What do you think?! I know I left things kind of cliff hang-y at the end but this chapter might make up for it, K? I need some reviews to tell me how much of a relationship I should make Max and Logan! I am bone-dry past kissing and I know that if I write a make-out scene or semi-lemon it will suck MAJORLY if I do not have support... Tell me what you think! :) Remember, Max knows about Logan but he doesn't know anything about Max or her past yet. This chapter holds a few flashbacks on her past but not everything so be ready to get little let down!
Disclaimer: X-MEN go to Marvel and MR ideas/powers/character... go to Patterson - QUIT BUGGING ME WITH THIS AND READ ALREADY!
The next thing I know, I'm bound at the ankles and knees, arms and hands behind my back with a piece of fabric wrapped around my head, gagging me. I hear the sounds of an engine going and my adrenaline pumps up to an eleven on a scale of one to seven. I struggle to get free of my bonds but then someone steps on my back, knocking the air out of me and forcing me to breathe air with my neck crammed uncomfortably against the floor. I jerk my head towards someone walking up to me and kneeling over my bent form. I hear someone chuckle at my struggling and take the fabric off my eyes. I blink back the light in the before dark room and see Sinister standing in front of me, grinning like he just won a million dollars in evil science supplies. Sinister said with a sneer, "You truly are a rare specimen for my collection. It would be a shame if you would not coöperate and have to get rid of you before I can witness what your full capabilities are."
He nodded to whoever was kneeling on me and the person brings me to my knees and jerks my head so I have to look at Sinister, right into his disgustingly, twisted face. I stare at his blood-red eyes until he smiles a wicked smile that makes my heart freeze at the thoughts he had when he smiled at my scared and frightened look. He speaks again but this time he acts like he is all-knowing...'Oh, wait! He already thinks that!' "I have already tested your blood and know you are one of us so you can drop the innocent, rebellious, bad-ass teenager act." My eyes widened to the realization that my right arm feels numb, with a white bandage wrapped around it at the elbow joint, where he took my blood sample. My eyes return to his and my head droops a little as he smirks at my defeated expression.
Nodding to the person holding me again, he hauls me to my feet and cuts the bonds on my legs and ankles so I could walk after Sinister through the steel door on the opposite side of the room. He turns and says to someone behind me, "Is that any way to treat a young lady? Cut off the rest of the ropes and let her be; she can't go anywhere anyway, not from where we are now." Sinister looks at me and informs me of a simple fact like I am a child and points to the window as he explains. "We are on my personal jet and we have already ascended over a thousand feet above sea level and are over a hundred miles away from any land or island; above the Pacific Ocean if I might add. If you don't believe me, look for yourself out the window." By the time he finished his derogatory speech, the henchman had cut my hands free and I have pulled the gag out of my dry and parched mouth.
I move towards the window he indicated to my right and find all that he said was true. All I saw was cloud cover around us before opening up to allow a brief view of open ocean and nowhere to go if I decided to jump out. Did anyone care to know that all I needed was some open space and clear skies for me to escape? I guess not but I had to act like I would stick around for now until an opportunity presented itself to me and keep a Sinister's guard down until that point and time. I had to act cool, calm and in a way to appear angry at my captors; I clenched my fists at my side and gridded my teeth like I was upset at my situation. He took the bait; hook, line, sinker and rod! Sinister took this 'sign' of my relenting and invited me to join him up front in the more comfortable part of the plane.
I glanced at him in warily and slowly follow him through the open and sinister-looking doorway. The jet was well-suited with drinks, luxurious items and the latest technology in making traveling much more comfortable. In some of the aircraft's chairs were some of the mutants I had taken out in the Virginia forest; believe me when I tell you this, if looks could kill, I would have died a hundred times already. Some of them looked displeased with my presence there while others looked like they wanted to rip my head off. I would have happily said the same thing about them and more except Sinister was motioning me towards the two front seats facing each other near the front of the plane and at the cockpit door.
