Disclaimer: I do not own Maximum Ride or any of its characters. I stole them, but James Patterson made me give them back T-T
A/N: So this is a tweaked take on Maximum Ride where Max is a boy (because why not) and wasn't born into the School. Jeb Batchelder took care of him for the first six years of his life, so the School could know how he'd act if he was raised normally. The story starts on Max's birthday, when Jeb has to take him back to the School. Max, Iggy, and Fang are 12, Nudge is 9, Gazzy is 6, and Angel is 4. This will be mostly Max POV, so assume that unless I mark otherwise. Review please!
Prologue
Jeb Batchelder smiled and reached down to take the little boy's outstretched hand. His eyes held a sadness that the child was too naïve to understand. "Hello, birthday boy. How does it feel to be twelve whole years old?"
Max bounced happily on the balls of his feet. "I'm a big boy now!"
Jeb laughed, but it stuck in his throat. The poor boy had no idea. He frowned; cleared his throat and gave his head a little shake. He was getting sentimental; he had raised the boy since his creation, after all. "Since it's your special day, I'm going to take you somewhere super fun!"
The bright eyes lit up even further, sparkling with delight. "Wherewherewhere?"
Jeb walked Max over to the shiny new blue Honda Civic and picked his foster son up, depositing him in the back seat and fastening his seat belt. "It's a surprise."
When he slid into his seat and started the car, he could see Max's bright, expectant smile in the rearview mirror. Images of the child's possible fate flooded his mind, and he adjusted it hastily, blinking rapidly to dispel the torments. He had signed up for the job willingly, had spent twelve years of his life raising the child, preparing him for this. He'd educated him, provided for his special needs, kept detailed reports on every occurrence in the little boy's life, for twelve years. Max honestly thought Jeb was his father. And, Jeb realized with surprise, he had come to feel that Max was his son.
That was ridiculous, he scolded himself as he pulled out of the driveway. He already had a son, Ari, a boy just now beginning seventh grade. Ari and his wife Helen, who lived without him because they knew of the importance of his examinations. Max had needed to be closely monitored, in a normal environment. He needed to go through a normal life until he was finished developing, until he was ready to be introduced to the others. In other words, he needed a scientist to volunteer to be his foster parent. Jeb had stepped up to the job.
At the intersection, two black Mercedes-Benzes joined him—one in front, one in back. Without looking, he knew that there would be four Erasers in each car, armed with guns, tranquilizers, and Tasers. They were present to ensure the child transferred safely to the research facility, without being harmed—or harming someone. He felt that was silly. Max had only ever killed a fly, quite literally, and he had cried for an hour before solemnly burying it in the backyard with a gravestone and a painstakingly-crafted farewell speech. The boy was as harmless as one could get.
Still, someone with his abilities had to be considered dangerous, just to make sure. And people would definitely kill to get their hands on him. Hence the cars.
"Daddy, there are people following us," Max said, a note of worry in his voice.
"Don't worry," Jeb said soothingly, wanting nothing more than keeping his son from getting distressed. Not his son. Foster son. Not even that. His object of research. Yes, Jeb decided, setting his jaw. Max—Number 011628—was not to be considered human. "They're just coming to the special surprise place with us."
He turned right, and the pavement ended. Jeb was driving through a rocky desert, with orange sand and wispy, withered stalks of grass growing out of crags in the rocks. Max—No! 011628—twisted to look out the back window.
"Daddy, we're driving out to the middle of nowhere and the men in the cars don't look very nice."
"Max, what have I told you about name-calling?" Jeb scolded.
"I'm sorry," Max—no, 011628 said meekly. "But they're holding guns and you said people with guns are never good people."
Jeb force-locked the doors and windows, easing his foot down on the gas pedal. Pebbles rattled against the bottom of the car and sprays of fire-colored sand dusted the windows. The heat radiating in from outside was stifling, so Jeb put on the air conditioner. The ice-cold air blasted him in the face, and he heaved a sigh of relief. Then realized he'd almost missed the turn and jerked the steering wheel to the right.
Max—he'd given up calling him 011628 by then—was thrown sharply against his side of the car. Jeb heard him cry out in shock, then start babbling questions about what had just happened and crying that he wanted to go home.
