Hey! Sorry for the evil cliffy. I REALLY wanted reviews. (It worked! Yay!) ANYway...
Disclaimer/Claimer thingy: James Patterson wrote Maximum Ride. And considering the fact that he's a man, and (except sometimes when I'm onstage...) I'm NOT, in any way, shape, or form, a man, but in fact a girl, I am NOT James Patterson. I'm Deji and I wrote Aspen. And considering that you aren't me, you did not write Aspen OR invent the characters thereof. (Unless you're Goober, in which case you did half the work... or maybe more?) So I don't think you should write anything using them. (Refer to the threat at the beginning of chapter four. I'm still totally serious. I've got the spork all ready and everything.)
-Deji
PS- Sorry that it's taken me so long... MAJOR writer's block. (Of course, once I finally have time to write, I can't. Just my luck.)
Chapter nine: Conner and Robin
"Shh! What's your problem, anyway? You act like you think I'm an Eraser or something."
I stared at him in horror. He smiled back at me reassuringly. His blue eyes were warm, without a hint of the hatred and fury I'd seen in them when I'd last met him. And tried to kill him. And got the crap beat out of me. Why was he being so... nice? Did he normally help out those he'd previously been bent on destroying?
"Hey, just hit her with a rock or something and let's get out of here. We're still too close to where we got attacked." I hadn't noticed the girl standing next to him yet. Her black hair was a little longer than mine, and flying in all directions.
The boy turned to her. "We can't just leave her here! Look at her. She's as beat up as we are. The Erasers will eat her alive if..." He stopped, looking anxiously at me. "Um... figure of speech. We'll be right back." He put his hand on the girl's shoulder and started pushing her back towards the trees. I watched them talking to each other. The girl looked angry and kept gesturing towards me. The boy just shook his head and gestured towards me, too. She stopped flailing in my direction and nodded, but it looked reluctant. She followed him back over to where I still sat stupidly on my rock.
"Hey, sorry if we scared you," said the boy. "We just really don't want to get caught. Shocker, right?" He laughed. I almost did, too. But with hysteria. He seemed to notice the look on my face, but didn't comment. "Uh... It looks like you got into an Eraser fight," the girl commented from beside him, glancing at my oddly bent wing. "Um... yeah." I guess it was an Eraser fight. Depending on your definition.
"I'm Conner, and this is Robin." The boy... Conner... looked at me expectantly. "Um... I'm... uh..." Crap. I'd only been called by name about three times in my life. (Unless you count Reuben. But I pretty much block out what he's saying more than half the time.) Usually, when it wasn't a number or 'hey, you' I was something along the lines of 'Loser' or 'Freak.' What wasmy name? ... Alvin? No, that's a chipmunky guys' name. Oh, right. "I'm Aspen."
Conner looked at me weird. "Like the tree?" "What?" "Your name. It's a kind of tree." "Uh, yeah. I guess so." My namesake was a foliage. You can't begin to imagine the excitement it brought me to come to that conclusion.
I started to stand up, feeling outnumbered and vulnerable. I winced as the movement jostled my wing. "Hmmm... that looks pretty bad," observed Robin. "Can't fly with that, can you?" I shook my head. "I'm not really tempted to try." Suddenly, pain shot through my wing. I couldn't hold back the scream. "Sorry. I probably should have warned you." Conner looked at me apologetically. "I'm just trying to fix it before it heals wrong. You wouldn't be able to fly at all if it healed like this," He gestured to my bent appendage. It looked pretty gross, actually. The dried blood didn't give a very pleasant overall appearance.
"Here, just let me fix it. It'll only hurt a li... okay, this is REALLY going to hurt." Conner looked concerned. I was baffled. "Why?"
He looked at me oddly. "Um, because I'm going to be moving the broken bones around in your wing..." "No, why are you doing this? I never did anything for you...?" He raised his eyebrows at me. "Would you rather I didn't help you?" "Um... no. But why?" He looked at me, his face both confused and thoughtful. "I don't know, really. I guess everyone deserves a fighting chance, right? You probably worked really hard to get out of the Institute, and you shouldn't have to go back." He laughed quietly. "unless you want to go back," he added jokingly.
I laughed along, seeing no humor in his joke. Why wouldn't I want to go back? I couldn't take care of myself. At least at the Institute I had somewhere to sleep, and someone else was cooking. ...But I had no way of getting back. I was going to die out here, in the middle of nowhere, just because I can't cook anything that didn't look like it would try to eat me first.
"Hold on. I'm going to straighten your wing out, okay?" I nodded, not looking at Conner. If he had any idea of how my wing had gotten into its current state... what with me being outnumbered and more than slightly disadvantaged in the fact that I was unable to fly... not good.
I just had to get out of there as soon as humanly (or mutantly, rather) possible.
"So, how long ago did you escape?" Robin's conversation seemed forced. She obviously didn't trust me yet.
"Um... yesterday." I couldn't come up with a lie, so I told the truth. Mostly. "Escape" isn't the word I would have used, but whatever. "Yesterday? Wow... must not have been a very clean getaway," she said, indicating my wing. I forced a laugh. "Yeah... the Erasers, um, followed me this far, though before they, um... got me." Jeez, I couldn't lie worth crap to her. Why? I'd lied to whitecoats and Erasers all my life. Why should it be harder to lie to a stupid runaway mutant?
"AAAAAAAH!" Conner caught me by surprise, jerking my wing into position. It took all of my self-control not to morph right there and tear out his throat. Both he and Robin looked at me with concern, Robin's face dark with mistrust. "Sorry..." Conner began, but he stopped, not sure what to say. "No problem," I gasped. "Um... thanks." It sounded like a question. I'd never had to say that to anyone. I'd never been in a situation where it would have been necessary.
Robin looked around. "Hey... are you alone?"
I was confused. "Alone?"
"Yeah. Who did you escape with?"
"Umm... I got out alone. I didn't have anyone else to help me."
Robin looked confused. "What about the other person in your cell?"
"I didn't have anyone else in my cell."
"Why not? I knew of cells with three bird kids in them."
I had to come up with something, quick. Oh well. A little more truth, then. "I'm not exactly a 'bird kid.' I've got some other DNA in me, too."
Conner looked surprised. "Really? Well, weren't there any other of... whatever you are... in there?"
"No. They never made any more of me. I was considered a nearly complete failure. Not enough of a failure to kill me, but enough that they didn't want to repeat their 'mistake.' Meaning me." That was me- a mistake. I couldn't even take down a single bird kid by myself. What a loser.
Robin's mistrustful face softened a bit. "Oh. You must have been so lonely." I'd never even thought of it that way. Lonely. It made sense...
Conner looked around. "It's getting kind of dark," he said to Robin. "We should probably go find some place to stay for the night."
Robin nodded. "Yeah. Those clouds don't look so good." They didn't. They looked like surly gray cotton balls. Just bigger. "I think I saw an old abandoned wood shed thing over there," she said, gesturing over her shoulder as she spoke. Conner nodded. "Sounds good. How far?" Robin thought. "About a quarter mile at most." "Good. Let's check it out. I'm getting tired of abandoned animal dens. They're almost as bad as the unabandoned dens." Robin laughed, turning to walk back into the trees. "... Badgers..."
Conner turned to follow her. I watched them leave, surprised that I wanted them to stay.
Conner turned around. "Hey, come on! Do you want to get caught in the rain?" Shocked, I stood up and followed them into the trees. Thunder rolled menacingly in the distance, the lightning a thin thread of light through the quickly darkening sky.
