This is my first cross-series fanfic, so bear with me if it's not the best. It's a cross between Heroes and Maximum Ride, using an OC of mine from a Heroes fanfic I've just started on with a heavier emphasis on Maximum Ride. Takes place after MR2, but before MR3, and will switch POV between Max, Fang, and my OC Jackson, with a heavy emphasis on my OC.

Disclaimer: I do not own Heroes or Maximum Ride. Tim Kring and James Patterson, respectively, own them. I do, however, own my OC.

Max POV

You want to know why people have dreams about flying? Not the airplane type, mind you, but really flying free through the sky. It's because it's so darn amazing.

Imagine the most fun thing you can. Now take that fun factor, and multiply it by ten. After that, you have the smallest fraction of how fun flying is. That euphoric freedom, that sense of vastness as you look out at the world below you, and realize that nothing could tie you down.

Well, almost nothing. It would be nothing, if it weren't for that nagging Voice always telling me what to do. We were somewhere over Nevada when it had to pop its annoying presence inside my head.

Max, I know you want to just go somewhere and forget about everything, but you can't be on the run forever. I would suggest going to Los Angeles. I have a house set up, and six spots at a private school there.

Oh great, I thought, another school! After leaving the school with the tasering teachers, I don't think any of us want to go back to one anytime soon.

Sorry Max, but you don't have a choice in this. The Voice flashed an image of a school in an upscale LA neighborhood, and the image panned over a little bit to a nice house a few blocks away. There's your school, and there's the house. Another image flashed into my head. Here's the address.

Perfect, I thought, but why California? Why not, say, Texas?

Because, Max, you're also going to be on the lookout for certain people there. They're not recombinant DNA experiments, like you: they have a genetic mutation that grants them superhuman abilities. None of them have had a mutation that makes them grow wings, and we haven't found any that can fly yet, but there are some outlandish events. There might be some at the school you're going to, and it's more present in younger generations. Just try to enjoy it, okay Max? You're starting on Monday. Just try and enjoy it, okay?

I didn't respond to that. People with a natural genetic mutation? Superhumans? All of this sounded strangely like the School, or ter Borcht's work.

Angel came up next to me. She looked at me with large, innocent eyes.

"Max, why are we heading to Los Angeles, and why do we have to go to school there?"

Fang heard this and gave me a death glare. Oh boy…

Jackson POV

The alarm rang way too loudly, waking me out of my nice reverie. I had one of those flying dreams, and while I can fly myself it takes way too much effort and exertion for me to do it on a daily basis. After pressing snooze a few times, I finally zapped the stupid clock and got out of bed.

Well, I guess this would be a great time for introductions. My name is Jackson Davis. I am 15 years old, and I'm superhuman. I'm not superhuman in the cliché super-strength or laser eyes type. No, much cooler: I can generate and manipulate electricity. Oh the infinite number of insane things I can do with this: charge my phone, drain somebody else's phone, give people small electric shocks, cause blackouts (took a while to not cause them every time I sneezed), fly for limited periods of time, and my favorite, shoot lightning bolts or concentrated beams of electricity. Sometimes, depending on the weather, I can also call a lightning bolt down from the sky. It's pretty cool, I must admit. I found out about this in 7th grade, when somebody tried to beat me up with a metal baseball bat. The instant the bat touched my skin, an electric charge ran up it, and my ability appeared. I decided very quickly to keep this a secret from everybody, even my parents. Only three people besides me know about this, and I swore them to secrecy after an incident in France where I lost control. Since then, I've been refining my control over my power so that, among other things, I didn't electrocute myself every time I took a shower.

Speaking of which, I took a fast shower, and got ready for school. Today was going to be interesting: I'd gotten an e-mail the night before that there were 6 new students, three of which were in the sophomore class… my grade. Sweet. Hopefully I could befriend them before they were tainted by some of the jackasses and morons that called 10th grade their home.