"Please, daddy, I'm scared," he said, reaching up to touch Jeb's shoulder.
Jeb shook him off roughly, his nerves getting the best of him and causing him to lash out. "Sit back down!"
Max started crying, and he immediately felt horrible. Screw the deadline, his son was in tears. Jeb slowed the car to a stop and got out, ignoring the shouts from the black cars. He opened Max's door and took the boy's face gently in his hands, wiping the tears away with his thumbs.
"Shh, shh," he soothed, "I'm sorry I yelled at you. You didn't do anything wrong; it's my fault, okay? I'm sorry you got scared. We're just going to a special vacation house, see? It's so special that these men have to come along to make sure nobody else follows us and figures out how to get here. They're the good guys. There's nothing to be scared of."
"Is there a pool at the house?" asked Max, immediately perking up. Max had always loved swimming. Jeb breathed an inward sigh of relief.
"Yes, there's a pool, and it's this big," Jeb said, holding his hands as far apart as he could and widening his eyes.
The eyes lit up again, and the smile reappeared. Jeb closed the door and got back in his seat, resuming the drive to what was as far from a vacation house as one could get.
The School. It was a top-secret underground facility in California that was a mere twenty minutes' drive from the small Arizona town of Topisco. A research facility, headed by the world's most brilliant scientists; the biggest, most expensive one in the world, full of top-notch equipment and technology that wouldn't be available to the general public for decades. Hundreds of people had collaborated their lives' work into this.
And it all revolved around Max.
Max, as his name had been formulated by Jeb, was no more than an idea when Jeb first heard of him. A superior being, completely genetically engineered. Something other than, hopefully better than human. And when they had actually succeeded in creating the embryo, they had to decide what to do with it once it was developed enough to leave the lab.
A normal life, for the first twelve years. They eventually decided that was best. The boy would learn how to be a human being, know love and comfort and kindness. And then, on his twelfth birthday, he was to be relocated. To the heart of the school, for—Jeb paused at the mere thought of the word, a bitter smile coming to his lips—testing. Testing was the delicately phrased word the School had come up with for what it would be doing to Max. What it already was doing to the more primitive batch of mutants, the original bird kids. They were around Max's age, but had been in captivity their whole lives, were regularly subjected to needles and machines that would probably scare Max to tears. And now Max would become one of them.
Not that, Jeb told himself. Max would be fed better, clothed better, treated better, without physical pain as a punishment for lack of cooperation. He would be taught about himself, become the figurehead of a new scientific discovery, the greatest by far. Little harm would come to him, Jeb assured himself, conscience easing a bit.
The car came to a stop, tires crunching against the hard-packed gravelly ground. Jeb braced himself and got out, leading Max towards the drop-off point. It was marked by a box of yellow spray-paint; an elevator to the underground facility, disguised as common earth.
"Daddy there's nothing there," Max said curiously. "What do the lines mean?" Jeb brought him into the center of the box, which was about two yards long as well as wide, and took ahold of his shoulders.
"No matter what happens, I want you to stay here, okay?" Max nodded uncertainly.
Jeb released him and stepped back, out of the box, blinking back sudden annoying tears. "You're my son, Max; remember that always. I love you so much—" He broke off, thinking, then why am I sending him here?
Cracks in the ground formed where the paint had been, and the ground Max was standing on began to descend. Max stumbled at the sudden movement, his eyes going wide with panic.
"Daddy!" he screamed, and Jeb suddenly realized his job, his life's work, didn't matter, not when compared to his little boy. He ran forward, but the Erasers, who had gotten out of their cars by then, grabbed him and held him back.
"LET ME GO!" Jeb bellowed, straining against their grip even though he knew it was futile. "HE'S MY SON!"
"Dr. Batchelder, get yourself together," hissed one of the Erasers. "You're upsetting the child—"
"DADDY!" Max cried one last time before the elevator disappeared out of sight and the hatch slid shut, silencing his voice.
The Erasers released Jeb then, and he stood there, seeming to sag into the ground. After a long moment, he took a deep breath and straightened. "My apologies. Take me down to the lab."
By the time the elevator had reached the bottom of the shaft, a gathering of employees of the School had commenced. Everyone wanted to catch a glimpse of the wonder child—the final result of their works. The scientists eagerly clutched their clipboards, running data through their heads and speculating about possible outcomes. The others merely wanted to see the product of their lives' works.
