Beta-read by Tokoloshe Monster. Thanks to the reviewers: jrits on anon three different times, and dicaeopolis.
"But to surrender what you are and to live without belief is more terrible than dying—even more terrible than dying young."
- Joan of Arc
I slammed my foot into the thick metal door of my cell, doing my best to ignore the pain. The canvas sneakers that I had woken up in really weren't made for anything useful.
Case in point: the door didn't budge.
My head chose that moment to flare up in pain, and I clutched at it, doing my best not to whimper. It wasn't as bad as it had been when I had first woken up down here, coming down off of whatever tranqulizers they had me on, but it still hurt like the dickens. I had already thrown up once into the steel toilet affixed to the wall.
Toilet, sink, mattress, shuttered door. They were the only things in my cell. And I had tried to throw just about all of the first three at the last one, with absolutely no success.
I slammed my fist into the wall, sending shockwaves up my arm. I had splintered my nails and split my knuckles open hours ago trying to get out of here, but I hadn't made a dent in anything. The only signs that I had even tried were the dark brown smears of dried blood littering the walls.
Why did I even bother? It was hopeless. I was just burning myself out. They would leave me in here to rot, and I'd never see the sun again, never fly…
These assholes had ripped my family apart and maybe killed some of them. They had locked me in a windowless prison cell and drugged me to the point where I couldn't see straight.
I was going to kill them all.
My breath hitched and I saw red. Again I slammed my fist into the wall, and again, and again…
I forced myself to stop, curled up in the corner. I couldn't cry. I couldn't break down. I had to be strong. Even though I was trapped in a windowless hell with all of my family gone, I had to be strong. I tugged my gray sweatshirt over my mouth and took deep breaths. Slowly my breathing evened out, and I was able to stand up.
They couldn't keep me in here forever. Eventually they'd need to experiment on me, and when they did I'd be ready. I could take out a whitecoat, no problem. Erasers would be harder, but I could handle two of them if I kept my back to a wall. Heck, maybe I'd be able to get a few other mutants to help out. Six years ago, I had convinced Fang and Iggy to fight like hell when the whitecoats came—I could do that again with another set of kids.
In the meantime, though, I'd need to be ready to fight. I started to stretch, taking care not to move my head too much.
The door opened before five minutes had passed, and two female Erasers strode in. Before I could move, one unholstered a cattle prod from its belt.
I glared, my hands curling into fists. I could—
I couldn't.
They were armed to the teeth and blocking the doorway, over six feet of muscle and claws. I couldn't remember the last time I had eaten, and my legs were cramping up in time with the pounding in my head. My shoulders sagged.
One of the Erasers snorted. "Don't try anything funny. Hands out, palms up. Now."
Not knowing what else to do, I complied. They cuffed my hands behind my back and frog-marched me out of the room.
The hallway was just as dull as the room, lined with white-painted metal doors. Black block letters on the walls told me that this was RHB01, and that my cell was RHB01.09. Whatever that meant. I tried to look around, to see if there was any sign, however imperceptible, of a struggle—maybe the rest of the Flock was down here?—but I was dragged into the elevator at the end of the hallway before I could see anything.
Apparently RHB01 was on floor B7. I frowned. Iggy had said that there were only four basement levels. And when Fang and I had taken the stairs, the fourth basement level was the lowest. What was this? Did Jeb leave the School not knowing about this place? The elevator went down to B10—what was on the lower floors? How deep would I have to go to find the rest of my Flock?
When we got off, it was on the second floor. But I didn't have time to be quietly relieved that I wasn't underground anymore as I was hauled through another hallway before being shoved unceremoniously into another room. This one was more furnished than the cell downstairs—it had, like, a table. Chairs. Windows. And a coffee machine, with bottles of water on the side to use for brewing. I licked my lips, conscious of how dry they were. How long had I been out?
I stared hard at the woman sitting at the table. She was in her mid- to late-thirties, brunette, and pale. She looked like a mom, not a mad scientist. But the super-starched white lab coat she spoke louder than her mousy hair, pasty skin, or unathletic physique. It didn't matter what she looked like—she was the enemy.
The Erasers dumped me in the chair across from her and went to stand by the door.
She stared at me.
I glared back.
She was the first one to break eye contact, turning to the Erasers. "Um, excuse me? Can we—get her hands—in front? Please?"
I didn't stop glaring as my hands were un- and re-cuffed, even as the disgustingly meaty breath of the Eraser wafted around me.
