Much gratitude to my beta, Tokoloshe Monster, and to everybody who's reviewing and helping me make this better. Onward and upward, guys.
"Fang," I said. "Take Angel. Remember that hiking trail that we found back in the spring? That'll dump you guys right behind the house."
Fang stared at me, his expression unreadable.
"Max, no!" Angel clung tightly to me.
I unfurled my wings. They ached, and even half-spreading them made me feel like they were going to seize up. But I would be fine. I had to be.
"Angel," I said, my voice as soothing as I could make it, "I have to go get Ari. You need to let go of me, and go back with Fang." I peeled her arms off from around my waist, my hands shaking. When I took a step back, the muscles in my legs burned, and I felt the jagged teeth of a bramble rip deeper into the flesh of my thigh. I tugged it out and dropped it on the ground as blood tricked down my leg.
Another step back. God, would I even be able to do a U and A? There were trees down here. They might not be the biggest, but they were still enough to get in my way—after that fight, and the fall, what would happen if I broke a wing on a particularly sturdy branch?
I guess I'd have to find out. No matter what they could do to me, no matter what I could do to myself, it wouldn't be half as bad as what they would do to Ari. He wasn't even a mutant—what if they wanted him as the "control" in some freakish experiment on mutant endurance? What if they just wanted to use him for Eraser food?
I forced myself to spread my wings fully, and readied myself for the jump up into the air. U and As weren't the easiest thing to do—I had come close to breaking bones while learning. I had been in better shape then, too.
Before I could leap up, Fang strode forward and grabbed my wrists in his hands. His jaw was set and his eyes were bright, and even though his grip wasn't as strong as it could have been, there was still some steel in it.
"Get off," I snapped. "Go back to the E-shaped house. You need to stop that." I gestured at his chest with my chin. We heal super-fast, yes, but he could still bleed out before then.
He let go of one of my wrists and touched a particularly nasty scrape near my temple. I hissed and stepped back, but he followed me.
"We go back together," he said.
"But—"
Angel cut me off. "I can't hear them. They're gone, Max. Ari's gone."
"I—" I swallowed down the retort on the tip of my tongue. "Okay."
The walk back home was the longest I'd ever taken in my life. Every single muscle in my entire body had been stretched, torn, or bruised. But worse than that were the angry tears starting to my eyes, the lump in my throat, and the knowledge that I was a hair's breadth away from flying completely off the handle and bursting into sobs.
I had a hand on Angel's shoulder. Whenever she stumbled—which happened quite a bit—I'd hold her steady. Fang was leaning heavily on me, his hand pressed up against the makeshift bandage wrapped across his chest. None of us spoke.
When we got back, Jeb had pulled out our first-aid gear—bandages, boxes of antiseptic wipes, needles and thread, and gauze—and spread it out over the kitchen table. He was alone, and my stomach dropped when I realized that the other three weren't home yet.
Fang unslung his arm from around my shoulders, grabbed a needle and thread, and headed off towards the bathroom.
Jeb looked at me. I had never seen him like this. He didn't look adult; he looked old. Concern was etched into the lines on either sides of his eyes. "The others?"
I swallowed. "Gazzy—I'm worried that he might have gone off after the copter. Nudge and Iggy went down together. They might have met up, and…" The headache was gone now, but my legs were still throbbing. I pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down gingerly. "But Fang lost a lot of blood and Angel's arms are still cuffed."
My decision to head back had been based on what I knew. Lead with your head, not with your heart, Jeb always said. But just because a decision made sense didn't mean it was right. My stomach twisted as I thought of Gazzy in a cage, of Nudge's body ripped apart by teeth and claws, of Iggy dead from innumerable bullet wounds. Fresh adrenaline flooded my system and I forced myself up again, ignoring the soreness in my legs and wings. I pushed past Jeb and Angel, headed outside—
Only to collide with Iggy as I opened the door. Gazzy and Nudge were behind him, and all of them looked like crap. Iggy hadn't lost as much blood as Fang, but he was still a mess. Blood was dried into his strawberry-blonde hair, smeared over his jawline and neck, even visible on his arms where the Erasers' claws had cut open his sweatshirt. The side of Nudge's face and the front of Gazzy's throat were only slightly different shades of black-purple. And all three of them were covered with the cuts and scratches that came from falling into a forest from above.
I had never been so glad to see them. "Gazzy—" The word tore itself out of my throat. "Gazzy, I'm sorry. But I had to. I couldn't let them get you."
Gazzy swallowed. Tears started to his eyes but he wiped them away. "Yeah."
"We tried to follow them, but we got into the air too late and they were too far away," Nudge said, talking through split lips. She spat out a mouthful of blood and kept going. "They were going fast, like over a hundred miles an hour, and they had a head start and—"
Iggy put a hand on her shoulder and she took a deep breath in. Tears started to her eyes.
"Are Angel and Ari okay?" the Gasman asked.
It felt like the Eraser had tackled me again. All the breath went out of my lungs when I saw the look on his face. He didn't know. We had come so close, and failed, and he didn't know.
