Chapter 2

"Hello, Mr. Valducci."

"Please, just call me Sand," the blond-bearded man said.

"As you wish, sir. Here's your escort, sir. This is Mr. Zeal."

The skinny man in a white lab coat uneasily shook Sand's hand. "Hello, sir."

"Hello, Mr. Zeal. Ha ha ha… oh, it's quite comforting to see a mad scientist who's a Mister."

"Um… it's true, I have no doctorate, but, um… well, I'm here to take you to your superiors."

Sand and Zeal walked down the hallways. They were narrow, but extremely tall.

"Today, you're going to be working under the 'Threes'," Zeal explained. "Professors Boyar, McAllister, and ter Borcht."

"ter Borcht? Roland ter Borcht?"

"That's him, sir."

"Unbelievable," Sand muttered, smiling.

Mr. Zeal led Sand into a room with a round table. The two of them sat down, opposite the three Threes. Sand recognized McAllister, a heavily scarred and cut-up man, Boyar, a very attractive woman who never seemed to get out of her levitating chair, and ter Borcht, towering over the other two on his large chair.

"Sand Valducci," Boyar proclaimed in her thick Spanish accent. "Did you succeed in bringing Dr. Dwyer back into my possession."

"I did not," Sand said. "Brigid Dwyer's insanity has taken her by the bits; she's purely convinced that she belongs with Fang and the flock."

ter Borcht turned away, and McAllister stood up hastily. "Well, on the subject of the flock," he said nervously. "Over the past eighteen years, our organization has begun to notice the rather unusual direction the experiments are taking."

"Such as?" Sand said. He was taunting them—a dangerous game, but Sand was confident with his own value. They outranked him, but he was infinitely more important.

McAllister cleared his throat and held up a sheet of paper. "We open with 'Gasman'," he said. "Twelve years old, in good shape, his spare powers developing as normal… he has recently begun a coital relationship with an unknown mutant stolen from Itex's London base two years ago."

"Coital?" Sand said.

"Sexual," Boyar offered.

"I know what the word means, I merely object to it. There are much better—"

"Angel," McAllister interrupted. "Nearly eleven, with a multitude of powers that can only be described as godly. The onset of puberty has promised to bring with it even more skills."

"Is that a problem?" Sand said. "We all knew their age was mildly accelerated."

Boyar leaned across the table toward Sand. "A very weak minority of events are going as planned," she whispered harshly. "Iggy, seventeen—content in his blindness, using technology other than our own to compensate for it."

"Other than our—?"

"Nudge, fourteen," Boyar said, increasing in volume. "Weakening. Softening. Carnally involved with Iggy."

"They're married," Sand corrected.

Roland ter Borcht finally turned around in his chair, and dropped down onto the table, stomping over to Sand.

"Dese tings vere not supposed to hoppen," he snarled. "Max II vos not supposed to be spared! She travels vith the flock now. Zey call her 'Tooey'. An unknown mutant has expressed an interest in her. Airy—ze daughter of Max and Fang. Max and Fang vere not supposed to breed."

"Well, what do you want me to do?" Sand demanded. "I haven't seen those two since they were ten years old! What was I supposed to do, stand over them and tell them they're bad for each other?"

ter Borcht fumed. "If zey had remained locked up, tings may have gone according to plan."

"You know that's not true," Sand said. "If they had remained at School, they would have come into adulthood far too weak to accomplish anything. If they had cooperated with your various… attempts… that would only prove they have no free will."

"McAllister!" ter Borcht roared. "Remove Mr. Valducci and explain tings to him."

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Sand went along with the things that Professor McAllister had to say.

"The final obstacle is Headmaster and his Survivors," McAllister said. "Once we're clear of them, you—YOU, Sand, take full responsibility for this—the flock must be divided. Max, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel must never see each other again. This is what the world needs."

McAllister left. Sand stared after him, feeling nothing but amusement.

"Up yours with what the world needs," Sand whispered. "Mr. Zeal, come with me."

Zeal followed Sand nervously.

"These fools," Sand muttered. "Their plans can be deconstructed in an instant."

"But how can that be?" Zeal asked. "They control everything."

"Not people, they don't. And Maximum Ride and the mutants she loves are more 'people' than anyone you or I will be privileged to meet. The Threes think that they can train the flock to work alongside them to rebuild the world, this is simply not true."

"What can be done for humanity, then?" Zeal said.

"The flock can do it themselves," Sand said. "The Threes seek to rule humanity via the flock. But it's the flock who'll rule humanity. The flock who will be humanity, all that's left of it."

"I don't understand your motivations, Mr. Valducci," Zeal said.

"Oh, well, Sand Valducci looks out for number one."

Zeal frowned. "I don't follow, sir… if the flock are the only humans left, then won't you die as well?"

"Not that kind of number one," Sand said. "Follow me."

Zeal followed Sand deep into the bowels of the well-lit building. Deep underground, farther than any other man-made structure had ever reached, Sand pushed open a door.

On the wall was a three-hundred-foot-tall holographic image of a ten-year-old Maximum Ride. Her muscles shrunken, her wings shriveled, her eyes miserable, this photo had been taken not long before Jeb Batchelder had stolen her, made her strong.

The thirty-story picture was captioned. It read, Maximum Ride: Number One.

"Oh," Zeal said. "I understand now."