We were normal, well, as normal as a teenage girl named Maxine Batchelder can be. That's me, in case you didn't get it. Maxine is me. My dad's name is Jeb, my mom is Valencia, but my parents never actually got married even though they live together, so her last name is Martinez. I have a younger sister named Ella, and a little bro named Ari. I was kind of a loner at school, rich but not popular.

Isn't that weird? I had no friends to speak of, and nobody liked me. Dunno why, but it could be the fact that I didn't like them first. In fact, I stayed away from people as a rule.

I was rich, as I stated before, because my dad is a famous scientist. I didn't wear high heels or skirts, though. It makes me shudder just thinking about it. Oh, I also had a twin named Maya. She's everything I'm not, high heels, mini skirts, low cut blouses, the whole shibang. Blech.

Anyway, like I was saying. We were all normal-ish, until that fateful day when a shadow overtook the land, stealing all light and everything good from it, leeching all of the life out. I'm not kidding. We were attacked by some unknown person who had managed to do something -not sure what it was- that allowed him to attack the U.S. without retaliation. At first. Then, our army managed to fight him, but not without starting a nuclear war. That was interesting. In the space of a few months, all of the major cities all over the world: London, New York, D.C., Moscow, St. Petersburg, Paris, and all of those other cities whose names I can't recall, had been nuked. The fallout was incredible. It changed people. Gave them powers, and mutations.

I got several: Wings, (I know, right?) Hyper-speed while flying, I could breathe underwater, and I had this Voice in my head. The Voice was like another me. Not Maxine, and not the name I had after the War, Maximum Ride, but, no, this voice was like the rational, unimpulsive side of me, the one that told me what to do if I wanted to survive with my sanity still intact.

The War was unexpected and sudden. I'm in my class in school, listening to my Chemistry teacher (yes, I was a junior) drone on and on about who knows what, when all of a sudden there was an... earthquake, almost, but somehow I knew it was no earthquake, that this day would be one that we would remember forever.

We did. We simply call it the War, there is no other name for it. It was six days long, but the consequences tore our world apart. Governments fell, new ones rose up, 'till there were only five. Europe and Asia, Eurasia it was called, Africa, Australia, the Americas, and Greenland. The different island were taken over by different nations, and names were given to the different countries. Eurasia, Africa, and Australia remained the same, but the Americas were named after their dictator's tag, the Shadow, so that our country's name was Shadowacan. Greenland became Sleatland, named after it's ruler, Harridan Sleat.

My story starts three months after the War, when everyone had finally settled down into their respective areas. I had been walking to the store from my home, everything had remained much the same except for our justice system, that was nonexistent, when I heard the screech of the missile over my head.

I watched as it buried itself in my house on the hill, before it exploded, sending me down to my knees on the pavement. I watched in disbelief as random pieces of junk fell from the sky.

My home.

I may not have liked my dad, but, Mom. Ari. Ella.

I still didn't cry. In fact, I wouldn't ever cry. Never again. In that moment, the moment my family, my life, was ripped from me by the leader of this land I lived in, I shut down. All feelings, all emotions, gone. I didn't care whether I lived or died, but I would survive because that's what they would want me to do. That's when the Voice kicked in.

Get up, Max, you've got alot to do if you're going to survive in this world. Go to the house, find what you can, and make sure the clothes you get hide the wings on your back, but cut slits in the shirts so you can pull them out if you need to. I knew then that my life would change, that it would never be the same.

It continued to sink in as I reached the house, seeing the mutilated bodies of my family made it really hit home. I knew, though, that it was dangerous for me to stay here. Perhaps my dad had been the only target, perhaps not, but I couldn't stay here. Shadow would find out soon enough that he was missing one daughter, and if I was one of the targets, then I needed to be as far away from there as possible.

I had to survive.

I had my backpack from school still on my back, so I dumped my books out and went through the rubble to find things that could be useful. I went to my room first, thankful that we had only had one floor so it made it easier to find stuff. I found my room and realized that I had shoved a load of clothes under the bed this morning so Mom wouldn't see them and make me fold them and put them away later. I pulled out five black T-shirts and three pairs of black jeans, then a black hoodie and two pairs of socks. I grabbed a coupla sets of sturdy underclothes, then grabbed my black combat boots, both pairs. My mom had bought them for me when we went hunting earlier this spring, and I silently thanked her now as I stuffed one pair in the backpack and put the other ones on. The clothes I had would last me about a week, and then I would break in somewhere and use a washer and dryer. I glanced around to see if there was anything else before I remembered the dagger and hunting knife I had gotten for Christmas. I slipped the knife in my boot and strapped the dagger around my thigh using the sheath it had come with.

I was ready to go and start my new life, my life on the run. Not quite, Maxine. You need a new name. I thought for a moment before a name came to mind. It was the name I had used as a child when playing house with Ella and we needed a cool name.

Maximum Ride.