Tokoloshe Monster and SydneyLouWho both looked over this chapter for me. And both of them are level of Leslie-Knope-esque compliments about their intelligence and writing ability. Additionally! nathan-p was the one who described to me what Colorado-type accents sound like. I'm very grateful, as I am godawful about sounds.

The sun was setting over the mountains, painting the sky in oranges and the purple-blue of clouds. I was on the edge of a canyon, my feet kicking out over empty air, Fang's hand resting under mine. I tilted my head back and opened my wings just enough to feel the warm air rustle against my feathers. Everything was so warm—my skin, after a long day in the sun, the scratchy grass beneath my legs, Fang's fingers entwined with mine.

"You're so beautiful like this," Fang said, and I looked over to him. He was in his usual raven-black attire, looking paler than normal. Why was that? I liked his olive-brown skin. Something—something was—

Fang shifted his head to meet my gaze. His eyes locked on mine, and my thoughts washed away. And it didn't bother me. The air flowing past my legs was like a river, and even though the canyon beneath us had no water, we could swim in it just fine.

"You, too," I said, even if it wasn't true. Fang and his sharp lines and sudden paleness weren't a part of this orange-river world; he was better suited for silky night skies and innumerable twinkling stars. Whereas Iggy was the clean gray light before sunrise, cold river water swirling and whirling. Speaking of—

"Where are the others?" They were supposed to be here, too. Nudge loved watching the skies, and she took pride in being able to describe them to Iggy. Gazzy would take running leaps into the night air even if he had a sprained ankle, and Ari and Angel had yet to get tired of me telling them about the summer night when we escaped from the School. Not only that, but the sky was now a deep red—Ari's favorite color. He'd tried to tell Iggy what it looked like once, with Nudge helping him.

When Fang didn't respond, my stomach twisted. It was too quiet, just the two of us sitting on the edge of the world. I tore my gaze away from his to stare down at the canyon, to look at the sandstone walls bleeding with red light.

"Fang," I said, and the word slipped out into the empty air around us. The weight of the sky was on my shoulders, in my lungs, and I felt so immeasurably small. "Fang, answer me."

"I'm so sorry, Max," Fang whispered, his voice hoarse. "But don't you know?" He raised an arm and pointed down at the canyon floor, hundreds of feet away.

The broken bodies of my family were piled in a heap, surrounded by a widening pool of their blood.

"Oh, God." I was far away—impossibly far away. But I could still see a worm pushing its way through Nudge's rotting eye, and I could hear flesh rip away as rats gnawed at Ari's arms and legs. My jaw tingled, and my mouth filled with saliva—I was a half-heartbeat away from barfing my guts out. To try to distract myself, I turned back to Fang. "How?"

"You—" His words were cut off abruptly, and something warm and wet splattered against my cheek. I raised my hand to my face and my fingertips came away crimson.

"Fang?"

He was falling, his body spiraling through empty air. Blood trailed behind him, and I could just make out a bullet wound on the back of his neck. He didn't open his wings, didn't even twitch them. Instead he hit the rocky ground with a messy splat.

Even from my spot up above, I could see how his skull had caved in, could tell that his neck had snapped. Part of me wanted to call out, and every bit of my body screamed at me to go down to him. But I couldn't. I was rooted in place, my hands clutching at the cloth of the surgical gown that I was wearing.

Night was coming. From the woods behind me I could hear Erasers, and I scrambled to my feet so I could face them. Moonlight glinted off of their bared teeth and shone off of the guns they held at the ready.

Unconsciously I took a step back, over empty air. Before I could make the choice to jump I was free-falling, my arms pinwheeling, the world blurring around me. I unfurled my wings and pushed down—

But I couldn't get airborne. There was a hand around my ankle, colder than the night air around me. I looked down and saw Fang.

Or rather, what was left of him. Half of his face was unrecognizable and pinkish-gray brain matter was smeared in his hair.

"Stay with us," he hissed.

