The Death Knell

Summary: Sooner or later, death claims all.

Disclaimer: I own none of this.

A/N This was inspired by the last few chapters of 'School's Out Forever' and the prologue preview of the next book. It set the more morbid part of my brain into gear, and this was the result... (Max II refers to Max's clone, if you were wondering)

0-0-0

It had been slow. Oh, so slow!

8 years, she thought. 8 years since the death knell began sounding, 8 years since the sentence was pronounced. But it had been passed long before then. Before Jeff took them, if her guess was right.

When the School had finally recaptured them, Jeff had gathered them in a room with bulletproof jackets restricting their wings and cuffs on their hands. Once they had stopped yelling at him, he had told them the thing that would change their lives forever.

Max had joked about it at first. Admittedly, it had been halfhearted, but no-one blamed her for it. She was dying, after all. Then, one day, she was taken from her cage. When they brought her back, she was dead.

Nobody had taken leadership then. The flock, such as it was, had only ever seen Max as the appropriate member for the job. Even so, the void she left was gaping, even more so when her unmoving body lay in the cage between Angel and Nudge. The body was taken away eventually, and they never saw it again. Often, when they were taken to tests, they saw glimpses of Max II or Ari, and even they seemed stunned.

They were unconcerned when Fang died, though. Iggy, too. And Nudge. And finally Gazzy.

Angel did not doubt they would not bat an eyelid at her death. After all, what reason did they have? Nobody but whitecoats had seen her for so long. Her resistance waned, she barely made it through the maze anymore. The scientists murmured on her lack of energy, but she had no more inclination to read their thoughts. And now, she simply lay there. An IV drip now fed her arm, after the food pushed at her had been ignored as lethargically as everything else. Even the death knell, sounding louder and louder now, as it waited to claim the last of the flock.

0-0-0

"Time of death: 09:46." The man pronounced. After a final look at the not-yet-cold body, he turned away. "It's all yours." The medical group swarmed around the body, oohing and aahing and poking as they satisfied their curiosity about the inner workings of the avian human. The man remembered what he had said to her, 8 years previously:

"You, all of you, were the only experiment that lasted long at all, barring Ari. But, death claims all in the end. You lasted this long because you were programmed to. And you were given time to live, and a time to die. On your fifteenth birthday, exactly fifteen years after you took your first breath in fact, you will die. Each of you."

They had been disbelieving at first, but it had happened as he had said. Without a backward look, Jeb Batchelder walked from the room.