Chapter 13:

Nudge started this chapter with a frown and all of us took that as a bad sign. I knew this was going to be hard.

"Chapter 16" She read.

Angel knew she couldn't go on like this much longer. "Not another one from Angels perspective!" Ella cried out and leaned into Mom's shoulder. Mom was looking not much better than El.

Her lungs had started burning bad an hour ago; she hadn't been able to feel her leg muscles for longer than that. But every time she stopped running, a sadistic whitecoat – Reilly – zapped her with a stick thing. It jolted electricity into her, making her yelp and jump. She had four burn marks from it already, and they really, really hurt. What was worse was she could feel his eager anticipation – he wanted to hurt her.

Well, he could zap her a thousand million times, if he wanted. This was it – she couldn't go on. "Oh no you don't." I sent soft glances to my baby girl. "Don't worry Max, I didn't give up!" She told me as Nudge continued.

It was a relief to let go. Angel saw the whole world narrow down to a little fuzzy tube in front of her, and then even that went gray. She sort of felt herself falling, felt her feet tangle in the treadmill belt. The zap came once, twice, three times, but it felt distant, more an unpleasant stinging than real pain. Then Angel was lost, lost in a dream, and Max was there. Max was stroking her sweaty hair and crying.

Angel knew it was a dream because Max never cried. Max was the strongest person she knew. Not that she had known many people. I smiled sadly as this was read. Mom was smiling weakly at me too. She was glad I was there for these kids.

Ripping sounds and a new, searing pain on her skin pulled Angel back. She blinked into white lights. Hospital lights, prison lights. She smelled that awful smell and almost retched. Hands were pulling off all the electrodes taped on her skin, rip, rip, rip."Um, -Ow." Ella said cringing into moms side. We all cringed really. These were not pleasant memories. Gazzy was rubbing Angels back being the sweetest big brother that he was as Angel was shivering beside him.

"Oh, my God, three and a half hours," Reilly was murmuring. "And its heart rate only increased by seventeen percent. And then at the end it was only in the last, like, twenty minutes that its peak oxygen levels broke."

It! Angel thought and wanted to scream. I'm not an it! That's my girl.

"I can't believe we've got a chance to study Subject Eleven. I've been wanting to dissect this recombinant for four years," another low voice said. "Interesting intelligence levels – I can't wait to get a brain sample." "These people are sick!" Ella said, surprising us all. Some of us are just a tad slow I guess. "Now what gave you that idea Ella?" I asked, in a serious/sarcastic tone. She didn't answer.

Angel felt their admiration, their crummy pleasure. They liked all the things wrong with her, all the ways she wasn't normal. And all those stupid long words added up to one thing: Angel was an experiment. To the whitecoats, she was a piece of science equipment, like a test tube. She was an it.

Someone put a straw into her mouth. Water. She started swallowing quick – she was so thirsty, lie she'd been eating sand. Then another whitecoat scooped her up. She was too tired to fight.

I have to think of how to get out of here, she reminded herself, but thoughts were really hard to string together right now.

Someone opened the door of her dog crate and flopped her inside. Angel lay where she fell – at least she was lying down. She just had to sleep for a while. Then she would try to escape.

Wearily, she blinked and saw the fish boy staring at her. The other boy was gone. Poor little guy had been gone this morning, hadn't come back. Might not.

Not me, Angel thought. I'm gonna fight. Right … after … I … rest. "She's just like you, Max." Mom said trying to smile after that. Everyone was a little shaky after this chapter, as I expect they will be after every chapter where we get stuck there.

"I tried to teach them what to do." I said. "Most of them are just like me." I laughed at their expressions. It was priceless. Nudge passed the book to Gazzy and we continued.

Chapter 17 He read.

"Unhhh . . ."

This bed was horrible! What was wrong with my bed?

Irritated, I punched my pillow into a better shape, then started sneezing hysterically as clouds of dust sailed up my nose. Iggy started chuckling to himself.

"Wah, ah, ah, choo!" I grabbed my nose in an attempt to keep some of my brains inside my head, but the sudden movement casued me to lose my balance, and with no warning I fell hard to the floor. Crash! Okay, everyone was laughing here. I guess this was a good chapter to have right after one like the last one…I shuddered.

"Ouch! Son of a gu –" I scrambled to get mup. My hands hit rough upholstery and the edge of a table. Okay, now I was lost. Prying open my bleary eyes, I peered around. "What the…"

Where was I? I looked around wildly. I was in a . . . cabin. A cabin! Ohhh. A cabin. Right, right. "A little confused, Max?" Gazzy said sweetly. I glared at him.

It was oh-dark-thirty – not yet dawn.

I leaped to my feet, scanned the room, and saw nothing to be alarmed about. Except for the fact that obviously, Fang, Nudge and I had just wasted precious hours sleeping!

Oh, my God. I hurried over to Nudge, who was sprawled across a recliner. "Nudge! Nudge! Wake up! Oh, man ..."

I turned to Fang, to find him swinging his feet over the edge of a couch. He sneezed and shook his head.

"What time is it?" he asked calmly. "Do you have any other tone?" Ella asked, with Mom nodding quietly beside her, a smile playing on the edges of her lips.

"Almost morning!" I said, terribly upset. "Of the next day!"

