A/N - I'm disappointed no-one's reading or reviewing my story, if I were more into the young generation's text talk stuff I would be putting a sad face. But I won't. So to combat this I have decided that reviews now earn 20 redemption points and remember that one kitten will cost 57 redemption points. So please review.

Disclaimer - I don't believe in ownership anymore, material goods are irrelevant, we all die anyway. If anyone was inspired by that, feel free to send all your worldly possessions to me and I shall ensure that you won't be corrupted by the evils of material goods.

Rogue Mantis Chapter 10

Max's POV

When I woke up, the others were still out and we were strapped to tables. On the positive side, they weren't dog crates; on the negative side we were still trapped. The others started to wake up one at a time, as soon as Pythus woke up; he tried to break out and failed miserably. Not even Spectre or whatever the hell his name is, could get out, he couldn't pass through the straps that restrained us. Then I noticed the smell, antisepticy and sterile, the flock and I hate it. It was all I could do to not have a panic attack, the flock were having similar problems and surprisingly so did Pythus.

Max calm down, this wasn't part of the plan, something's gone wrong; someone's been intercepting and interfering with my transmissions.

"What was the freaking plan then?" I shouted, thankfully Pythus didn't shout at the same time.

We intended for you and Pythus to prevent his personality from leaking into your mind or yours leaking into his mind.

"You mean you were never going to get rid of this psychic link thing in the first place?" Well this sucks, we came here to get rid of the link thing and now we're trapped in the institute and we find out that they never were going to get rid of it in the first place, and the worst part of it all, One of Pythus' psychotic teammates is singing 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life' completely out of tune, good to know I've got my priorities right.

So we were stuck there playing 'I-spy' for ages with Iggy making sarcastic comments about him being blind. Pythus was still struggling against his bonds, still making no progress.

"I thought you had more than a hundred knives or something." I called over "Can't you cut your way out?"

"They disarmed me, unfortunately they learn from their mistakes. They took our other weapons as well." He shot back

"Glad to see they're being thorough" I spat; he really is the most annoying person ever, even worse than Fang or Dylan.

"This is all your fault you know." He snarled at no one in particular.

"My fault? How is it my fault? You're the psycho whose fault it is, if you hadn't tried to kill me none of this would have happened!"

"If you had complied with your execution, none of this would have happened either, I was just doing my job!" Everyone had gone quiet now; all were listening to the argument, not wanting to miss anything.

"'Comply' with my execution! How many people have you killed that 'complied' with their execution. Anyway, you didn't 'comply' with your execution!"

"I wouldn't have had to break out if you hadn't died like you were supposed to; we were supposed to save the world by killing you, besides you've got off easy. Andrea's mouth has been clamped shut so she can't use her acidic saliva; Angel has a psychic dampener strapped to her head; Nudge has electromagnets hooked up to her arms and I'm missing an arm!"

"Missing an arm?" This revelation shocked me, they hadn't hurt the rest of us why him?

"Accident long time ago, fire at the school and I got caught right in the middle of it, it melted part of my armour so it fused to my skeleton. It hurt like hell after and the whitecoats couldn't get it off, I told you they'd disarmed me." He half-joked, I rolled my eyes at his twisted humour, Iggy and Gazzy just busted out laughing.

"If anyone feels like developing some freakish new mutation, now would be a good time." I told the group, Itex had learned from its mistakes, good for them, bad for us. Nudge couldn't magnetise anything, Angel can't use her powers, Pythus has lost all his knives and an arm and none of his lot can use their powers either. We are well and truly doomed.

Pythus' POV

I hate being trapped, I am terrified by enclosed spaces, no matter how big they are and if I can't get to the sky I hate it. To make things worse, I'm missing my right arm, there's just a bleeding stump where they cut just above the elbow. But that part doesn't matter much, I can always get Andrea and Dodger to make me a new arm; they excel at mechanics and that sort of thing. What gets me is that we've been trapped here for an unknown amount of time and probably will be for some time.

