A/N: I am soo sorry for not posting anything sooner. No excuse for it I know, I know. Patterson owns the characters, and I get the plot. The song that this fic is based off of is called "learn to fly" by: The Foo Fighters.
-twilightjunkie1313
Jeb Pov:
The last one hundred miles had been silent. About three hours ago we had stopped for food. Max and Iggy had enguaged in half hearted conversation. Iggy had convinced me to get a map of colorado. Nudge had spent ten minutes looking at it. Fang had said nothing.
Fang Pov:
The flock was slowly going absolutly bug nuts. The radio had provided a temprary haven from our boredom, along with the rest stops.
But still, we had spent way-way-way too many hours in the Suv. But with great boredom comes great inovation.
Max Pov:
This royally sucked. I was stuck in the front, the rest of the flock had switched seats. Angel, Nudge and Gazzy in the seats behind me, Fang and Iggy had taken the back.
They were looking at the map, they had been for the last hour. Iggy had muttered something undecipherable, but no sound had come from Fang. He was starting to creep me out, Fang talked sometimes, not often...but right now nothing.
Still, Iggy and Fang both had the oddest look on their faces. Like they had just beat the crud out of thirty erasers with their arms tied behind their backs.
What were they up to?
Fang Pov:
With the vauge clues Jeb the-wacko-white-coat let slip (at the threatening of Max) we had narrowed the location of our house down to a 75 by 75 mile chunck of land. And cross refrencing that information with the roadsigns we had seen in the last four hours we had come to one conclusion...
If our home was real, if Jeb the-demented-phyco wasn't lying to us, our house was two hours away.
Some small part of me wanted to trust him. I wanted something other than the school, the crates and the tests. I wanted someplace where I could be safer, free and with the people I cared about.
Still, each and every part of me screamed to run away. My instinct told me this was a bad situation, that this scientist couldn't be trusted. So I did the only thing I could...
I let Max make the call.
Max Pov:
The radio stations were getting fuzzy. It was a bad development as far as I was concerned.
No radio meant more boredom. That was just fanstastic...
"Ahem." Jeb cleared his throat, all of us locked our eyes on him in a second. He hadn't spoken since the rest stop, so whatever he was about to say must be important.
"We are almost there." He said with little cheerfulness. His tone was more informative, and less than happy. I guess being trapped in a car for umpteen hours would do that to you.
"What county?" Iggy asked suddenly from the back. I spun, surprised to hear him speak. My gaze raked over his face, finding honest curiosity. I looked at Fang...
He silently mouthed four words, enunciating them just enough for me to understand.
"Could be a trap..."
My adrenalin pulsed.
Fang Pov:
The 75 by 75 mile chunk of land sat on three counties. Greens county, Bear county and Sandstone county. If jeb didn't name one of these...he was a liar. And we were idiots.
From where I was sitting I could see the thought behind Max's eyes. She already had a plan, in case this turned out to be nothing more than a scientist, a whitecoat, feeding us another lie and leading us through another maze.
Max was probably ready to punch Jeb in the head, knock him unconsious and take the wheel of the suv. She would probably steer us off to the ditch and we would tie jeb up and leave him on the side of the road. Yeah, and the school had made flying pigs too. I shoved those thoughts out of my head and waited for jeb to answer.
I wanted this to be real, I wanted an out. Someplace better than a dog crate, and food that wasn't spiked with something or another.
"The house is about an hour and a half away." Jeb began. "If you see another car I want you all to duck down in the seats and hide."
"Why?" Max asked with a cold sharp tone. Her voice hid her fear and suspicion well, but there was a flash of emotion still present in her eyes.
"Nobody needs to see you, that is the point of hiding." Jeb said with an air of finality.
Without looking at her I could tell max was beyond upset. She had every right to be, the whitecoat had spoken to her as if she was four. True we were all young, but we were not stupid.
Max Pov:
One hour and thirty minutes from now this road trip would end. I cast a glance at Fang, an eyebrow raised questioningly. He looked at me, allowing half his mouth to twitch into a smile that lasted a second.