I made sure I was dressed decently (no holes in the jeans, no rips in the shirt) and headed on my short walk to school. Naturally, there was going to be a grade meeting to introduce the new students. I'd sent an e-mail back to the dean asking if I could be the one to show them around campus, and whaddya know, I share all my classes with one of them and most with the other two. Perfect.

When I arrived on campus, I checked the schedule, and noticed that the grade assembly was… well, first thing. I headed on over to the theater so that I could get a seat in the front row. They were probably already there waiting.

When I arrived in the theater, my prediction was correct: they were there waiting. I saw three kids, two guys and a girl. As soon as I opened the door, all three of them were watching me as I walked in. Man, talk about a warm welcome. They all seemed really on edge, as if they could have jumped me at any minute.

The taller of the two guys was wearing perfectly black clothing: black shirt, black jacket, black jeans, black Vans, you name it. He also had black hair. Go figure. I immediately pinned him as the mysterious one in the group, and set my mind to trying to find out more about him specifically.

The shorter of the two guys had this strange, faraway look in his eyes, which is when I realized that he was blind. He had strawberry-blond hair, and very fair skin. He was dressed more like me, just minus the button-down over my T-shirt.

The girl had striking blond hair, and I must admit, she was really attractive. I can't quite put my finger on it, maybe it's just that blonds are my type, but she was really beautiful. She was wearing a jean jacket over a T-shirt, with a pair of jeans and Converse that looked kinda torn apart.

The three of them (well, two of them at least) were staring at me intently, and I immediately picked up something very strange about them: they didn't have the type of electrical signature a normal human had.

You see, there's one other thing I can do with my ability: I can see the activity that's going on in somebody's brain. Everybody's brain has a unique electrical signature, and humans had a very specific type that all of them conformed to. But something was different about these three: the signature was somewhat erratic, not quite human but not quite anything else either. I'd have to look into it. Now, time to introduce myself.

"Hi there, and welcome to Brentwood! The name's Jackson Davis, pleasure to meet you all. What are your names?"

"Jeff," the blind kid said first. "Nice to meet you too." He held out his hand, but before I could reach out to shake it the girl grabbed my wrist and pulled it away. She pulled something out of his hand; it was a small buzzer toy that kids use.

"Jeff," she said, "don't electrocute somebody you've never met." Electrocute? I grabbed the little toy and activated it. Sure enough, I felt an electrical charge going into me. Thank goodness I'm immune to them.

"Yeah, it was electrified alright. You're lucky that I'm the one who tested it; anybody else would have taken the shock." Jeff stared at me (or stared at me as well as a blind kid can) and seemed kind of taken aback at this.

"That's nice to know," the girl said. "My name's Max." I shook her hand, noticing something very strange: Jeff's electrical signature changed to indicate he was lying when he said his name, but Max's didn't… was Jeff not the guy's real name?

"I'm Nick," the brooding guy said in the corner. I had to look for a second before I saw him. Strange: he was lying also.

"Nice to meet you too, Nick. Anyways, after the assembly to introduce you to everybody, I'm going to show you around campus. Can I see all of your schedules please?"

The three of them pulled out schedules, and I saw that Nick shared every single class with me. They all shared my free class period (score), Max had three classes with me, and Jeff had two besides the free class.

"Well now that's interesting. Nick, we have all the same classes. Max, we share history, English, and science, and Jeff, you and I share science and math. I'll warn you though Jeff: math class is going to be the biggest bore-fest you could possibly imagine, but it's worse for Nick, he actually has to see the teacher."

Jeff let out a slight chuckle at that, and Max punched him on the arm. A moment later, the bell rang. The three of them jumped maybe six inches into the air each, all looking around strangely.

I sighed. "Relax you three, that was just the bell signaling the start of classes, or in today's case, the start of assembly. People are going to start piling in pretty shortly." Sure enough, five minutes later, the theater was filled. Max, Jeff, Nick and I were standing over to the side. "Now remember, you want to give these people the best possible impression of who you all are. Don't act all gloomy or nothing."