A metallic jangling stopped me from having to answer that question, as Angel pushed past me and threw herself at Gazzy, hugging him tightly. Jeb must have gotten out the bolt-cutters from Iggy's room, because the chains in-between her cuffs had been snipped, leaving her with two sets of evil-looking metal bracelets.
"Come in," Jeb said. "We'll need to get you fixed up."
Nudge shrugged as she stepped in, with Iggy, the Gasman, and Angel following. "I'm fine, really," she said, her mouth dripping blood onto the wood floor. "But we should look at Ari. He heals worse, right?" She raised her voice. "Hey Ari, are you still okay from that kick in the side you got?"
"Ari's still kidnapped," I said, the words feeling like every punch to the stomach that I ever had.
Iggy spun on his heel and headed out, unfurling his wings as he went. I hurried after him, my legs aching with every step.
As he leapt into the air, I grabbed at his arm and yanked him back down.
"Look," I said. "I know how you feel. Really, I do. But you're just going to get yourself killed going after him. You literally can't see it coming, and you're already a bloody mess. I—"
I can't lose you, too. That's what I would have said. But the words didn't come out.
"At least I'd be doing something," Iggy retorted. He tried to tug himself free, but I hung on. "Let me go!"
Just as I was about to ask him who the hell he thought he was, Fang inserted himself between us. He had tugged on a black flannel shirt before heading out, and he was holding an icepack to his lip. His dark eyes burned with something I couldn't recognize.
He stared at each of us for a long moment. I fidgeted. Somehow he had a way of making all of my not-very-well-thought-out decisions seem… well, just like that. I realized how stupid I was being. The kids were in the E-house. The Erasers were gone. Ari was on his way to the School. I wasn't going to be able to stay on my feet for another hour, and I reeked of dried sweat and blood.
"Sorry," I muttered to nobody in particular. "This just sucks."
Fang nodded once.
"Sorry," Iggy said to me, arms crossed over his chest.
Fang turned on his heel and headed back inside, and we followed.
Getting fixed up took longer than I had wanted it to. Bruises had to be iced, clothes had to be changed, and cuts had to be cleaned and bandaged. We had to eat, too. Even though none of us had anything resembling an appetite, our metabolisms were screaming at us for fuel to repair our battered bodies. And through it all I had to listen to Nudge's unending monologue. The ice pack that she was holding to her mouth wasn't enough to muffle her nervousness-induced word vomit.
"—so I guess we could steal a car and just go for it, but none of us knows even how to drive a car, no Gazzy watching Grand Theft Auto LP's doesn't count, and besides, how would we get gas money? Also like how would we get into the School, could we just bam drive the car into the side of the building, but don't they have security guards after nine-eleven for stuff like that, also like Jeb I'm really sorry that we let Ari get kidnapped, we should have done better, I should have done better, but one of the Erasers punched my shoulder loose and when I took off it popped out, and then they had guns in the copter. And I was so scared and I wasn't really thinking when I tackled Iggy, but I would take alive-Iggy and captured-Ari over dead-Iggy and maybe-still-captured Ari oh my god that—"
"Shut up!" Angel shrieked. Iggy, who was cutting off her handcuffs, cringed. The rest of us flinched and stared at her silently.
She kept going. "I know you're scared, but stop being so loud. You're giving me a headache and everybody else is freaking out. So either think of something useful to say, or keep your mouth shut."
Tears welled up in Nudge's eyes. She stormed off to the room she shared with Angel, slamming the door behind her.
Fang, holding an icepack to a scratched-up shoulder and playing with the cap to a gallon jug of orange juice, frowned. "We're not stealing a car," he said.
"She's kind of right," Iggy said. "We do need a plan."
I nodded and took a deep breath. Time to be a big damn leader. "Fang, Nudge, and I will go to California. You three stay back with Jeb and keep the house safe. We'll meet up with you, and then—"
Jeb cut in. "We'll get on the road as soon as you three get back with Ari. It won't be safe to stay here anymore." And then he turned and left, heading for the ladder that led up to his study/bedroom in the attic.
"What?" Gazzy protested. "I can come along! Ari's my friend!"
"Gazzy," I said, trying not to snap at him, "you're really tough and a good fighter, but you're also a kid. They'll eat you for lunch."
Angel crossed her arms over her chest. "I can read minds. I'd be the best choice for helping Ari get out."
"Yeah," I said. "But the School is going to be… a lot of miles away. Like six hundred. We're going to be logging major hours, and I need somebody who can keep up."
What I didn't say was: And I don't think I could handle losing you. Because a sick little part of my heart was glad it was Ari that had been kidnapped, and not her. Angel could read minds, and, like the rest of us, she was one of the rare successful experiments. And while I didn't want to imagine what the School would do to Ari, I could remember everything that they had done to me when I was her age. The truth was that I loved her the most, more than anybody else in the Flock or on the planet, and it would kill me if the School got her.
"And, Iggy," I said. "I'm—"
"Don't give me any of that bullshit," he snapped. "It's because I'm blind."
"Fine," I snapped back. "It's because you're blind." And with that, I stomped off to my room. "I'm going to go pack. Fang, Nudge, you too."
