Disclaimer: What's mine is mine, what isn't aint
Five Things That Never Happened to Maximum Ride
I want to fly.
I'm bored with my average life. I'm tired of my ordinary friends. I'm sick of the endless lessons and I'm fed up with my stupid scientist parents. I can't stand watching another re-run on TV and I don't want to read a book, surf the net or listen to music. I want to fly.
I've had it with being earthbound. I want to escape from the drudgery of my life. I want to soar in the sky not sit down and do homework. I want to do something exciting, have an adventure, go to new exciting places, see the world, be the best, go to the Max, instead of just the Maxine.
I just want to fly.
I want to just open my window and leap into the sky. Fly like the birds. Fly with the birds. Hunt with a hawk. Soar with an eagle. Bug an albatross. Not use a cold metal plane but wings. Real wings. My wings. If I try hard I can almost feel them, the press of feathers against my back, the touch of my shirt against my wings.
But I'm just day dreaming. I can't fly. I don't have wings, and will never have wings unless I start messing with my genome.
I better go do that geography homework.
But I so want to fly.
I wanted to see the world. Just once. It doesn't seem like much but I wanted to so badly. I never stood a chance though. Doomed to live my life in a cage. Forever looking through bars, never to breathe the free air, just the rank poison of antiseptic.
That's not a life. That's a prison sentence. And just because I have wings. It's not like they're any good anyway, all they do is take up space and I have precious little of that. They don't let me fly; I know I could, but they won't let me.
Once I wanted to see the world but now all I want is my life to end. I can't escape, I know, I tried. I almost did. I got one look at the outside world, just one, before they found me. Almost shot me. I wish they had, it would have been better than being taken back to the lab, back to the pain.
I want to die. I can't face another 'examination'. I can't face another day trapped in the same cage. I can't just live to be a lab rat. I can't bear to look at my desolate future stretching before me and I don't even want to remember my past. I, I can't fight them anymore, it never does any good, but I can't give in.
I just want to die. I don't care how, whether it's by gas, injection or just expiring. Just as long as it's quick, and not by the Erasers, I don't particularly care. I just want it to end.
Anything would be better than this life.
I was pacing, I couldn't do much else. Fang was under the knife and all I could do was wait. Just sit and be quiet in a corner. Okay so I wasn't doing very well with that last part.
A doctor came out of the operating room in bloodied scrubs, never a good sign. There was a long pause in which I want to grab him by the front of his shirt, throw him against the wall and get some answers. But I'm trying to outgrow that kind of thing.
"Err, Max is it?" he said hesitantly, not meeting my eye.
"Yeah. Max it is." I waited tensely. If the unthinkable had happened, I'd snag the kids and…
"I'm sorry. We lost him," the doctor said slowly. I froze mid thought. I couldn't believe my ears. I didn't want to believe them. Fang couldn't be dead. "He went into cardiac arrest," the doctor continued but I hardly head him. "We couldn't save him."
I collapsed into one of the chairs they provide for just such an occasion. Fang was dead, I was never going to see him again, I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye.
"I never told him," I said sadly trying desperately not to cry and failing. "Why did he have to go before I told him?"
I was going back to Ella's with the flock.
I wanted cookies. That was just one of the reasons though. Mostly though it was because it's the only place where I haven't be made to feel a mutant freak girl and I'd liked that. I liked that a lot.
"A point east," I muttered. Homing is okay until you get really close, then it gets confusing.
"So this is where you went when we were supposed to be rescuing Angel," Fang said, looking down at the ground. Somehow managing to say that without a hint of irony.
"I got shot," I said defensively. He looked at me as if to say And whose fault was that? Yeah, it was mine, thanks, I know. I rolled my eyes at him. Would it kill him to speak once in awhile?
"This is where you left us," Fang said simply. Oh, wish granted. I looked down. He was right too. There was the warehouse; I think I'll pass on meeting the bully boys again. The wood, which looked much smaller from up here and. A column of smoke on the horizon?
I had a very bad feeling as we flew towards Ella's house, which was directly under the column of smoke. Or rather, had been. It was completely destroyed.
A single fire engine stood next to the remains of what was once a home. The bright red clashing with the ash. Firemen were poking through the wreckage but there wasn't much of even that, just half a wall and the rough outline of what might have been a house charred into the earth. I couldn't see Ella or her mum. I doubted I would. Just as I doubted this had been an accident. The White Coats had killed them. Killed them because they knew. About me.
I'd killed them.
Max II chuckled evilly and I arched my back trying to throw her off. It didn't work.
"And now," she said a nasty grin spreading across her face. "I'll show you why I'm the strongest Max." She grabbed my throat with both hands and started squeezing. I struggled vainly, painfully aware of my oxygen running out, she didn't budge. She's going to win I realised in horror. She was going to kill me. That was all she cared about.
"Err… Max, kind of important," the Gasman said again.
"What?" Max II snapped at him, momentarily loosening her grip and I gasped a half breath.
"No, the real Max," he said hesitantly.
"I'm the only Max," she said viciously, redoubling her gip. Thanks Gazzy. "Get used to it."
I couldn't let that happen, what would happen to my flock if she was left in charge, she'd destroy them. But I couldn't stop her.
The world faded, the edges of my vision fading into blackness. I so wanted to breath, but I couldn't, and wouldn't, ever again.
"There can be only one Max," I heard a voice say sadly; I couldn't think where I knew it from though. I couldn't think at all. The world faded away into a tiny point and, then it exploded. I hardly noticed.