"Yeah F-Nick. Brighten up a little will ya?" After saying this Max smacked him playfully on the arm, a lot more gently than she had punched Jeff. Something was off though… why the 'F' before the 'Nick'? And what was the 'F' for? I would just have to find out later.

After the assembly was over, I took on the task of showing the three of them around the school, conversing along the way. Nick was exceptionally silent though; hopefully I could get him to open up in class.

"So here are the science classrooms, all four of them. They're all pretty big, so that's nice. If you want to blow stuff up, you've gotta get the teachers to help you, and even then it's pretty rare for them to agree. Anyway, you say you're all adopted and that you have three more younger siblings?"

"Yup," Nick answered. That's all he'd said all day. Amazing I'd coaxed even that out of him.

"We have a few more siblings," Max said for him. "Crystal, Zephyr, and Ariel."

"Huh," I said. "Eclectic names. So where did you all live while you were growing up?"

"You don't want to know," Nick butted in again. From his electrical signature, I could tell that just thinking about his past was deeply troubling, so I let that line of discussion go right then and there. Something about these three was still bugging me though: they all seemed to be keeping some really big secret, and I couldn't pry it out of them. Eventually I'll figure it out, but until then, I'll keep guessing.

"So now, I'm going to take you three to the athletic facilities and show you around there." And wouldn't you know it, that's exactly where trouble found us.

Fang POV

This Jackson kid has been showing us around the whole school, and he's been running this mouth the whole time. It's like the Nudge Channel, only with a male voice.

"So where did you all live while you were growing up?" This was the only thing he said that actually broke through my consciousness. I didn't want to give Max or Iggy a chance to answer, because Iggy is mischievous and Max will run her mouth until the whole world knew about us. He may have already seen my blog, and if so he would be able to put two and two together from the descriptions of our personalities that I posted up there. But back to the matter at hand: ending the childhood line of discussion.

"You don't want to know." I figured that would shut him up and keep him from wondering for a while. The less people that figured out we were mutant bird kids on the run the better.

I couldn't help but wonder how I'd been put into every single class with this guy. He was definitely going to try to get close to me, be my friend, coax secrets out. Well, I would tell him my secrets if he had something equally good to share, but only enough that I could keep him dangling.

Of course, secrets don't stay hidden for long in places like Los Angeles. We were no different.

Jackson POV

I was showing them the athletic facilities of the school. I'd shown them the football field, the track, the baseball fields, and was heading towards our basketball pavilion, this time staying silent because there wasn't much more to talk about. I already knew everything about these three that they were willing to let slip, and Nick kept a tight grip on the reins of the information leaving Max and Jeff's mouths.

When we got the pavilion, I felt something strange: more erratic electrical signatures. A moment later, three men in black leather clothes came out from behind the pavilion. They were really hairy guys; however, their electrical signatures were anything but human. What was going on?

I had no idea, but Max, Nick and Jeff apparently knew all too well.

"Jackson, run!" Max yelled at me and pushed me backwards. I knew that things were going to get ugly, but I didn't want to leave. I ran behind the pavilion, and using my lightning, engaged my limited flight and lifted myself up on top of the pavilion to a point where I could see Max and her brothers.

"You little birds thought you could escape, didn't you?" The first of the hairy guys said. Birds? What the hell was going on?

"Just what we need, Erasers raining on our parade." Nick was very cynical when he said this, but I was clueless. What the hell was an Eraser? My question was answered soon enough.

The three men started convulsing, and morphed. I had to cover my mouth so that I didn't voice my disgust. Their faces elongated to a very lupine appearance, hair sprouted all over their bodies, and they grew immense claws, looking like your typical werewolf. Things were going from bad to worse pretty quickly. I had to help those three!