"It's nice to see you again," the mad-scientist-mom said softly.
"Feeling not mutual," I snapped.
The MSM flinched and pushed her hair back behind her ear. What a weakling.
"I don't think you understand the gravity of your situation," she said, and gnawed on her lip for a moment. When she spoke again, it was like she was in a play, reciting lines she had only half-memorized. "We have captured you and your family. At any moment, should we so choose, we can end their lives."
She blinked, looking nauseas. Did threatening to kill seven innocent kids make her a bit uncomfortable?
"I know that sounds barbaric," she went on, "but it's true. If it weren't for me, the Erasers downstairs would be the ones interrogating you. And I don't want to get started on everybody who wants to experiment on you and your family. So really, your cooperation would be appreciated."
I snorted. "My cooperation? Let me tell you about my cooperation. You say that it's nice to see me again—clearly you were here when I was a kid. When Fang and Iggy were kids. Remember that? How we would go out of our way to give you hell? How we would bite and kick and scream? Well, that was when we were scared little eight-year-old kids. We're fourteen now, and we're just as mean. And so are the other three. You mad scientist whack-jobs think that we're lab rats, and that if you shock us enough then we'll do what you say. Well, guess what? We're not. I'm not. I'll fight to the death if I have to. We all will. So you can take your cooperationand shove it."
She sighed. "What can I offer you that will help you reconsider?"
"A pony."
"How about a granola bar?" the MSM said. She reached into her lab coat and pulled one out. "Nature Valley, honey oat, still wrapped."
My stomach chose that exact moment to let out a nasty growl, and I narrowed my eyes. "Throw in some coffee and you have a deal."
"Of course," she said. "Milk and sugar?"
"Yeah."
She made the coffee and pushed it and the granola bar across the table to me. The bar was scratchy and the coffee scalding, but I made short work of both. "You just bought three minutes of cooperation, lady," I said. "Make it fast."
She smiled, like she wasn't capable of ordering those Erasers by the door to rip my throat out. Like she was a friend's mom and I had come over to hang out—like she was Ella's mom, offering me a spoonful of cookie dough. Like she wanted to be my friend.
I hated her.
The caffeine dulled some of my headache, and the sugar was making it easier for me to function. I straightened up in my seat. "All right," I said. "Where's the rest of my Flock? What day is it? Are they getting shoved into dog crates? Experimented on? What do you sickos want from us?"
The MSM took a deep breath in, one hand fiddling with the pen in her breast pocket. "How about I ask the questions," she said. "We need for you to tell us about your childhood with Jeb Batchelder."
You know, this might sound impossible, but I had actually planned to give her three minutes of cooperation. But once she said Jeb Batchelder all bets were off. Jeb had saved my life, saved all of our lives. He had kept us safe from them, kept us hidden, and made us strong enough to take them on if we needed to. He had even diedhelping Iggy, Gazzy, and Angel get away. And now this whitecoat bitch wanted me to pretend that those six years meant nothing, that a granola bar and a cup of coffee was all it took for me to sell out my family?
Rage, white-hot and pulsing, choked me. For a second, all I could think of was how satisfyingit would be to haul back and punch her right in her stupid, soft face. To hear the snap of her jaw breaking, see her teeth fly across the room, and watch her blood splatter on the too-white walls. Whitecoats bled just as red as we did.
I half-stood, my hands balling into fists. It wouldn't take much. Just flip the table and—
An Eraser snapped its forearm against my throat and slammed me back into the chair, and I came back to my senses.
"Nope," I said, forcing some levity back into my voice. "Nothing doing."
She sighed. "You know, I can't help you if you don't work with me."
"You want to help me?" I would have laughed if my skull weren't throbbing. "That's rich. How about you start by letting me and my family go? And then you can, I don't know, never bother us again. Oh, wait, wait! How about you also give us some money and a house to live on our own, since, you know, we don't have any parents anymore! And then you can tell the Erasers to stop coming after us, and maybe you can also just jump off a cliff and die!" I was hysterical now. It was a show of weakness, like a rat scrabbling around in its cage. I didn't care. Adrenaline had won out over pain, at least for a moment.
"I hate to put it like this, but if you don't cooperate then you will be terminated and replaced. I really don't want that to happen—please work with me." She was leaning forward on her elbows, eyes wide.
