones." He smiled. "Now that we've been introduced, may we get down to business, please?"

I could see him distinctly now where he stood with one arm draped across the back of his chair, and I was thinking one thing and one only: where's the real ter Borcht's body hidden? This wasn't him. Couldn't be him. The ter Borcht I'd encountered last year had been fatter, much more annoying, and his accent could've stripped paint.

This guy, while still Eurotrashy, was thin, trying his hardest to be suave, and didn't seem to be in the business of torturing children anymore. Although, given the wheelchair and that this was my life, you never knew. He probably had a secret lab in the basement.

"What's 'business'?" I asked.

He ran one hand through his hair; no longer oily, unwashed, and totally gross, it stood up in gravity-defying chunks, and from what I could see, was totally sans styling product. Hmm. Was he taking styling tips from Jeb? I'd seen the same, uh, 'hairstyle' on him quite often. "You are business, Maximum."

I braced myself to leap from the wheelchair and throttle him. One more word. Just try me.

He put up one hand before I could jump him, smiling casually. "No, no need to panic. Jeb wants me to save your life."

"I'm not dying," I said (never show weakness, Jeb had taught us once, a lifetime ago), but I couldn't help but think: I didn't know how I'd gotten here, and I'd been feeling like crap for the past few weeks. But whoever this was didn't need to know that. It didn't matter.

"Your body says otherwise, Max." He smiled again, the expression more sad this time, and adjusted his glasses. "To be more exact, you are unraveling on a genetic level. You are coming apart at the level of your cells. Eventually that process will kill you."

"And how long is eventually?" The least I could do was indulge him. I felt fine. He'd probably tranquilized me to get me here, anyway.

He shrugged. "A few years at the most. Months at the least."

"So how do you know I'm dying?" I was stuck here for the foreseeable future, and I might as well make the best of it, I figured.

"Your headaches are due to increased intracranial pressure - something is causing your brain to press against the inside of your skull," he said. "Your vocal cords are deteriorating, atrophying. The distribution of your feathers is changing. Most worryingly, I am told you are suffering from blackouts, during which you act irrationally and recognize no one."

He wasn't faking; a laundry list like that was hard to fake. And I recognized the 'intracranial pressure' thing: it was often a harbinger of death for a failing experiment. As a child I'd seen heads literally explode; it wasn't common, but it did happen.

I'd always suspected that someday I would begin to fall apart and die; I'd tried to tell myself that me and my flock were different, that we'd live long, normal lives. But it sounded like I was beginning to unravel like so much cheap fabric - like we weren't so different at all.

I rubbed my temples with both hands, grinding the knuckles into the bone, trying reflexively to get rid of an ache that, if my new friend here were correct, wasn't going to go away until my head exploded. And I didn't want my head to explode.

"Jeb never told us anything about this," I said. When we were in the E-shaped house, I had asked him if we were going to come apart like all the other failures at the School. He'd told me no.

"He didn't know." I saw a momentary glimmer of sadness in his eyes. What the hell... "You're mutating on your own now."

"Yeah, Jeb mentioned that one," I snapped.

"That's why he referred you to me," said ter Borcht - I had no better name for him, so ter Borcht was going to have to do. "The School never intended for something like this to happen to you, and so they never planned for it."

Yeah, that's usually the way it goes... no one ever plans for me.

"What makes you so special?" Other than possibly being replaced by an imposter.

He smirked. I heard a faint meow somewhere in the room - what the... "Since Itexicon - collapsed, I've been working here." He spread his arms, indicating the compound at large (or so I guessed, at least; maybe we were just in one room out in the middle of nowhere). "Not to boast, but we are the primary researchers into recombinant DNA structure and behavior. Think of us like medical doctors, Max," he said, and apparently he had no idea how creepy he sounded. "We know how you and your flock are... put together. And we know, theoretically, how to fix your problems, including this one. That's why Jeb sent you here."

"Theoretically," I repeated.

He nodded. "Yes. Theoretically, although I have cause to believe that our methods will work to cure you."

Let the record show that when a mad scientist, or someone who claims to be one, says they have cause to believe something, it means they tortured someone to death to get that information. Just for your information.

"Well... theoretically I think you're a dick," I said, and decided the conversation was over. I put my hands on the arms of the wheelchair and got up.

The only thing ter Borcht did as I heaved myself out of the stupid thing was raise an eyebrow. Huh. Maybe I could learn to like this guy - he wasn't calling Flyboys on me or actively attempting to kill me in any other way, after all, and that was a definite plus.

He checked his watch. "You have two minutes, Max."

Two minutes to what?