The Erasers charged Max and co. Nick jumped in pretty fast and landed a nice blow on each Eraser, all of which landed with a sickening thud. However, the wolf-men weren't even phased by this. They didn't even look like they'd been attacked! I had to help them now!

"Max, Nick, Jeff! Get out of the way, fast!" I started to gather the electrical energy in my hands, but none of them could see it. The Erasers looked up at me and licked their chops, like Wile E. Coyote. Great…

"Max, I'm being serious! Get out of the way if you don't want to die!" That got through. The three of them backed away, and I prepared my unnecessarily heroic entrance. I concentrated even more electricity into my hands, and jumped off of the pavilion, clenching my hands together.

"How do you like this?!"

Right before I hit the ground, I swung my hands down like a hammer, releasing the electricity I had stored up into a giant shockwave, electrocuting each of the Erasers and knocking them back ten feet. The shockwave also prevented me from being injured by the fall, and Nick, Jeff, and Max couldn't do anything but stare at me.

The Erasers weren't down for the count though. They just got right back up. What were these things?

"Damn it!" I cried out. "That usually works!" I looked up at the sky… and let a wicked grin spread across my face. I started cackling maniacally, and everybody, even the Erasers, was confused.

I raised my hand up into the air, putting my thumb and middle finger together for a snap, while extending my index finger straight out. I brought my hand down, snapped, and pointed at the middle of all the Erasers.

A fraction of a second later, a lightning bolt came down from the sky, striking the Erasers with all its might. As soon as the flash of light faded, the Erasers were no more. All that was left was a bundle of charred leather clothing. I had increased the intensity of that lightning bolt to five times what it would normally be, which would explain the effect.

I turned around and saw that Max, Nick, and Jeff were staring at me incredulously. Well, Jeff was staring as best as a blind kid could stare.

"If you and all your siblings come over to my house after school, I'll explain everything… and maybe you can also tell me what your real names are and what you're hiding." I saw Nick and Jeff both change their facial expressions remarkably quickly when I said that one.

"Let's head back to the rest of the campus now, shall we?" With that, I turned around and started walking back to the main campus.

Max POV

Who the hell is this guy? He jumps off of a building and lets out an electrical burst, then calls a lightning bolt out of the sky? I've seen a lot of things in my day, but this was a new one. How did he get on top of that building in the first place?

On top of that, how did he know that Nick and Jeff weren't Fang and Iggy's real names?

Max, the Voice chimed in, he's one of the superhumans I told you about.

As if I hadn't already figured that out, wise guy, I snapped back at it.

What, you don't have a Voice in your head? Sorry, Wal-mart sold out, and isn't restocking any time soon.

Max, this is no time for jokes. The reason you're looking for them is because the School is after their powers, and wants to replicate them.

This all sounded very familiar… oh, wait. That's because it was familiar.

"You three coming, or are you going to stand there all day? Next class starts in ten minutes!" Jackson was already close to the football field, while we were still looking at charred leather. I snapped myself out of my reverie, and started heading back with Jackson. Fang and Iggy were quick to follow.

"So," I said playfully, "what class is next for everybody?"

Jackson motioned for my schedule, and seemed pleased. "All four of us have science next. Do you know any chemistry?" How about what chemicals people used to unravel our DNA and replace it with two percent bird genes?

I didn't say that of course. Instead, I just nodded.

"Good," he said. "You three are probably going to be my lab partners for today. We're playing with fire this time." I saw an evil glint in his eye. Uh oh… don't tell me he was a pyromaniac too?

"Stop worrying! I'm not going to set the school on fire!... I just think it looks cool, that's all."

"Yeah, well you sure had me fooled." Fang had suddenly popped up behind Jackson, and the walking generator jumped a few inches in the air and very nearly electrocuted Fang.

"What the hell Nick! Don't scare me like that, I'd rather not shock you."

"Whatever." Fang looked forward and stopped talking after that. Iggy was right next to us the whole time, smirking.

