Chapter numero tres. Hope you like it… introduction to a new character and all that! Anyway, hope you like it… wait, I already said that.

I was thinking about stuff last night, and I randomly had an extremely great idea for this story! So it will be coming in later… and it will be CRUEL! Mwah hahahahahaha!

Disclaimer: I … sniff sniff … do not own … sob … Maximum Ride

Max POV

Angel leads me and the rest of the Flock---minus Iggy---to the place where she heard Iggy's mind screaming for help. It is a space in midair over the forest, about three miles from my mom's house. There is a field below. We land and look around us at the crushed grasses, noticing signs that Erasers have, indeed, been here.

"Where did they take him?" Gazzy whispers, gazing around. There are no signs of a struggle, so they must have ever caught Iggy unawares---highly unlikely, regarding Iggy's amazing hearing---or Iggy had gone without a fight.

Which was also highly unlikely.

"There's only one place they could have taken him," Fang says in his monotone.

"Yeah," I agree softly.

"The School."

I can't believe I let one of my Flock get taken to that place again. After all that had happened, after swearing that none of us would ever have to go back to that place… Iggy was there again. After all they did to him, and he has to be the one.

Not that I'd wish this on any of the Flock. But why did it have to be him?

I can still remember the day they took Iggy's eyesight. Like always, the Whitecoats came in to take another one of us for experimentation. That time, it had been Iggy. They opened his cage and dragged the pitiful five-year-old out, then carried him away. It had been an hour before we heard him again, but it wasn't because they'd taken him back. No.

We could hear the screams.

After twenty minutes, Iggy's screaming stopped. But it was still several hours before they brought him back, his eyes wrapped in bandages, tear-tracks down his cheeks. He hadn't talked for days, so we didn't know what was wrong. Until they came to take the bandages off and we saw his pale, distant eyes.

They'd ruined his life that day. And now they'd taken him back?

I'd always thought Iggy would be the safe one. That they would never want him back, because he was "damaged." I'd thought Iggy would live safely, without trouble, without fear or pain. So why had it been him they'd got? Not Fang or me or even Angel? Because if they'd had wanted anyone else, they could have easily… we were so unprepared, eating dinner in the kitchen. And they didn't need to use Iggy as bait, if they'd had enough Erasers they could have gotten us all easily.

So they had taken Iggy for a reason. They'd wanted him.

"So what're we gonna do now? We can't just leave him there," Nudge chattered nervously.

"We're going to save him."

Iggy POV

I gazed around me at my cage. Inside the cage. Outside the cage. There were so many things to see.

Normally, it would have taken about a day or two to judge my surroundings. I'd have felt around my cage, tapped on the sides to see if there was anything touching it from the outside. I'd have listened to footsteps, voices, and echoes of my own voice to perceive the objects in the room, where they were, what they were, how they were positioned.

But with my eyes back, it took less than a minute.

This room was almost empty except for five things. Two were cages, one on either side of me, empty. Another of the things was a desk with a whirring computer atop it and rolling-chair sitting idly in front. The last was a cold grey filing cabinet.

Occasionally---about seven times now--- a Whitecoat had come in to check on me. Apparently the computer was judging my heart rate, my breathing rate, my mind frequency patterns. The way my body worked.

So far, I could see perfectly. Utterly, completely, and wholly. I could see like I'd always wanted, always wished.

And I was loving every moment.

The things I wanted to see most of all at the moment were the Flock. How had Max and Fang changed? How different would they look? Would I be able to recognize them? Would they look like they had nine years ago? And then there was Nudge. I knew she would look totally different; she was only a baby last I saw her. And Gazzy and Angel… I'd never even seen them. What would my Gasman look like? Would they all be as excited as I was, to find out I could see? Would they be happy for me?

What did happiness look like? I can't remember. You smiled, I knew. But what did their smiles look like? I wonder if it lit up their faces, like they say in the books Max sometimes reads me. And her face lit up with a broad grin. That kind of thing.

I hear---and see!---the door open. Two Whitecoats walk in. They lift my cage onto a wheeled cart, and begin to roll out the door.

I've never seen anything like this before. I recognize the feeling, but I've never imagined what rolling looks like. How the wheels turn so fast, you can barely make out any markings or scratches, just solid wheels. How the floor flies past. I imagine this is how it looks when you fly.

When I fly.

Suddenly, I can't wait to fly. I can't wait to see the landscape of the outside, can't wait to watch it fall away as I soar into the air, watch it rush past as I flap my wings strongly. I can't wait to watch.

It's weird. I forget I'm in the School, not a convalescent home. There is no time for being happy here.

The Whitecoats roll me through the hallways until stopping in front of a metal door. One of them punches four numbers onto the pad---1473, I store in my brain for later---and the pad lights up as the door slides open. They place my cage on the floor of the room inside, then open the door and slide me out. As I fall, I watch them lift the cage hurriedly back onto the rolling cart and back out. The door slides shut.

Geez. Can't I get any breaks? I've just got my sight back, and the room has to be pitch black. Great.

But then, lights flash on and I block my eyes from the brightness. This light is brighter than any I'm used to, especially since I've been "in the dark" for nine years. It almost hurts.

When I uncover my eyes, I glance around the room, drinking in the surroundings.

It's empty except for one thing.

It's---she's---a bird kid, like me.

