Chapter 4

I pondered the two-flock thing. Eight on my side, four on Imogen's side. Of course, we're all on the same side, technically.

Fang and Sean were hanging. They'd been so much at each other's throats! It was hard to believe they could even speak to each other, never mind swap stories the way they were. But Sean liked me now and Fang liked Imogen now, so I guess the two dudes had no reason to continue to hate each other.

We all liked Imogen. And we liked Sean, too, but… God, those twins. How could we keep reins on them?

"Hey, Max," Nudge said. "I think I've found something."

"What?" I said blankly.

"Over here," Nudge said. "I… I'm feeling like somewhere around this dune, there's been some… activity… thoughts… stuff like that."

"This stuff you're getting from that psychometric voodoo you used to have?" I asked.

"I've still got it, Max. I know when there have been people around… and what they've been doing."

"So, around the dune, then?" I said dubiously.

Nudge shook her head. "Beneath," she said simply.

I stared at the dune. "You want us to dig through the sand, Nudge-ster?"

"I can do it myself," Nudge said.

Nudge lifted her hand. Abruptly, wind came whistling from behind us. I instinctively covered myself and shut my eyes, but no sand was blowing on the wind. Instead, it simply began to piece-by-piece blow away the dune, until we were looking at a small pyramidal structure with a door set in its side.

"What could this be?" Nudge wondered. "I don't know who could have used this…"

"I have a better question," I said. "Exactly how long have you been controlling the elements, baby?"

"Like… just now," Nudge said. "Crap like that seems to happen to us. You know, new abilities."

"Still…" I muttered. "That's a pretty big one. Could you make it rain?"

Nudge looked at the sky. "Not here," she said.

"Not… here," I repeated slowly. "Swell. Anyway, we've got a door."

"Hey, if it gets us out of the heat of the sun," Iggy muttered.

"Have a lockpick on you, dude?" Fang asked.

"No… but I could fashion one," Iggy said. "Give me a couple minutes."

"Don't bother," I said, examining the door. "No locks, no handle, no obvious way to open the thing from the outside."

"Touch it," Angel said.

"What?"

"I got a hunch," Angel said.

"A hunch?" I repeated.

"Yeah, a hunch. Has that ever steered us wrong?"

"Dude…"

"Okay, lemme rephrase that. Have my hunches ever gotten us killed?"

"Comforting, Angel."

"Just touch the damn door, would you?" Angel said irritably.

I pressed my hand against the door. Immediately, a powerful feminine voice spoke out.

"HOLD STILL FOR DNA IDENTIFICATION."

"Don't move…" Angel said excitedly.

"DNA MATCH: MAXIMUM RIDE. ACCESS GRANTED."

"Is that Sigourney Weaver?" Gazzy wondered.

"Big picture, bro," Fang said gently.

The doors opened wide, leading to a wide, dusty corridor that went deep underground. The dozen of us stood in silence for a moment.

"Well…" I muttered. "Been a while since anything like this happened."

"It's happened before?" Sean asked.

"Oh, various things… the credit card in my name, TVs and computers acting funky when I pass by, Ouija boards talking to me. Crap like that. But it's been years…"

"Save the world, Max," Fang muttered.

I thought of the implications of that quote. How long had it been…? Sure, Jeb was still lurking around, asking me questions. The Voice had been passing on its usual que sera sera crap right up until it left me. But other than those two, things had been going… well, not normal, but it seemed so much like things were in control, that I was making my own decisions about the direction of my life. The School, Anne Walker and her prep school, Europe, D.C., Antarctica, Hawaii… all those places and the trials they'd put me through seemed a distant memory. I felt like, maybe, ever since all that was over, I was doing my own thing, being who I wanted to be.

Then, this door accepting me, and addressing me by name. Dear God, was I spinning back into…

…into…

…into…

…into that?

Was I returning to that God-awful life where nothing was in my control, where I was treated as a mutated tool for everybody to use and nobody stopped to consider that maybe I was a person with hopes and dreams and that I was only a child and that I didn't want to be a weapon and that I… AAAAAAAH!

The entire flock took an alarmed step back and stared at me.

"Did I say that out loud?" I muttered.

"What, 'aaaaah'? Yeah, you pretty much did," Max II said.

I looked into the corridor. "I don't wanna go in there," I said shakily.

Fang put a hand on my shoulder. "Can we afford to find out what happens if we don't go in there?"

I inhaled, then took a step in.

Needless to say, everybody followed me.

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

We emerged silently into an enormous, brightly-lit room. The floors were covered in a layer of lightly disturbed dust, and a whole lot of nothingness.

