What has happened to it all? Crazy some will say
Where is the life that I recognize? Gone away

But I won't cry for yesterday, there's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way to the ordinary world
I will learn to survive

TEN

When I finally came to, the smell was so overwhelmingly familiar that I didn't even leap into a defensive crouch: I knew I was defeated already. So instead of wasting valuable energy on panicking, on trying to escape the inescapable, I simply opened my eyes to study the space I was in.

It was pitch black, but I knew the area well: it was a small room, one I had been in before, no bigger than twenty feet by twenty feet. Four cement walls, one incredibly heavy steel door. A one-way dog flap on the bottom that food would occasionally appear through. Iron loops along the wall on the right that chains or handcuffs could be hooked to. The sound of pipes running through the ceiling at times, although it was eerily silent now.

My head ached, as it did most times I woke up in this place. I ended up here by force ninety-nine percent of the time, and those who dragged me in were never exactly gentle. My injured wing ached. When I moved to stretch the feathers, I was unsurprised to find that my wings were bound to my back tightly with zip ties. I pulled as hard as I could at them despite knowing from experience that I'd never break them.

It had been a while since I'd been here. In my early days, this had been my living space. As the months dragged on and I realized I couldn't escape—and they realized that I realized that—they granted me a bunker of sorts at the end of the hall.

The trembling started and once it did, it would not stop. I levered myself onto one shaky arm, squinting against the oppressive darkness. "Fang?" I called out, my voice feeble and scratchy.

Utter silence. Against every energy-conserving thought bouncing around my scattered brain, I started to hyperventilate.

They had shot him. They had shot him, he had started bleeding on the floor, and then I'd been knocked out. Then what? Then what?

I scurried to lean against the cold cement of the wall, folding myself over my knees and gasping to get enough oxygen. My hands were clammy and cold, but my back broke out into a thick sweat. "What did you do to him?" I forced out uselessly. As if anyone was around to tell me. As if, even if there was, somebody would.

I don't know how much time passed; it was something akin to sensory deprivation, having absolutely no sense of sight, no sounds, and nothing but cold cement and my own body to touch. I walked along the walls, feeling each inch of them for some sort of way to escape, even though I knew from experience that there was nothing. I shoved myself as far into a corner as possible, willing all of this to be a complete nightmare. I banged on the door. I cried.

At some point, I'd curled up like a wounded cat in the corner farthest from the door, hands over my ears in a pathetic sort of fetal position.

When the barely-lit overhead lamp flicked on, I gasped at the pain to my retinas after being in the dark for so long. Even with the dim bulb shimmering, it was difficult to see who was coming through the door.

When I finally did, it was like breaking the surface of the water after being caught in an undertow. The relief was almost painful.

Two soldiers marched through the doorway dragging Fang between them, and a third brought up the rear with a shotgun level with his eye. I didn't need to test them to know it was loaded.

He was alive.

He looked awful, and he was here, but he was alive. His skin was pale and his eyes were half open. His shirt had been shredded at some point during the struggle, still covered in blood from the gunshot he'd sustained. The middle right part of his abdomen was heavily bandaged, sanguineous drainage staining the gauze taped to his skin.

A selfish wave of relief crashed over me. I wasn't alone. Fang was here. When Fang was around, things were going to be okay.

"Fang," I breathed. Fang's eyes shot wide open and found me in an instant. The third soldier waved the shotgun my way in warning, and I clamped my mouth shut.

At the sound of my voice, Fang perked up drastically—he struggled against the soldiers, clearly exerting his already exhausted body far more than he was prepared to. "Are you okay?" he panted, thrashing and twisting. His eyes swept up and down my crumpled figure. "What did they do to you?"

Nothing, I wanted to say. What did they do to you? But my voice was gone again. I was back here—my freedom had been a tease—I was back here again—

"I'll kill all of you," Fang snarled. Whatever color had returned to his face in rage was seeping away slowly as he lost energy. His struggle became more half-hearted. The soldiers snorted at his words.

