Maximum Ride at H.I.V.E. ch10

Daring Disasters and New Friends,

-.-.-.-

Grappler Cavern

"So this is what he meant," Max said, getting some instructions from Shelby. The Colonel had swung off like a big ape in military fatigues after telling them what to do. But he'd deliberately done it vaguely to see how much teamwork the veteran students were prepared for.

"Yeah, press this button- POINT IT SOMEWHERE ELSE!" Shelby shrieked; dodging as Max accidentally launched the grappler hook at her.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry!" she said quickly, putting her hands over her mouth.

"Look, press this button to retract, and then point it somewhere else when you want to fire it. When you're ready, press this one to switch it to the triggers," Shelby said, pointing to each one in turn.

"OK, I think I've got it now," Max pointed it away at the roof and set it to triggers. She pulled the pointer trigger and the grappler shot the hook, trailing microfilament. As it hit the roof, Max pulled the middle trigger and it retracted quickly, taking her off her feet. "Hey!" she yelled, surprised.

Seth looked up and saw Max dangling from a stalactite. He gave her a thumbs-up.

"Not helping!" she yelled back at him. Shelby checked the equipment rack and found what Max needed; her other grappler.

"I think you forgot something!" Shelby yelled, holding up the other grappler. She quickly strapped it to her leg and took a running jump off the platform. Before she disappeared, she fired the grappler and swung around up to where Max was hanging helplessly. "Here you go," Shelby passed the grappler that had been on her leg down to Max, who quickly fitted it on and accidentally shot it at Seth.

"Now who's not helping!" he yelled, dodging as the hook tried to impale itself in his foot.

"Sorry!"

Seth shook his head and fired his grappler up at the ceiling. Once stuck, he reeled himself up and flipped himself upside-down, and landed on the roof as though it were the floor. His grin looked like a weird frown to Shelby, who was still right-way-up.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Francisco bellowed from the other side of the chamber, putting his own grapplers back on.

"Being sneaky!" Seth yelled back happily. He fired the other grappler forward and it struck the rocks a few meters away. Then he reeled it in and let the other one slack as he walked across the roof. He couldn't get a second grappler shot to continue skywalking. As soon as he released the first shot and walked past the second, the hook's angle had made it impossible to support his weight, and he fell towards the eel infested pool.

"Seth!" Max cried, ready to drop down and fly him to safety.

"Ahhh!" he screamed, falling. He hated water. Seth tried flipping in mid air and firing the grappler at the roof, but it didn't make it time.

He hit the water with a big splash, right next to a large rock. Bubbles swirled around him as he cried out in pain, losing his breath and sucking in water. He was choking immediately, his body fighting for air that wasn't there. So this is how it ends… he thought, his body starting to shut down. He stopped fighting to get to the surface, his movements getting weaker and even more ineffective.

Drowning.

Such a horrible way to go…

-.-.-.-

"He's gonna be OK, isn't he?" Shelby asked, worried for her friend. Wing was beside her, comforting her. Nobody knew what to expect when Seth hadn't come back up. Max had dived down, grabbed his unconscious body and had flown the downed Alpha up to the platform Francisco was waiting on. HIVEMind had made sure the others were sworn to secrecy about it. Any leaking information about the wings would come with a severe punishment.

Everyone had been worried about him.

"We're not sure," one of the doctors replied. "He inhaled a lot of water,"

Max was sitting solemnly next to the door. She could have saved Seth before he'd hit the water, and the rocks below. She felt terrible about it. Now who's not helping! His last words to her.

"Come on, guys, there's nothing else we can do here," Otto lead them out. Max stayed behind for a moment, thinking.

If only I was an Angel…

-.-.-.-

Science class

"And we seem to be missing a student," Professor Pike said, noticing an empty seat next to a rather upset Max. He noticed then how demoralised some of the others looked. "But we can worry about that later," he amended. "For now, though, we need to test the new students' abilities,"

Another thing Max didn't want to be reminded about: the chip in her arm. Her hand moved to it unconsciously. The Professor handed out unfinished blueprints for some kind of super laser, and returned to work on something on his desk.

