Chapter 21

Our plane dropped into the so-called "safe place".

Obviously, we didn't just up and get-r-done. First I consulted with Mom, who did in fact give me the same information that Brigid had. Then we'd gone through the entire compound, making sure we weren't leaving anything interesting behind. We weren't going back to that Italian grove ever again.

Then we all got on the plane—the ICBG actually had a whole hangar full of them—and took off for the safe place. It was in Ireland.

It was under the open sky, so I liked the place already. Though, of course, then I wondered how it could be a safe place if it wasn't underground. Damn my brain for making everything so joyless.

Our plane settled in. Evidently we had been expected, for there was a very non-hostile-looking committee there to welcome us.

I was the first to step off. The other five, including my clone, fanned out behind me, while Airy perched on top of my head.

Something happened then that I wasn't used to: I checked on the other people besides the flock to see how they were. Normally, it'd just be the flock, and then I'd stop caring. But here, there was Brigid, and Akila, and Mom, and Ella. Ella carried the travel-sized Living Cell.

"Hey, Ella," I said. "I'm really sorry about this."

She frowned. "Why?"

"I feel like I've taken a normal life away from you," I said. "These past couple of years, you could have gone to school, dated, gotten your license…"

"No, I couldn't have," she countered. "I moved into that compound with Mom because, like her, I'm a target now. That is the cost of having you for a sister, and you know what? It's totally worth it."

I smiled. "Thanks, El."

"I wanna be just like you, Max, you know that? That's what I strive for."

"Ah, you don't wanna be like me," I muttered. "You'd be all gangly and you'd have to eat all the time."

"Hey, I would love to eat as much as you do and still be as skinny as you are."

We shared a laugh. Like that was a lifestyle decision on my part…

Danny, Ray, and Ram began to exit the plane, but I held up a hand. "You three hang back for a bit," I said. "The CSM is real open-minded, but I don't know if the world is ready for you guys yet."

"Nonsense," called a voice at the foot of the ramp. It was John Abate. "We'd love to meet the greatest minds of our time, no matter their exterior."

I checked the plane. Just Jeb. Right on, now I can stop caring. I strolled down the ramp, Airy giggling with every step.

"Hey, John," I said. "It's been a while. Nice to see you." I shook his hand. I was surprised to find that I totally meant my greeting.

"Hello, Max," said a woman. It took me a second to place her… ah, yes, Hawaii. "Dr. Akana, right?" I said.

"Yes," she said. "But of course, you're free to call me Noelani."

What went through my head was, Yeah, as if I'm gonna put any effort into pronouncing that. What came out of my mouth was, "Will do. I didn't know you were CSM."

"I wasn't the first time we met," Dr. Akana said. "But I am now. I had to come here. I follow the blog, you see, and I couldn't turn down the opportunity to meet Airy…" She stopped talking as I glared at her. She viewed my daughter as something fancy and scientific to ogle? Not a vote of favor in my book. She seemed to realize what was going on, and started to apologize.

But Airy evidently didn't care about being put on exhibit. She hopped off of my head and gave Dr. Akana a great big hug.

"Oh, my," Akana said, surprised. She laughed. "What a sweetie! My goodness, she weighs nothing!"

"Who else is around here?" I asked. "Anybody else we know?"

"I don't think so," John said. "But you may have noticed—the CSM has grown."

"No kidding," I said. I looked around. There were soldiers, scientists, politicians, people in metal suits, people using hover-boards, one person who looked an awful lot like Mr. T… "Mucho expansion," I said. "Way to go."

"Aaron?" Nudge blurted.

I turned to her. "What was that, Nudge?"

"I could have sworn I saw Aaron," she muttered.

"Aaron, your boyfriend from Utah?"

"Yeah," she said.

"Didn't Jewel… isn't he dead?"

Nudge shook her head rapidly, to clear it. "Yeah, Aaron's dead," she said. "I'm seeing things."

Nudge glanced around. Only the two of us had heard our exchange, as far as I could tell, and Nudge seemed to reach the same conclusion.

I scanned the many figures throughout the grassy field, most of them practicing for some sort of battle or another. I spotted two familiar figures with their backs to me: a seagull, only slightly shorter than Iggy and much broader, and a coiled brown-and-black serpent some eighty feet in length.

My heart leapt with joy.

"Albert!" I called, running toward them. I figured that if I called for Felicia, then Albert would look at me like I was an idiot.