I shrieked and flapped harder, barely gaining a foot of freedom. And then Angel grabbed my other ankle. "It's your fault," she gasped. A snake slithered out of her mouth and up my leg, and the feel of its slimy scales, slimy from time spent in Angel's guts, made my skin crawl.

They were dragging me down. I tipped my head back so I could see the cliff, and I reached out to the Erasers looking over the edge. Hope or desperation made me reach out to them.

"Please," I shouted. Nudge's hand covered my mouth, and the stench of rotting flesh made my eyes water. "Please just shoot me," I choked out.

The Erasers laughed—harsh, barking sounds—and turned away.

Panic bubbled up, and I redoubled my efforts to get free. I kicked out with bare feet, smashing Fang's skull again. My legs were sticky with blood, but I was gaining altitude. I could get away from this. Bones snapped as I finally kicked free from Angel, but Nudge was unshakeable and Fang's fingers might as well have been made of iron.

"Don't be sad," Ari said. I twisted my head to see him. His shirt and stomach had been ripped open, and his guts hung out, gray with rot. They slapped against his stomach and legs as he took a step forward. "We're all together now. Isn't that what you want, Max?"

Gazzy's hand took Angel's place around my calf. "Max," he whispered.

"Max," Fang wheezed.

Iggy's hand closed over Fang's, his nails drawing blood. "Max." His voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

"Max! Max, come on!"

I woke up covered in sweat, my blanket tangled around my legs. Nudge's hand was on my shoulder, her eyes filled with worry. "Max, it's like ten!"

"Gimme a minute," I wheezed, and rolled over, breathing hard. I kicked my blanket away and spread my arms wide, luxuriating in how free I felt. Nightmares were the worst, and I'd be looking over my shoulder all day—but knowing that it was just a dream, that I was safe in the real world with a clear blue sky stretching endlessly above me—it didn't get much better than that.

And then I remembered where I was. In friggin' Arizona, with half a Flock, a kidnapped little brother, and no food.

Crudbuckets. I sat myself up and brushed off the reddish sand that had decided to get everywhere, shoved my blanket into my bag, and tried to ignore the aching of my empty stomach. I had eaten my last protein bar at about eight last night, when we had settled down here, on the far shore of Lake Mead. And water? Forget about it. We had tried drinking lakewater, but Nudge puked after half a liter, and none of us wanted to start up a fire to boil it. Fire was an easy way to get noticed, Jeb had told us. In the forest it didn't make much of a difference—we were at least thirty miles away from the nearest town. But here? When we landed, I had seen a glowing set of golden arches. We were a stone's throw away from civilization, which meant that there were police.

"How're you holding up?" I asked Nudge. She was a lot more put-together than I was, for sure. She wasn't covered in sand, her clothes weren't stuck to her with sweat, and she had even put barrettes in her hair. Given the prevalence of rainbows and sparkles, she had nicked a couple of Angel's.

She shrugged her skinny shoulders. "I'm hungry. Like, I woke up when the sun rose because I was hungry but you were still sleeping and Fang is… still still sleeping, I guess, and I didn't want to wake you up since you both took watches and I didn't, so I washed my clothes in the lake because they were all sweaty—speaking of, do you want to borrow my deodorant? You kinda need it. And I managed to bring that peach body soap/shampoo combo that you like, in case you want to wash your hair in the lake."

"Fang's still sleeping?" I could deal with minor issues, like personal hygiene and starvation, later. Fang had taken some serious hits last afternoon, and I wanted to make sure that he was okay.

Nudge pointed at a spot over my shoulder, and I did my best not to flinch. Sure enough, there was a Fang-shaped lump of blanket still on the ground. I headed over, crouching about three feet away from him. My stomach churned. I knew, logically, that my dream was just that—a dream. But the sight of Fang's bashed-in skull flashed before my eyes, and logic didn't matter so much.

I gritted my teeth. Fear was a message. I had to ignore it.

I prodded Fang. "C'mon, wake up."

