Hi, this part is more of a prologue than part of the story, but I still want reviews! Hope you like this one. It's my first try at a Fax fic with a happy ending.MR

Disclaimer: I don't own Max Ride, and am too bored to come up with something sarcastic. So there.

"Jeb, don't leave Ari here! You have to take him with us! You can't just leave him to be dissected and proded and tortured! He's your son, and first and foremost you have a responsibility to him. You know these people have no respect for human life! It's not a question of what we want to do Jeb. It's a question of what we need to do, of what the right thing to do is. And leaving Ari here is not on the list of things we need to do. Sure, he may be a bit of a liability, but I'd rather have a liability on my side than to have a worse liability that's out to kill me, and a guilty conscious that goes off whenever I see him! Don't you even want your own son to reach the age of ten?"

I can't believe I said that all in one breath, but it's even harder to believe that Jeb agreed with me. It was this, not our meetings in New York, nor my problems with Itex, that started the Outsiders. It was this conversation.

" Fang, you have to listen to me," I cried it out, the pain and weakness seeping through my body as I realized exactly what was going on. Fang was leaving me. The rock I clung to was slipping away. It was his fault even. " You were even the person who told me about Ari yourself. You were the person who overheard him and Jeb! Please he's my brother! Stop doing this. Please."

He shook his head and turned to fly off into the night. Now I was alone with my 3 year-old brother. What do I do? " Max?" My little brother looked up at me sadly. " where did Fang go? And can we get some food? I'm hungry."

Food. Wonderful. No money, no un tattered clothing, but we really need food. Food and Fang. I don't know what we're going to do without him.

Within the next week Ari and I were in New york, the city that never sleeps. We found our way down to the sewers, where some people probably sleep at night, meeting up with these kids that looked around our age. I walked up to them with Ari in my arms and they froze around their little trash can fire. " Hey, you can keep on talking, I promise I won't tell. You can trust me."

They looked at me quizzically. " How can you promise that?"

"Here," I said, taking out one of my feathers, " You can have this, You know my secret now, so even if I tell, which I won't, you can tell my secret. Okay?"

they looked at me strangely for a minute and then stared at the feather, as if deciding something, then all but a few reached to their backs and pulled out similar feathers. They were planning on how to release some people from this place called the Institute, and that's how we all became known as the Outsiders.