But he didn't. When I reached them, the corners of Albert's beak went up in a smile, and he wrapped his wings around me. Felicia rubbed her face against mine.

"What are you doing here?" I demanded of them. "I thought you were going to stay on your island forever. It's so great to see you guys!"

"We were contacted by the CSM," Albert said, in his Boston-grown bass voice. "They told us about this meeting, and convinced us to add two more minds and two more guns to the cause. See, they told us that… that our life of 'watching the world go by' wouldn't really work out if the world wound up being destroyed." His voice was tinged with bitterness… toward himself.

"Hey, you guys aren't cowards," I said. "That was below the belt, what they said to you. I'm gonna talk to somebody about that."

Felicia held up a coil to stop me. "It's okay," she said. "It doesn't matter how they got us here… the important thing is that we're here now." Her voice was deep and distorted. See, in addition to being a snaky mutant, and possessing a mind so brilliant that the United States government saw her as a danger to be locked up and never seen again, Felicia is also deaf. Triple the misfortune. But after all of that, she had her soulmate Albert, and her snake senses gave her something not quite like hearing but close enough. Felicia gave me a fanged grin, and I returned it. Not the fangs, the grin. You know what I mean.

"Well, it's good to have you here," I said.

"Are you staying?" Albert said.

"Yep. Me and the flock."

"You found the flock?" Felicia said excitedly. "Oh, that's terrific, Max."

"Fang and I are married," I said, showing them the ring. "So, do you guys want to see your old teammates?" I pointed to the ramp, where Danny, Ray, and Ram were still being interrogated by some of the CSM's scientists.

"Danny! Twins!" Albert called. His enormous voice carried, and the three others noticed him. They had trouble getting out through the tangle of scientists, but pretty soon, another reunion was taking place.

I snuck through the crowd and reunited with the flock. Airy was at Fang's feet, standing on the ground for the first time in who knows how long… and their eyes were aimed skyward.

"What's going on?" I asked Iggy.

"What are you asking me for?" Iggy said. "All I know is that John said if we look to the sky, there are some people showing up who we might want to meet."

I stood between Fang and Max II, leaning on them both. "What's he talkin' 'bout?" I asked.

"I really don't know," Fang said. "But John said any second now."

"There!" Max II said, pointing. "There they are."

"Oh my God," Nudge said.

Three shapes were flying through the sky in an arrow formation, straight for us.

They were human shapes. Humans with wings.

Exactly like us. Except (and don't ask me why this was the first word to come to my head) they were… sexier than us.

The flock flew in formation all the time, and I had seen video of it. We were impressive. But these three… their formation and synchronized flight was flawless. I was ashamed.

At some point I realized that there were four of them, not three—the fourth was flying way up above the others, but she remained largely peripheral as the three swooped down on us and landed, stone-faced, on their feet.

The two flanks of the formation were girls. They were completely identical: their green eyes, their red hair, their slender gray wings with black tips. They had the same dimensions as the bird kids of my flock, the only difference being that they were short, even though they were plainly around Nudge's age or older, at least fourteen. They had to be. Suffice it to say that puberty didn't neglect them.

Anyway, they were tiny—they barely capped five feet, and they were so slender that I estimated that they couldn't have weighed more than fifteen pounds apiece. Granted, every bird-girl looks more or less anorexic, but these two took it to a whole different level. And yet, I could tell that they were in shape, and I'm not talking about the puberty again. Their muscles were in tip-top shape for fighting.

The point of the patrol, meanwhile, was a dude. About the same size as Fang, and with a similar fashion sense. His shaggy hair was black and shoulder-length, and artfully streaked with alternating silver and purple stripes. His eyes were brown, and his wings were blue, with white streaks and black speckles.

He had sex appeal—nothing on Fang, of course, but I could definitely tell, he was the heartthrob type and… yeah, he knew it. He knew what effect he had.

And, I have to admit… Fang's wings, pure black and often compared to a crow, were all part of the brooding, sexy image that he had, but this guy's blue jay wings were pretty neat too. I wondered if wings could be dyed…

My train of thought ended as the fourth member of this flock dropped in.

She stood out. She stood out a lot. Not because she was well-dressed—which she was. Her outfit was all the current fashions, but she took it to the next step past fashion, which is of course style; she made the look her own. And not because she was beautiful—which she was. Her fair skin, strawberry hair, turquoise eyes, and superbly awesome bone structure made for a very attractive gal. She was more real than a supermodel, but also something a bit beyond normal-people beauty.