He flinched at my touch and rolled around to face me, flopping like a fish out of water. His eyes were bleary, and his face was still pale from blood loss. He had been shaky in the air yesterday as the day went on, and I was glad that Nudge had asked to stop when she did. Fang was too stubborn to let me know he was hurt.

Nudge bounded over. "Hey Fang! Can you please, like, get your butt in gear? I'm starving. And Ari's got to be starving too; remember how they would only feed us like twice a day? And it was super puny for us, because, like, metabolism stuff, but it's not gonna be that good for him either. Like I don't think that two peanut butter sandwiches a day is good for anybody. But oh my god I would do anything for a peanut butter sandwich I haven't had anything for hours."

Fang shrugged and started to wriggle out of the cocoon he had made of his blanket.

"Are you hungry?" I asked as he packed the blanket into his knapsack. It was a stupid question. I could tell by the dark circles under his eyes and the way that his hands shook that he needed some nutrition, stat.

He just shrugged. Again.

I groaned. "Not an answer, Fang."

He pulled a face as he pulled on his windbreaker. "I could eat." He shouldered his pack and stood. I didn't miss the way he had to shift to steady himself—like his world had turned into gray dots.

"Alright," I said, and stood. "That settles it. We're getting food."

"How?" Nudge asked. "Are we gonna dumpster dive? Because it's blistering hot and I think the food will have started rotting, and also we're going to get garbage juice all over our clothes and hair and what if we get caught, like, I don't want to go to jail for dumpster diving especially because I've never been dumpster diving and I don't think any of us have unless you've been sneaking off to do it without Jeb knowing. So we'd do it, like, the wrong way, and get arrested, and I don't want to get arrested because then they'd send me to Area 51 like you said the other day and I don't want to—"

"We have saved money," I said. "How do you guys feel about a McBreakfast?" One of the many perks of being a bird kid is that we can eat hideously wonderful junk food and not gain a pound.

Nudge gawped. "Really?" Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates. Fully loaded ones, like at Thanksgiving, with a whole turkey drumstick and two heaping cups of mashed potatoes—

I shook myself out of it, rubbing at my mouth to remove any possible drool. "Really."

"Sounds good," Fang said.

We headed into town, trying to look as unsuspicious as possible. Which is kind of hard to do when you're an unwashed teenager wearing a heavy jacket in the middle of summer. Thankfully, the town was just about empty. There was an old lady walking a dog who looked even older than her, but she was more or less the only person on the street.

It was like I was on the edge of the world again, and any second Fang would drop off. I shoved my hands in the pockets of my jacket, rubbing my fingers against the leather to ensure that it wouldn't turn into the scratchy fabric of a surgical gown.

Compared to the stifling heat of the sidewalk, the air-conditioned McDonald's was heaven. While Nudge and Fang ordered I took a quiet moment to stand still with my eyes closed, basking in the cool air. But it ended, like most moments did, and I stepped up to the register behind Fang.

"Hi," I said. "Can I get the big breakfast with hotcakes, um, and a yogurt parfait, and cinnamon melts?"

The girl behind the register nodded as she punched in my order.

I had to rummage through my backpack to find my money bag, and counting out individual coins was a pain, but I had more than enough to pay for the three of us.

"Y'all have a nice day," said the girl behind the cash register. Her voice was soft and she had a strong Southern accent, which was kind of weird—I had grown up listening to Jeb's Cali drawl. And when we did go into town, we'd be surrounded by Colorado accents, which I guess we picked up—broader, slower when it came to pronouncing words. Hearing this was like hearing a whole new language.

Nudge beamed at her. "Thanks!"

The torturously long wait for our food was, without any exaggeration, one of the longest stretches of time in my entire life. To be that close to food cooking, to be able to smell it, and to not be able to eat it—it was enough to make my stomach growl like a rabid dog. But finally all three of us had trays and were able to settle down at a table near the window.