"I'm sure you will," one of them droned. Both men threw him to the ground a couple of yards from me. He instantly sprang back to his feet and shuffled in front of me protectively, throwing his arms out wide. I saw his wings bulge a fraction against their confines. The bandage at his side got a little redder.

The third soldier raised his gun again, this time dead at the center of Fang's chest. "You're disposable," he said to Fang in a reminding tone. From what I could see of Fang's profile, it was clear he was deciding whether or not the soldier was bluffing.

I choked out half a cry, hating myself for being so weak. I wanted desperately to tell him how much danger he was in, resisting like he was—I wished I had told him every last detail of my time here. He wasn't prepared. There was no way he could be prepared.

Fang's head suddenly swiveled around the room, eyes narrowing as if searching for something in the dusky light. "Where is he?" he asked, voice dropping into a lethal spit.

"Don't know who you're talking about," said one of the soldiers coyly.

"You know who I'm talking about," Fang shouted. The sound reverberated off the walls like a dull roar. This was about as dangerous as he could get. Fang rarely raised his voice, but when he did, it was something to be afraid of. "Tell me!"

The soldier cocked the shotgun, staring down the barrel at Fang's chest.

A few things happened at once.

I unfroze from my spot on the ground, flinging myself forward to stand in front of Fang. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Fang reach forward for me. The soldier adjusted his killshot-aim directly to my heart. Behind me, Fang stilled. "Max—"

"He's disposable?" I tried to make my voice as much of a sneer as I could manage in my disheartened state. I was impressed with the results. "What about me? Am I disposable? Mallory's precious, one-of-a-kind Maximum Ride?"

The soldier didn't budge.

"Go ahead!" I shouted, hysteria creeping into my voice. Hot, fat tears sprung to the corners of my eyes. I blinked rapidly to try to keep them contained. "You took everything else, why not my life? Shoot me!"

"Acton," said the shorter of the two other soldiers. I recognized him. I could tell he was trying to hide the nervousness from his voice. "Lower the gun."

He—Acton—adjusted the shotgun a couple of inches, aiming somewhere over my shoulder. I stepped backward, nearly bumping into Fang.

"Do you know how fast my reflexes are?" I spat. "Because I'll show you. I will take that bullet so fast. If you want any chance of me cooperating, you will put the gun down and never threaten his life again."

For a moment, Acton and I stared each other down. I could feel my strength waning, but just as I was certain he'd outlast me, he lowered the shotgun and turned on his heel.

"You missed dinner," Acton called over his shoulder casually as he stomped out the door. The two other soldiers followed behind him.

At my back, Fang flinched like he was going to make a move for the exit—I held out two fingers behind me. Wait. He had no chance.

They would shoot him again and aim to kill this time.

The door closed, but dim overhead light stayed on. Fang sprinted to the closed door, running his hands along each crease in the metal. He banged his fists a couple of times before hanging his head. His eyes then traced the ceiling and finally all four walls.

I backed up slowly until I felt the cool cement of the wall against my back and slid slowly to the floor, dumping my head atop my knees again.

Fang gave up on looking for an escape route and turned his attention to me, eyes wild like a starving animal's.

"Did they hurt you?" Fang asked, kneeling at my side with a hand on my shoulder. I made myself take a couple of huge breaths. Do not panic. Do not panic.

"Max?" he asked, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear. His blue-black gaze was absolutely blazing. "If they touched you, I swear to God…"

I pulled my head back up, my best leader face painted on as thick as I could manage. I shook my head firmly. "I'm fine. Let me look at that," I said, gesturing to the bandage at his side.

Fang looked down as if he'd forgotten he'd been shot. "It just grazed me," he said, waving an arm off. "I woke up in the medical wing, I'm—"

I ripped off the ends of the sweatpants of his I was wearing, folding them into something vaguely resembling gauze. "Lay back," I demanded. "I will not have you bleeding out in this dungeon."

"Max," he said quietly. "This is the least of my concerns right now."

