Chapter 8
I shut the door as quietly as I could and grinned in the darkness. "What?" I whispered as innocently as I could.
"Go away. If you stay in here and get sick, I'll murder you."
"Kind of harsh, don't you think?" I asked, sitting cross-legged on the floor next to him. He winced as he pushed himself so that he was leaning against the wall on the other side of the bed—as far away from me as he could get.
"Just leave me alone. Did your Mom tell you what I have?" He snapped. "You just got out of the school after months, we don't know how good your immune system is right now."
"She told me," I hissed back. "And I'm not fifteen anymore. You can't tell me what to do."
"I never could," he grumbled.
"I'll be fine," I pressed. "I just wanted to come see how you were doing."
"Like I said, if you get sick…" he trailed off.
There was a long pause and I just looked him over in the moonlight. He was a lot less pale, but his cheeks were still tinted red.
"How are you feeling?" I asked quietly.
He hesitated. "I should be asking you," he murmured, lying on his side against the wall. I folded my arms on top of the comforter and rested my chin on top. The weight of the day was finally hitting me and my mind wandered a bit. I hadn't slept in a bed, even had real sleep, in months. Fang reached across the bed and brushed his fingers across my cheek. "You've lost weight."
"Oh, how nice of you to notice," I mocked.
He offered up a tired smile and a sigh. "I did miss you," he said quietly. "I didn't think we'd find you after a while."
"I would have gotten out eventually."
He pressed his lips into a line and frowned. "You weren't conscious often enough to try, Max."
"I'm here now," I offered, taking his hand in mine. "Now I'm just worried about you."
"Nothing to be worried about," he said nonchalantly. "I'm more concerned about what they were going to do with you."
"The breeding thing? I'm not worried about that right now." I grasped quickly for a change of subject before he could continue down that road. I wasn't ready to think about that yet. "How are you feeling though, for real?"
"Everything hurts. Throat is on fire. Hurts to breath."
"Other than that?"
"I'm fine," he smirked. "Other than that."
"Good."
"Max, maybe you should…" I gave him a glare that made him switch thoughts. I was not leaving. I wasn't sure if I would have stayed or gone back to my sleeping bag after I'd checked in on him and he'd been sleeping. "How are you feeling?"
"I'm fine." My mind dusted over the memories again and I scrunched up my face, willing myself not to think about it. Seeing Fang and Iggy in the cell, being thrown in with them, fighting the Erasers off as they stripped me down and put me in that horror movie set piece of a tank. Then I remembered one sharp detail like a splinter. When they put me in the tank…I was naked. I lifted my head and glanced at the fabric that I was dressed in, a pair of soft scrubs. Oh, jeez. "Who…" I felt myself blush and I wanted to slap myself.
"Who what?"
I took a deep breath. "Who dressed me?" He blushed too—that was new…
"Nudge," he mumble. He paused and I thought that was it. "Are you sure you're okay? Because seeing you in there, like that, it was…"
"I'm fine." I glanced down at my leg and groaned.
"What is it?" his voice panged with concern, even in a whisper.
"Iggy's gonna have to re-break my leg soon."
"Well, if you don't wanna limp when you walk," Fang said with a half shrug, trying to lighten the mood.
It worked. I flicked his foot and he jerked it away.
"You're hands are cold!" he complained. I grabbed his foot. "Quit it! You're going to wake everyone up."
I stood up and stretched, content. Fang was going to live. He was already bouncing back—a lot quicker than when he'd had surgery when we were fourteen. Damn. He didn't need surgery because of this illness. Relief flooded my veins and I swam in the feeling. My flock was whole again and we'd be alright. We were in Mom's protection for now. We had food, warmth, a temporary refuge.
I headed for the door.
"Talk to Nudge, tomorrow," Fang blurted out.
"What?" I stopped and turned around, walking back over to the bed. "Why?"
"Back at the School," he mumbled, staring out the window by the foot of the bed. "I was coughing up blood. I tried not to let Iggy know, but Nudge saw. She didn't say anything about it to anyone, but I think it freaked her out a little." I nodded slowly, understanding.