Jeb's story had held, Fang and Iggy believed him. For the moment I did too.
(A/N: I would have cut this into two chapters but then they would both be short. So I am using creative lisence and adding a small time lapse here.)
One hour and thirty minutes later...
Max Pov:
There it was. Our house, huge white and oddly shaped. The flock and Jeb stood about twent feet from the front door. Just staring at it. Fang was murmering a description of the building to an intent Iggy, who nodded and smiled.
"What's that on the roof?" Iggy asked suddenly. My eyes flew to the roof where an odd antenne stood straight up, pointing to the sky.
"Satalite radio and telivision link up, normally there is no reception out this far. So I piggy backed a statlite feed and added a receptor to the roof." Jeb explianed easily. I saw Fangs eyes blacken as we were remined again that Jeb was a scientist.
"Would you like to go inside now?" Jeb asked after a short pause. Gazzy nodded, Nudge began to whisper something quickly. The rest of us followed him in the door without a sound.
Fang Pov:
I had never been in a house before. None of us had, we lived, until very recently, in a lab. On the inside all of the walls were painted white, the ceiling was white and floors were wood. Real wood, like somebody had taken trees, cut them up and put them on the floor. I had never seen a wooden floor before, the school was all tile and linolium.
The halls were short and wide, with really tall ceilings. I led Iggy into what looked like a kitchen, with black cuboards and counters. The sink was white, the rest of the large boxlike objects were covered in wood. I watched Iggy run his hand along the counter.
"There is no stainless steel?" He said amazed and a bit unnerved.
"None, I thought you would hate it. So It's all wood and umm white, and black. But we can paint if you want to, I have some colors already." Jeb said suddenly from behind us.
Max Pov:
I skipped over the kitchen, there were too many people in it already. The kitchen itself could hold all seven of us easily but we mutants needed our space. Spending your early years in a dog crate can give a person severe cloustrophobia.
So I made my way to the living room, it was huge, white and had a singularly amazing feature. At the end of the room, filling an whole wall were four ginormous windows. They were the biggest windows I had ever seen. So clear and clean. It took me a moment to actually look through them.
And then I gasped.
Fang Pov:
I heard Max gasp and my instincts went on red alert. I strode past a space with a huge table and eight chairs. We were so stupid, why were we running around this place without checking for traps first?
I stopped as soon as I saw Max. In a second I checked her for blood or missing limbs, bone fractures and new bruises. Nothing, so I looked at her face, following her eyes to the wall.
Correction: It wasn't a wall, structurally it appeared to be a window, four massive windows conected by pieces of iorn too thin to hold them together.
Max Pov:
I was remotely aware of Fang gaping behind me. I knew that Iggy would be with him, and behind them both Jeb would be watching like a hawk. But for the moment all that mattered to me was the hole behind the window.
The canyon was our backyard, and this house seemed to be balenced carefully over the edge of it. From the window I could only see the opposite side and wall of the canyon, the grey, brown and cream colors had turned into coppery tones thanks to the sun.
Then Nudge burst into the room, Gazzy and Angel with her. Broken from our window induced trance we all turned to her to see what she had to say. Nudge always had something to say.
"There are a lot of empty rooms, like just a bed and some drawers. What's that about?" She said in a rush, her excitement speeding her words.
"You all have to pick bedrooms." Jeb said slowly, "I have my room already and an office. Aside from that you'll have to decide who sleeps where."
Fang Pov:
It took us almost no time to chose rooms. After sleeping in crates we were not too picky about where or how we sleep. Max, Iggy and I got larger rooms, Gazzy had one closest to the bathroom and Nudge picked a spot across the hall from Angel.
I sat in my room, looking out one of several windows. Max came in quietly, cleared her throat and sat down on the matress. Aside from the dresser it was the only piece of furniture in the white room, my white room.
"So what color are you going for?" Max asked suddenly, I turned my head, looking over my sholder to see her.