"And Jeff," I said, remembering to use his cover name, "don't go making any explosives either. Okay?" Iggy looked pretty downcast at that. I think he was looking forward to making little lightning bombs with Jackson. Too bad for him. Now, I just had to get through the rest of the day, and make sure that Jackson didn't bug out when the Flock told the truth. I just hoped he wasn't one of Them.

______________________________________________________________________________

I was in my last class of the day (thank God), and it was English. After the teacher introduced me, I went and sat in the corner, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible. If we suddenly had to leave in the middle of the school year, I didn't want anybody to realize that the Ride family had just up and gone.

While the teacher was rambling on, one of the other girls passed me a note.

New girl, huh?

I looked around for who wrote the note. I saw a blond girl whose clothes looked like they cost over a hundred bucks just to clean, and she smiled at me. Guess I knew now who wrote the note.

Yeah, I am. My name's Max. What's yours?

I passed the note back, and a few moments later got a response.

Max huh? Is that short for Maxine? Never mind. My name's Alexandra. Nice to meet you!

I quickly wrote my response, and handed the note back.

Nice to meet you too. Anybody here I should stay away from?

She took her sweet time writing this one.

Well there's this John guy who likes nothing better than going up to girls and grabbing their asses, so stay away from him. That Jackson kid who showed you around is kind of weird too; he apologizes every time there's a blackout. Candice's clique is just a big group of sluts, so stay away from them.

Wow, very detailed, but I didn't like that she ripped on Jackson. He's a nice guy, and even put himself in danger to help us. This John, on the other hand, would probably need a good butt-kicking, courtesy of Max.

After nearly an hour of sitting there twiddling my thumbs, the bell rang, signaling the end of the school day. Of course, I still jumped out of my seat, and everybody in the class turned and looked at me. If there was one thing I hated, it was being the center of attention. I grabbed my books, shoved them in my bag, and got out of there as fast as I could.

Jackson, Fang, and Iggy were waiting for me by my locker. Iggy's was right next to mine, and Jackson was busy rigging up the locker so that Iggy never had to put in his combination to open it. Damn, this kid thought of everything, didn't he?

"There ya go Jeff, you'll never need to put in your combo to open this thing up anymore. Nick, I hope you were watching, cause you can do yours by yourself; last time I checked, you can see the hole I put the branch through."

Fang didn't answer Jackson though. He just looked my way, and let out his trademark "yo".

I gave him a quick nod, then quickly turned to Jackson to take him up on his offer of letting the whole Flock go to his house.

"Alright, we'll go over to your place once we pick the other three up. Where do you live?"

Jackson didn't answer. He just pointed his finger at a house that was just past some bushes.

"Wow… that's not far from our house. Maybe a block at the most." Fang said that this time. Guess maybe he was warming up to Jackson. Fang with a friend? That'd be a first.

"Yeah, really. But remember: once I spill my guts, you all spill yours. Okay? And if any more of those Eraser things come around, I'm gonna reduce them to ashes again, just without the lightning bolt."

"So that's what that noise was!" Jeff proclaimed, just a little too loudly. I shushed him, then started walking down to the middle school, where Nudge and Gazzy were.

When I saw Nudge, I realized she'd had no problem making friends. She was surrounded by about ten other girls, all of whom were talking really fast. Guess the Nudge Channel had finally met its rival!

Then there was Gazzy, who was out on the field throwing a football around. Seems he'd blended in pretty easily.

"Crystal! Zephyr! Time to go!" Nudge said goodbye to her new friends, and Gazzy begrudgingly dropped the football and plodded over. "Alright everybody, let's go get Ariel and then we're going over to Jackson's house." I pointed at Jackson, who was busy acting like a carbon copy of Fang. I didn't think they were so similar.