"Max," Nudge said after inhaling half a sausage roll, "how're we gonna get Ari? What's the plan?" She took a swig of orange juice. "I was thinking that we, we could—"

"We could eat our breakfasts in peace and quiet," Fang suggested, stirring creamer into his coffee. He reached across the table to steal a forkful of my eggs.

I batted his hand away. "Nudge, look," I said. "I'm worried about Ari, too. But right now we need to focus on where we are. We need to get to him before we can do anything."

She sighed and shoved the rest of her sausage roll into her mouth, savaging it the way lions tore into living gazelles. She swallowed and grinned. "Max, what did the vegetable say when it was being strangled?"

Fang buried his face in his hands, letting his fork and knife fall onto his mostly-emptied plate.

I shrugged. "I don't know, what?"

Her grin got wider. "Help, you're arti-choking me!"

The pun was godawful, but looking at her bright smile and seeing Fang roll his eyes, both of them shining in the late-morning sunlight—it was beautiful, in a surreal kind of way. We were hundreds of miles away from home, hundreds of miles away from where we needed to be. But we were also here, and now, and none of us were starving or on the verge of passing out.

Laughter bubbled up and spilled out, and I had to cover my mouth so I didn't spray half-chewed food all over the place.

That was when I saw the guy. It was out of the corner of my eye, and only for a flicker of a second, but I could have sworn that I saw a man in a suit, standing at the other side of the road. He was tall with broad shoulders and plenty of muscle, and he was fiddling with something in his hands.

A chill ran down my spine, and my legs tensed beneath the table. Without looking, I could feel Fang do the same, getting ready to break the window and jump out if necessary.

I shot a glance at Nudge. She had dropped her parfait, and picked her backpack up from the floor. Judging from the bulges in the fabric of her cover jacket near the tops of her shoulders, she had begun to unfurl her wings.

"Max, what is it? Did you see something?" She was like a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming van.

I tore my eyes away from her face to stare out the window again. The man in the suit was gone. Like he had never been there at all. Had I just imagined him? Dreamed him up because I couldn't have a good moment with my family?

"Max?" Nudge asked, her voice high.

"No," I said. I swallowed, tried to sound more convincing. "No, I didn't see anything. We're fine."

Fang and Nudge both relaxed, picking up their food and continuing like nothing had happened. Nudge even tried to start up a conversation, and her voice sounded like the wind screaming through the mountains. I couldn't focus. Not on her, not on my food, not on the man who wasn't there anymore.

I snagged Fang's coffee cup and drained it before he could stop me, relishing the rush of caffeine and sugar.

"Let's hit the road," I said.

We dumped our trash and headed out the door, Nudge waving at the cashier as she went. I headed off, back to the lake, but Fang put his hand on my shoulder.

"I saw a couple of cars headed out there," he said. "Tourists."

I nodded and set off in the opposite direction. This town was puny, so it wouldn't be that hard to get out into the desert. We'd take off there, and nobody'd be the wiser. And then in a few hours, we'd be on the School's doorstep, ready to bust Ari out and head back home.

We didn't leave the town so much as it did us—slowly there were fewer houses lining the streets, and finally we were walking down an empty road. Well—almost empty. Up ahead of us there was a group of kids about our age. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. They were headed home—headed back from a job, headed off to do homework, coming back from the movies. They'd never know what flying felt like, never feel the rush of being thousands of feet above the ground. Maybe they'd never even been outside of this tiny town.

But at the same time they'd never suffer from hunger cramps severe enough to make them puke. They wouldn't wake up covered in sweat from the nightmares about what they went through. And they'd never have to leave half their family behind on a near-suicidal mission to rescue their kidnapped little brothers.

It sounded nice when I thought of it like that. But it also sounded really, really boring. I was ready to shrug off these kids, this inconsequential group of humans, when I noticed something.

Most of them were my age or older. And guys. Big, beefy guys with sunburnt skin. One even had a shotgun resting in the crook of his arm, and one looked like he juggled tractors for a living. But the one in the middle?

She was a girl. Petite, barely five feet tall, maybe Nudge's age. She had her shoulders squared, and she took each step slowly.

