Maximum Ride: The Draco Deviation

Maximum Ride: The Draco Deviation

3

"Gol, Virginia is shore purty." Max said. Gasman grinned, and I chuckled. Ms. Walker's Suburban held all 8 recombinants; I still think it was somehow mechanically designed to be bigger than it looked.

But the Gasman was right; it was pretty. I saw trees, and hills, and even horses. I spent my time describing it to Iggy and watching Max. Max seemed really jumpy for some reason. Nudge, as usual, spent all her time talking to anyone and everyone who would listen. She asked about the ranches, the trees, Anne's house (which wasn't a bad question, now that I think about it.), and myriad other things.

When we pulled into the gates, I looked around. I wanted to make sure I had a mental map of this place; I really like knowing my way around a place. When the gates closed, I saw Max jump again. She's really jumpy. And for good reason. I don't know why, but I could sympathize with Max. And also with Fang, and Iggy, and the others as well. I didn't know why, but I just understood and could relate to however the others felt.
When we got out of the car, I could only stand and stare. "Wow…" Iggy, or should I say, Jeff, was trying to get me to tell him what it was like, but I was too busy being shell shocked. Seriously, imagine the scenario; one dragon boy who's never lived inside anywhere bigger than the largest size doggy carrier, who managed to escape and is now going to live in a house. Sure I was nervous about being enclosed, but still!

Sadly, I noticed one problem immediately; there were 7 rooms, and 8 people. Luckily enough, I was used to sleeping in or on hard surfaces; that's all you got at the Institute. So I just slept in the living room, on the couch. But first I had a nice, warm shower.

I had to work hard not to stretch my wings out in pleasure.

I went out back to find that the others had already made it outside. Anne was showing them around and they were walking towards the barn. "Hey! Don't forget me!" I yelled as I ran up. They all turned, and I stopped for a second. This was my perfect ideal of a family. Multiple children, a loving mother, wide open spaces, animals. The only problem with it was the fact that most of my 'family' had some messed up DNA sequences. The fly in the ointment.

When I stopped, Angel walked up to me. Leaving my mind alone, she grabbed my hand and pulled me over, breaking my reverie. I joined the group as we went into the barn. We saw the huge horse Sugar; Nudge and I gave him carrots, and I ended up petting him on the nose. Anne turned and walked back to the house, telling us that dinner was in half an hour.

I knew there would be plenty of food.

We were walking by the pond and the Gasman got pumped. "Ohhhhh yeah! I am so there!" I shook my head; he got so excited over some of the tiniest stuff. Max was staring at the pool like she had acute hydrophobia, but I didn't say anything. She seemed stressed enough about our current situation without my assistance.

We walked on, and Nudge said "It's so beautiful here. Like the Garden of Eden." I nodded, slowly looking around at the hills, the water, taking it all in. If only I had been born here. Mutant freak or not, I would have been happy. I heard Max grumbling about how badly the Garden of Eden had turned out; I just rolled my eyes. I then saw some animals; pigs, sheep, and a few more horses.

I nudged Iggy. "Hey, Jeff, there's some more animals over there." He made a 'lead on' gesture, and I walked towards the pigs. How he followed me and stopped immediately at the fence, I'll never guess. I ran a hand down the pig's back and it squealed. I felt a pair of eyes on the back of my head and turned to see Max turning her head away. I wonder what that's all about..? She turned to Fang and he smiled, and she led the rest of the group over. She asked what we had been talking about. "Oh, just the birds. And the little things with feathers and beaks." She tried to do an Iggy scowlsmile, but failed.

"I wonder who's for dinner, right Alex?" she asked me. I smiled and laughed. Total jumped from Max's arms and started barking at one of those shepherd dogs. "Total!" Max yelled. "Stop it! It's his yard. Angel!" Angel pulled Total to a stop and he called the other dog a putz. I looked at Max, who was standing there with a very confused look. She turned and saw Gasman, and her mouth shut. "Come on, guys. Lets go eat."

A few minutes after dinner, Max and the others went up to Max's room. While they were looking over the printouts, I went for a 'walk'. Now, while for you, a walk might be a few minutes and a few yards. For me, a walk was me taking off into the darkening sky and gliding around the house for a while. Anyone who saw me would just think I was a really big bat or something.

Now I'm not crazy or anything, but I liked to talk to myself. For me, talking to myself was a way to figure things out. Now I know that that is normal, but the 'crazy' part is that sometimes, I'll answer myself. So. How are you doing? "I'm ok. Much better than at the Institute." No jealousy about the connections between the f-wings? "No, no jealousy." You're not telling the whole truth. You're jealous about something. And that was when I found out what I was trying to block out. When I had first seen them, they had been looking through the printouts, looking for information on their parents. They all had known each other for longer, so they obviously cared more about each other's happiness. That was part of the reason they had come to the Institute; they were looking for facts about their parents.

But I was still 'the new guy', as much as they didn't act it. Also, they had only printed out stuff about each other. They had nothing on me or any of the other experiments. And even if they had, they would have either burned it or tossed it out. I just felt that loneliness that came from having a cause all to yourself and being a new face in a line of old.

Sounds like being a new kid at school. Except I've never gone to school. I sighed again and began gliding back to the house.

