a/n: Happy Presidents week if you live in America. :) Read and review please! Although obviously, if you are here, then you are going to read it. I hope.

Shout Outs to: james maddison and his friend (by the way, you can do the story, just give me credit if you are going to post it) aviator301 (what you said was correct, by the way) Livylooloo (thanks for reviewing so much!) PolkaDotFeathers (thanks so much for being an awesome reviewer!) alamodie (you made me feel special, as you all did) and KiKi144327 (of course I'll keep it up!) and of course, last but not least, Agni xx. (Thanks so much for the following: giving me virtual cookies, watching YouTube videos at the same time, accepting random messages that make no sense to nobody but us, and, oh, if you don't update your story or write something of something, there will be some serious Jacob Black gut throwing involved. :)

Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride. Oh, and because of what I said above, I don't own Jacob Black either. And have no desire too.

Angel's POV

I really, really, wanted Max back. It wasn't that Nudge wasn't doing a good job, because, in her own way, she was. But it wasn't the same without her, and I wasn't sure how much longer any of us could last.

I looked at Nudge. She hadn't talked in awhile, and that worried me. I wanted really badly to hear her talk, because somehow, it meant that we were going to get out of here okay.

The white coats had left after Nudge's temper tantrum, but now, I could hear thoughts coming from them again. They were coming back, and soon. They still wanted to do all of those bad things to us, and I wanted Max to be here to protect me. But I was really glad that she, Fang, Iggy and Lai were free somewhere.

I told Nudge and Gasman about the white coats in their minds. I knew that they thought it was creepy, but really, they were all jealous of it.

A white coat came in. She had long, dark black hair with a pink stripe down the side and she was short. If we could only get out of the cages we could take her down real easy.

I didn't look at what was in her hand, but sadly, I saw it in my mind. A catheter and a shunt for each of us. I hated those things with a passion. The shunts made taking blood easier for the white coats, but not for us. And the catheters? Who knew what they were going to give us through them? Not food, that was for sure.

She didn't say anything until she bent in front of my cage. She didn't open the door.

"Experiment 11; please hold out your arm for shunt and catheter placement." She sounded like a robot. Shouldn't she know better than to just ask us?

I crawled to the back of my cage and whimpered. She reached in through a little dog door like thing on the side and shoved both into my arm without another word, and I screamed bloody murder. I was going to have no voice tomorrow. Not that it would matter.

"Leave my sister alone!" Gasman screamed, punching the side of his cage with fury. "You dirty, rotten, no good –"

"Gasser!" Nudge said angrily. "Max wouldn't want you using that kind of talk. Therefore, I'll say it. You are dirty, rotten, no good butts!"

The white coat flushed red, but left my cage and went over to Nudge next, shoving the catheter in her arm and the shunt in her wrist. I saw her biting her lip and trying hard not to cry.

She moved to Gasman. He had a different kind of cage then us, a different make; it looked stronger, as if they were afraid that since he was a guy he would be stronger. Dumb sexists. Either way, it had no doggie door thing. She would have to open it to do her evil torture.

I heard a clatter - Gasman was trying to fight her off! Just as she got the shunt in his wrist, I head a massive snap – he'd shot his wings open, struck her across the face, and she flew, struck hard against the tile wall opposite us and crumpled to the floor.

"Gazzy! Gazzy! Gazzy!" Nudge chanted. He burst out of the cage and rose into the air as sirens sounded. I heard angry Eraser snarls.

"Nudge, give him your bobby pin!" I shouted.

"Right! Of course! Why didn't I think of that? Ig probably taught him how to pop locks and…

"Just throw it!" Gazzy and I shouted in unison.

"Right! Sorry!" She threw it through the air, and Gasman caught it. He scrambled to my cage first, jamming it in and twisting it. It popped open easily – cheap security – but not effortlessly like when Iggy did something like that.

"Go!" He said, yanking me out, almost throwing me out of my top row cage. I burst open my pure white wings, enjoying the feel of the muscles stretching, pushing up and down to keep myself afloat. By the time I could bat my eyes, Nudge was out too – her tawny wings gliding on air.

"Angel!" Nudge said, sounding a lot max-ish, leader like. "Try to find a building layout in someone's mind, pronto! An escape route, maybe, a secret tunnel…"

I blocked out her voice, focused instead on listening to Erasers, who were coming down the hallways. "Got it!" I said. "Left, right, straight, left, left, right, door on the right!"

"Nice, Angel!" Gasman said.

"Follow me!" I shouted, and we burst through the still open door lab door, flying at full speed, Nudge managing to swipe a laptop on the way out.

"Get in touch with Max!" She explained. We didn't like stealing… but a mutants gotta do what a mutants gotta do.

I think Max would have been proud.