I chose wisely to sit in the seat facing the plane, and all the mutants who wanted to kill me in my view, should any of them try anything while Sinister was talking to me. He was busy looking at a file handed to him by one of his assistants that had come through a different area in the rear of the plane. I happened to glance at the symbol on the file and my blood ran as cold as the ice cubes in the drinks that are in front of us. THAT symbol stared back at me like a deadly cat, waiting to pounce on me and beat me to near death. It was basically a serpent curled around in a swirl pattern with heads of snakes sticking out at eight different points around the main body. In the middle of the coiled snake, there was a larger head of a black cobra, its mouth open and fangs fully extended.
- FLASHBACK -
Blood spilt on the clean, white floors . . . Mangled bodies dragged out of their cages and fed to their killers as a reward . . . cages stacked on either sides of a storage room, with small boys and girls crammed into each one . . . screams and cries of those same children, now dying in the fighting arena, echo through the empty halls...
Medical supplies on a clean silver tray, almost time for another torture session; they are using the numbing serum this time so I wont feel much pain . . . they inject the red one first, see for an hour, then inject the orange one and so on until they use up the entire tray . . . the pain comes later when the serum wears off; I scream but nobody listens to them...
Another day at the School, a place where hell spawns the most evil creations . . . like me, one of the unlucky, lucky ones who survive everything thrown at me . . . a monster among monsters . . . and will always be one, no matter what happens to me...
- FLASHBACK -
I feel Sinister's gaze on me and I quickly replace the horror-faced façade with a mask of indifference. I recovered from the symbol's appearance by glancing out of the window on my left and gazing outside at the cloud-covered sea until Sinister cleared his throat and waits for me to look at him again. I take a deep breath and look back at the white-skinned mutant, waiting for him to speak. Sinister glanced at the symbol, the folder now closed on the table, smiling creepy all along, and asked me, "Do you know who this logo belongs to? They're my adversaries in the genetics world and I do enjoy looking over their latest failures."
He looked at me questioning and I give him a calm façade answering, "No, it was just my imagination." His smile faltered for a moment and I felt like I had passed some sort of test he had set up. Just at that moment, I felt trapped for the first time in five years, even though I was capable of moving my body, and I started bouncing my leg as a cooping mechanism. Sinister didn't notice this action but rather ignored it and went on to ask me some more questions. "So...back to my original question; now that we are far, far away from your 'friend' in the woods. Who are you?" I look at him and knew he would know right away if I was lying to him and relented in giving up my most basic piece of information to an evil scientist. "My name is Max."
Sinister seemed pleased my reluctant but willing coöperation and asked a few slightly altered questions, "Where are you from, Max?" I answered as truthfully as I would allow it. "I'm from New York originally." "Why were you traveling with Wolverine, or Logan?" I replied as quickly as I could, "I was only traveling with him so I could get out of the city." These small questions by him and small, fragmented answers from me went on for another five minutes before he paused and quietly asked the last question on his mind.
"One last question for you Max." I looked back at him from the window view I was glancing out at, acting like I'm interested in his words like any good soldier would to a general. "My last question to you before we continue on this is: are you truly that devoted to remaining free from any outside control?" The question was surprisingly simple but those words hit my very core of my existence. Ever since I was born in THAT place, my actions, thoughts and even my deepest emotions were under the control of someone else. I had run away from all that, vowing to never return to that life style ever again, and to live my life in my way, no matter what the consequences were afterward.
- FLASHBACK -
The ground is getting rougher and starting to hurt my feet but I run even faster as I hear the sirens going off all around me in the arena. They know I have escaped the designated area for the fight but they won't know where to look for me yet. By the time they have even considered looking towards my direction, it will be too late and I would already be out of sight and out of harm's way.
I had planned this escape from the first time I saw a friend and comrade die. He only saved me from an Eraser's wrath but the scientists thought he inspired too much courage and disobedience to their work. So, they made everyone watch as he's torn apart, limb from limb, in the central arena by fifty Erasers. I was three and he was only a year older; I didn't stop crying, or waking up screaming in the middle of the night, for weeks.