"Yeah, well, it's the most of mine. Lay. Back."

Doing something physical was good. Keeping my hands busy was good. Sitting around with Fang asking me every fifteen seconds if I was okay and staring at me like I was back in the dilapidated prison that had kept me for four years—which I was—was entirely counterproductive.

He read the expression on my face and settled back on the ground, pulling up his ragged shirt to expose the saturated bandage.

"They're not going to give us more dressing supplies, so this will have to go back on until one of the medics changes it." Gently, I peeled the paper tape back, revealing a wound about two inches in diameter that had, at one point, been stitched completely shut. The middle half-inch had split open.

Fang sucked in a breath as I studied the wound. We'd had much deeper wounds that had never been stitched shut—for all the testing they did on me, they still had a lot to learn. "Ripped stitches," I said, applying pressure on his side. "Should heal fine on its own."

Laying on the floor, he still looked sallow, but altogether much less like he might faint at any minute.

"Why would they take you?" I said, more to myself than anyone else.

"Buy one get one?" Fang said drily, wincing as I peeled back the fabric to inspect my progress. He leaned up on his forearms to inspect the injury, abdominal muscles tensing as he did. The wound was still weeping a bit, so I applied more pressure.

"He shot you," I said, shaking my head in disbelief. "Why would he shoot you just to bring you back here, treat you, and then lock you up with me?"

"Why would any of these people do what they do?"

It was rhetorical. I answered him anyway. "Because they can," I whispered.

I reapplied the paper tape and wrapped one of the clean strips of fabric over the dressing and around his middle, cinching it tightly. He sat up all the way, massaging one of his knees with his knuckles.

"The skin will close by tomorrow," he said, once again trying to play down the fact that he'd been shot. "Where have you been all this time?"

"In here," I said. "They had the lights out. I think I started to go crazy."

Fang's face was stony. "Have you seen Gazzy?"

My heart stopped and then restarted at a sprint. Gazzy wasn't here. Gazzy was back at the house. That's why I hadn't seen Gazzy. "What do you mean, have I seen Gazzy?"

Fang gritted his teeth so tightly together that he actually showed them, perfect rows of chiclets beneath his split lip. The unhinged part of me remembered the days he'd bared his canines in an attempt to scare off the whitecoats from all of us; how he'd used his teeth as a defense mechanism.

"He heard the gunshots from the deck, I think. After they chloroformed you, he tried to use the element of surprise, threw a couple of smoke bombs, but they overpowered him. I passed out at some point after that."

He was wringing his hands together again. "So he's here," I said unnecessarily.

"Has to be," he said. He looked around the room again and then back at me. "This is my fault."

"What—?"

"I really didn't think they'd come back. It's been six years since Itex fell. Six. This copycat lab pops up, they imprison and torture a girl for four years, and when she escapes, they don't worry for a second that she'll out them?"

I was suddenly so, incredibly exhausted. "I don't know. The boss obviously knew we didn't do that after escaping the School."

He looked like he wanted to say more, but decided against it. The look of self-depreciation he'd mastered in my time away clouded his already shadowy features.

Fang stood and walked over to the door, favoring his right side just a bit. He had a hand wrapped over his wound.

"There's no way out," I said tiredly as he began inspecting the steel door for the nth time. He looked over his shoulder at me. "I've been here before. Several times."

He turned back to the door, leaning his forehead against it. "How big is this place?"

"Pretty big," I answered. "We're in the front wing. There's a big rec room at the end of this hall where they do physical tests. Medical wing is a little further past it. Some testing rooms there. Offices past there, I think. A couple of boarding rooms. They kept me there towards the end."

Fang's shoulders were hunched. Every facet of his body language indicated that he was defeated. He looked up again, studying where the top of the door met the wall. "We will get out of here," he said. I'm not sure which of us he was trying to convince. Maybe it was both of us.

A gnawing sort of unease had settled over me. "Fang, I spent four years trying to break out of here."

"You succeeded once. Very recently."

