Hey everyone, I know that last time I updated was about two weeks ago… I started working on this chapter last week, so now I'm trying to write as much as I can of it every day. I hope to put things up more. This chapter was challenging – lots of describing and stuff. Happy reading!
You would think that when Maya opened the door, something really climactic would happen. Sorry to disappoint you. What was really inside the door was nothing. Nothing but… blackness, that is.
Maya ushered me into the dark room, pulling my wrist as I tripped over my feet.
If years of running for my life had taught me one thing, it was that when you are trying to run away from somewhere that has a "bad reputation" and then you get caught inside it, it isn't good when you are pulled into a room where you can't see by someone that also has a "bad reputation." So I was silently freaking out that any number of those freaky mutant-shark things could be lining the walls this very minute. I decided to believe that I could trust Maya, after all, I shouldn't be so hard on her – she was here for a while, suffering from test after test after test. Her life hadn't been pie either.
She pulled me along a little longer, and then stopped abruptly. I felt her muscles tense, and I wondered why. Suddenly, the lights flickered until they stayed on. I scanned the room, looking for any sign that imminent death was answering a door I didn't know I knocked on. Instead, I found something almost worse, or maybe there was really no difference between them.
It was a Jeb.
He was looking at me over the top of his glasses, observing what I would do next. I sneered at him, giving him something to observe: Jeb = annoyed Max.
But then, Jeb looked over at a door I hadn't seen before, and motioned with his hand – a "come in" gesture. I readied myself for something bloodthirsty to walk in, but instead, it a…
…girl.
It was a girl that Jeb had summoned. She didn't look too happy though. She walked in, immediately seeing me, and I got the feeling that she had expected me. Somehow, Maya's muscles became even tenser than before. What did she know…?
The girl wore converse, boot-cut jeans, and a spaghetti strap shirt. She wore a leather jacket that fit over her shoulders in a crooked sort of way – hanging over one shoulder on one side and tight to the neck on the other. Her whole outfit was torn, ripped, and bloodstained. But it wasn't her clothes that surprised me.
It was the fact that framed by wavy, bedraggled blond hair, was my face.
It all hit me just then – the girl, why Maya was acting so strange, why they took her.
They had taken Maya, instead of me, to the school. My guess was that Maya had hardly ever had to worry about being kidnapped in the middle of the night, like I had been once before. She hadn't been the leader – Fang was – and she never had to think about being stolen back to the school. So, they cloned her, hoping that since she was a copy of my DNA, that her clones would be the equivalent of what would happen if I was cloned. They were probably still trying to make their "perfect Max."
But this girl didn't look like a normal person. Her breaths were deep and heavy, her fists clenched so tightly, I wondered if her fingernails would puncture holes in her palm. Once in a while, her eye would twitch. I wondered what they did to her, because she basically looked as if she was one banana peel away from the edge of sanity.
With one final eye-twitch at me, the new Max walked over to the left.
Maya gulped next to me, and I noticed another girl come in. This one was nothing like the other – she wore fitted jeans tucked inside high-heeled – and I mean high-heeled – leather boots and a rainbow camisole. Necklaces draped down elegantly over her neck, and her wrists were decorated colorfully in an assortment of bracelets. She stuck a pose, then held her left hand up so I could see the back of her hand. I knew I saw what she wanted me to see when I saw it. Because there, on her left hand ring finger, was my ring.
I looked down at my own hand to see the exact same ring on my own hand. How could this sissy have gotten Fang's ring? I thought. Then the flashy Max strutted down next to the mental-problem Max and put her hands on her hips.
You see, Max, the Voice said, you are right. These Maxes are all clones of Maya's DNA, which is the same as yours. But cloning your clone turned out to have an odd effect…
What? What do you mean, Voice. What happened to them?
Each clone is a different part of Maya's emotions. The first one, she's Anger. The second one there is Love.
Ooooohhh. So that means that Maya was pretty much split up into two different people. Wait — Love? That doesn't make sense, who would Maya be in love with?
Oh. Right.
Why else would that Love chick have Fang's ring?
Jeb nodded as a third stepped out of the doorway.
This one was wearing a school uniform, her hair tucked neatly in a ponytail. She stood up strait and walked with her hands at her sides. When she stopped to face me, I felt like I was staring at a rock with a face – sort of like Fang in a way, except she never smiled at me, or anything. She could have stared at me blankly for eons. I even almost wanted to turn away, but told myself not to chicken like that. Eventually she turned a ninety-degree angle and stood next to flirtatious Love.
Knowledge, the Voice said. Built to have no emotion and to only make brain decisions. Oh. I guess that was the real problem with me, so they made a new Max with no heart. She's Max version five. Love is version four, Anger three, Maya is two, and you are one, the first Max.
Yeah. I get to be the first Max. I wonder how many girls grow up dreaming of being "the first Max."
Another Max walked in, quite different from the previous. This one was slouched, clothes simple (and orange, which is a gross color), hair sticking up, and staring at me with her mouth wide open, with an "OMG" face.
Max version six – stupidity, the Voice said.
Knowledge must not have worked out for them. Maybe she had enough sense to know that being injected with chemicals was not good. But creating a Max that was meant to be stupid seemed sort of, well, stupid.
When Jeb motioned for her to go to the side, I don't even think she saw him. She just stared at me until Jeb had to shove her next to the others.
The next Max to walk into the room was staring off into space. She didn't seem to notice me until Jeb coughed at her. She stopped suddenly, startled, and stared at me with sad eyes. One, single tear slipped out of her eye and snaked down her cheek when her eyes met mine. Her eyes were empty, blank, as if she had never seen the sunshine before, ever. I believed it, too. She quickly dried her face, smothering the tear. I wondered what it had held inside it. She stood next to Max.6 and stared off into space at a white wall.
The next Max was quite different. All smiles, I figured Max.8 was the "happiness" Max. She wore a halter-top exposing her belly button, and a pretty jean skirt. She had lots of necklaces and she wore no shoes. She had open eyes (which automatically reminded me of Dylan), a big smile, and she was really pretty. I can't believe I'm seeing me, practically, looking so happy. All in all, she certainly didn't look like a mutant, a lab experiment, or a clone. She looked like a normal teenage girl; one that had a boyfriend, and a lot of friends, and liked to walk to town to get pizza all the time. Seeing her sent a wave of shock through me – how someone that looked so much like me could even do such a thing as to look normal.
All the new Maxes were lined up in a line – Max.3, Max.4, Max.5, Max.6, Max.7, and Max.8, each with their complex personality issues.
I looked to Max 3, the one with anger problems, and saw that she was literally on the verge of wanting to punch a whole in something. Then, all of a sudden, she yelled out a battle cry, and all seven mes came charging toward me, each with different levels of enthusiasm. Looking to my left, I saw Maya, my face requesting help. But instead of a face that said, "I have to help Max," I saw a face that said something a little more like:
"This is the part where you run."
This chapter was sort of endless – I'm bad at speeding it up through all the character introductions. SORRY. When it says "mes" it means "me" just plural. Like, multiple mes. I would do "me's" but that isn't grammatically correct. I really want to know what everyone thinks about the Maya situation, so REVIEW PLEASE. Also… I want to know what song is stuck in your head right now. If there isn't a song stuck in your head, just tell me a song you like.
~avian-american-supporter OUT.
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