He was already moving toward the kitchen cupboards. He'd found an ancient, stained backpack in a closet, and now he methodically started to fill it with cans of tuna, sealed bags of crackers, zip-locked bags of trail mix.

"Wha's happ'nin'?" Nudge asked, blinking groggily.

"We fell asleep!" I told her, grabbing her hands and pulling her upright. "Come on! We've gotta go!" Dropping to all fours , I raked my shoes out from under the couch and blew dust bunnies off them. "Fang, you can't carry all that," I said. "It'll weigh you down. Nothing's heaver than cans."

Fang shrugged and pulled the backpack on. "Stubborn idiot," I muttered. He stuck his tongue out at me. Stubborn kind of fella. He moved soundlessly across the room and slipped through the window like a shadow.

Now I was jamming Nudge's shoes onto her feet, rubbing her back, trying to wake her up. Nudge was always a reaaallly slow waker. Usually I appreciated the lapse of word spew, which would begin when she was fully functioning, but right now we needed to move, move, move! Nudge's gaze turned to me. sorry she mouthed to me. I gave her a thumbs up. It was in the past, over and done with.

I practically threw Nudge through the window, slithered out myself, then propped the screen back in place as best I could. Everyone chuckled at that, and Nudge grimaced.

A quick run, down a country road and we were off, stroking hard, pushing to get airborne.

Sorry, Angel. Sorry, sorry, sorry, my baby.

"Max, it's okay. You needed to rest." Angel told me, non telepathically.

"I know that now. . .But at the time, it was hard. I didn't want any one of us stuck at that awful place ever again. And this was just my worst fear confirmed. I couldn't let you stay there any longer, knowing they did the most sick, vile things beyond anyone's imagination." She nodded and Gazzy passed the book to Angel.

"And I hate to break it to you guys, but you're gonna have to deal with the way that I was thinking for another 20 chapters or so…." Everyone groaned and moaned with that and Angel started to read.

Chapter 18

Okay. Despite the imminent sunrise, I felt better once we were flying above the treetops. "I knew you just needed to be in the air." Fang whispered in my ear. "That's why I went through the window first."

But still! How stupid was that? What kind of a loser was I, to let us fall asleep in the middle of a freaking rescue! I thought about Angel waiting for us, and my heart clenched. With a sense of dread, I banked and set us going about ten, twelve degrees southwest. Anxiety fueled my wings, and I had to remember to find good air currents, set my wings at an angle, and coast when I could. I grimaced along with a few flock members as this was read.

"We had to rest," Fang said, coming up beside me. "The ever caring, stubborn idiot." I murmured.

I shot him an upset glance. "For ten hours?"

"Today we've got another four hours to go, maybe a bit more," he said. "We're going to have to stop again anyway, right before we get there, and refuel." "Like I said, the ever caring, stubborn, annoyingly logical idiot." I stuck my tongue out at him and he smiled a signature Fang halfsmile.

There's nothing more annoying than cold logic and reason when you've got a good fit going.

Fang was right, of course – sigh – and of course we'd have to stop again. We hadn't even hit the California border yet. Far from it.

"We going to storm the place or what?" Fang asked an hour later.

"Yeah, Max, I was wondering what your plan was,"said Nudge "And here comes the motormouth, bringing ever needed words of wisdom." Iggy said and was thanked by a slap on the head. I laughed at this exchange as did Angel, Gaz, and Mom. "coming up alongside. "I mean, there's only three of us, and a whole bunch of them. And the Erasers have guns. Could we, like, drive a truck through the gates? Or even into a building? Or maybe we could wait till night fall, sneak in, and sneak out with Angel before anyone notices us."

That crazy thought cheered her up. I kept silent. – I didn't have the heart to tell her we had about as much chance of that as we did of flying to the moon. But if worse came to worst, I had a secret Plan C. If it worked, everyone would escape and get free. Except me. But that was okay. "WHAT?" everyone around me, but Fang, yelled. "How could you even think of doing that? And it would NOT be okay! Do you know what we would do without you?" Nudge said, everyone else was too shocked to speak. Ungh, I knew they would react this way.

"Look, it was a last resort. I would have done that for any of you! I needed to think in worst case scenarios and this was my only option if worse came to worst! But it didn't so don't have a hissy fit." I said calmly and Fang just looked at me. I looked at him and I knew he understood. Don't you ever. EVER. Try to pull something like that off. Got it? His eyes told me.

"I don't have to now. And as long as I'm alive, none of us are EVER going to live in cages again." I said looking first at him then at the rest of the room.

"Okay, okay already." Gazzy said.

"How about we move on to the next chapter, okay?" Mom said, trying to soften the mood.

"yup, besides, Ella makes a guest appearance soon." I said as Angel passed the book on to El. Suffice to say, the atmosphere in the room cleared up a little bit. No need to tell them that it wouldn't really end well for me, but oh well.

~~~~~~~~AN~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey guys! I Hope this was a lovely little surprise for you :) I'm gonna start doing 3 chapters at once because my mom surprised my with the actual book! *and the crowd goes YAY!*

And I'll try to update at least twice a week. So you'll hear from me at least on Fridays and Mondays MINUS next week. I'll be gone next week but i'll update on Saturday, then back to my new shed. :) Sound good?

Let me know if you liked this please! I don't know what you think of some of this

Until Friday,

Jezi Raewin