"That was a freak accident," I breathed. "Right place, right time, right circumstance—"

"We're freaks, and accidents happen." I bit back the frustrated scream I wanted to let loose. Fang sensed my impatience and changed his tone. "You're not alone this time."

I shook my head. "They're stronger than us. Stronger than you. Faster."

"We've had worse odds."

I sighed and dumped my head into my hands. Fang stalked back from the door and paced in front of where I sat against the far wall.

"Iggy knows something's wrong," he said.

With that, I wilted a bit further. "Oh, no," I lamented.

Fang stopped pacing, eyes boring into me. "What?"

"His friend," I said quietly. "What was her name?"

A flicker of recognition lit Fang's eyes. He frowned. "Cara," he said.

"Cara," I parroted. "Oh, God…"

Fang knelt in front of me, hands on my shoulders, trying to force me to make eye contact. "Breathe," he said. I realized I'd started hyperventilating again.

"Another person dead, because of me," I choked out, pressing a hand to my chest. My heart was running the steeplechase.

"Can't think like that," he said quietly. He tipped my chin up with one giant hand, squeezing my cheeks as he did. "Stop. Don't think about that right now. Iggy will find us."

"How long did you spend looking for me?" I challenged, my voice gaining a bit of strength. I couldn't handle his optimism—he hadn't been here, he didn't understand. "We don't even know where we are."

"This place got lucky the first time," he said through gritted teeth. His boots scuffled against the cement floor as he resumed pacing. "There's no way they didn't leave some sort of a trail."

The sound of heavy footsteps echoed outside the door. Fang pivoted to stand in front of me again, arms wide at his sides, as if he could possibly protect me from anything that this place could throw at us.

As the footsteps got closer, he changed his tactic, advancing through the room to stand at the side of the doorway. "Fang," I whispered urgently, "don't—"

He held a finger to his lips and crouched as if he were ready to attack.

The door slid open, and Fang was able to take half a step towards the intruder before Mallory's massive hand was wrapped around his throat. "Stop!" I screamed, struggling to get to my feet quickly enough.

It was pointless. Mallory had Fang at least a foot off the ground by the neck, and he carried him across the room toward the iron loops in the walls. Fang was kicking his feet feebly, hands moving up to claw at his neck, face turning blue—I thought of how, just days before, I'd done the same to him in our living room, and he'd let me choke him so as not to overpower me with his strength—

Mallory used his free hand to lock an iron cuff around Fang's ankle. At the end of a three-foot chain was another iron cuff, and he hooked this one to the wall. He dropped Fang to the ground unforgivingly.

Fang sputtered for air, both hands coming to his neck to massage his windpipe. His face changed back to its normal color and he launched forward against his restraint, gasping as his ankle pulled backward on the chain.

His breathing was ragged, but he continued to struggle as Mallory turned towards me. "Get away from her!"

I scurried against the wall, trying to put myself closer to Fang and further from Mallory. I ended up in the corner, ten feet or so from Fang, who had stretched his body as far as he could against the chain. He reached a hand out toward me, eyes wild and tortured as Mallory approached.

Fang was inconsolable, face red as he shouted in a way I'd never heard him do before. I could hear his voice but couldn't process what he was saying.

Mallory, with a steel-toed boot, stomped on Fang's outstretched hand.

My vision tunneled as he approached me, Fang's howl of pain rocketing off the walls like a firework. I backed myself as far as I could into the corner, wishing I could shrink and climb in between the cracks of the wall.

"Welcome home," he said. The sliminess of his voice sent a shiver down my spine. My breathing quickened and a ball of nausea settled at the pit of my stomach.

"You must've known you wouldn't stay gone for long," he continued. He stopped and stood at his full height in front of me, peering down at my collapsed form. A wicked smile came to his lips.

One of his hands reached down and grabbed mine, flinging me to my feet roughly. He pushed me into the wall and pinned my arms above me with one of his hands. I tried to free myself but could not even budge against his grasp.