I settled on the roof, curled up with my back to the chimney, my wings wrapped around myself. I looked around, not noticing anything out of the ordinary.

I went back inside when I heard Anne asking if anyone was sleepy. I also heard her ask about me. I jumped from the roof, fanning my wings before I hit the ground for a soft landing. Coming through the front door, I saw Anne look down over the banister at me. "Oh, there you are, Alex. I was wondering where you'd gone." I nodded and walked into the living room, but not before calling goodnight to everyone up the stairs. I heard a chorus of 'good night' s and I smiled.

The next morning was awesome. Max and Iggy made a cornucopia of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast; the works. After that, we discovered that Anne wanted us all to keep our sleeping areas neat, which we did. It seemed to irk Max, but I didn't pry, vocally or telepathically. We spent a lot of our time outside, with breaks for lunch. Also, Anne called us to her one by one and had us show her what we could do.

When it was my turn, I glided down and came to a running stop right in front of her. She jumped a little, which I expected; I had always enjoyed doing that to the scientists at the Institute. "So, Alex. Anything special besides the obvious." She pointed at my wings.

I nodded. "Yeah. Hard skin, fire breathing, and the ability to make myself irresistibly cute." I smiled widely on the last one, wondering why I hadn't told her about my ghosting or my telepathy. Duh. If she knew you could ghost, she'd know how to find you and if you told her about telepathy… She asked me for a demonstration of my fire breath and I happily obliged. I pulled out an apple I had been saving for later and threw it into the air. Aiming carefully, I blew a stream of fire on it, toasting it nicely. As it fell, I caught it, barely feeling the heat. "And here is a demonstration of my skin." I held the apple out and she put out her own hand, obviously feeling the heat radiating off the apple. She thanked me and let me go. I turned and shot up into the air, biting into my apple; they always tasted better toasted.

Dinner was somewhat like last night. There was a lot of food (for us starving recombinants, or recos for short), but most of it was not too well prepared. Apparently Anne was more for having a quick protein bar for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And that wasn't working out. But she was cooking and I didn't have to, so I didn't complain.

About two weeks later, I was lying on the couch. I was, for some reason, still wide awake at about 11 o'clock; it might have had something to do with the 5 milkshakes I had had at dinner, not to mention the Liam Rooney from Max's room. When I heard footsteps coming down the stairs, I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing. Hopefully it wasn't Anne coming for another midnight check-up; it was beginning to irritate me. Through slitted eyes, I saw, not Anne, but Fang. He stared at me for a full minute, then turned and headed back upstairs.

Max's room was right above my own, so I could easily hear what was going on. I heard Max and Fang talking. Fang had come up with the idea that the numbers on the sheets were map coordinates. I chuckled when Fang called Anne the Annemeister. Hey, I think odd things are funny, ok?

They planned to step out and check out one of the coordinates. I decided to follow, simply because that's how I am. If I wasn't a reco, I'd probably have gotten myself killed. As the saying goes, 'curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.' Since I slept in whatever clothes I had been wearing that day, I just hopped off the couch and followed the two out of the house, ghosted of course.

Where we first landed looked nothing like a residential area. I saw a pizza parlor I'm hungry , a car wash If only I could drive… , a bank I wish I had money to withdraw , and a dry cleaner now I know where to go when I have dirty clothes while on the run. Max cursed and I chuckled quietly to myself. If Anne had heard Max, she would have flipped. Of course, if she found out we had gone out, she would flip anyway.

Second place we stopped was near an old, abandoned apartment building. With all the activity, it looked inhabited from the air. And then you landed.

After about fifty minutes of waiting for people to leave, they headed in and I decided to wait, ghosted, outside. There were a lot of crack-heads out here and whenever the police went by, they hid in the nearest building. I stopped a few of them from trying to hide in the apartment; I didn't want Fang and Max getting caught.

While I was out there, a drunkard stumbled by. Looking straight at me, he wound his way over. "Hhhhhhey… d-d-do I knowwww you?" he asked. I looked around and, seeing no one, shook my head. "Oh… well, tak-k-ke c-c-care…" He said, and slumped over on the ground.

Note to self; ghosting doesn't work on drunks, either. I looked around to see some guy's back go inside the building. Oh shoot. I spun around and raced into the building, but two of the men were about half way up already. The third, slower guy received a quick rap on the head, knocking him cold. I stashed him away where he wouldn't be seen readily and ran after the other two.

When I caught up with them, they were threatening Max and Fang. Fang was on one end of the hall, Max was on the other. I snuck up behind Max, hoping to find a way to help when Fang did this whole Angel-of-Death thing. Max joined in and, in the heat of the moment, I decided to join in. moved over to the doorway between Max and Fang, spread my wings, and de-ghosted. "Get. OUUUUUT!!" I said in my deepest and scariest voice. The guys basically fell over themselves going down the stairs.

Both Max and Fang turned to me. "Apex?! What are you doing?! Why did you follow us?!" I shrugged, slightly rolling my eyes at the same time.

"Uh, I don't know, maybe because you were sneaking out of the house late at night. If anything happened to you two, the rest need to know. Plus, I was awake anyway, so…" Fang glared at me from behind Max's back and I gave him a cool and indifferent look. "Maybe we should get back. You two can berate me later."