My room was exactly the way I had left it in the morning, bed unmade and clothes strewn across the floor. That somehow made it worse. Because Ari had been here a few hours ago, had been safe, had been fine. The only problem then was his complete lack of talent at checkers.
And now he had been kidnapped and the Flock was about to get split in half. I set my jaw and blinked hard, stopping the tears from welling up. I had to be strong. I had to be the leader. I had to be the one who got us out of this. Jeb was great, but he was human. He didn't get it the way I did. Didn't get us the way I did.
It took me about two minutes to pack. I rolled up three pairs of jeans, five of underwear, and a couple of T-shirts. Hunted under the bed for the casualty blanket, box of matches, and pocketknife that Jeb had taught us to keep ready. I grabbed my plastic bag full of cash—it was mostly quarters and fives, and amounted to about fifty bucks. Tied my oversized bomber jacket around my waist. It was my "cover jacket," or what I would wear around normal people. Our wings fold up neatly, but they don't disappear. The jackets help. They're awkward to carry around, but they're worth it. And if we were rescuing Ari, we'd need some way of getting back to the E-shaped house that didn't involve flying. So we'd need to blend in.
I headed for the kitchen next, where I filled up a gallon jug of water and grabbed as many protein bars as I could hold.
Keep moving, I told myself. You won't cry if you keep moving. I bit my lip harshly.
When I headed back out into the main room, Nudge and Fang were there, water bottles already filled. Nudge's lips were still bleeding, and she didn't make an attempt to wipe them clean. She didn't even look up when I put the box of protein bars next to her.
Fang had finished packing. His backpack was on his shoulders and his black windbreaker was tied around his waist. When I handed him his box, our fingers touched. He stared at me for a long moment as he dumped bars into his bag. Finally he nodded once.
Before I could respond, Angel launched herself at me, hugging me tightly and burying her face into my side.
For a split second I thought she was an Eraser, and it took all of my self-control not to kick her in the gut.
Instead I smoothed back her hair. She was trembling with silent sobs, and it was a long moment before she choked out, "I love you the best, too," so quietly that I doubted even Fang had heard it.
Tears choked me, and for a second they threatened to spill over. "Shhh," I managed to rasp out. "Shhh, Angel, it'll be okay. We'll be okay. Stay strong until we get back."
She nodded.
I glanced around and found Gazzy, who was slumped on the couch with his arms crossed over his chest.
"Gasman, keep your sister safe."
He glared at me but nodded, and then pushed himself up off the couch and walked across the room to put his hand on Angel's shoulder.
Angel sniffled and wiped her nose on my shirt. "I'm being dumb," she said. "You're going to be fine, right?"
I forced a smile and nodded at her. "Right."
"Hey, wait a minute!" Iggy called, his voice coming from the direction of Jeb's room. "We have stuff."
In a moment, they clambered down the ladder, stacks of manila folders clutched to their chests. Iggy dumped his armful onto the couch; Jeb placed his neatly on the floor.
"Okay," Iggy said. "One of these papers is important. I'm not exactly sure which."
Jeb pursed his lips and picked up a file from the couch. "Maps and plans of the School," he said. He rifled through the piles before handing me another folder. "Maps of the surrounding area." I must have been staring at the other files a bit too curiously, because he continued. "The rest is more of the same. I took every blueprint that I could get my hands on when I left—a lot of it was extraneous."
He handed the two folders to me.
"We'll get Ari back," I promised. I shoved the folders into my bag.
Jeb paused for a moment before he said anything. "Max, you're a strong, capable leader. I trust that you'll make the right choices. As long as you don't let yourself get too hot-headed, you'll be fine."
From his spot by the door, Fang nodded agreement.
"You're a jerk," Iggy said. "But you're our jerk. Get back safe." He nodded in Fang's general direction, punched my arm, and hugged Nudge before heading off to his room.
Angel let go of me and took a step back. "You're going to be okay," she said. "Even if it's a dumb idea not to take me."
Gazzy looked at Nudge, at the hand-sized bruise that was beginning to yellow around the edges. "You'll be okay, right?"
Nudge nodded, wiped her bloody mouth on her sleeve, and said the shortest sentence that she had said today. "Let's do this."
Fang, Nudge, and I strode out of the door into the afternoon sunlight. And after a running start and a jump, we were off, flying away from the only home we'd ever known.
1. What's really interesting from a writer's perspective is Fang's presence in the story. In TNTS, we're four chapters in and Fang has spoken nine words. Three of them are in a six-years-before intro. Here's a quick list of Fang's dialogue:
—Are you okay?
—Helicopter.
—Sorry.
—We go back together.
By any other right, a character with such little verbal presence would be all but ignored. But here Fang is very much visible, and an important part of the story. That means that I have to find another way to make him relevant and help make his character and personality visible to the audience. The way that I do that is by making people aware of him—through his relationships with his family (especially Max), his body language, and his actions. Please let me know what you think of his presence in the story!
2. KLoves2Read mentioned that my poor chapter-to-chapter transitions made for "abrupt chunks," so I tried to fix that up and I'll be paying more attention. I'd really appreciate if y'all could tell me how the ch03-ch04 transition works in comparison to the ch02-ch03 transition, and what you think I could improve.