I scanned the room and located a door, which I oriented myself to face. I decided to regard his statement as something optimistic: I had two minutes, and if I had escaped by the end of them, I could stay out, alive, and free.

I made my first stride towards freedom, accompanied by the blessed quiet of no shrieking alarms or jackbooted footsteps... and then something entangled itself around my ankles.

Before everything went fuzzy, I had time to look down and see the agent of my doom: no, not a ninja star to the Achilles tendon; no, not a lasso wrapped around my ankles.

An ordinary-looking brown house cat was purring ecstatically as it twined around my legs, and I went down for the count.


I was drowning in grey haze; I couldn't breathe, couldn't move, couldn't think...

There was a mask on my face, cold plastic over my nose and mouth, cool air forcing its way down my throat. My hindbrain, conditioned by ten years of pain and torture, shrieked that someone was trying to kill me, that I was dying, but I couldn't raise my arms from my sides to bat the mask away.

My senses began to return to me. The mask disappeared, and I felt that I was lying in a bed - it was hard and unyielding, not like my bed at home. Of course not, we don't have an oxygen mask at home, I scolded myself.

I could move my arms again, and I twitched them back and forth, trying to build up the energy to... do something. I wasn't sure what, exactly. Anything at all would be better than just lying there helpless in a strange place.

I felt a gentle tug, and the slide of a needle leaving the skin of my hand. An IV? Why? What was someone trying to do to me?

Someone put a bandage over the place where the IV needle had been, and I wanted to smile, although my face wouldn't respond. I'd had more IVs during my first ten years than I'd had hot meals, but this was the first time someone had given me a bandage after taking one out.

I wondered if it had a kids' cartoon character on it; apparently that was what they did for non bird-freak children, out there in the real world.

That would be kind of nice.

I drifted for a while in the haze, and eventually came back to myself a bit faster than I'd have liked when a cat jumped on me.

Dammit, I thought, mostly for the fact that though I was instantly awake, my limbs largely refused to flail. I felt a twitch of my hands and feet, but nothing else.

Someone scooped the cat off of my stomach and scolded it; I recognized the language as German, but couldn't tell what was being said. I listened intently anyway; you never knew what someone might give away when talking to Mr. Purr.

"Schlecter Kaetschen." The voice was soft, soft enough that I couldn't tell who was speaking. Maybe it was fake ter Borcht. I heard a cat meowing, and then the low rumble of a content purr. "Kein Springen auf den Patienten."

I could make out patient in that, and Kaetschen sounded kind of like cat, maybe.

Who was I kidding? I didn't have the time to pick up languages; all my spare time went to the saving-the-world gig.

I didn't want to alert my visitor (visitors, if you counted the cat) to the fact that I was awake, so I kept my eyes shut and focused on listening.

Eventually, the inevitable happened, and I fell asleep as the cat purred like a happy lawnmower.


The next time I woke up was slightly less sudden, and I could move my arms. My head was sore, so, naturally, the first thing I did was touch it, make sure it was still there.

My head was there.

My hair was not.

Not all of it, anyway - a patch near the nape of my neck had been shaven off.

I felt around the shaven patch - there was a raised line there, like a healing scar, and something sticky that made my fingertips feel gross. I took my hand away and scrubbed it on the thin sheet.

So. Someone had done something to my head. I didn't know what... but I knew I wasn't freaked out.

Which meant that whatever they'd done had been serious. I don't react well to surprise surgery, and the lack of freakout tension in my muscles meant that they'd actually knocked me out for whatever they did.

I couldn't do anything about it having happened, though, given that to my knowledge I didn't possess the ability to travel in time.

I pushed myself into a sitting position and cradled my head in my hands. The movement made me feel dizzy and slightly nauseous, which didn't combine well with how hungry I felt.

OK, first goal after getting the heck out of here: hit up a Mickey D's.

You know how hospital beds usually have those rail things on the sides so you can't roll off? They were missing on one side - and on that side, an unfolded wheelchair sat patiently, apparently waiting for me to get into it.

There was a piece of white paper on the seat, folded neatly in half.

Constitutionally speaking, I'm unable to resist a mystery.

I leaned over, reached down, and scooped up the piece of paper. I unfolded it; it was written on in neat, spiky handwriting that I almost recognized.

Maximum. (Note to any potential or current mad scientists in my audience: my name is Max. M - A - X. Get it right.)

You are free to explore the grounds, though I politely request that you contact me before leaving the floor you are currently on, as my security clearance will allow you to access all areas you should wish to see.

I have no secrets to hide from you, Maximum. This is a place of healing, and you will find no torture chambers.

However, if you wish to look, that is your decision.