The laser had a lot of confusing symbols on it that made no sense to Max, even when she read through the key. Otto and Laura finished theirs in record time, spending the rest of the lesson working on some other project Pike had given them.
She was still worried about Seth; too worried to properly focus on anything else. Shelby started chatting with Nudge about something, and neither of them got any work done, but it distracted Max a little. Laura and Otto were busy discussing the applications of nanotechnology in building extremely fine computer cores, and started going on about what to use to build an impact resistant energy shield.

"Hey, need any help?" a voice said behind her. Max spun in her seat to see Nicholas politely asking if he could sit next to her.

"I suppose so. I can't figure out any of it right now," Max said, returning fruitlessly to the blueprints as Nicholas sat down beside her. "Nicholas, right?"

"Call me Fang," he grinned, and Max could see why. He had real vampire-like fangs.

"So, Fang, got any idea on how this thing should work?" Max gave him a lopsided smile.

"Nope. But we could always just do this," he copied some of the symbols below the drawing and added them to the circuit randomly; some of them in places that the instructions said had been completed already. Max giggled and did the same, avoiding everywhere they should have been, putting symbols in the completed areas and completely avoiding where she should have been working.

"And now, to finish the trail," she said, sticking her tongue out and drawing a single line to complete the circuit.

The Brazilian girl, Sasha, looked completely lost. "Can I just-"

"No," Pike answered automatically, not looking up from his work.

"If it's any consolation, I suck at this too," Shelby whispered to her, leaning back, head upside-down.

"Remember what happened to the last person who was upside-down?" Sasha reminded her bluntly, tapping her pencil on her forehead.

"Uhh," Shelby started to fall backwards, having leant too far in her seat. "No?"

She hit the floor with a crash.

-.-.-.-

After classes

Max decided she liked N-Fang. Fang. But she couldn't have been more torn between being guilty about not being able to save Seth and guilty that she was having a great time, at the pools, with Fang, while he was recovering, or maybe dying.

There wasn't a pool party today, but they were allowed pool-volleyball.

"Heads up Max!" Otto yelled, seeing the ball flying towards her. She headbutted it into the air and dived down to the other side. Shelby was about to hit it back to her friend, but Max started tickling her feet and the ball hit her on the head. It was one of those hard plastic balls that had a real bounce to them, and it bounced off the back of Shelby's head and hit Nudge in the face.
"Owww!" Nudge moaned, holding her nose.

"Stop it! That's cheating!" Shelby cried, pushing Max away once she came up for air. Max laughed and swam back her side, backstroking.

"Incoming!" Laura screamed, pointing at something coming from the diving boards. That same inflatable shark flew towards them, chucked downwards by Franz.

"Hah, I can be beating your tiny splash, Mr Sharkykins!" he yelled, jumping into the air above them.

"What's the chance he'll hit the net?" Nigel sighed and shaded his eyes, looking up at Franz's downfall. Shelby dived under, and the others started racing for the pool edge. Nigel grabbed the ball and chucked it basketball style in Franz's way. Franz, now rushing towards the pool extremely fast with his legs flailing, accidentally kicked the ball into the back of Max's fleeing head.

She saw stars, and her body didn't seem to want to work properly anymore. She couldn't think straight, and didn't feel herself get picked up and chucked away by the Franz Tide. Her mind didn't register where she was until she'd been lying on Nicholas- Fang's abs for a whole minute. And even when it did, she didn't feel like moving. Max just lay there with him, resting her head on his chest.

"Max?" came a fuzzy and indistinct voice. She tried to look up at Fang's face, but all she achieved was a weak push like she was trying to look left. Her right leg was tangled within Fang's.

"Max?" the voice came slightly clearer this time. She could almost swear it was coming from next to her. "Are you OK?" Max felt slightly OK. She didn't feel anything, to be honest. She tried to open her eyes, but barely managed a flicker.

