Chapter 4: Fight Then Flight

Nudge POV

"Come on, time we got out of this place!" said Max smiling.

"Why did you knock him out?" said Angel angrily. "I had him under control! He was going to lead us out!" All of a sudden there was loud beeping noise all around us. Then a voice came out over an intercom.

"Avian experiments escaping! All available personnel to Room 108!" Uh oh!

"Well it looks like we'll have to find our own way out then! Come one!" shouted Fang over the repeating voice. Max ran out of the room with the flock following me behind. Will didn't get up straight away, looking up at us, worried.

"Well?" I asked "Are you coming or not?" He smiled and picked up Emily and ran out the door with me behind him. Then the rest of the flock came running by us. "Yeah, we're not going that way!" Max said to me as she ran past, and I looked down the corridor from where she came, and there were a small group of whitecoats running towards us, shouting orders. I pushed Will along and chased after Max. We ran, past countless rooms. I looked over my shoulder. "Max!" I shouted ahead. "7 of them, 6 o'clock!"

"Just keep running!" She shouted back. We ran down so many corridors, twisting and turning. Left, right, right, left, left, right. We had no-idea where we were going! Suddenly, out of an adjoining corridor on the right, came a whitecoat and grabbed me! "Gerrof me!" I screamed as he tried to cover my mouth. I bit his hand and he yelped out in pain. Just enough time for me to shout out, "Max! Help!" I saw her turn around and instantly she came charging at the whitecoat. She tackled him on to the floor and he released me. "Come on quick!" she said, getting up and grabbing my hand.

We started running trying to catch up with the others. We heard a roar behind us and we all turned our heads. There was standing Ari. His features were wolfish, even though he hadn't morphed. He had never been the same since they changed him. Then he started morphing into an Eraser. It looked painful, having fur, claws, a muzzle come out of nowhere, changing his bone structure into something hideous.

We caught up with the others. "Iggy, I need you to take the little ones and get out of here! Me and Fang will stay and hold them off!" She shouted to him. Iggy didn't argue, but Will did. We heard Ari roar again, in pain as he morphed.

"I'm staying too!" he shouted.

"No! You've got to look after you're sister! You need to—" Max begun.

"No! They're gonna pay for what they did to us. I'm staying." He cut in forcefully. I could see Max wasn't going to argue. There was nothing she could say to stop him. You could see the anger in his eyes. Instead she just nodded to him and got ready to face the oncoming attack. He Will walked up to Iggy, still with Emily in his arms and said "I need you to take her. I need you to keep her safe." he said to Iggy. Iggy nodded and took Emily from his arms. "Don't let anything happen to her!"

"I won't. I promise." He replied and then beckoned me, Gazzy, Angel and Emily along down the corridor. "Be careful!" I shouted back to them as I saw Ari coming to a halt near them.

"Get the others!" he ordered to the whitecoats. "I'll handle these ones." He said grinning. The whitecoats carried on after us without hesitation.

"Come on!" Shouted Iggy. "We've got to get out of here!"

Ari POV

There they were. Not a hundred yards ahead. I morphed into my Eraser form. It used to hurt, a lot, but I'd gotten used to it now. I roared, letting my instincts take over.

I started running after them. I could here Max telling the others to go. Sounded like Fang and the new one was staying too. I don't care. All I wanted was Max. She was an amazing fighter, always seemed to have learnt new moves, new skills, I didn't care that each time she beat me. Every time she did, I just learnt more about her. This time, she wasn't going to win though. This time, she'd be mine.

I ran up to them and came to a halt. I shouted orders at the goons, ""Get the others! I'll handle these ones." They ran right past me and headed after the younger ones.

Max and I looked at each other. This time I'd beat her. This time I'd win! The new one, Will, started forward, his fists clenched, but Fang held him back. "This one's Max's, let her handle it" he said to him.

"But I" - Will began.

"I'd listen to him if I were you Will." I called to him. "This is between me, and her" I interrupted, turning my head to Max as I said it. I could see the anger in his eyes. He wanted his own back. Not today, you mutant freak. I chuckled to myself.

That was when Max attacked. She took me by surprise, she was so quick! She launched herself at me, I swung my claw at her, but she ducked, and slid feet first into my legs, knocking me over. I got up just in time to have a hard fist slam into my head. That's when I lashed out.

I started swiping my claws, pushing her back, I nicked her a couple of times, but she was dodging most of them. Damn she was fast! I could feel the adrenaline pumping through my body. I had backed her up against the wall. This was when I thought I was going to win. I smashed my fist into her face, once, twice, three times.