The scientists would be angry when they realized they had been fools to trust that I would play 'obedient experiment'. I smiled in satisfaction at the thought of their faces since I would not be able to see them now. I smell the scented forest air again and know I am close to the city. I burst through a wall of leaves, vines and branches and emerge victoriously as I look over the first of many cities I would hide in the coming years since I escaped that hell hole.
- FLASHBACK -
I realize I had stiffened like a deer in the head lights and then dropped my head over my chest like a dying flower during my revelation and flashback. I quickly shook my head and straightened back up to look Sinister in the eyes and respond forcefully when he answered his own inquiry. "Of course you are, child. If you had not been so forward with that goal, I wouldn't have given you a second glance back in Virginia." He seemed to smile at a joke he just made and continued saying, "You realize that by proving that you were worthy of living to me back then, you made yourself a target for me, knowing who I was and what I do with potential mutants who show promise." I wait for him to continue gloating when one of the henchmen from the back comes up front to our seats. I recognize him as Saber Tooth and I do not like the way he is smiling at me with his fangs and claws showing.
He is standing right beside me when Sinister speaks again. "You must understand, Max, that you are worth more to me alive than dead at the moment and I would appreciate it greatly if you coöperate in us 'handling' you until we reach our land destination." I jump out of the chair I'm sitting in and dodged out of Saber Tooth's reach; while that happens the other mutants start to make their way towards me and I back up to the cockpit's locked door. The only option I have for escape is me dodging through all the angry mutants along with Sinister and racing through the hatch door at the rear of the plane, nearby the steel door where I was being held before.
As I take another step back to jump over Saber Tooth, Sinister whips out a small automatic pistol from one of his pockets and pointed it straight at my heart, merely two feet away from me. The air thickens with the gun's presence and I freeze mid-stride towards ST (aka Saber Tooth) before the mutants spring towards me. About five seconds of useless struggling and unfair numbers, I was down by ST with my arms wrung behind my back, face almost smashed into the ground and him straddling me from behind.
Sinister smirks at my helplessness and motions ST to bring me to my feet. As the over-grown fur ball hauls me to my feet, Sinister walks toward me and wrenches my neck to the side. Before I could start struggling, Sinister whips out a huge syringe filled with a sickly green liquid, which he soon empties into a vein on my exposed neck. I shake his hand away and, immediately, my head started to spin with stars in my vision. "I made this serum special for my experiments and it has given me the ability to capture mutants without harming them. It also makes performing test on them much easier."
Sinister and everything else in the cabin starts rocking and ST drops his hold on me, allowing me to fall to my hands and knees, facing the ground feeling like I was about to throw up everything I had in my body. My eyelids were getting heavier with each passing moment from the drug's effect and before I blackout Sinister starts laughing for the first time since I met him. He is suddenly kneeling in front of me, holding the folder he was looking at earlier; the folder was open towards me so that I could see the profile and information inside of it and what I saw made my blood run ice-cold.
There in the upper left corner was a picture of a malnourished, under weight and angry ten-year old girl with limp blonde-white hair and almost-black violet eyes glaring at the camera. I would recognize that face anywhere; it was me, right before I had escaped from Hell-On-Earth. I looked at Sinister, embarrassed and angry that he knew who I was the entire time and was pulling me around for fun. I was, however, also terrified and afraid of what he was going to do with me now that he knew exactly what I was capable of.
"I know exactly who you are, Max, a.k.a. Maximum Ride 2.0, of the School's Prestigious Genetic Youth." smirking at my mixed and slurred expression from the drug's effect. My eyes widen in shock and I'm terrified at what he plans todo with me 'He knows who I am and is happy about it! Never a good combo!'
The drug finally took over my brain and thrust me into a realm of darkness, where I wondered where I was going to wake up to this time.
Yes, yes I did end it like that but HEY! There is one more chapter after this that I wrote so no complaining!
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