Now I did laugh. "Replaced? Who with? You think Fang will work with you? Try getting him to use more than five words in a sentence. Iggy's blind, Nudge can't do more than forty push-ups at once, and the Gasman and Angel are kids. Face it—if I don't work with you, your entire plan is up a creek. And I'm not doing squat."
She sighed again, and leaned back to massage her temples. I felt a small surge of vindictive joy. It was nice to know, that even after six years, I was just as much (if not more) of a pain in the collective whitecoated backside of the School.
Finally she spoke, but it wasn't to me. She fidgeted with her sleek black earpiece. "Simon, please send Erasers to collect 1A2 and 1A3, please. And… can you not back-cuff them, please? …Yes, I'm sure."
Did she just say please three times? What a pushover. If it weren't for the cuffs and the Erasers, I'd be done with her in half a minute.
We sat in stony silence until the door opened and Fang was marched in. He was quiet, but the way his arms tensed told me that he was half a second away from trying to break out of his cuffs.
A moment later, Iggy was dragged in. Instead of the two-Eraser guard that Fang and I had, there were four Erasers surrounding him, one with a sparking Taser a hairs-breadth away from his neck.
Seeing the two of them under the harsh bright lights was a bittersweet thing. For one, they were alive. For another, they looked like crap. Fang's normally olive skin was chalky, and Iggy looked like a ghost. A blind, feral, ghost.
I tried to hug him, but the cuffs stopped me from doing that. Instead I stood and took his hands in mine, standing on my toes so I could lean our foreheads together. "Iggy, c'mon. Snap out of it."
His fists relaxed and he exhaled. "Hey, Max," he said, his voice hoarse, and snapped his fingers once. "There. I've snapped out of it."
I bumped my forehead against his collarbone, fighting against the lump in my throat.
When I stood normally, I saw that tears had begun to well up in his eyes.
Fang was next. I grabbed his hands, and he held onto mine, our knuckles going white. "I'm so sorry," I whispered, my voice breaking. And then I said the three words that I hated the most. "You were right."
He nodded once, still tense, but he didn't try to pull his hands away from mine. And for a moment, I didn't care about the Erasers, or the MSM. I just wanted to hug him and cry. Because he had opened up to me, and I had brought him back here.
An Eraser came in, holding two chairs, and set them down next to mine. Fang and I sat down and glared at the MSM while Iggy fumbled his way to his seat.
"Guys, this is Random Whitecoat Number I Don't Care, aka the Mad Scientist Mom," I said. "You probably remember her as one of the anonymous psychos who tortured us for kicks. Random Whitecoat Number I Don't Care, these are Fang and Iggy. You probably remember them as the second- and third-biggest troublemakers ever, respectively. Now that the introductions are out of the way, how about we get ready for the next load of BS that MSM is going to spew."
The MSM looked like she needed an aspirin.
"I had you two brought here," she said, very carefully, "in the hopes that you would be slightly more cooperative than your sister. That you would help her to see reason."
Fang didn't move. Iggy flipped her off with both hands.
"As you can see," I said, "that's not going to work. What might work is, like, getting all of us in a room together. And having the Erasers leave. And opening a window. Preferably one facing the west—I've always liked flying off into the sunset."
"Max, I'm trying to help you." Her hands were in her lap, but I was willing to bet that she had clenched them into fists by now.
"If I had a quarter for every time one of you freaks tried to help," Iggy snapped, "I'd have enough money to get my eyes fixed. Fuck you."
Fang didn't say anything, and I shot a glance in his direction. His eyes were trained on the MSM, looking at her the way he did when he was getting ready to fight somebody. Thanks to our constant sparring, I had been on the receiving end of that stare more times than I could count. It had always made me feel weird, like I was getting X-rayed. Good. Let her feel invaded. It wouldn't even be a tenth of how we felt.
"If you cooperate, we can have you moved to more comfortable quarters." She turned to Iggy and me. "You two. Wouldn't you rather have beds to sleep on? We have plenty of room in the second-level rehabilitation floor. And if we work together, then you and your family—you can all see each other again."
Iggy flipped her off again but didn't say anything. He was shaking like a leaf, biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood.
"That's bullshit," I snapped. "Because my family isn't just the six of us. It's Jeb, too. And Ari. And Jeb is dead, and you kidnapped Ari."
She paused for a moment, her eyes going wide. What, was she oh-so-surprised to learn about the horrible fucking things that the School did? "I'm sorry about—about Jeb," she said. She said sorry like she was on tiptoe, and I felt my lip draw back over my teeth.