The doors opened, and 011628 stepped out.
He was exactly the opposite of what everyone had expected. The Erasers had notified the headquarters that the child would be hysterical, in tears at being taken from his father. Common sense said that the boy would be frightened by the cold steel facility—scary-looking devices and rooms upon rooms full of failed experiments they had yet to dispose of. People imagined a powerfully-built, tall boy with commanding features and willpower.
No one expected to see a completely collected child step slowly out of the elevator. 011628 was small and slim, with blond hair and big brown eyes and lips that would make for a beautiful smile—which he did now, though it was clear he was distressed.
"Hello," he said politely, eyes flicking nervously about the room. "Can someone tell me where I am?"
"You're at the School," the head scientist, Dr. Grace Tey, said.
"Oh," he said, smile wavering. "I don't like school much. I'm homeschooled."
Dr. Tey glanced up at him, already scribbling on her clipboard. A small upward curve touched her lips. "Oh no, the name of this research facility is the School. We don't teach here; we study and experiment."
"Why am I here?" he asked, rocking back and forth on his feet.
"We want to learn about you," Dr. Tey said carefully. "You're special, you know that." The child nodded. "We want to figure out why you're special, see if we can make more people like you."
"There are others," Max said suddenly. "Others like me, but not quite." His eyes filled with tears. "They're so sad and scared…"
"How—" Dr. Tey began, but the boy was already walking away from them, walking down the hallway towards their Ninth-Gen mutants.
The five experiments were in their cages with their wings furled but plainly visible. Human DNA had been crossed with that of a bird to create these angel-like children. There were five of them, ranging in age from four to twelve years old. There were three boys and two girls—one of the boys was blind because of a disastrous night-vision surgery. The two girls were in their cage together, huddled up in a corner, while the boys were sitting in opposite corners of their cage, the most defiant one with his wrists shackled to the bars.
When Max came in all five heads jerked up to look at him, but no one said a word. The boy took a step back, eyes wide in shock as he took in the horrible scene.
Then the younger of the two girls whimpered, and Max snapped out of it, his eyes softening. He squatted next to their cage. "What are you doing in here?" he asked quietly, head tilting to one side. No one answered him.
Then the door to the room slammed shut. On the other side, Dr. Tey pressed the locking mechanism with an expressionless face before radioing the tech lab to record the video footage for the room and send a copy to her department later. This would be the first sample of the boy's interaction with the other experiments, and it was vital that it was recorded.
Inside the room, everybody went still, looking to Max to see how he'd react and regarding him with curiosity. He was the first person around their age that they'd ever met, aside from each other. Max himself froze, his heart hammering in his chest. Not only was he in a strange place where the grown-ups put people like him in big metal cages, but he was locked in with them, and it seemed that his father had abandoned him.
Any normal child would have probably burst into tears right about then, but Max was most definitely not a normal child. Max took a deep breath and composed himself, his face maintaining a rather strained smile. He sat down with his back to the well and rested his hands in his lap. "My name's Max," he offered to no one in particular, seeing nothing else to do other than make introductions, just as Jeb had taught him to. "What's yours?"
One of the boys glared at him from between locks of dark brown hair. "I don't have one. None of us do."
Max was shocked, and for a few moments wasn't sure of how to reply. "How do you not have a name?" he asked eventually, choosing his words carefully.
"Wait! I have a name!" a boy with a shock of blond hair squeaked, jumping up and down in sudden excitement. Max noticed that he was young, maybe six or possibly seven, and a pang went through his heart. Little kids weren't supposed to be kept in cages. Jeb had taught him that cages were for animals that were dangerous, like tigers and lions at the zoo. These kids weren't animals, though, and he wasn't in a zoo. "I'm 562040!"
"I'm 600572," the older girl piped up, peering at him with wide brown eyes.
"Your name can't be a number," Max said, frowning. What kind of place was this, where kids weren't allowed to have names?
"Those are the closest things to names we got," the dark-haired boy said sullenly.
Max frowned. "You can't not have names." He chewed on his lower lip for a moment, lost in thought, before coming to a relatively safe conclusion. "Why don't you make names up for yourselves?"