She stares at my with wide, grey eyes. She wears the same basic ensemble as me, the wonderful---note my sarcasm---uniform presented by the School. Basically, it's a pillowcase with slits cuts for arm-holes, and more pillowcase-y pants. Her hair is a sort of blond, with streaks of darker colors… red, and some brown and even black. I wonder… maybe, if she's changed more than I'd thought..?

"Max?" I ask. The girl stares at me.

"Who's Max?" she asks.

Oh. Guess not.

"Um… never mind. What's your name?"

"Meagan," she states, gazing into my eyes. I gaze back. I gaze back!

I still can't get enough of the whole 'vision' thing.

"I'm… Iggy," I tell her. The scientists will already know this, and I see no harm in revealing my name to another mutant.

The girl nods. Her wings are spread slightly, half cocked as if she's ready to fly away. They're a nice black. But the black shimmers a deep indigo when she moves them, and tips of this indigo, as well as white, dot her outermost feathers. They're beautiful.

I glance back at my wings. They're better than I'd previously thought; a nice, creamy white at the base, though spreading outward feathers of a reddish color begin to fleck them, until at the ends there is no sight of the previous white, only the nice red which matches my hair. Over the areas in the middle, it looks as though someone had spilled droplets of shimmery gold paint, so that when I shift my wings the feathers gleam gold. The girl's eyes widen as she notices my wings, and she smiles.

"I've never seen another Avian before," she says.

"Really?"

"Yeah. They've only put in some of the weird ones with me. Like the lizard-crosses, the fish-crosses, the other kinds. They all die soon." Her eyes look sad. "But they say the Avians don't die. I won't have to watch you die."

I don't know what to say to that.

"So what are we doing in here?" I ask.

"You don't know?" she asks quizzically. I shake my head.

"I've been out of the school for about six years," I explain. "We… I escaped when I was about eight."

"Oh," Meagan nods. "Well, they like putting in pairs of their mutants, to see how different ones react to the others' presence. I've been in here… maybe five times before. I guess they want to try it with the same species," she shrugs.

I walk over and sit next to her. I gaze at her face, her hands, the curve of her neck, her hips, her slender legs…

"Why are you staring at me?"

I shake my head, awakening from my reverie. I open my mouth to tell her that I haven't actually seen people, not including Whitecoats, in nine years, but I swallow my words. For some reason, I do not want her to know that I used to be blind.

"I'm sorry. I was… staring into space," I tell her.

After maybe four hours, food appears in the center of the room out of nowhere. Just suddenly, there it is, two trays of dinner.

For us flying mutant bird kids, two-thousand calories a day is, like, torture. We need at least three-thousand to sate our hunger. So, having had nothing to eat previously, this small meal of hard bread, a glass of water, and a bowl of thin pea soup is hardly satisfying.

But Meagan picks up her tray and wolfs it down hungrily.

"Is this all we get?"

"Once a day, every day," she nods. I groan.

"What?"

"It's just," I start through a mouthful of the soup, "that I'm used to about seven meals a day, consisting of hamburgers, milkshakes, ribs, French fries, sodas, candy, popcorn…"

"What're those?" Meagan interrupts.

"Huh?"

"What are hamboogers, and milksakes, and ribs, and French fries, and…"

"Hamburgers. And milkshakes. You don't know?"

Meagan looks down at her hands. "I've never been outside the School before," she says quietly. "This," she gestures, "is all I'm used to getting."

I look at the tiny portion. This is all she's had, every day, for her whole life?

"So you must have not been here long," she continues. "If you don't know about the food arrangements yet. When did they get you? How long have you been on the Outside?"

I hesitate, wondering if it will be giving the scientists information. But no, they know all this already.

So I tell Meagan everything. About the Flock (though not where they are at the moment), about escaping the School when we were little kids, helped by a man called Jeb, about all our adventures, and about getting caught again and taken here. I tell her everything.

Except about my eyes. For some reason, I can't tell her that I used to be blind.

Later, the door slides open and some Whitecoats come in. I expect they're for me, but they pull Meagan into a cage and begin walking out.

"What're you doing?" I ask nervously, watching Meagan from behind her bars.

"They do experiments on one of us each day," she tells me hurriedly. "It doesn't matter. Don't talk, they'll…"

But too late. One of the scientists hits my face, and I fall backwards to the ground, my nose bleeding, a tooth loose.

"Don't speak unless spoken to," he growls. "Don't come near us unless called."

Then they roll the cart away.

While they're gone, I work my busted tooth out and spit it into my hand. I feel sick. Blood. My own blood. I haven't seen blood in so long.

Hours. I think it must be early morning when they bring her back. I've fallen asleep, my head against the white wall, when the sound of the door sliding open jolts me awake. I jump up as they roll Meagan back in, dropping her cage to the floor and opening the door. They shove her out and walk away, the door shutting.

I hurry to Meagan and help her up.

"Are you okay? They didn't do anything bad, did they? What did they…"

I stop, speechless.

Because wrapped around her head is gauze.

Bandages, covering her eyes.

"No!" I gasp, horrified.

So it ended up pretty long. I just got carried away and couldn't stop writing!

Yay! Another cliffy! I warned you I was going to try to make that my trademark. Sorry if I left you hanging…

At least I am, right away, going to start writing the next one! I'm on a roll here!