In the back of the room, a woman was gently caressing a gigantic sphere.

"Hi, Max," she said quietly. "I was told you'd be showing up around now… yep, four years ago they told me that you'd be coming in once again…"

I recoiled as the woman turned around.

"No way," Nudge muttered.

"Ohhhhhh God," Angel wailed.

I regained my composure. "Um, hello… ragged, wild-eyed version of Anne Walker."

Anne was not in good shape. Her eyes were bloodshot and red, with dark, dark shapes beneath them. Her hair looked like it hadn't been combed in a millennium, though from its erratic length one could infer that she'd recently hacked at it to shorten it.

She chuckled. "Ah, good to see another human being… or whatever. I haven't seen anybody in so very, very long. It gets so lonely here… no one, nothing, nothingness, emptiness, only me…"

Fang reached into his belt loops for his thin knife and Gazzy-made gun. I held his hand back. "She's not hurting anybody," I whispered.

"I knew you were fated to come here," she said. "You know, I'm so utterly fascinated by fate, and destiny, and where you fit into… hey! Is that your child?" She eyed Airy, fascinated. I expected Airy to take a step back, but she merely looked confused. Of course… this is the little girl who throws things at Jewel. A crazy lady isn't gonna bother her.

"Um, yes," I said. "Mine and Fang's daughter."

"Fang?" Anne said, crinkling up her face.

"I think you knew him as Fnick," Iggy offered.

"No, no, I know who Fang is," Anne clarified. "Just… surprised, that Max would mate with Fang, of all people… awfully convenient, don't you think? You know, born two months after you, always kept near you… maybe that's how it was supposed to go! Set to be mates from birth…"

Fang squeezed my shoulder. "Hey, that works for me, crazy lady," he said.

"Fascinating," Anne slurred. "So, do the two of you still mate?"

"Okay," Fang said. "Of the many, many ugly terms used to describe a beautiful thing, I'm gonna go with 'mating' as the least attractive."

"It was only a question," Anne said in a wispy voice.

"Well, since you ask, we're married," I said, flashing my ring.

"Ah. So, no," Anne said. She roared with maniacal laughter, then abruptly paused. "Marriage joke," she said. "Don't you ever tell marriage jokes?" She eyed Airy again. "A second generation. I never dreamed they would be right about a second generation…"

I stepped forward. "How have you been passing the time, Anne?" I asked.

"Glad you asked," Anne said. "For four years, I've been working on this." She grandly presented the giant sphere, eight feet tall and lumpy. "It's a scale model of the planet."

"Scale model of…?" I muttered. "Where I come from, we call that a globe, Anne."

"Oh, this is so much more than a globe," Anne said. She turned it, so I could plainly see Africa, Europe, and Asia. "Look closely with your eagle eyes," she said. "You'll appreciate it."

I squinted. "Cities," I muttered. "Structures. God, this is incredible art."

"You don't know the half of it," Anne said dreamily. "Sometime, I'll have to turn off the lights and show you how they smolder…"

"And these cities are all over," I said. "Look at the texture… no wonder it took you four years."

"And I'm not nearly done," Anne said. She turned it. "I've still only put very few details here in the Western Hemisphere."

I saw North and South America… but it didn't really look very much like North and South America. In all directions, the size was greatly reduced, the shape nearly incomprehensible.

I frowned. "Why did you make the Americas so narrow?"

"This isn't the world now," Anne explained. "It's the world in the future… I don't know when. But it's definitely the future, because if it was the present, I'd be much too dead to explain it to you… hahaha…"

"Wha… why?" I muttered.

Anne pointed to a bit of ocean on the map. "Because we're right here. When the ocean swallows this place up, it'll take me and my home with it."

My brow furrowed as I thought about that. She was pointing to a place that would be swallowed up by the ocean?

"Anne, how long have you lived in this… new home?" I asked.

"Oh, plenty long, long enough. Ever since you escaped here, with Angel and Ari and your dog… we were shut down, so very, very shut down, but I couldn't leave, because I had to wait for you, for destiny fulfilled… fate in action…"

I barely registered the latter half of her speech. "Since… I escaped… here?" I repeated.

Nudge covered her mouth. "No! No! No, no, no, no, no…"

"Here?" Fang breathed.

"That's what I'm telling you." Anne pressed a button on her table. One of the walls went transparent, and I saw it… dusty and dark, but still, I knew the place.

I fell to my knees. "God damn," I whispered.

"What?" Imogen demanded. "What's wrong?"

"So much is wrong, Immy," I said. "Here's the first thing I'm going to teach you. This… is where I grew up. Imogen, welcome to the School."