Now I know that the world is full of strange, unexplainable happenstances. I have freaking wings, for God's sake. And the man from earlier was decidedly unexplainable. But this right here? Was not a coincidence.

I adjusted my backpack on my shoulders and sped up.

Fang kept pace with me. "Max, no."

I glared at him. "Max, yes."

He sighed, and that was when Nudge jostled my elbow. "Max?" she said. "Do you see those guys? That looks kinda like a bad situation, you know, like, stranger danger, and—oh my God they have a gun."

I set my jaw. "I'm going to help her."

Fang sighed. "You can't save everybody."

He had said that nine months ago, when we had found a den of rabbits abandoned by their mother. And I had ignored him then, gathering them all up into my backpack and taking them home. And he had complained the whole way back, but he had helped feed them, and I think he had teared up when we let them go free.

So what if I couldn't save everybody? I could still do the right thing.

"I'm going to help her," I told him. "You can—"

"I'm going with you," Nudge said. She stuck her jaw out.

I sighed, not wanting to argue with her. "Fine. Fang, you can go back to Lake Mead if you want. We'll meet up with you."

Fang stared at me for a long moment, and then shook his head.

Excellent.

I broke into a jog, closing in on the kids ahead of us. We caught up with them in less than a minute. I tapped Shotgun on the shoulder. He whirled around, jaw dropping, and I smirked.

"Five on one," I said. "That sounds fair."

The girl in the middle stared at me. "You should stay out of this," she said, her voice shaking. Up close like this I could see how the blood had drained from her face—she wasn't pale by any standard, but she still looked sick with fear.

"Yeah," said the guy on her left. I snorted. He was dressed in forest camouflage—in the desert. "Listen to the chick."

The girl glared at him, but flinched when he shifted to grin at her. One of the guys behind her—the one with ratty-looking white boy dreads—put a hand on her shoulder and started pulling, and something inside of me just snapped.

In retrospect, it was probably my willingness to put up with this nonsense.

I smashed my elbow into Shotgun's nose. It broke like a dropped egg and he stumbled back, groaning. That gave me the space I needed to get face-to-face with Dreadlocks. He had a firm grip on the girl's shoulder, but she was wriggling like a caught fish, distracting him.

Good.

I slammed my knee into his groin. He doubled over, letting go of the girl to cradle his crotch, and I lifted my foot to kick him back by the shoulder.

That was before his shirtless friend grabbed me by the hair, yanking me back to land hard on my ass. He kicked me in the stomach, making me throw up in my mouth a little. Gross.

I rolled out of the way, bumping into Nudge—she was grappling with Camouflage, who had a good four inches on her. She tripped over me, falling backwards, and I flung up a hand to catch her. Nearly dislocated my shoulder, too.

I scrambled up to my feet and looked for Shirtless. Fang had him in a chokehold, which meant that there was only one guy left—Linebacker. He had a hand fisted in the girl's long, dark hair, trying to yank her away.

Yeah, no.

I ran up behind him and leapt onto his back, choking him with my forearm across his throat. I yanked back hard, arching my back for leverage. He flailed and tipped backward, sending us both crashing into the ground. The impact smashed my wings and jarred my spine. I tipped my head backward and bit my lip against a shout of pain.

For a long moment Linebacker tried to get free, but I was a lot stronger than him. He went limp, leaving me with a bruised tailbone and a lap full of two-hundred-plus pounds of deadweight.

I wriggled out from under him and stood. Breathing hurt, and the fall had left me wobbly.

"Hey," I wheezed, and waved at the girl. "You okay?"

She nodded, wide-eyed.

I shot a glance over my shoulder, and saw Fang and Nudge headed up to us. They both looked fine. Nudge had a black eye, and Fang was rubbing at his jaw—but black eyes weren't serious, and Fang didn't look like he had broken anything. I let out a sigh of relief.

"Who are you?" the girl demanded. "I haven't seen you before. What're you doing here?"