Fang came over to me. "I'll go pick up Angel, you take everybody else over to Jackson's house and tell everybody just how much to say. See you in ten." I nodded, then turned to Jackson. "Nick's going to go pick up Ariel. Lead the way."

Jackson POV

I lead Max, Jeff, Zephyr, and Crystal over to my house. When we got up to the gate, I put my hand on it, and sent a very specific type of electrical current through it. The motor creaked to life, and the gate opened.

"How did you do that? What did you do? How is that gate moving anyway?" Crystal just couldn't shut up, could she? She'd been talking the whole way back to my house!

"The gate is moving because of motors. The rest I'll explain later. Come on in and put your things down somewhere." Everybody shrugged their backpacks off and dropped them on the floor. About a minute later, Nick arrived with the last girl, Ariel.

Wait a minute—the elementary school was at least a ten-minute walk. How the hell did they get back so fast?

"Well, um, that was pretty quick. Come on out to the backyard, and I'll spill my guts."

I lead everybody out to my backyard. I had a swimming pool and a tennis court with a couple of basketball hoops on the side. My parents were out of town in Vegas for the week, and they'd left me on my own because they considered me responsible. There was no party at the house rule unfortunately. Bummer.

I turned around to face the six of them, and began my little shpiel.

"Alright, first off my name's Jackson Davis. I've already met Max, Nick, and Jeff, but why don't you all introduce yourselves again just for the sake of things?

"I'm Ariel," the young girl said. She had blond hair, just like Max, but maybe a shade brighter. She stared at me kind of funny. "Why are your thoughts all staticky? I can't pick up anything!"

Umm… she was reading my mind? That pissed me off really bad… I gave an angry look on my face, and opened and closed my left hand faster than most people would care to notice. Behind her, a light socket shorted out, making everybody jump.

"First lesson: stay out of my head. Next!"

"Name's Zephyr," the youngest boy said. He let out a fart to compliment that. "Sorry, I can't hold it in." Another lie, just like all the names I'd heard so far besides Max's.

"Hi, I'm Crystal! What kind of food do you like? Do you like hot dogs? How about hamburgers?"

"Umm… a big juicy steak, no, and cheeseburgers more so than hamburgers."

"You already know me, but I'm Jeff."

"Nick," he mumbled. He didn't talk much.

"And I'm Max," Max finally said. "And this is my humble family."

"Alright," I said. "Now that I know your names, first I'll tell you a little more about me, give a small demonstration, and then you can tell me your real names. Except for Max, that's her real name." All of them were kind of taken aback at that, like I was some kind of lie detector.

"Like I said before, I'm Jackson Davis. I'm 15, and I've lived in Los Angeles all my life. I'm also not quite human."

That piqued their interest. "I guess a demonstration is in order."

I held out my right hand, and gathered my energy into it. A few moments later, there was a small orb of ball lightning floating there. I grabbed the ball with my left, and shot out a small lightning bolt at a branch that was lying on the ground, igniting it in flames. Everybody was staring at me with awe, as if I was the second coming of Christ.

"Well, now that you know what I can do, I guess the only thing you can do I reciprocate in kind."

Nick was about to start speaking, when Max held her arm out. "It's okay, I'll handle this." She came over to me, and one by one pointed at the others while telling me their real names, starting with the youngest.

"That's Angel, he's the Gasman, Nudge is the one who won't shut up, Iggy's a blind pyromaniac, and Fang you already know. And as you know, for the third time, I'm Max."

"Okay," I said. "That's great, but what's this huge secret you're hiding?" I was facing Max, when suddenly I heard a strange whoosh behind me. When I turned around, the other five were gone. I heard a similar noise, and when I turned around to look at Max, my eyes went wide.

Max was still there, but… well, how am I supposed to say this? She had huge freaking wings growing out of her back! I thought I was weird, but this?

"What the hell…"

"We're recombinant DNA experiments," Max said. "We've been kidnapped, nearly killed, experimented on, tested, and tortured more than you can imagine. We're 98% human, and 2% bird, which explains our wings. And yes, we can fly. Just look up!"