"That actually makes sense. She said some things earlier—I'll talk to her. But, to be honest, I was scared, too," I confessed with a sigh, sitting down on the edge of the bed and rubbing my tired eyes. I hadn't done this whole admittance-of-emotions thing, but it's become a lot more frequent lately. Especially to Fang. Ever since he'd left, when he came back…things just started to spill…Anything to keep him there.
"I was, too," he whispered. "I thought we were done with them." Him and me both. Sure, we'd come across them on our own, trying to destroy their Schools and all. But they hadn't come after us directly. Fang took a deep breath and then looked up at me. His eyes were deep and reflected brightly in the light of the full moon. "What did they do to you? I mean, aside from the breeding plan, what did they do?"
I shook my head. "They replaced the chip," I muttered, my fingertips brushing the raised pink scar along my arm. They had put it in the other arm this time.
"Great," Fang groaned. "Please don't try to cut this one out."
I scowled at him. "I'm not going to, but it needs to come out still," I grumbled, standing. "But they said it was a chip to track my body, changes and stuff. So it's gotta be transmitting that data to them."
"Do the rest of us have one?" he asked after a beat of silence.
"Maybe. We can talk to Mom about that later." I paused, grasping at another thought flying through my head. "How did you guys even find me?"
"I tried. We followed the direction the Flyboys took you for days, but got nowhere." He took a deep breath and adjusted himself against the wall. "I posted on the blog that you were kidnapped and we followed some false leads for months. Then we finally got a hit. Some guy in Idaho said that he'd seen some news story on some chopper that crash-landed a few miles from him. Locals had said they'd seen werewolves after it crashed, but those were just rumors. So we flew up, just in case."
"Erasers," I mumbled.
He nodded. "So the flock and I devised a plan that had a high chance of you getting out—"
"And getting caught has a high chance…how?"
He threw a glare at me and continued. "So we decided that Iggy and I—the largest of our group—would get caught and plant a bomb on the inside white Angel stayed outside with Nudge and the Gasman. Nudge was unsure of how she could help, so she stayed out, but Gazzy was to plant a bomb near the fence on the outside. Turns out Nudge was needed on the inside, but it worked out alright."
"Yeah," I muttered, imagining everything that had gone on while I was away. Seems like they did okay without me. Their plan worked perfectly. Well, alright, not perfectly, but they'd managed to get in, get out, get me out, and get away without too much harm. There was Iggy's leg, though.
"But our plan was flawed," Fang said suddenly, as if reading my mind. "Iggy's leg was broken. We didn't think things completely through."
"But it worked. And he's healed for the most part—he was walking on it fine, even when we escaped. And I'm here, aren't I?"
"We got you thrown into that tank early," Fang stated sadly.
"Yeah, two days early. Hardly any difference."
"Who knows what they did to you," he argued.
"I do, Fang," I said, aggravated. "Would you just take a 'job well done' like a man and shut up? Not all plans are going to come out exactly like you want. And, as long as you succeed, take the consequences in stride."
He shifted so that he was lying on his stomach, his head on the pillow, and he sighed. "How do you do it?" He asked softly, closing his hand around mine.
"Do what?" I asked, moving so that I was sitting on the floor again, my arms folded on the bed so that I could rest my head a bit. I threaded my fingers through his and rubbed his thumb with mine.
"Lead as perfectly as you do?" His eyelids fluttered shut and I saw exactly how tired he looked, despite the fact that he had just been passed out for the last half a day.
"I have this friend. He's an amazing little helper," I chuckled. "Get yourself a second-in-command. They tend to keep you in line."
He shook his head slightly and said, "No, that sounds like a very difficult job, being your second-in-command. Full time job and then some." I glanced out the window and saw the sun just beginning to rise.
"Go to sleep, dork," I said, standing. "Mom will check on your in the morning."
Content that he would live for the most part, I made my way back to the living room as silently as I could and slipped back into my sleeping bag, which was so much more comfortable than an isolation tank, you would not believe…