"You can't do that," murmured the youngest girl, shaking her head slowly. She seemed to be no older than four, but spoke just as eloquently as the others. If anything, her tone was more serious than those of the other children.
"Yes, you can!" Max insisted. "Look, I'll do it, too! From now on, my name is..." He paused for a moment, thinking, before brightening as an idea struck him. "Maximum Ride!"
"That's a weird name," muttered the dark-haired boy, but Max ignored him, plowing forward instead.
"Well, come on," he said, looking around expectantly at the others. "If I can do it, you can too."
The older girl was the first to speak up. "Nudge," she said, her voice small, and said no more than that.
Max smiled, and scooted closer towards her cage. "Hello, Nudge," he said cheerfully, or as cheerfully as one stuck in a place such as the School could say. "Nice to meet you."
The girl, and the rest of the children, stared blankly at the hand Max had stretched out through the bars of the cage. Eventually, the dark-haired boy asked, "What the hell are you doing?"
"Don't swear," Max replied automatically, "it's bad. And it's called a handshake. Here, you take my hand-" Nudge hesitantly clasped hands with him. "And then you shake it. It's how people say hello."
This was a strange place, indeed, where people didn't know what a handshake was.
"Hello Nudge," Max repeated, shaking the girl's hand.
"Hello, Max," Nudge replied, giving him a small smile that he returned with a brilliant one of his own.
The blond girl curled up against Nudge's side was the next one to speak. "I like the name Angel," she said softly, her expression determined.
Max shook her hand, too. "Nice to meet you, Angel," he said solemnly.
"I'll call myself Iggy," one of the older boys ventured. "I read a story about an iguana named Iggy once." As Max greeted him and shook his hand, he noticed that the boy's eyes were glazed over and unfocused. He was blind.
The dark-haired boy seemed to notice him looking and sent him a hostile, warning look, but Max merely finished the handshake and smiled. When he next spoke, you could hear the smile in his voice. "Nice to meet you, Iggy."
The younger boy was fidgeting, seemingly unsure of himself. "I don't know-" he started, but Angel cut him off.
"You're like a Gassman, you're so gassy," she quipped. "You should incorporate that into your name."
Max barely had time to raise his eyebrow at the four-year-old's knowledge of a big word such as 'incorporate' before the boy was brightening. "Yeah! The Gassman! That sounds cool!"
Max's face was completely straight as he shook hands with the boy. "Nice to meet you, Gassman. Can I call you Gazzy for short?"
"Sure, sure," the boy chirped, settling back into his corner.
Max turned to the dark-haired boy, the only one so far to refrain from choosing a name. "Are you going to pick a name?" When the boy merely glared at him, he took a breath and tried again. "You know, I might be here for... for a while," he said, speaking more hesitantly than before, "and I think it would be good for me to have something to call you if that... happens."
The boy snorted. "You won't be here for long," he said bitterly. "Someone like you won't last for a week."
"Why not?" Max asked, confused.
"Because of the testing," Nudge piped up, her eyes wide with fright.
Max's eyes widened as he made the connection between the scientists and her words. "You mean," he choked out, "the scientists out there... experiment on you?"
"How do you think Iggy lost his vision?" asked the dark-haired boy harshly. "They wanted to see if they could give him night vision. Something went wrong."
Max winced. "But that's illegal."
"What does that mean?" asked Iggy quietly.
"It means that it's against the law to do that," Max said.
Silence. "What's the law?" asked Angel eventually.
Max was stunned. "It's, uh, a list of rules that the government makes. You have to follow them, or else you get put in jail."
"The School doesn't follow the law," Nudge said hollowly. "They're a top-secret org-organ-"
"Organization?" asked Max. She nodded.
He felt fear flood through his veins, but he squared his shoulders and looked the dark-haired boy directly in the eyes. "I'm not afraid," he lied, and was surprised when his voice sounded confident. "So tell me what your name is."
The boy considered him for a long moment, but Max didn't back down. Finally a glint of something-approval?-flashed in the boy's eyes. "Fang," he said quietly. "Call me Fang."
A/N: Is it okay for me to have two of these? Whatever... So there! The first chapter/prologue/thing! *throws confetti* Hope you liked it! I always wondered how they picked their names... So, review please? Pretty, pretty please? If you like this, let me know so I keep writing!