Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride.
"C'mon, Max," I said softly.
"'Kay, Angel," she replied.
I took off, and she followed, as she always did.
I hated it.
Wasn't this what you wanted, huh? Didn't you want to be the leader? I said to myself. Yeah. The leader. Look where it took you. Look where it took the world. Look where it took Max.
The world was in ruins. It seems that it was Max, and only Max, who could truly save the world. It was what she'd been created for. And as for me? I was created to back her up... and to give her something to save.
Angel. Her little girl.
She went back to the place of her her nightmares, the School, in order to save me. That was one of many reasons why they kidnapped me in particular-- because she loved me best. I know this because I took it from a whitecoat's mind.
She loved me more than life, and she would save the world for me.
Well, there's the whole thing about Max just having to play the hero (like in the Ella Incident), and the fact that it was the Right Thing to Do. And I guess she cares about the rest of the flock too.
Well, cared, anyways. She doesn't seem to care about much, anymore.
And it's my fault that she's like this.
She's my responsibility now.
I wanted to be a leader, to be responsible for others. Well, now I have to take care of Max, whose very existance reminds me of that horrible day...
---
"Max... I think" I began.
"If it's another shot at leadership, I don't need to hear it," Max said tiredly. We were all tired-- the Erasers had been attacking with far greater frequency than usual, especially at night. We'd been constantly on the run-- well, nothing new there, but no one had gotten a full night's sleep for weeks, and everyone was scraped up to some degree.
But I was getting stronger. I'd taken out four of the flying Erasers last time with my mind alone... and I'd gotten two to start attacking each other. I was, in my mind, the strongest.
So I said so. "But Max, I'm the strongest! Shouldn't the strongest person lead?"
"Angel... we're all uptight, and this is no time to complicate things. Can't you give it a rest?" Max replied.
I fell silent, but I smoldered inside. I fell out of formation. No one said anything, which was just as well, because I wanted to fly alone for a while.
It was then that the terrible idea sprouted in my mind.
If I can make an Eraser fall, just by telling him to, I reasoned, why can't I just 'convince' Max that I'm right?
I recoiled from the idea at first... but it grew on me as the days passed, and the thought kept running through my mind...
If I were the leader, things would be better. It would be for everyone's good.
We'd taken shelter in a cave that night. I hadn't said anything about my ambitions to leadership for a few days. All the better... maybe it would make for less suspicion when Max suddenly had her change of heart.
I took a deep breath, gathered my strength... and mindspoke, trying to impress it upon her mind.
Let Angel be leader. Let Angel lead. She's strongest, so Angel should leave, and I should step down.
"I think..." Max said suddenly, then stopped, her brow furrowing.
"You think what?" I said, pushing a little harder with my power.
Max's teeth clenched. "Stop it."
She was fighting me, and was doing a much better job of it than any Eraser. I pushed harder.
"Augh! Quit it!" she screamed.
"Max!" Iggy yelled. "What's wrong?"
"Get out of my head!" she screamed, grabbing her skull.
"Is it the Voice?" Fang asked urgently. "Is it another headache?"
I pushed harder. They didn't think it was me, and I had to do it now, before she could tell them it was me...
LISTEN TO ME! DO WHAT I SAY! I yelled into her mind, releasing all my power in a great wave...
It was too much.
My head hurt, but when I looked up, I saw Max staring blankly ahead.
"Max?" I asked softly.
"Yes, Angel?" she replied.
I could still hear what was going on in her mind... but I wished that I couldn't.
Listen to Angel. Do what she says. Listen to Angel...
With the final psychic blow, I'd destroyed her mind. Nothing remained but that final command.
"No... I didn't mean it..." I moaned, giving myself away.
"Didn't mean what?" Gazzy, my brother, asked. "You... you didn't hurt her, did you?"
He didn't want to believe it. But...
"You mean you were the one hurting Max?" Fang yelled, whirling on me.
"I... I didn't mean..."
"It doesn't matter! What did you do!?"
"I just wanted to be leader..."
"What did you do?!"
"I think... I-I think I..."
I couldn't say it. I think I killed her.
Her body still lived, but everything that made Max Max was gone.
"Come on, Max!" I sobbed, and took off. She followed.
So did the rest of the flock. "Max? What are you doing?" Fang yelled.
Mind-control? She wouldn't... she couldn't... did she? Fang thought.
I grabbed on to Max. "Warp speed," I whispered, and we were gone.
---
She was nothing more than a shell of the Max I'd known since I was a baby. If I didn't tell her to, she wouldn't eat, wouldn't sleep, wouldn't do anything.