"We're tourists," Nudge said brightly, brushing her hands off on her jeans. "From Maine. Hence the, um, the jackets. We thought this place would be like Maine. Who're you?"

"Ella," the girl said. "Ella Martinez. And oh my God, your eye! Are you okay?"

Nudge nodded.

She turned to me. "And that guy, like, he crushed you! How are you still standing?"

I shrugged, straightening up. I had gotten my breath back, and my legs were solid under me again. "I work out."

She didn't seem to have a problem with that answer, for which I was grateful—I didn't exactly need her poking and prying and figuring out that the three of us were mutant freaks on the lam.

"Alright, Ella," I told her. "Let's get you home."

She nodded. "I live… down the road."

We headed off, walking fast—

And then there was a shotgun blast, and something whizzed over my head—barely by a foot.

I threw a glance over my shoulder. Shotgun was up on one knee, gun in hand, blood streaming from his nose. He pumped the barrel to eject the spent cartridge, and took aim again—

I didn't think about it. Not consciously, anyway—I threw myself at Fang, knocking him to the ground.

And my shoulder erupted in a burst of pain so intense that I blacked out for a half-second.

"Max," Fang hissed, his eyes wide. I followed his gaze, cutting my eyes down and to my right—and crap. My jacket was ripped, and blood was seeping through the leather. Some of it dripped down, landing on Fang's cheek.

"Max!" Nudge shouted, tugging at my backpack. I shrieked—it felt she was ripping my body away from my arm. The pain made me nauseas, but I forced myself to stand steady. Fang scrambled to his feet as well, and the four of us started running.

I won't lie—I was barely conscious by the time we got to Ella's house. I've been beaten bloody, thrown across rooms, forced to run at top speed on an empty stomach. This was different. Worse, kind of—after a while my arm started feeling numb, and I couldn't tell how much blood I had lost. By the time we got to Ella's bungalow, the pain itself had died down, but the world around me had taken on the consistency of maple syrup. Ella sprinted up the stairs, banging on the door.

"Mom! Mom! There's a girl outside, and she's hurt! She got shot! Mom!" Her voice sounded tinny, even though she was barely five feet away.

Fang, Nudge, and I shot each other horrified glances, and terror pooled in the pit of my stomach.

Ella spun back to face us. "Don't worry," she said. "My mom's a vet. She can help." She banged on the door again. "Mom!"

The door swung open, and a middle-aged Hispanic woman poked her head out. "Ella, what—"

I shifted my wings underneath my jacket, getting ready to ditch it and start flapping, and bit my lip when pain flared up. Son of a—he had hit my wing, too!

Ella's mom had opened the door fully, and was gesturing us in. I went, Fang and Nudge trailing me. What else could I do? I couldn't get away. My first aid knowledge was mediocre, and theirs wasn't much better. Like it or not, this lady was our only chance. The door shut behind us, and I took a deep breath.

I liked the Max/Fang/Nudge dynamic. They play off of each other well. That's one of the strengths of MR, I think - the personalities and bonds of the Flock are such that you can put any number of characters in the same scene and they'll all develop their own unique set of interactions. And if you put a slightly different group together, they'll take that set of interactions and change it completely.

My favorite thing about this chapter was how many moods it cycled through. Fun fact! When I was writing this chapter in Word, I got one page of hipster wet dream prose, and then page two rolls around like hello little children its time for nightmares. And okay, like. Mini-rant ahead.

Max's canon nightmare always Bugged Me, on a level that I couldn't quite express. Now that I've written a corresponding scene, I kind of can. The issue with Max's nightmare is that it's not scary. It ends on a high note, and while it's not BAD, it also isn't GOOD. Not to mention that you have the godawful line in STWAOES that the Voice delivers about Max's nightmare Becoming Real and everything being a circle and hand to god I swear I'll never do that to you guys. Ever.

So yeah? What did you think about this chapter? About the Fax? Because that's still going to be a thing, you know. At the moment it's slow-building, but it's still going to be, like, a thing.