As soon as I tilted my head skyward, Max jumped straight up, and joined the other five, who were airborne about fifteen feet above the ground. Guess I should join them!

I gathered immense amounts of electricity, but instead of releasing it I stored it inside my own body. I began to glow blue in the arms and legs, and slowly started rising up off the ground. I levitated up to Max and company, while they just looked on.

"I can fly too, but there's a catch: I can only sustain this for at most an hour if I use all my energy, and in my current state, maybe thirty minutes. Now, if you don't mind, can we all go back on the ground?" They all nodded, and in near perfect unison, we all went back onto terra firma. They pulled in their wings, while I dissipated the electricity I had gathered into the ground so that I didn't kill the next person I touched.

"Well… um, that's pretty interesting but why—"

"Hang on," Max interrupted. "Do you hear that?"

I didn't hear anything, but I opened up my senses and noticed two peoples' electrical signatures near the gate to my house. Something about them was…

"Oh no. Oh god no."

Max POV

"Oh no. Oh god no."

As soon as I heard Jackson say that, I immediately started panicking. Whoever had just entered his home, if they could make a guy who shot lightning out of his hand scared, then I didn't want to mess with them.

Jackson turned towards us, all color drained from his face.

"You six need to get out of here, now! Quickly, and quietly. The Company is here to try and take me in, and I don't want them to get their grimy hands on you guys. Go! I'll hold them off!"

Max, Angel thought into my head, Are we really going to just leave him here?

No, we're not. Just get out of sight, and try to read the minds of whoever just came in.

I already tried Max, I can't! It's like there's a brick wall around their minds!

If I wasn't worried before, I was now. I had to hold my wings taught against my back so that I didn't start flying because of jittery nerves. Jackson was already heading up the stairs, to whoever was inside. We were behind him the whole time, checking out the action to see if we needed to step in.

I had heard two intruders, but I only saw one standing in front of us. He was middle-aged, wearing a suit and horn-rimmed glasses. But where's the other one?

"Noah Bennet," Jackson said, maintaining his distance from the intruder. "What do you want from me now?"

"The Company has deemed you too dangerous to be left out in the world. You killed three people today, Jackson. Just like that time in France."

"Back in France, those people were criminals! They tried to rape my friend, and I couldn't even control myself! And those three today weren't even human, you know I swore to never kill a human again!... You know what, I'm through trying to reason with you, Noah." Jackson held up his hand, and created a small orb of lightning, but almost as soon as it appeared, the orb started vanishing. A strange, downcast expression appeared on Jackson's face.

Then, the second intruder appeared. He was tall, and looked like he was Haitian. How did I know that? I have no clue. Jackson resumed talking.

"So… you just had to bring him along, didn't you? Guess I don't stand a chance now. You might as well just give me a tranquilizer and bring me in." Instead, the Haitian guy held out his hand, and a moment later, Jackson fell to the floor, unconscious.

The one he called Noah Bennet took a phone out of his pocket and made a call.

"It's Bennet. We got him."

I made one of my famous split-second decisions, and this was one I'd especially regret.

"Oh no you don't!" I came rushing out from behind the wall, and slammed my fist straight into HRG's stomach. He keeled over, and the Haitian guy was about to try and knock me out, but Fang was already onto him. His attack was worthless, though. The Haitian touched his hand to Fang's forehead, and just moments later Fang was unconscious on the floor. He knocked out Iggy, Gazzy, Nudge, and Angel, and left me for last.

"I don't know who you six are," HRG said, "but the Company will probably take a great interest into all of you." HRG hit me in about three places at once, and I was just barely on the verge of consciousness. I heard the man with the horn-rimmed glasses say one last thing into his cell phone before I blacked out…

"This is Bennet. Prepare two cells on Level Five. We got a few… extras."