If you are hungry, I will be more than happy to escort you to the cafeteria. My office is down the hall on your left, the fifth door on your right. I will be waiting there for you.

I hope that a tour of this facility will serve to convince you of our altruistic intentions. If it does not... that's your issue, not mine.

It was signed simply "Roland ter Borcht". So whoever I was dealing with was apparently at least convinced that he was my old nemesis. Interesting. He might actually be my old nemesis, but the differences between them said otherwise to me.

Below the signature was another section of text, probably written in after the fact. I glanced at it.

You will probably be most interested in the hospital wards where our current patients stay. Unfortunately, they are not accessible to someone with your security clearance.

You figure it out.

The only response I could think of to that was one of Iggy's favorites.

"Bite me," I muttered to the note, and kept reading.

Incidentally, I would not recommend walking at the moment. If you wish to risk it, go ahead and try, but please understand that there is a reason I've provided you with a wheelchair.

In addition, you will understandably have questions regarding what happened to you while you were unconscious. I will gladly answer them.

"OK, OK, I get it," I said, and folded the note in half again, sliding it into my shirt pocket for future reference. So he wanted to see me. Couldn't he just say as much? I hate this deceptive crap. I'm a busy girl, I don't have time to waste being clever with mad scientists.

Actually, I don't have time to waste with mad scientists at all. Ten years was plenty.

I glanced at the wheelchair. The last time I'd been in one had been a less-than-pleasant experience, to say the least.

The veiled threat in the note about what might happen if I didn't use the wheelchair made me think that it might be an acceptable alternative to... who knew what. Hopefully it was just "you'll pass out if you don't", but it could be "you will die painfully if you don't". I didn't want to take that chance, not at this juncture in time.

I sighed and manuevered myself into the wheelchair. It wasn't the option I'd have liked to have taken, but it was better than staying in bed.

There was one definite benefit to this place, I had to say: while I didn't wake up in my own clothes, I didn't wake up in a hospital gown either. Instead I was wearing a very boring pair of minty green scrubs with slits helpfully cut in the back for my wings.

Of course, that meant that someone had dressed me while I was unconscious, which was pretty creepy, but hey, at least I was wearing clothes.

I wheeled myself to the doorway of the room I was in - some kind of infirmary, by my estimation - and peered outside. Or attempted to - the door stayed shut even when I rolled right up to it.

I slammed one palm against the door. "Hello! Open up!"

"Authorization, please," said a female voice that brought me unpleasant associations: the public address system in airports, the alert system in the School, Marian Janssen... jeez, it was like a carnival of fun nasties from my past.

"Let me out," I snarled, banging my palm on the door again. My hand was beginning to sting - stupid metal door - but someone would eventually hear and let me out of this crazy place.

Right?

"Authorization, please," repeated the door.

(I'm talking to a door, I thought. There have been weirder moments in my life, but not by much.)

I huffed in irritation. "Max Ride."

"Incorrect. Authorization, please."

I told the door what it could do to its mother; I told it about its mother's ancestry and sexual preferences; I suggested improbable sexual acts to it; I wrapped up with an invitation to perform an impossible act upon itself with the suggestion that it also involve a goat.

"Authorization, please."

I took a deep breath. Well, it had just failed my version of the Turing test, there was that.

"Maximum Ride," I said tightly, suppressing the urge to throw a few choice swear words in there somewhere, maybe more than a few. Like about ten, let's say.

I really do hate being talked to by things I can't see.

"Authorization accepted," said the door, and hissed open.

I rolled through the doorway just as fast as I could. I did not want to risk having to go through that again. My name is Max. Not Maximum.

Once I was in the hallway I stopped to have a look around. White, sparkly clean, smelling faintly of... something pleasant I couldn't quite identify, kind of spicy. It was a nice change from alcohol, that was for sure.

The floor was tile as far as I could see in either direction, and there were signs on the walls telling me where things were in helpful large type.

I focused on putting the wheelchair into a turn, remembering what ter Borcht had written in his note (fake ter Borcht, whatever, I didn't really care at the moment): left, fifth door on the right.

I hate wheelchairs, have I mentioned that yet?

I rolled up to the fifth door and rubbed my hands on my pants (as much as they qualified for that designation). Ow. If this was going to be a semi-permanent feature, I was going to ask for gloves. My palms were already getting chapped.

I raised a hand and knocked on the door, my best shake-the-walls, open-up-it's-the-police knock. If you have to knock, you might as well do it with style, that's my motto.

The door opened and I wheeled myself inside. Then it hissed shut behind me. If I lived in this place a hundred years (and hopefully I wouldn't be here for nearly that long) I would never get used to that. It just wasn't right, doors that shut themselves.

Kind of cool, I had to admit, but not right.