"But you can see the rest of your Flock again," she went on. "If you cooperate, you can see Ari again. Don't you want that?"
It was tempting. Almost too tempting. To be in the same room as Angel, to see Nudge's face light up, to let Iggy see the Gasman again (well, not see), to find out how Ari had been doing… It was almost everything I wanted. It almost ranked higher than "not being treated like a lab rat by evil mad scientist psychos". Almost.
And besides, if they had kidnapped Ari to lure us here, then they would obviously stand to gain something from letting us see him again.
I set my jaw. My head throbbed. This lady thought she could set me up like a puppet and watch me dance. First the coffee and Jeb. Now Ari and… what? Were they going to put a pizza pie in front of me and tell me to kill a man?
Fang shifted. It wasn't much, maybe a quarter-inch of movement, but it was enough to catch my eye.
He had warned me about this last night. They had caught Ari to catch us. And now that they had us, who knew what they were trying to get us to do.
The hostile stares of the Erasers pinned me to my chair. The harsh fluorescent lights beat down on the room, their humming going straight to my already-aching head. Blood pounded in my ears. And across the table, the MSM was shifting in her seat.
She thought she had us in a corner and the only way out was the path she had set down.
Yeah, well, she could kiss my feathery brown ass.
"You know what?" I snarled. My hands balled into fists, earning me a cautionary growl from an Eraser that I didn't spare a glance. "Maybe I don't want to see Ari again. Maybe I never want to see Ari again. Maybe I came here just to get one last swing in, just to mess with you guys. Maybe Ari being kidnapped was completely coincidental, and if it had happened last year or even a month ago, I wouldn't have done anything. So why don't you fuck off." I spat onto the table and glared at the MSM.
She flinched back in her seat, her chair squeaking against the floor.
A rush of pride washed over the aching in my skull. I was winning. I was still undeniably me. Iggy had been right about the School not being able to change how we thought, who we were. They could kidnap my brother, kill my father, stalk my Flock, beat me unconscious, drug me bad enough for my head to feel like it was about to explode, and lock me away from everybody I cared about—but I was still me.
I caught Fang's eye. His head twitched, and his face looked the same way it did after I had narrowly beaten him after long hours of sparring.
I gave him the smallest nod I could muster up and glanced at Iggy, who was grinding his teeth and clenching his hands into fists. "You heard her," he bit out. "Get fucked."
"I understand. Maybe later… you'll—" The MSM's voice was shaking and her chin was wobbling. She took a deep breath and turned back to the Erasers. "Please take them back to their rooms in the rehabilitation centers. Separately." When an Eraser stepped toward Fang, she held up a hand. "Why don't we see if he talks before we make any judgments?"
They took me first, using the same two Erasers as before. I threw one last glance over my shoulder. Iggy was snarling at the Erasers holding him, and Fang could have been a statue for all that he moved.
It wasn't exactly the most heartening sight, but I held onto it as I was hauled into the elevator, as I was dragged down the hallway, as I was thrown into my cell and roughly uncuffed.
I sat on the floor, holding that image in my mind. I would have liked to have something happier to think of, something with all of us. But if this grim little picture and the lingering warmth of Fang's hands in mine were all I could take away, then I would take it to my grave.
But that wouldn't be necessary. They had come for me once. They would come for me again.
I just had to wait.
I sat on the mattress, dry-eyed and still, staring fixedly at the door. I just had to… wait.
I just…
And then the throbbing in my head surged up. I curled into a ball and screamed; my hands clamped over my ears.
My brain was exploding, again and again. White-hot nebulas burst behind my eyelids only to vanish, and then they came back twisted into slightly different forms. The universe was expanding inside my mind and there was nothing I could do to stop it. After a while I wasn't sure if I was screaming anymore. I couldn't hear anything that wasn't my mind unfolding, couldn't see anything that wasn't a starburst of pain.
Finally there was a burst so intense that I blacked out.
This is the first of several chapters detailing the Flock (and Ari!) in the School, on somewhat even ground since the beginning of TNTS. Obviously things have changed since then! And obviously things don't align with canon - no Jeb, for one. No hawks saving the day, for another.
What do you think of this? Excited to see more? Can't wait for it to be over? Wondering how badly everybody's going to get hurt? Pretty confident that I won't do anything serious? Let me know in a review! :)