My brain shut down. It was a defense mechanism I hadn't asked for but was grateful to have. Fang was nearly purple from screaming and pulling against the chain—one of Mallory's fingers traced the curve of my cheek to the bottom of my chin—I knew the ugly hazel-green of his eyes; the color of crabgrass, the color of seaweed. The color of vomit. My heart hammered in my chest.

His face was inches from mine, his ashy, revolting scent rolling over me in waves. His greasy black ponytail was dumped over one shoulder. "A little birdie told me," he began, tapping my bottom lip with his finger, "that we did the impossible." He smiled that crooked, fucked up smile, teeth yellowed from too much nicotine and chewing tobacco.

I jerked my head to the side, trying to calm my breathing. At this rate, I was going to pass out from lack of oxygen.

We did the impossible.

A bolt of utter dread ripped through me like a lightning bolt. He knew that I'd been pregnant.

How?

"Don't touch her!" Fang's voice broke through the bubble Mallory had created.

In a moment of bravery, I lifted a knee as fast as I could, aiming for between his legs. I don't know what I hoped would happen—there was no way I could actually hurt him—but he dodged my attack swiftly, positioning his body flush to mine, pinning me against the wall.

"Stubborn," Mallory said at my neck. "We know where you family is. And we have the blonde boy. He's alive. If you want to keep it that way, I suggest you cooperate."

Gazzy.

"Don't you dare hurt him," I whispered, trying to channel my terror into anger. "You have me. Don't hurt him."

Mallory's lips dusted over my throat; he parted them and nipped at my carotid. Fang was still struggling against his restraints ten feet away. "I have you." He repeated my words, and I felt his lips curl to a smile. "Don't forget it."

The door slid open behind us, but Mallory didn't move from his position against me. "Sir," said one of the soldiers, addressing him formally, as they always did. "You're needed up front."

Mallory's free hand ran along my chin again, tipping my head forward. He said something—his lips moved—but I couldn't hear him, not over my pulse rushing like a waterfall in my ears. That free hand came up to my neck, finding the carotid artery on either side, and before the spots even filled my vision, I knew exactly what he was doing.

Fang was yelling in a panicked voice, but I was a thousand miles away, dancing the line of unconsciousness as Mallory lowered me, limp as a corpse, to the dusty ground.

Max's body hit the ground like a sack of flour, and the deranged part of Fang was certain she was dead.

Mallory turned on his heel, slid the door open, and was gone. Several seconds later, the lights cut, plunging the two of them into darkness.

"Max," Fang panted. He pulled with every single ounce of strength he had against the cuff on his ankle. "Max—"

He dragged himself across the dusty floor on his stomach, ignoring the fiery pain in his abdomen and the definitely crushed bones of his left hand. Stretched to his full six-feet-whatever, with a long arm as far over his head as he could reach, he could just dust his fingers against the cool skin of Max's wrist.

He jostled her forearm, desperate for some sort of confirmation that she was alive. If she was dead—if Mallory had killed her—

He bit his lip to force back the obsessive thoughts that he knew would take over him. Keep it together.

"Max?"

In the silence, Fang heard a ragged breath, and then another. The tension in his body unraveled just a bit. She was alive. Her pulse danced under his fingertips. Unconscious, but alive.

He rubbed his thumb in circles against her skin and allowed his forehead to drop against the cold floor.

"Come on, Iggy," he said.

Song: "Ordinary Day" by Duran Duran, cover version by Joy Williams.

I realize this chapter is shorter—I wanted to get an update out and also want to start fresh with the next chapter. I've finally finalized (I think) where I want this story to go. I'm not the type to thoroughly plan out my writing; I kind of let ideas come to me and write as I go. This is probably part of why I'd never have success as an author, or really any other career that involves long-term planning. Flying by the seat of my pants, over here.

A couple of people commented that they didn't think this would be so fast-moving, and I'm glad! Like I said above—I'll never be an author—and most of my fics were typically short back in the day when I wrote, so they moved. I'm not sure how long this one will be—we've definitely got a ways to go.