"What do you mean?" I asked slightly confused. I hadn't expected her to be so relaxed about this. I glanced at her face, tight jaw muscle and white knuckles. She wasn't calm at all, just putting up a good front. I said nothing, waiting for her to shift back into reality. She didn't have to pretend for me, or Iggy, we all knew how odd this was.
"So strange." I began.
"how?"
"Aside from us trusting a whitecoat, being hijacked from the school and living in a house with windows the size of doors?"
"Sorry." She whispered quickly.
"About what?" I asked, not quite knowing what she meant.
"If this is a mistake, if it all goes wrong...I am sorry." She explained quietly. I crossed the room and sat next to her.
"And if it's not?" I countered.
"We don't know that, it was a huge risk to do this. What if I was wrong? What if he is just as bad as they are, and it's all a big test...a lie?" Her sentence dropped.
"Maximum," I said and she raised her head, turning it to look at me.
"I trust you."
She smiled a little, and stood up, somehow sensing there was no more left to say. She opened the door silently, and was half way through it when I remembered something.
"Black." I said quickly. Her eyebrow rose a little.
"The color I would paint this place." I explained, a smile spreading slowly across her face. She left the room, the door closing silently behind her.
Max Pov:
The flock settled into their rooms. Jeb had left us all to our own devices. Thankfully.
Honestly i needed my space, this house was on the boarder between the ground, the sky and all the things we had left behind us. This was to be our home, as long as we lay low and stay out of sight.
So why did it feel like a prision? The four walls of my new room felt like an extension of the crates in the school. It felt like a prision because it was a prision, diffrent walls, same feeling.
I heard the slight knock on my door, and a moment later Iggy appeared at my side. Somehow finding his way to the bed without haveing been in here before.
Iggy Pov:
She was stressed. Concerned, fighting. I understood it, the feeling that we had exchanged one form of confinement for another. We had.
"Relax max." I muttered, knowing she could hear me.
"Why? I just told Fang that this could be the biggest mistake I have ever..." I glared at her, arranging my face into a look that made her go silent.
"Than Fang already told you you made the right choice."
"But what if i was wrong?" She protested, speaking more to herself then me.
"There is no turning back. I trust you max, all of us do. We'd follow you, no matter what."
She didn't reply to my statement, she didn't seem to breath or move. So I stood and walked out of her room. Maximum was having regrets...
And it was too late to do anything about it.
Jeb Pov:
(LATER THAT DAY)
The flock was doing well. They had managed to negotioate the huge house, and each had found a room to settle into. I found their room selections to be most telling.
Fang had selected the room with the most windows. It was the second largest room of the six. He had enetered it quietly and closed the door behind him. As anti-social as he had appeared to be at the labratory he surprised me by not refusing anyone who knocked on his door. Max, Iggy and Nudge had visited him.
Of curse Iggy had visited everyone. He had selected his room the fastest, picking one with the highest celing and a few windows. His room was right in the center of the hall, on one side was Gazzy's room, the other Nudge's. Iggy had surprised me the most, even compared to Fang, by checking on each of the five other flock members. He seemed to have accepted the remoteness and finiteness of the situation. Not so with everyone else.
I stood in my room, the third largest room in the house (counting the living rom and kitchen/dining room combonation.) This was a big risk, taking the flock here. Removing them from the lifestyle they had been forced to accept. But not taking them would have been much worse...so much worse.
As is they were skiddish and withdrawn. Gazzy had flinched more than once in the car during a loud section of a song, or when a semi would honk loudly. Fang hadn't said a word to anyone other than Max or Iggy. He had been that way for most of his life, from what i could tell.
I turned away from the windows that formed one entire wall. On the other side of the room stood a filing cabinet, filled with files of the flock. The files were copies I had made and brought here for safekeeping. If i showed them to the flock now...they wouldn't trust me. Not ever.
Someday I would have to tell them about those files. They deserved to know that their suspicions of me were not unfounded.
But not today, and with any luck not soon.
A/N: Hope you like it. I am on vacation for two weeks (gasp!) and have been kicking myself for not posting something. So i give you this.
enjoy it...
-twilightjunkie1313