"Oh, jeez, we're having a really bad day with water, aren't we?" came a second voice. It sounded like… like… Max gave up. She couldn't tell. She just wanted to sleep…

Someone picked her up, and Max tried standing through instinct. She must have looked like a sleepwalker… Walker…

"MAX!" the voice came clearly this time, right in front of her. She scrunched her face up and tried to push it away, her eyes barely open. Her arm didn't get very far, and she forgot to keep standing. "Max, wake up!" Fang caught her before she could fall over. Max didn't want to wake up. She was fine like this, without the memories… without the pain, the guilt… without her friends… her loves…

"Is she breathing?" another voice asked. Max was too tired to attach it to a name… a face…

"I think so," Fang… said. She could feel her breath hitting his… something… could she go to sleep now? She was so tired…

What… why can't you leave me…

-/-/-/-

Shelby looked at Max, who was lying on Nicholas. Normally, Shelby would have giggled at a sight like this, but she'd seen the way Max had just stopped moving after Franz had kicked their surrogate volleyball, and was more concerned that they might have another person to drop off to the sick bay.

"Max, could you get off me?" Nicholas laughed, delighted at having her there while he was only wearing board shorts. He thought it was pity Max wasn't wearing a bikini like Shelby. He almost looked exactly like Wing, only not Asian. Max didn't respond. She didn't move at all.

"Max?" he tried again. Max moved slightly. Her head rose a little, but immediately fell back down. The others were still laughing and sharing experiences they'd had with the Franz Tide. Only Shelby and Nicholas knew about- no, even they didn't know what kind of condition Max was in. It wasn't good, either way. "Are you OK?" Nicholas asked, confused. Her eyes flickered open, but then stopped and stayed closed. She made a small noise.

"Oh, jeez, we're having a really bad day with water, aren't we?" Shelby said, crouching down to feel the back of Max's head. "Oh yeah, she's going to have one hell of a bump," she sighed. "Let's get her off of you,"

Nicholas nodded and tried to get Max off him without grabbing anything inappropriate for acquaintances to be grabbing. Shelby grabbed Max and pulled her up under her shoulders. Max, for one hope-inducing moment, actually managed to stand up. She started swaying to the side a little, then a lot, and Shelby propped her up.

"MAX!" Nicholas shouted in her face, trying to get her to wake up. Max moaned and raised her arm in a feeble attempt to push him away, but in doing so she slipped off Shelby and fell into Nicolas's waiting arms. Her eyes were barely even half open, staring into nothing. "Max, wake up!"

"Is she breathing?" Nigel asked, suddenly realising that chucking the ball at Franz might not have been such a good idea.

Nicolas leant down and put his ear to Max's mouth. He could feel her breath tingling through his too-long black hair. "I think so," he said.

"Do we need to get her to the sick bay?" Nigel asked. Shelby just cried.

"Where is it?" Nicholas asked, picking up Max bridal-style. Nigel pulled him along and they left Shelby to explain to the others what had happened.

-.-.-.-

Shelby's new bunk room

Shelby didn't want to be with anyone for a while, and she knew that Seth and Max weren't coming back from the sick bay for a while, so she'd swapped with Laura. Otto was fine with it, and Laura didn't feel like getting revenge anymore.

Max was suffering from concussion, and slight spinal displacement in her neck. The messages weren't getting from her brain to her muscles properly. It had been fixed with some light surgery, but she needed to rest and recover. The doctors were still trying to clear out Seth's lungs, so he wasn't coming back either.

Shelby was alone. She took a long hot shower to rinse off the day's horrific events. As she stood under the water, she had a sudden crazy thought. Why was she in the shower with nobody else in the bunk room? Considering all the accidents that had happened today, perhaps getting wet again wasn't a good idea.

She sighed and hopped out, not wanting to risk it. Her body was tired, but her mind needed something to distract itself. Drying herself off, she got into her pyjamas and looked around the small room. There wasn't much she could use if she wanted to get to sleep. Looking up on the shelf that served as a bedside table for whoever had the topside bunk, Shelby found the iPod that Seth had shown her, back on the day they met. So it hadn't fallen in the pool with him, she thought.

Shelby snuck under the covers of her new bed, put the earphones in, and pressed play. She looked at the screen and smiled as she saw the name of the next song. God Is A Girl.