Several hours later.

I woke with a start; I'd fallen asleep without noticing. I was still in the room with the others, they were asleep. Oh great, they gassed us, then I realised my arm wasn't hurting any more. I turned my head to look at it; the whitecoats had attached a new arm. I'd say they weren't bad if they hadn't just gassed us, chopped off my arm in the first place and tried to kill us. But the new arm wasn't that bad, it looked weird, I could see all the internal workings, I could see the bits of metal flex when I moved my fingers. So I wasn't going to bleed to death; that was probably why the white coats fixed up my arm. We were still strapped to the tables, which wasn't an improvement but slightly better than dog crates. Soon after everyone else had woken up, the door to the room slid open and the bane of my existence, Ter Borcht, marched in, flanked by two nanomite guards. I summoned up all of my recently acquired sarcasm to throw at him, but he ignored me entirely and spoke to the two guards.

"I only require Maximum Ride and Experiment 234, the others are not required, exterminate them." Talk about efficient, they've cleaned up their act, no incompetent fools, just the kind of operation I would run. But in my current position I wasn't appreciative of their concern about their shoddy track record. So they wheeled the flock and my team out of the room, some of them looked pretty scared, thinking back perhaps I should've tried to look reassuring.

"So, ve have captured you just like ve said ve vould." He smirked down at me. "Though I strongly argued against it, ve have replaced your missing arm as a show of goodvill."

"What's the catch? I know this is real nice and all but haven't you ever heard of 'there's no such thing as a free lunch'? Tell us what you want." I snap back, quickly losing my patience with Ter Borcht.

"Alvays straight to the point Experiment 234, ve merely vant to study you and Maximum and the psychic bond you have created."

"And I'm sure that's all you want to do." Max broke into the conversation

"Vell, if you help us, ve vill not retire you, you could be pivotal in our plans."

"And what are these plans exactly?" I asked him, I was intrigued by his offer of non-retirement.

"Ve are re-initiating the re-evolution plan."

"Don't you psychos ever give up? We stopped you once we'll stop you again." Max interrupted again.

"Max, shut up!" I yelled at her, I was sick of her constant interruptions, and then nodded to Ter Borcht to continue.

"Ve only need one of you to study but that one needs to be cooperative but it vould be better if ve had the two of you."

"And you seriously think that we'll cooperate?" She then glanced over at me and a look of horror crept over her face. "Oh no, you can't seriously be thinking of joining him. If you look in a dictionary, under 'untrustworthy' you'll find a picture of him under it and under 'gullible', 'stupid' and 'idiot' you'll find a picture of you."

"Think about it Max, not being hunted down by Itex, not having to stay on the run all the time. I don't know about you but I'm going to work with them." I told her.

"But what about your team?" She asked desperately.

"I never cared about them; they were just teammates, never friends." I then turned to Ter Borcht "I'll do it; I'll help you if you give me your word that you won't retire me."

"I give you my vord, and you Max, vill you help us?"

"No freaking way!" She yelled at him in that oh so eloquent manner of hers, then spat in his face.

"Fine, take her to the holding cells, vith the mistakes to be terminated. And unstrap him."

"Pythus please don't do this." She was pleading with me; I've never heard her do that before.

"My name is not Pythus, I have no name my designation is Experiment 234." I informed her coldly, as I turned my back on her as she was wheeled out of the room.

Max's POV

That freaking idiot, how could he trust them? I was wheeled through several corridors until I was deposited roughly in a room with the flock and Experiment 234's team.

"Max, what's happened?" Gazzy asked, he looked scared.

"He turned traitor, Experiment 234 turned traitor." I told him, I could tell how defeated I sounded.

"Pythus turn traitor? I don't believe it." Stated one of his teammates.

"You'd better believe it mate." Even I couldn't believe it, we were stuck somewhere under New York, Experiment 234 had turned traitor and the flock and team were sentenced to death. I couldn't see how we were going to get out of this one.