Fake ter Borcht was sitting at the desk, petting a cat - the same cat, might I add, that I had tripped over, and probably the same (or at least so I suspected) that had jumped on me. He looked up as though he'd been expecting me when he heard the door hiss shut, which didn't surprise me, because the note had pretty much said: I'll be expecting you. I wouldn't be surprised if it contained those exact words, but I wasn't exactly going to check right then.

I'd never seriously expected to see someone sitting in a chair stroking a cat after inviting me to their office. Check that off my list of things to do before I die.

Fake ter Borcht leaned over and put the cat down on the ground; I rolled cautiously forward to a position in front of his desk, about where I'd been sitting the last time we talked. It was a mad scientist's cat, I knew that, but it was still a cat, and I couldn't just run over what I couldn't be sure was anything but a normal, innocent little kittycat. Wouldn't be right; I'm the hero, not the villain, and heroes don't run over kittycats with their wheelchairs.

I raised one finger before fake ter Borcht could say anything. "I have some questions for you."

He shrugged. "Ask away, Max."

Max, not Maximum. Huh. Maybe he was making progress.

Now, if he could only teach the doors my name, then I'd be willing to give the man some real points.

I leaned forward in my chair. "What did you do to me?"

"What?" He looked confused - about as confused as I felt, actually. "What do you mean?"

"Some of my hair's gone and there's sticky crap on my head. What did you do to me?"

"Oh." His expression brightened up a bit. "We had to perform a little, ah, surgery on you. Nothing major."

He saw my glare and hastily added on to his inconclusive, rather weaselly statements.

"We siphoned off some of your cerebrospinal fluid before it could cause permanent damage to your brain by putting it under crushing pressure," he recited. Did he have to give this explanation often? "Normally in situations such as this we install a shunt to drain off excess cerebrospinal fluid, but in this case we could only presume consent to maintain essential life functions."

How oddly sweet - a mad scientist had had me unconscious on an operating table and hadn't decided to see how much of me he could change before I kicked the bucket. "In addition, monitoring you in the recovery room, we saw cerebrospinal fluid being replaced at no more rapid a rate than usual, so we saw no need to perform a second surgery to install a shunt."

It was depressing how much of that I understood, really.

"Any other questions?" he said, in that silky voice that confirmed to me that this had to be an imposter, because there was no way that the soup doctor's voice could have changed that much in so little time.

"When can we tour the labs?"

He blinked once in surprise. "Any time you like - would you like to go after we finish our little conversation, or-"

"As soon as possible," I said.

"-after we have lunch," he continued smoothly. "All right then. We'll go as soon as I've answered any other questions you have."

What is the meaning of life? Will I ever find true love? Who moved my cheese? A million dumb questions flitted through my mind while I stared at him across the desk - to his credit, he stared back, blue eyes unblinking and mild behind those little glasses - but I eventually settled on one.

"What do you know about Dr. Hans Gunther-Hagen?" I asked him.

He seemed genuinely caught off-guard - however, given how determinedly cool this guy was, all I got was a slight widening of his eyes and one raised eyebrow. The man could compete with Spock in a most-expressionless competition and make it a close race.

He closed his eyes for a moment, then reopened them, apparently using the time to phrase himself.

"Hans Gunther-Hagen, to the best of my knowledge," he said slowly, "is living in Stuttgart, Germany, where he is living a quiet life as a botanical researcher." His eyes moved to the chair I was sitting in, and I realized, one moment before fake ter Borcht effectively told me, that I was in a whole lot of trouble. "The last time I saw him, he was in a wheelchair like the one you are in right now. He was... crippled in a car accident when we were younger."

I laughed. It seemed kind of cruel, but I couldn't keep it in. "You're not fooling me. He's not in a wheelchair, and he sure as hell isn't in Germany. As far as I know, he's living in Malibu, and he's a card-carrying nutjob."

I was ready to keep going - This was a test, and you failed - when something happened that I had honestly never seen before.

Fake ter Borcht went white. I mean that almost literally - all the color drained from his face and his lips thinned so much they almost disappeared.

"That cannot be," he said softly.

"Well, it is," I said cheerfully.

"Are you sure?" he said.

"Absolutely. I saw him two months ago," I said, putting as much sunshine into my voice as I could muster (and yes, that is a figure of speech, not a random new power - how much would that suck, really, the room lighting up every time you spoke?). "When was the last time you saw him, doc?"

Fake ter Borcht put his head in his hands.

I had the feeling that what had been a simple charity case for him - cure the birdkid, get invited back to all the good mad-scientist parties - had just turned into something a lot more complicated.

I kept on smiling. It wasn't my problem.