Chapter 25

MAX:

Ultimate End (or my brother) looked at me with stunned silence. He still didn't understand what was going on. Getting person with my feelings was a ground I would rather not cover, much less with anyone else, but I knew I had to try. I had to try to help my brother.

"Ultimate," I said, not knowing how to go on.

He waited patiently.

"Look," I said, coming right out with it, "I know this is hard for you, to be experimented on without even knowing you are a genetic hybrid. It can be very hard to be one, especially when you are on the run. But it is something you are born with, and something you have to live with. Having this can be a curse as well as a good thing. At least we don't have school, with average kids. But yet again," I said as he was about to interrupt, "we have to be hunted, chased, and kidnapped again and again.

"But look at me, Ultimate," I said as I put my hand through his cage onto his shoulder, "things will look up. I will not leave you. I'll even stay in a cage if it makes you happy. I am not going to leave you."

"But Mom and Dad left me. How do I know you won't leave me, either?"

"Our mom is really cool," I said with a smile. "She loves to bake chocolate chip cookies, which are delicious. Dad, however," I gagged mentally, "is not the nicest person in the world. I don't know what to make of him. He helped my flock and I when we needed it, but then he was working with the School the whole time, and I couldn't trust him ever since, but ever since then, when he started coming back into our lives, he has been nice, but I still don't trust him. I have never forgotten what he did to us, and I never will forget. But in the end, it comes down to survival. What we need to do to survive."

"What did you do to get out?" Ultimate asked.

"Dad, or Jeb, helped us. He was on our side at that time, and we all looked up to him, but then he turned out to be working for the School and now we all hate him."

"Who are the others with you?"

"There are five others: Fang, Iggy, Gasman, don't ask. Then there is Nudge, Angel and then me."

"Where are they? Shouldn't they be here with you?"

I was instantly cautious. "We separated, but I am going to meet up with them someday."

"If you do, take me with you, please?"

"I'll do whatever I can, I promise," I said honestly.

"What's going to happen now?" he asked after a minute silence.

"I am going to help you, teach you the ropes of being a bird kid. I'll even teach you how to hot wire a car. How does that sound?"

"What's a car?" he asked, genuinely confused.

I looked at him; well, stared at him is the better word.

"It's something that transfers you from one place to another," I said in a flat voice.

"Oh. Will you show me one someday?"

"I just told you I would teach you how to hot wire a car, so don't you think that involves showing you as well?"

"Oh, right."

"Don't worry," I said, patting his shoulder. "Everything will work out. Trust me."

"I do."

I looked at him, and knew it was going to be a long night.