And not because her wings were those of a bat instead of a bird—which they were. That was something I had never seen before. Proportionate to her height, her wingspan was greater than that of any of my flock or hers, and were also wider in the up-and-down dimension. And, when she landed, rather than retract her wings and flatten them along her back, she draped them over her shoulders like a cape.

No, the reason that she stood out was her… aura, I suppose you could say. Looking at her, the way she moved and the way her flock moved with her, it was clear that she was the uncontested leader of her flock, just as I was with mine. I felt a bond with her, an understanding.

Of course, my flock was nowhere near as organized as hers. I'd have to whip my troops into shape if our two flocks were to have any kind of ongoing contact… what am I talking about? What do I care what the bat-girl thinks of me?

I answered that question myself: I care a lot about what bat-girl thinks of me. Her commanding aura, the way I already respected her so much before we even exchanged a word… I needed her to respect me. I absolutely needed that.

The bat-girl stepped forward, while her three followers stood at attention behind her. She looked around at our shocked faces. "Well," she finally said. "I guess ye've been taken by surprise. Ye have me apology. I might have given ye more warnin'."

She was Irish. Was this her turf? Was she the reason so many people were grouped here? I thought they had come together for me…

"Wow," Max II muttered. "Oh my God, wowie-wow…"

"What's going on?" Iggy demanded. "I heard wings… this can't mean what I think it means…"

"There's another flock, dude," Fang whispered. "Three girls and a guy."

"Yeah? How's the guy look?"

"I'm intimidated," Fang confessed.

"And the girls?" Iggy pestered.

"So hot," Fang said earnestly.

Fang braced himself for the dirty look. I didn't give it to him. When a guy's right, he's right.

The leader laughed. "Well, I see we've got the flock's approval," she said. "Well, I'd like to introduce ye to my flock. Me second-in-command ye may call Sean; the twins are Jacqueline and Falon. And I am Imogen."

"Imogen," Max II repeated, as if testing out how the name tasted.

Imogen stepped forward and shook Max's hand. "It's an honor to finally meet ye, Maximum Ride," she said.

"Oh!" Max said, alarmed. "I'm… I'm not Maximum Ride, she is. I'm Max II."

Imogen's eyes didn't even flicker towards me. "Max, too?" she said, confused.

"Max, Roman numeral two," she clarified, looking down shyly.

"Ah," Imogen said. She turned to me and sized me up, as if she genuinely hadn't noticed me until that very instant. She then looked back at Max II. "Well, that's a pity," she said, a smile creeping onto her face.

My ego started to prickle.

"So, Imogen," I said. "You lead here."

"Aye," she said. "Much like yerself."

She was looking at me, but still hadn't stepped away from Max II. I decided to take the matters myself, and step up to her.

"Where are you from, Immy?" I asked. "How long have you been around? Who… made you?"

"All good questions," she said. "But questions for another day. Welcome to me party. I hope ye enjoy yerselves. Soon, we find the Survivors and we fight."

Imogen turned and spread her wings.

Like any woman would, for that's what I've become, I ran over that adieu in my head and picked out the one sentence that didn't favor me. "Your party?" I said. I had been under the impression that it was my party, and I didn't like the way that seemed to be changing.

Imogen turned around and stared at me. "Yes," she said slowly.

We stared each other down for a few moments. Finally, she lifted off. Her three flock-mates followed. None of the three had said a single word. I watched them do a circuit around the perimeter of the camp.

"Impressions, perspectives?" I said to the flock.

"I had no clue there were other flocks," Nudge muttered. "I mean, I figured maybe we'd pick up a stray mutant here or there, but a whole 'nother flock? I for one am reeling."

"I second that," Gazzy said.

"But… I meant, did anybody pick up any of their character aspects, maybe some negative feelings…?" I continued.

Fang slouched. "The thing is, we kind of relied on Angel for that."

"I know," I muttered.

"Imogen is a bad-ass, though, that's for sure," Fang supplied.

"A bad-ass?" Max II repeated. "That's the understatement of the century. She's phenomenal and magnificent."

My clone was evidently star-struck. Come on! She's supposed to idolize me, damn it. I'm her freaking original.

"I don't know," I said. "Immy seems like a bit of a snot."

Fang raised an eyebrow. "Max, you're a bit of a snot."

"I know," I said. "That's what I meant. I could totally hang with her."