I was pulling back to take a forth hit when someone on my right said, "Hey! Ari!" I turned around, snarling, to see a fist coming at me, and into my face. I was flown back ten feet, though a door and landed against a wall, my head banging cracking against it.

I heard a loud explosion in the distance, and saw Fang and Will looking at each other, and saying something to each other, through the doorway, then down at Max who had slumped to the ground. At least I gave her a pummelling, even if she got rescued. Next time it would be different.

My vision started to leave me and I felt myself slipping into sweet unconsciousness. I remember think to myself, 'Holy hell, what a punch that kid had' to myself, and then seeing Fang helping Max up and running off with her and Will, before I blanked out.

Gasman POV

"Come on!" Shouted Iggy. "We've got to get out of here!"

I was at the back of the pack. We ran down lots more corridors, pushing Angel along when she needed it. I wasn't going to let them get my sister.

After a few minutes of running we had lost them. I could hear one of whitecoats shouting orders in the distance to "Spilt up! Now! We've got to find them before they get out!" A sure sign that they had lost us. But we kept running. Just in case.

We helped each other along, going at a steady jog to conserve energy. We went past many different rooms. I took note of them as I went past. Records, Toilets, Weaponry and Explosives. I stopped outside that last one. Weaponry and Explosives? The Whitecoats were far off. I grinned to myself and opened the door.

"I think we lost them for now" said Iggy. "No doubt they'll be back though. Is everyone ok?"

"Yeah, we're-- wait a minute! Where's Gazzy?" asked Nudge worriedly. "Do you think they got him got him?"

"It's ok! I'm here" I said catching up to them. "Sorry, I err, I tripped up."

"You should have called ahead, for all we knew you were—"but Iggy was cut off when a whitecoat came round the corner. We all looked each other unsure of what to do until the whitecoat screamed

"I'VE FOUND THEM! THEY'RE OVER HERE!" Iggy put down Emily and pounced, punching him square in the jaw, knocking him out cold. But before we could run again, a group of them appeared behind us. I swivelled round to see them coming down on us. We tried fighting them off of us, but there were too many of them. I saw one run off, holding a crying Emily to his chest. We started to push them back now, punching and kicking at them, Angel had one hypnotised and made him run into the wall, fast. That had to hurt.

I pulled one of the grenades I took from the room, out of my pocket, pulled out the pin with my mouth, and threw it towards the white coats. "GET DOWN!" I shouted! The others did, as did I and the dumbfounded whitecoats just looked at us before an explosion in the middle of them, threw them all around the corridor. 'Just like old times' I grinned to myself.

I looked up after a few seconds to see the dust settling, then seeing the charred bodies of the whitecoats. I didn't feel bad. They deserved worse, after what they had done to us. "What the hell was that?!" I around to see Iggy and the girls getting up.

"A grenade. Swiped a load from this room earlier." I replied to him.

"Well thanks for telling us!!" he said, unsure what to think.

"Sorry" I said quietly, getting up too. "Come on, lets get going."

We started jogging, down the corridor, knowing that there wouldn't be too many whitecoats left. Then we saw it. An exit, leading outside!

"I don't know what you did back there, but whatever it was, you did it right!" I turned around to see a beat up Max, with Fang and Will behind her.

"Oh I found a grenade and-" I was cut short by Will who pushed his way past Max and looked at Iggy and said,

"Where's Emily?" Nudge and Angel looked around surprised, realising she was gone, and then I remembered. "Where's Emily?!" Will repeated, louder this time.

"I'm sorry Will. They got her before the explosion, I saw one of the whitecoats take her." I said solemnly. He looked at me, and then at Iggy angrily.

"You said you'd take care of her, that you wouldn't let anything happen to her!" he shouted at Iggy. Iggy was silent, unsure of what to say. "I'm going back." said Will determinately. "I'm going back for her!" Just then some Whitecoats and two Erasers came round the corner. Max had seen them too.

"There's no time for that now, we've got to go!" She said pushing Will along.

"No! I've got to go back for her!" he said, trying to go back.

"You can't you'll be killed!" Max shouted. "Now get going!" She started pushing him harder and extremely reluctantly, he started to run for the exit with us.

Before we knew it, with the whitecoats and erasers not 10 yards behind us, and we were outside. It felt so good to be outside again!

"Take off!" Shouted Max and we all unfurled our wings and then took off except for Max and Will.

"Come on just flap your wings and get some wind underneath them" she shouted to him. Still running he started flapping in a regular motion. Soon he was starting to lift off the ground. "That's it, keep going!" shouted Max who had started take off too. I looked back from the sky to see Will; with pain written all over his face, take off and get into the sky. But whether that was pain from leaving Emily behind, or the pain of flying for the first time, I couldn't tell.