For a long time, I spent my days hiding out from the flock. The Erasers didn't seem to bother with me and Max anymore.
I even considered going back to the School in the hopes that they'd know how to fix her...
But in the end, I didn't need to. They came to me.
---
Max and I were bunking in an abandoned warehouse when Jeb found us.
"Max," he said.
She didn't look up. "Jeb..." I said.
He turned to me. "You did this? You turned her into a vegetable?"
His voice was eerily calm. I still couldn't get any thoughts from him, and that scared me.
He didn't wait for me to answer. "But you had a hard time with it, didn't you? See, when we first planned to include telepathy in one of our experiments, we also figured out how to engineer a safeguard against it, a sort of mental shield. We gave it to both Max and Fang. Of course, I never really thought it would come to this," he said, shaking his head. "Why did you do it? Don't bother answering, I think I know already. See, you're really too young to have that sort of power. I'll bet you wanted more. Was that it? Because you'd tasted power, you thought you could handle being the leader?
And now look what you've done. You singlehandedly split up the flock, taking away not only their leader, but also their telepath, the one who could give them warning if someone had ill intent, the one who could get whatever information you needed straight from the horse's mouth... or in this case, mind. Max, as well as the rest of you, were created to save the world. And now the chances have plummeted to almost zero. There's not even enough time to create another Max clone."
"Can't you fix her?" I pleaded.
He shook his head. "It's hard enough to heal ordinary human minds. What's happened to her... no one knows anything about. Brain injuries are the hardest to heal... we can't fix what you've done.
Still... I suppose I'll take her off your hands now."
"No!" I yelled.
"She is my daughter." For the first time, anger seeped into his tone. "You've done enough."
Images of Max being subjected to further experimentation flashed through my mind. No. I wouldn't let them.
"I won't let you take her!" I screamed. "I could kill you, you know!"
"Not really. I'm sure you've noticed that you are unable to read my thoughts?" He had returned to his earlier, calm, almost conversational tone. "See, I've had a device implanted in my skull. It sets off waves which disrupt your abilities. It only works in a very small field... but it is enough. You cannot kill me that way."
"Maybe not that way," I said, "but I'm stronger than you are."
"Yes," he said, nodding. "We did good work with you. At least... I had thought so."
"Go away. Find someone else to mess with."
"No. Max is coming with me. You may come too, if you would like."
"No, Jeb."
"Stubborn, I see. I had hoped it wouldn't come to this, but..."
He started to pull a tranquilizer gun from his coat. I ran forward, jumped at him, collided, kicked...
And he fell to the ground, hitting hard. His neck was twisted at an unnatural angle.
He was dead.
That was twice I'd killed someone... but this time, there wasn't even a semblance of life in him.
"Max..." I whispered.
"Yes, Angel?"
"Let's go."
And we did, flying up into a blue, clear sky which mocked the inner turmoil inside.
---
After that... more wandering from place to place.
Then came the War. We took shelter wherever we could.
Next came the Virus. It wiped out most of the regular humans, but Max and I seemed to be immune. Maybe it was something they put in all the mutants.
Now, we wander from place to place. We sometimes run into other recombinants. Even more rarely, we run into humans.
The weirdest thing is, the children being born to normal humans aren't human. Some have gills. Some have tails. Others have wings.
Something in the virus must have changed the DNA of the surviving humans. I bet the whitecoats at the School, or maybe the Institute, designed it. It makes me a little sad, that humans are going to go extinct. But we'll be there to take their place: the birdkids, catkids, lizardkids, fishkids, and whatever other sort of recombinants I haven't seen yet are out there. That was probably what the whitecoats wanted.
But as for me...
I just try to take care of Max. I hope against hope that one day, she'll go back to the way she used to be, and everything will be all right again.
But deep down I know that it will never happen.
My world ended a long time ago.
I won't ever have children. I don't want any children to be born with my powers.
I'm not sure whether there are any other telepaths out there, though. I hope not.
Huh?
I'd long tuned out Max's thoughts. They were always the same. But suddenly, a slight flash of confusion came from her, as if she'd woken up briefly from a strange dream, only to fall back asleep.
Maybe there's still hope, after all.
After all, we'd survived the end of the world.
Somehow, I'd find a cure.
And I knew where to start looking.
Jeb might have said they had no idea what to do to cure Max... but maybe they had something that could help, anyways.
"Let's go... Maximum Ride," I said, both her name and the speed I wanted her to take me. I wrapped my arms around her in a hug.
And as the sun rose slowly over the horizon, we zoomed off.